Done with phase 1

We didn't actually assign phases to this house for remodeling purposes (like we did with the condo). But, we put a fork into the first big remodel project for the white house and are enjoying a few days off before we jump into the next thing (also have to finalize what exactly is the next big thing). I wish we were faster at this, but we do have jobs, a child, and other fun hobbies that take up our time too.

The most exciting change in the work we did for this phase was taking out the closet. Here's a few views of the final product there.

When you walk into the front door and are greeted by a little space to move, it's nice! I'm slow to furnish, as usual, but the body space has proven useful several times over.

I found some pictures of the door, shelf, and drawer cleanup process...

In  Noah's room, someone had done a poor job of painting the trim white. We started to prep for paint and discovered that the white came off very easily. Too bad, now we have to take it off!

Yes, we used the "rec room" in the basement as a paint booth. The walls are too dark and the tile floor is too ugly. Since we will be changing it all out anyway, it made sense to go for it and save some masking and prep trouble. 

Where did September go? This was sitting in my drafts folder all month, we finished a while ago.  I'm just not a very timely blogger.

The "Before" Kitchen

Today, the last day of May in 2015, our microwave died. This has caused some reflecting on our kitchen, and likely accelerated the remodel.

Let's review the sweet appliances we're working with these days.

Meet our stove. 

One day in the past 21 months, we bought a deep dish deli pizza to cook for dinner. That was the day the oven igniter went out. 45 minutes later, instead of a tasty pizza, we had a lukewarm mess that had to get thrown away. After a dinner recovery, we spent the whole night tearing the oven apart and swapping the broiler igniter with the oven igniter, so we can still cook.  So, we have a semi-functional gas range in a hot almond/black color combination. At least it blends in with the always dirty laminate countertop.

Let's continue our tour of kitchen awesomeness.

Meet the fridge.

This sweet piece actually is a first week replacement. When we moved in, we found out that the fridge that was here didn't keep cold, at all. Fortunately, we caught this flaw before closing so we got just enough credit back to only pay $3 at the used appliance store for this classy piece. The front is ugly enough that we encourage Noah to post lots of art to cover it up! He's willing to make that sacrifice for the good of our kitchen. Note, it's white, so we have a second appliance color going on. 

Now, the interior...

Do you see that strange plastic box half full of water? We keep this custom drip pan in just the right place to catch water that is produced by the compressor(?).

And, the freezer, below, has a funny bulge across the bottom, and is sealed by a thick line of caulk.  There is no shelf, so we keep a box in there for organization.

Continuing our tour, here's today's inspiring microwave.

I haven't really had much to complain about the microwave until today. Yes, it's stainless, the third appliance color in the kitchen. It is now a special kitchen clock, timer, and could function as a nightlight, if necessary.  

Next, the dishwasher. It's the finest appliance in the kitchen. For the most part, it cleans the dishes. It's newer than most of the appliances in the kitchen. And, it's black, so we add another color to our stylin' space.

Notice, the funny wear spots on the floor at the corners of the dishwasher? That's because it leaks. Somewhere around the door it doesn't seal properly. Sigh.

How about the sink?

Since we don't have a working microwave, we put our pack of frozen meat into a warm water bath to thaw. The only way to get the sink to hold water is to use both the standard plug and the rubber ring plug to block the drain. No sprayer, old workhorse faucet.

I almost forgot, the hood.

Sorry about the poor quality photo. The oversized copper piece sucks up lots of light. The fan is loud enough that it is rarely turned on. The slope is covered in kitchen grease and dust. I'm not sure I should have demanded ventilation in my kitchen when we left the yellow house, the pot rack was way classier! I think the backsplash piece is covering a tile backsplash; I'm looking forward to tearing into that and discovering the old finish. Note, copper is yet another appliance color in our space. We've got it all!

We're close to done with the upstairs and stairway work. I think we're going to buy an appliance per month this summer and move right into implementation on the kitchen/dining remodel...

I hope my sarcasm wasn't too much for you this weekend! Now that I made you all feel really good about your kitchen, have a good week!

Putting the entry back together

After we made all that mess, we fit a few extra studs into the openings and hung some random sheet rock pieces.  It was a little like a puzzle.  The big challenge was... guess what!? The concrete walls don't have equal thickness everywhere.  We have a new rule - don't ever lay a straight-edge along these walls.  They look flat and that's what matters.  

 Brian grabbed an hour here and there to mud this space up and smooth it nearly perfect.

 It feels so much more open!  

Our froggy-boot, shirtless friend got in on the painting fun.  You gotta have a uniform for these activities.

Our flooring expert friend is going to make a topper for the slant that matches the stairs.  He also has to fill in a few pieces that weren't there with the closet wall - easy stuff for an expert like him.
I'm planning on creating a welcoming area - much more so than a closet door.  A little bench and a row of coat hooks are definitely in the plan.  Maybe a mirror, maybe a shelf.  All we kept in the closet was a handful of outdoor toys that Noah rarely played with.  He can find another home for them.  I'll look for a bench that will contain something so we could tuck a couple things in it that might have been in the closet.  If we do a shelf in there, maybe a cute basket to hold some balls too. Since we couldn't ever open the front door and the closet door with any more than one person in the tight space anyway, guests coats rarely made it into the closet anyway.  Hooks will serve much more useful without a side of claustrophobia. :)

Any bets how many months this will take us?  

Making more mess

Taking things apart goes much faster than putting things back together.  The next day, Brian and Noah took a few more pieces apart.  They traded in the hammers for a saws-all, made fast work of the remaining wall parts.  

We made a huge pile of garbage!  It was challenging to work in those close quarters.  I didn't feel like I could get much for pictures of the process.

We have some fun ceiling lines to work with here, and in the end, it will be smooth and continuous to wrap from the stairs to the entry.

That was one fun weekend making a big mess and opening up that space.  I want to do it again!  Have to wait until this one is put back together before breaking into the next.

Entry-way action

They asked me at work not too long ago what I do to deal with stress...

Meet my very tight entry way (minus a door and shelf because I wasn't quick enough to grab the camera).  

 One day this spring I was feeling a little stressed, dealing with a work situation.  I needed a good hard labor project to burn off some of that stress.  From the first time we walked into this house, the front entry felt a bit claustrophobic. It's hallway sized with the front door swinging across the entire width.  The closet door could not be opened when the front door was.  It's hard to imagine any number of people coming in there, which is how we met the house the first time because it was an open house.

 My helper and I sent Brian for a bike ride, threw down a little protective paper and started tearing the place apart. :)

 This is not as easy as it might seem because our walls are made of concrete - can you see the layers here?

 Noah and I did some serious wall banging, got really dusty, and blew off some stress!

We took pounds and pounds of wall material out of there and added lots of light to the stairwell.

Anybody else think a sledgehammer workout is a good stress buster?

Sorry about missing last weekend's post.  Just when I start getting nice and regular on here, I go and take off for a party weekend at a waterpark with friends.  That's another good stress-buster!  See you next weekend!

Paint prep

Now that the bathroom is done, we're working on getting everything painted upstairs. While we're itching to bust into the kitchen, we have to finish things in order. So we talk and plan about the kitchen and shop appliances and dream and put cardboard mock ups together, while we drag our feet about finishing the upstairs.

Previously, the stairs had been carpeted. I know because there are little red tufts stuck to the painted skirting boards. They have bothered me for as long as we've lived here.

I finally took a paint scraper to them and they disappeared faster than a magic eraser. It felt so good to say goodbye to those little carpet reminders!

We even got the stairwell walls painted, so we're working slightly out of order here, but we can't get any further out of order, the masking would be too much of a burden in the bedrooms if we do walls before trim, so it's time to get the trim prepped and sprayed!

We're motivated now to keep moving on the upstairs because we got a slot on Super Jim's calendar (that would be our wood floor guy).  Brian was working the doors while I prepped the built in dresser.

Paint prep isn't very exciting, but progress is! We'll be able to see something more exciting than a lack of red fuzz within a week or so.

I spent some time working the kitchen planner - I wasn't able to export an image, but the tool allowed me to learn that we don't have sufficient space for double wall ovens. I was a little sad about that until Brian found me a range with an included steam tray. Now I feel like making up some bread dough!

Plans, big plans...

So, we've been living for a few weeks with a large cardboard box in th middle of our kitchen. We're trying to simulate a kitchen island, without breaking down any walls or tearing out anything functional.

Here she is In all her glory. Noah thought he would be helpful and started to cut it up, so it's not quite as tidy and semi-functional as it first was.

We tried it going the other direction for about 5 minutes, like if we were to have a peninsula. The flow was terrible like that, so we learned that we definitely don't like that idea.

Now imagine in place of that sheet of cardboard, a sheet of gleaming granite, and while you're imagining, paint the cabinet faces white and replace that awful range and hood with something pin-worthy.  And, add light, lots more light!

Here's a rough drawing of the most challenging areas in this house, compliments of Floorplanner.com, where I only wasted about 3 hours playing to get this result.

This isn't perfectly to scale, but you can see that we have a pretty big kitchen. We call it the 10 step kitchen, that's how many steps between the fridge and the sink. Boo.  The flow is not cook friendly at all. The space is just a bit too big for function, but not really big enough for the typical new construction kitchen. It was last updated in the late 1980s with fairly high-end cabinets and very basic of everything else.

I'll try to get some images of what I'm thinking up here, if the Ikea kitchen planner takes fewer hours than floorplanner, and has an export option, I'll show you what I come up with.  Don't expect this all to come together quickly... We need to paint the upstairs and entryway before we can move into kitchen/dining. At the rate we work, it could be a year before I'm cooking in a functional and stylish kitchen.

And, do you see that main floor bathroom?! I have plans for that too!  Maybe we'll start implementing work weekends like what got us through the condo project at a reasonable pace. In the meantime my Pinterest board is nearly overflowing with kitchens, tiles, appliances...

Full bathroom!

Here she is in all her finished glory!

You mostly saw this last time, but we added the shower curtain.

And... Whoop, here's the sink side!

Light, bright, clean, and open!

This shot might not look like much, but here, you can see the little set of buttons next to the light switch. We have a timer for the vent fan, so it can run longer than a shower to clear the humidity, without someone forgetting to turn it off.

Do you remember what we started with? The glass shower doors cut the room almost in half. The toilet had a permanent old house smell. The light fixture was as yellowed as the tile accents and it barely let any light through. The vanity cabinet blocked most of the heat vent, so it blew at hyperspeed into the tiny little space. 

Warning, pedestal sinks installation is not for amateur plumbers! It was pretty challenging getting that darn thing into place and making connections that we could barely reach behind the pedestal!

What's your favorite feature? I'm kinda thinking the bead-board walls and pedestal sink.

Bathroom progress - tile shower and tub refinish

It's pretty fast and fun to make a hot mess by demolition. It takes a lot longer to put it back together!

This bathroom had a decent tub, so we didn't replace it, saving the rough ugly walls to simply cover back up. Next time, we think it would give a better product and make a few things easier to just replace the tub.  This is a pretty traditional house, so we planned to make a pretty traditional bathroom, with a hit of pizzazz in there. Let's put this mess back together! 

Had to level/smooth the walls some with thin-set in a few areas before installing the tile.

Brian worked with the plumbing for a few weeks before getting to this point. Hello tub/shower faucet!

We finished the floor tile first, but saved the grout for a later step. It's 12x24 inch tiles, which to me is where some of the more modern flare comes into the bathroom.

White subway tiles are a budget friendly and classic look that lighten and brighten this tired old bathroom!

Once the tiles were in and grouted, we turned to "freshening" up the tub surface. We thought this would be a fun new product to try and save a lot of time and money over replacing the tub...  We thought.

Here's the product, it includes a special cleaner and basically a spray paint.

Lots of masking to get this ready!  We had already painted the room, so our masking skills were warmed up.

We grouted the floors after the tub was sprayed to make the best line between the two (didn't want to spray white onto the tan grout). The problem with that plan was that the tackiness of painters tape caused some blemishes in the under-performing tub coating.  Since we sprayed over white, you really can't see it unless you get your nose in there and look for it, so all is not lost. We just think it wouldn't have cost too much more time or money to put in a new tub in the end.

Put the final touches on the plumbing and you have a fresh white new shower!

Next up, the other side of the room...  We need a toilet and sink.

Cutting heating costs

One of the things we learned while we were taking our year to "just live with it" at this house is that it's off the charts drafty, air-leaky. Brian has been reading about some do-it-yourself spray foam insulation. Of course we had to try it. He had fun learning how to spray the tight knee wall areas in our second story.

Here's the product we used, and the sweet protective suit that came with it.

He had to work in some seriously tight spots...

Since I'm a slacker blogger, I can tell you the resulting savings from this winter! In February, when adjusting for heating-degree-days our house was 22% more efficient. December were similar, January had a hole in the ceiling for the bath fan install.

Our assessment is that this is a great product. It costs the same as calling the pros if you have a big job, but is great for those smaller jobs.