The kitchen is done!

Out with the old... in with the newborn!

Remember the room with the ugly wallpaper? Well now it's Jake's nursery. I'm pretty happy with the results!

The New Floors!

The new carpet and new hardwood floors are in!

Floor Prep & Cabinet Prep

The new carpets and the new hardwood floors were installed Thursday and Friday. There was a lot of mess with the prep work. I painted the kitchen cabinets as much and as fast as could so that once the wood was installed I wouldn't be painting any more.

I still have to do the cabinet drawer fronts and doors, but those can be done in the garage.

Guest Room

The guest room got a huge jump start in part because my FEMIL (favorite evil mother-in-law) came to visit on Friday and Saturday night. I love her. I felt bad because I painted it so last minute, finished the last coat at 1:30 pm the night she was staying, and she had to deal with paint fumes. I suppose I'm used to them by this point so I didn't think the fumes were that strong. She didn't' think so either until she layed down to sleep. She opened the window and said it was fine but I still feel horrible about it.

We still have to find the head board/foot board that I want. I want a white, bead-board type and I'm watching my budget. I might just have to make it myself!

So this room has a long way to go but at least the yellow paint turned out cheerful instead of "Big Bird".

Inside Painting

Here's my brother Greg painting the ceilings in our office and our family room. The popcorn ceiling (acoustic ceiling) has been scrapped and a new plaster finish was sprayed on. It took two coats, primer and paint.

Outside Painting

The outside has been prepped for paint. I doubt the painter will be able to start today because the wind is blowing 100 MPH!

Here are the photos of the stucco repair & match. The stucco is dyed as close as possible to match the existing house color so that when painted, it will all be uniform in color without having to paint a coat of primer paint. The paint color has been picked out but you'll have to wait for the "after" photos to see it!

New chairs!

This isn't really a remodel project. What do you think of our new chairs! Even little Juanita likes the chair!

Fireplace

The fireplace brick work is done! Now all we need to do is have a wood mantel put on. I'm thinking probably something like an old, dark chunk of raw type wood. Nothing "finished". I'll know the right mantel when I see or when we see the right hunk of wood! I love the way this is starting to look already. I can't wait till it is dry and we can start using it. Notice how much bigger the opening is on it now.

Wallpaper

The wallpaper in the room that eventually will be the baby's room was pretty bad. As of yesterday... it is off the walls! Stripping wallpaper is a lot of work and it is time consuming and boring! Thank goodness for my little steamer (the thing pictured near the window). Steaming the paper is a lot less messy than using the Dif wallpaper spray. I only used that for tough spots.

The Beam!

The beam that is supporting our ceiling is over 800 pounds, 24 feet long, 16 inches deep and 8 inches wide. When it was sitting out on the back lawn I took Grace's photo as she jumped it, I thought that might give a size perspective. We still have a lot more work to do on it, like another coat of stain and a non-gloss sealer, but it's coming along pretty well.

The Wall, during contstruction

Here is the wall, during the constuction phase. It hasn't been textured yet but you can see how much more open the space is.

The Wall, before.

So we have a wall between the kitchen and the family room that has a pass through window. This wall is a load bearing wall. To knock it down requires us to create some other form of structure to hold up the ceiling. These are the before pictures. Click on the photo to enlarge the image.

Rock

So we hated the rock on the fireplace. We also hated the rock on the front of the house. So we removed it!

My brother Greg and Alex did the demolition! Greg did all the demo on the fireplace.

Welcome ... to our house!

In an effort to keep people up to date on our remodeling projects I've created this blog.

I'll try to keep the photos in order but since I'm starting this blog two months into the project things might get jumbled!

These photos were the first photos we viewed of the house. These were taken by the real estate agent who sold the house. I take no responsibility for the decoration or the quality of images!