BLOG BRB

Our renovation blog is on a temporary break as we have spent the last month settling in and dealing with the holidays. We're getting ourselves organized. Everything is going well. We had a very nice 1st Christmas in the house! Many pictures will be uploaded in the coming weeks.

As for the future, we are looking to begin full remodeling of the master bedroom after New Year's. Liam will continue the hardwood floor restoration project in the guest bedroom.

Check back soon....

Please visit Chelsea's really lovely vintage shop in the mean-time. Helps pay the bills!

The MASTER Bedroom

is coming along!

We had to have some privacy, so we picked up some fancy inexpensive faux silk curtains to hang up on some fancy brushed nickle rods, for a temporary fancy home-y effect.

drill, baby, drill!

Changes in the Kitchen

Whoops! What was I thinking putting a blue rug and white curtains in an all brown kitchen. I was tired, and I forgot that the blue rug is for the living room to take your shoes off when you come in off the sunporch and the white curtain looked much more at home covering the side entrance door. There's nothing better than something clean, white and frilly to cover an ugly plexi-glass window such as that of the side entrance door. If you can't fix it right away, cover it with something white and frilly. That's my new motto.

So, anyway, since our kitchen countertops are for the time being, an ugly brown, we have to incorporate brown things to make the countertops look less out of place.

Liam picked out the roosters! We have a nice pair of rooster curtains as you will see, and I switched out the blue rug with a brown one to compliment the shades of brown. Makes for a nice warm, autumn kitchen, don't ya think?

Curtains!

We finally started the process of hanging curtains. So far we hung the kitchen curtain up, and will continue today, moving on to the master bedroom windows. Move-in is still scheduled to be Friday Nov. 21st.

Here's some pictures:

before & after

Natural Walnut Plank

It was only .89cents a sq. ft. We thankfully had some help, "free of charge."

The entrance to the house ought to have a golden plaque with the names of our sponsors.


The photos here were taken late at night, so they are not the best of quality, but at last we have the floor entirely finished and here is the result...

Laminate Flooring Installation

We invested in a little help (okay a lot of help) to make this floor transformation magic happen.

Liam and I previously had removed all the carpeting, carpet strips, nails, staples, screws, etc. from the hardwood floors.

However, removing the subfloor(s) from the kitchen was something like removing the seven layers of hell.

We started with a grease splattered, moldy, filthy, stinking linoleum. That peeled up fairly easily, however it left behind a water logged, stinky, moldy paper adhesive backing. We sanded that up in areas using a dragster sander with 50 grit sand-paper. Beneath that we reached the wood backer-board/subfloor. At that time, we had to remove the board to bring the kitchen floor back down to the same level as the rest of the first floor. We took a prybar and began ripping it up. Nails and staples went flying. Wood splitters shot into the air. Liam did most of this dangerous work while I hammered staples and nails back into the bottom subfloor/vinyl tile (the floor beneath all the floors). The vinyl tile as you will see was covered in a black mastic and more mold. Armed with 3 "Mold Blaster" bottles, I blasted out the mold. Then, I scrubbed using chemical resistant gloves, until the mold was killed and only the unattractive purple residue was left behind.

AT LAST, we cleared away all the debris, swept up the floor, and finished hammering down all the staples and nails so we could have a smooth, level surface to lay our new flooring. Then we brought in the experts...to help us lay down the laminate- a job that would have taken us quite possibly two months if attempted on our own. Instead, with help, our floors were down in a little over two days.

BEFORE & AFTERS.....

EXTREME HOME MAKEOVER: Curb Appeal

The breakdown:
1. new roof
2. front masonry stoop & chimney repaired
3. bushes trimmed with a hedge trimmer by Liam!
4. trash removed from yard + christmas lights
5. New exterior light fixture
6. leaves raked by me!
7. NEW WINDOWS!

The laminate floors are going in on Tuesday! The appliances soon! We went through 3 layers of moldy and rotting subfloor in the kitchen for this transformation. We will have many new photos of the interior upon completion of the floor installation.

The master bedroom hardwood floor is finished. The hallway needs one more coat of polyurethane and then it will be good to go. Photos coming soon!

The Contractors Do Their Thing

Liam and I were able to accomplish thousands of dollars in necessary renovation due to a special renovation loan program. It was no small feat to acquire all the necessary paperwork to make this happen. That is an entirely different story, called "FHA Madness"

Anyway, within the first couple of weeks, our contractors got to work. Everything they needed to do primarily had to do with the exterior of the house.

1. We received a brand new roof. The old board members were entirely stripped from the roof, and new boards were laid. After that, the roof went down! An enormous truckload of roof came off the house and was thankfully towed off the property. It was quite a sight to see!

2. The garage was refaced and the entire garage was lifted back up. This is a temporary fix until Liam and I replace the garage entirely which will ultimately be necessary.

3. The front porch masonry stoop was repaired and the chimney as well.

Once the contractors were done doing what they needed to do, the outside of the house looked like it had a brand new haircut and it seemed to be happy.

It looked something like this:

Plastic Tile Nightmare

One of the biggest challenges we initially faced, was the side entrance. Not only was the rest of it filthy and utterly a disaster, the walls were covered in a terrible sort of thin red and green plastic tile. This tile was covered in mold and the stench coming in from the side entrance was unbearable. This tile had to go and it had to go fast!

Luckily the plastic tile itself was fairly easy to remove. Sure enough, black mold was found behind the tiles and a sticky brown, musty adhesive remained on the walls after the tiles cracked off.

All we knew was the tile had to go. We went at it with a trowel and a hammer and just kept going.

Eventually we had it all removed and it looked like this:

Later, the adhesive was removed with chemical adhesive stripper. We had to wear thick chemical resistant gloves, goggles, garbage bags over our bodies, and face masks for this process. It took about 2 days to remove the adhesive. Once the adhesive was removed, the plastic wall was patched and sanded until it was somewhat smooth, then painted over with a thick white primer. Pretty soon wainscoting will be placed over the imperfect plaster walls and will then be trimmed with crown molding.

The First Few Weeks...

There was nothing we could do, but get in there and just do it! Our FHA renovation loan closed on August 20th, 2008. The house was finally ours.

We drove out to the property late, the following night. We gathered what needed to be done and what we could do right away. The carpet was a disaster and needed to be torn out first. There was water damage along the plaster walls in the eat-in-kitchen area which was once a back porch. It had been closed off and made into an addition probably around the 1950's. The roof was going to be entirely replaced through our loan, so we knew we could get started repairing the water damaged plaster.

It looked like a disaster, but we knew if we could get the horrid carpet out and repair the plaster damage, we'd have a start.

It took several days to tear out the carpet throughout the entire house. We had intended to refinish the hardwood floors throughout the entire house; however, we came upon the discovery that the floors on the first floor were severely covered in stains, paint, and had board separation throughout. We knew immediately we would not have the skill, the money or time to refinish the first floor, so we considered our options and determined laminate flooring would give us the same look of hardwood floors for a price we could afford.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that the second floor did not have nearly the damage of the first floor. Although the floors were splattered with paint, that could be sanded off with patience.

The carpet was out in a few days, and we began the tedious effort to remove all the old carpet trims, nails and staples throughout the entire house. This process took many days straight. We ultimately removed 5,000+ staples and nails.

The once beautiful hardwood staircase with rich lacquer finish finally became partially uncovered. It too had been victim to a sloppy white paint job, rubber step pads, metal trim, nail upon nail, and thousands of staples. That was the first glimpse into the 1920's history of the home and it filled us with hope and motivation to keep going.

In a matter of a couple weeks we had repaired the plaster damage in the eat in kitchen to the best of our ability. A lot of old plaster had to come out and wall patch had to be applied. We had no idea how it would turn out, but at last, after hours and hours of patient sanding by hand, the wall began to look like a wall again. We finished it with a thick white primer designed for uneven and damaged walls.

With the carpet out, the floors cleared, and the wall repaired, we could move on to the next challenges...

Here are some photos of the repaired wall & floors sans carpet!