Friday, May 31, 2013

I Almost Forgot....

Someone recently pointed out to me that I never posted final pictures of the bathroom.  We have been using it for almost a year now so this post is a bit overdue.  It took us a little longer to finish all of the trim. Some of these pictures make the room look very yellow which it isn't -- someday I'll have to learn how to use the white balance on our camera!

Just past the door on the right used to be a wall so the linen cabinet, second vanity, and new closet are located in what used to be a closet!

We took out an old tiled shower and added a bathtub. I'm not sure the shower curtain is permanent but it works for now. The dark circle in the ceiling is a vent.  The cover still needs to be painted.



With niches....(I LOVE the niches)



And some artwork (one of only two rooms in the house that we actually have pictures on the walls!).  We originally saw a set of these prints at a local lighting store and we thought they were a bit pricey.  We tried to look up the name of the artist online in the hopes that we could buy unframed prints (we thought it was fancy!).  Then one day I found these at Kohl's (they were very cheap!) and I have seen them at multiple stores since. So here's to cheap reproducible art, but at least it has a good story. 

Not to spend too much time on a toilet but we do love this Kohler model.  It has a great easy-clean function to remove the entire seat that we didn't even know about when we bought it.

 


 

This window finally got a blind and some trim.  It still needs some sort of window treatment but I haven't found a fabric I like yet.

We love the vanities and linen cabinet.  We have more storage than we know what to do with! Andy is still working on some crown moulding for around the tall linen cabinet.



And the closet at the end of the room is dedicated to some additional storage and some of Andy's clothes.
 

It's a slight improvement over the original!!!!


Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Doors Optional

The house had a mix of interior doors when we bought it.  Some 6-panel doors downstairs and these flat doors upstairs.



For about a year after we bought the house we debated buying all new interiors doors or just replacing all of the doors upstairs to 6-panel doors.  Although there are a ton of awesome door styles available we decided to stick with the 6-panel door.  Lowe's runs a promotion every few months where they offer a free upgrade to a solid core door (instead of the standard hollow doors) which is about a $30 savings per door.  We took all of the measurements, waited for the sale, and ordered 7 new doors.  We were told that the doors would be easy to hang by routing out the locations of the existing hinges and drilling a new hole for the door knob. 

RIGHT! This was NOT an easy job (which is probably why I don't have any pictures of the process)!.  It consisted of tons of measuring, routing, drilling, carry doors (remember the solid core = heavy door) up 2 flights of stairs and then back down to the basement, painting doors, and installing new hardware.  It was a worthwhile improvement but I know Andy had many moments when he wished we would have bought all new pre-hung doors and just installed all new doors, jams, and trim.  That would have been a lot of work too, just maybe not as tedious. 


 All new Baldwin brass knobs...

Ignore the old brass handle on the metal bi-fold door.  This is in the spare bedroom and someday those doors will be replaced.
 

Monday, May 13, 2013

Sometimes It's Nice to Pay Other People to Do Work

We have been talking about building a shed in the backyard since shortly after we moved into the house but other projects, deciding where to put it, and the debate of building ourselves vs. paying someone else to do it for us took some time.  At Easter we drove home through Amish country and looked at some shed options.  We couldn't beat the prices and options so we took a few days to work out all of the specifics and placed the order.  

About two weeks before the shed arrived Andy had 3 tons of stone delivered...


We located the shed with the required setbacks for code and then Andy leveled out the area and placed all of the stone.

With the pad area prepped we were ready for the shed.

I wasn't sure what to expect when three guys arrived with the shed mostly built on the back of a truck.  They took the walls apart and completed the entire construction in just over 2 HOURS!  I couldn't take pictures fast enough! This would have taken us weeks to build ourselves and we wouldn't have saved a significant amount of money either.

Here is the floor...

With the plywood installed...

They wheeled each of the walls back through the fence and assembled the building.





They brought the roof joists but installed the joists, plywood, and shingles on-site.


And two hours later we had this 10'x14' board and batten, pine shed that should weather to a gray color like the fence.  We are very pleased and Andy promptly filled it (almost!)


It's really not very full (10'x14' is pretty big!).  We have plans for some shelving, maybe a small work bench, and some pegboards, but it is nice to have all of this stuff out of our garage.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

The End is in Sight

A few weeks ago we reached a milestone event in our 2+ year remodel of the bedroom, bathroom, closets, family room, and hallways.  NEW CARPET!!  The old aqua carpet in the bedroom was gross but we lived with it while we built the new closest and remodeled the bathroom.  With all of the major (and dirty) renovation work complete we finally ripped out all of the old carpet in the bedroom and upstairs hallway.


Removing the old carpet exposed the hardwood floors and before you all gasp in horror that we covered them back up with carpet the floors really weren't in good condition closeup.

It didn't take us as long as we thought it would to remove the carpet and all of the old staples.  We spent the night on the air mattress in the living room since our bed was temporarily stored in the office.
 


The next day two workers came and installed all of the new carpet in about 2 hours.  It was wonderful.  I may or may not have gone in and laid on the carpet as soon as they left. 




We never had carpet in the new closets so this was a nice addition.


We have a different plan for a runner on the steps so the carpet stops at the top of the first step.  Andy was concerned about how it would look because of all of the repairs and trim work he had to do but we are very pleased with the result.  As soon as we find time to finish the steps the Phase 1 Renovation will be DONE!!

It's come a long way since this!