Wednesday, December 30, 2009

The Living Room

Well, we are doing something that I never wanted to do while we getting the house ready to move in...work on two rooms at one time. I know, never say never. It's gone alot better than I thought it would though, and I can proudly say we are almost done with TWO rooms instead of just one (oh, and have I mentioned our goal is to move in this weekend?!). When we bought our house, it had 3 bedrooms, two bathrooms, and two living room areas. All three bedrooms were small rooms, as were the two living areas. So when we started talking about what we wanted to do with the house, we decided to make a bigger living room out of one of the living areas and a bedroom. Here's what these rooms looked like before:

This was the living room (I don't have any pictures after they got their stuff out of the house).  The doorway in the second picture leads into the kitchen.





























This is the one picture I took of the bedroom we merged the living room with (I know, I need to step it up with these pictures)

















These rooms had two different types of ceiling tile, and each was a different height (due to there being two layers of ceiling tile in the living room), and each had different carpet. Here's a shot of a patch of carpet that we pulled up in the bedroom (just for you, Jamie):


Yep, that's one piece of carpet. The blue portion is the part that was in the closet; we're not sure how the rest of the carpet turned yellow, but needless to say that carpet had seen better days and needed to be retired.

There was also an old fireplace walled up between the two rooms.  With the help of a rotary hammerdrill (before you get impressed, I just had to ask Steven what that thing was called), Steven was able to take the chimney and fireplace out it a couple hours.


















After Steven finished taking out the fireplace, we were able to start working on taking out the wall between the rooms.  This was a load-bearing wall, so before we could take the wall out Steven had to make sure there was enough support to hold the ceiling up. So we constructed two massive beams out of plywood and 2x12s (it would have been impossible for us to get them up in the attic put together, so we put them together in the attic). Here are some pictures I took while the wall was being taken out:












































Then we put sheetrock on the ceiling, stomped it, and got ready to paint (yay!). Since the paneling was old and covered with grease (yes, I am still talking about the living room), we had to use an oil-based primer. It smelled TERRIBLE, but it did a great job sealing everything up.  Mom, Kalie, and Luke came down to help us paint the walls (we chose Benjamin Moore's Morrel).



















We were blessed to get free carpet from some good friends who just replaced their carpet. We've been hoping to move into the house this weekend, and I must admit I have done my share of nagging, especially in the last few days. It was Steven's responsibility to get somebody out to lay the carpet, and here's how some of our conversations have been this week:

Monday -
Me: (in the morning) Steven, will you call the guy about the carpet today?
Steven: Yes, I will.
Me: (in the afternoon) Steven, did you call the guy about the carpet?
Steven: No, not yet. I'll do it tomorrow.

Tuesday -
Me: (in the morning) Steven, will you call about the carpet today?
Steven: Yes.
Me: (later that day) Steven, did you call the guy about the carpet?
Steven: No, not yet.
Me: You know that Friday is a holiday, right? We probably can't get it done this week now...

Today -
Me: Did you call about the carpet yet?
Steven: Yes, he said the earliest he could come out will be Monday morning.
Me: I TOLD YOU SO.

And this is what I see when I get to the house this evening:













(Open mouth, insert foot) To my defense, my husband is a liar...but, he gets the job done. :)

All that's left in here is to put up the molding (crown, base, and corner), and put the furniture where it needs to go.  Hopefully you'll see before and after pictures soon!!

Saturday, December 26, 2009

The Kitchen: Part One

Finishing the laundry room/mudroom last month was only the beginning of what we wanted to accomplish before we move in to our house (we are still shooting for the weekend of New Year's).  We immediately moved into the kitchen and began work on it. About the time we finished the laundry room, Steven happened to notice that there was a large hole under our kitchen sink, the result of a bad water leak.  We knew that had to be one of our first fixes in this room.  While our long-term plans involve moving the kitchen completely, we've decided the best thing to do right now is to work with what we've got, so our plans for this room now are to:
  1. Fix the hole under the kitchen sink.
  2. THOROUGHLY CLEAN the cabinets and appliances.
  3. Replace the cabinet doors.
  4. Tear out part of the wall leading into the living room to open the space up a little more.
  5. Move the door to the guest room from the kitchen to the living room.
  6. Paint the cabinets, walls, and ceiling.
  7. Install a new sink and countertop.
Steven started working on the hole under the sink right away, and I took down all the old cabinet doors.  Both jobs were pretty gross; Steven had to deal with rat nests and a rat skeleton, while I had to deal with years of grease buildup on the cabinets and little presents left by the visitors that had been in the cabinets in the year that the house has been empty.  The grease buildup was so bad that on one cabinet door I took the screws out of the hinge attached to the cabinet and opened the cabinet door, and it just hung there (kind of like gross magic).






We finished getting rid of the cabinet doors and fixing the hole under the sink, then we moved on to tearing out the wall between the kitchen and the living room and moving the door to the guest room from the kitchen to the living room.  Here is what it looked like before:



I don't have a shot of the door to the guest room, but it's to the left of the refrigerator on the other wall.  Here's what it looks like now:

This is where the guest room door used to be.  We've moved the refrigerator to that spot since the wall it was on is gone now.


The guest room door now opens into the living room...

So far we've accomplished 3 things on our list (#s 1, 4, and 5). Stayed tuned for the rest (hopefully coming soon)!