This Will FLOOR You!

We are slowly working our way through the downstairs of the house.  This week we spent our time in the living room.  Anyone who has walked through our house could tell you, the living room needs a lot of work.  The floor joists were warped and the center of the room was noticeably higher than the edges.  It also smelled like cat urine and had paneling with drywall mud on the walls.  It was a very intimidating room with all of the work that needed to get done.  We are only part way there, but it already looks like a different house. 

Here is the picture from when we bought the house:

As seen in an earlier post, we pulled down the paneling, many layers of wallpaper, slat and plaster, and more wallpaper to find rough cut beadboard:

As much as we liked the beadboard walls, they did not have any insulation behind them.  We ended up tearing everything down the the studs and floor joists:

While the floors were up, we insulated the crawlspace around the foundation, ran the heating ducts from our new furnace, and finished some electrical work:

We also moved our fireplace mantel.  The mantel will be put back in after the white paint and sharpie marker is stripped off.  Hopefully it will be a long time before we ever have to see that crawlspace again:

Just like we did in the kitchen, we added in new floor joists for support and leveled out the original ones.  We laid down a new subfloor to finish out the day:

It is still a rough looking room, but after we put in new drywall everything will be like new.  We were able to get a lot more done than we thought possible in just one day.  

Today is the one year anniversary of buying the house.  Next weekend we will be taking progress pictures for each room we have worked in.  It truly is hard to believe it is the same house that we bought one year ago.  

Father-Daughter Project

Nothing says family bonding like Father-Daughter roofing projects.  This weekend was busy, but we were still able to tackle a much needed project.  The porch roof was in need of repair before winter.  The roof is pretty flat, so it won't be seen much from the road, but the upstairs bedroom looks out onto it.  Now it is a nice looking roof!  We  were able to get the project done relatively quickly and even did some drywall work in one of the guest bedrooms.  

Preparing for Winter

We are almost coming up on the one year mark of owning this project house.  Ryan and I were recently going through pictures from when we started and could hardly believe the difference.  I will write a post soon with before and afters of each room at the one year mark, but here is a sneak peek:

This weekend we worked on updating the windows in the house and got 6 new vinyl windows put in.  3 went into the living room and 3 more went into the master bedroom, including one that replaced this window made of cling-wrap and duct tape:

Here are some pictures of the updated windows:

We also enclosed some plumbing and electrical that runs from the crawl space into the upstairs bathroom.  It runs through the guest bedroom downstairs:

Lastly, we wired 2 pendant lights in the kitchen.  There really isn't much more to do in the kitchen until it is finished!

Our new furnace was delivered to the house this weekend and will be put in some time next week.  We have decided we will be moving into the house in January if all of our plans work out, so we are approaching crunch time.  Our next big projects include putting new roofing on the porch and back half of the house and gutting out the living room.  It's one adventure after the next!

Kitchen Sneak Peek

It is amazing what a week off of work (for your husband) can do for your house!  We made a lot of progress this past week that we would like to share.  We were able to put up the rest of the furrow strips for the ceiling tiles, install 200 tiles, and put in 5 can lights.  We still need some extra tiles for around the edges, but we left them off so we could paint easily.

We painted the kitchen blue (Summer fun blue E22-3 by Dutch Boy).  Although it looks like a lot right now, once we put in the cabinets and white backsplash a lot of it will be hidden.  Only 3 walls were painted blue, the other will be a cream color that will carry into the dining room.

We also delivered the primed cabinets to the house, but didn't have time to officially install them.  Here are a couple pictures of what the layout will look like: 

It is hard to believe it is the same house we bought in September!  We have some much needed time off scheduled for some family trips so we may not have an update for a couple of weeks.  Next up we will be installing the cabinets and looking for kitchen flooring and trim.  Thanks for reading!

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 :)