Bathroom Sneak Peek

We haven't had much time to update our blog, but we have gotten a lot done in the past few weeks.  In the bathroom we have primed and painted, put in our vinyl flooring, vanity, toilet, and wainscoting.  We are hoping to get the bathroom completed in the next week or so, but here are a few pictures to show you what we've done so far:

We still need to install the chair rail, trim, and our built-in shelving unit.  We built the shelving ourselves and tiled the back of it.  It will be put in where you can see the old siding in the above picture.  We also have a mirror and some other finishes to put in.  

As of now, we have a fully functional toilet, which couldn't make me any happier!  The water is turned on and we have a tankless water heater ready to be installed.  

Next up, we will be moving to the kitchen for prime, paint, lighting, ceiling tiles, and cabinets.  We will try to update soon with our final bathroom pictures!

Nice as New

Things are starting to look new! After looking at a torn up room for months, it is nice to see a new side to the kitchen and bathroom.

This past weekend we were able to finish putting up drywall throughout the kitchen and bathroom area.  We also put a layer of mud on the walls.  

We also got the new header for the doorway finished.  The higher doorway should make the small kitchen feel more open.

After our drywall project, we started lying furrow strips on the ceiling for the tiles we will be using.  We can also start seeing what our lighting will look like.  

A bit of sanding and some more mud and we will be able to paint the kitchen and bathroom.  Then we will be installing our ceiling tiles in the kitchen. 

Meanwhile, we have our kitchen cabinets and need to begin priming them.  Once the humidity works in our favor we will have to get moving, because we will need to install them soon!

Dirty Jobs - Drywall Edition

The bathroom and the majority of the kitchen have drywall!  Ryan also finished running the plumbing for the shower this weekend.  Here is a picture of the shower with our new fixtures partially installed (the purple drywall is moisture resistant):

 This is a view of the bathroom looking out from the shower.  The door is to the left.  Our camera makes the walls look crooked, but I promise they don't look like that in person!  Under the light we will have our vanity (that I scored for less than $40!) and to the right will be the toilet.  We also got a great deal on a new light fixture that will have 3 lights and will brighten the room:

This view is from where the vanity will be and is looking into a opening in the drywall.  The wall is very thick on this side of the house and there used to be a shelf in here.  We are making a new shelf with a tile back on it that we will post soon!  You can also see that we put in a 6" wall next to the bathtub so we could run plumbing upstairs for the second bathroom:

Ryan worked very hard on installing the plumbing on the backside of the shower:

We finished this wall as well as the one on the left with the new window:

We got a lot more done than we originally thought we could, so we are extremely happy with the progress!  That's all for this week, thanks for reading :)

The Fun Begins Here!

We had a very successful weekend full of hard work and differences that you can actually see.  We spent Saturday replacing a couple of windows downstairs.  Both windows that we replaced needed new frames (the old ones were in rough shape).  We started with the kitchen window.  Because the price of a 42"x42" window was a special order and incredibly expensive, we reduced the window to a 36"x42" in the kitchen.

We also replaced a window in the downstairs bedroom (and Sadie showed up to help out).  

Here are the final product of the new windows (new siding will make it look even better):

After installing the windows we made a trip to town and purchased drywall and some more lumber with a large trailer.  Since it takes over an hour to get to town, that took the rest of the day.


On Sunday we did a bunch of preparation for drywall.  We installed electric for an outdoor light, ran a vent for the bathroom, and opened up the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room.


Before (please ignore the garbage pile in the living room, we are waiting for "free dump day"):

After:

We also started installing a vapor barrier and even got a couple of sheets of drywall up.  Of course, nothing is 48" on center, so all of our drywall needs to be cut one way or another on most of the walls.

Hopefully we can get a lot of drywall installed next weekend.  We also have a garage full of kitchen cabinets that need to be primed and prepared for installation, so we have our work cut out for us these next few weeks!  

We are very lucky to have so much support and would like to thank everyone for their interest in our project! As always, we look forward to comments and suggestions!

Back to Work

We finally have some new progress to report for the house! Winter was quite slow, but we are rapidly picking up speed with our early spring.  Our kitchen cabinets will be delivered on Friday to be sanded and primed. We will be painting them after they are installed in case we have any issues/damage during installation.  


Before we install the kitchen we would like some extra security.  We got very lucky while shopping for new doors and also got a great deal on windows.  We were able to purchase 3 doors and 7 windows at a great price.  


The biggest project we worked on last weekend was the installation of a new door in the kitchen.

BEFORE

We had a remove the insulation and cut a hole in the wall to make room for our new 36" door.  We did not expect there to be so many layers of siding, so we were in for a surprise.  We will be tearing off the top layer of siding and residing the house either this summer or next (depending on when all of our windows are installed.)

(As Ryan says, "Let me get a picture.  Seeing you work is like seeing bigfoot.  No one will believe me without a picture!")

AFTER

We were able to also install a new front door and porch door in the short time we were there.  

We also began working on a built in shelving unit for the bathroom.  More details will come on that project soon! We hope to have many more updates in April and May than we have had the last couple of months.

We hope that everyone had a great Easter weekend!  

Model Kitchen

This weekend we worked on getting measurements for windows, doors, and cabinets.  All of the windows and doors need replacement or fixing, so we are currently looking for those items now.  Once we have the correct windows and doors we will be able to drywall the bathroom and kitchen.  

I was able to find a program online that will let you input all of your measurements to make a 2D and 3D model of rooms and houses.  Once we took all of our measurements this weekend, we were able to input everything and get an idea of what our kitchen will be like.

The program does have some limitations so it is not perfect, but pretty close.  I wasn't able to put in a cabinet above the stove so you will have to use some imagination.  Also, the sink will be under the window.  Here is a snapshot of what we are looking to do:

We will be removing one small window.  The door in the kitchen next to the fridge will lead to a pantry.  The door behind the stools will lead to the bathroom and we will be adding the glass exterior door soon. The last door leads to a bedroom that will probably be used as an office. 


You can use the following link to see the kitchen in 3D and you will be able to rotate it and look at everything.  Just click the link, then click "copy design" in the right side bar.  After that you can play around with the design and view it in 3D.  It won't affect our design because you won't be signed in, so feel free to take a look.


http://www.homestyler.com/designprofile/e0129c62-f885-47e7-b697-4d8b4cedf0fe


It is hard to believe something like that can come from this:

Hopefully we will have some real progress to show soon. Thanks for reading!

Kitchen Work

Every time we work on the house we are faced with the question "Should we cover it up or do it the right way?" This weekend we finished taking down the beam in the kitchen. There was a drop ceiling throughout the kitchen area.  The beam was not supporting anything, but was pulling down on the rest of the ceiling.  

BEFORE

We worked on the beam and noticed that the drop ceiling did not have much support.  Our only choices were to try to add support throughout, or take down the ceiling and use the old, higher ceilings.  We decided to use the high ceiling to open up the kitchen, since it will be kind of small.

DURING

It was a lot of work, but at least it is done right now.  There was some drywall that we needed to take down, boards that had to be taken down, and there were some slats and plaster that needed to be removed.  Now we have nice tall ceilings.  We just need some drywall and our kitchen will start coming together.

AFTER

It might not look like much, but it is getting a lot better!