Home Project #4 (part 2)

Turning our house into a HOME 

Project #4: The Kitchen! (con'd)


Step 3: Framing
I never realized what it took to frame in that hole they just made. You cant just throw up some wood and go. You have to level everything out, down to the centimeter. 

It looks so nice with the framing up

And even better with varnish!

J admiring his work

Painting the temporary nook counter top. One day we want to get a thicker one. 

Step 4: Paint and new cabinets! 

After J varnished them. You can also see the paint. Same colors from the living/dinning room

Step 5: Granite Counter Tops!!!

New Fridge, new cabinets and mounted microwave. 

(You know you are an adult when you are excited about appliances!) 

Look the water/ice works :) 

We are DONE!!!!

Home Project #4

Turning our house into a HOME 
Project #4: The Kitchen!

Well lets just start with this picture. This is before.  

We use our side door for our main entrance and this is what you saw when you walked in. The placement of this kitchen is BAD. It is a small kitchen to begin with and with everything where it was it just made it smaller. We wanted more then just a face lift in here, we wanted to rip everything out and start fresh. We took it step by step, it took a few months of washing dishes in the bathtub eating off of paper plates with plastic silverware. We even had to buy a single burner to cook on. It was not fun. Let me repeat myself, IT WAS NOT FUN, but looking back on it we are so glad we did it. Not only for living in our house now, but for re-sell value.

This is what we wanted the finished look to look like: 

Step 1: Demo

J and Uncle Mike cut a nice hole in the kitchen/dinning room wall. 

It is amazing just how much it opened the whole area up! 

View from the dinning room

Step 2: floors

We had to get everything out of the kitchen to rip up the old nasty floor

proof that I helped! 

This floor was nasty and sucked getting up. It went something like this: 

laminate, glue, super old tile, glue, glue, tar, and then felt that was nailed down every square inch. 

some of the nasty "glue" that did not want to leave

 To our amazement there was amazing hardwood planks under all of that. This was such a wonderful find!!

After the sandless guys came back

To be Continued....

Home Project #3

Turning our house into a HOME 

Project #3: The Bathroom! 

Living in a home with one bathroom has its cons and only one pro that I can think of, only have to clean one bathroom! This bathroom was pretty much all original to the house. The sink had to go, the mirror had to be replaced, the light fixtures had to go, fresh paint...it really needed more then a face lift.

Our first task was the sink. It was too big for the room and it had separate cold/hot facets and well it was just nasty. 

Before              

Uncle Mike and J taking the stink down

Its gone!!! 

Thankfully Mike was there to help us with the pluming, 

two things you do not mess around with when remodeling, pluming and electricity. 

 new sink looks so much better

We went back and forth about the floor. I LOVED the floor, J on the other hand thought it did not go with the house feel. I am not sure how I won that argument but I did, and with winning I was the one to deep clean the tiles. After the deep clean it was so much better.  

We got a new shower curtain, replaced the light fixtures and will be replacing the blinds when we find the right ones. 

Final product!! 

Home Project #2

Turning our house into a HOME Project #2: the Living room/Dinning room!! When picking out wall/trim colors J was all over it. He has an eye for things that like that, I do not! My first apartment was painted the lovely shade of purple, why? because I liked the color, not because it went with the decor, the carpet or the mood I was trying to achieve. I firmly believe some colors should not be available in wall paint. So J is now our labor man and interior designer. I am one lucky gal!!

After about a week of looking at every.single.paint swatch out there we picked our colors!First, we have to take all of the base boards off. Scrap all off 20+ years of paint, cat/dog urine and Lord knows what else off of the base boards and then varnish them the beautiful wood color we picked out. Then we painted, and by we I mean J did the majority of the work. I tried to help him out, but I just wasn't doing it right... something about brush strokes and going with the grain blah blah.

This was a process!

We got SO excited about painting the very next thing we did was put a call into the sandless-hardwood floor guys to come and give our floors a much needed DEEP clean. 

Before: 

After: 

Dinning room

well worth all of the work we put in!! 

(do you like J's sweet CD rack he made? I do too but thankfully its in his office now) 

We also put in the light fixture over the dinning room table, we wanted the "old world feel"

Living room

turning a house into a HOME (Project #1)

J has lived in his house for just over 5 years now. It took me moving in about 3 years ago for him to turn his Bachelor pad into a home. He had visions of what his house could be someday but never really wanted to start remodeling. Always hoping the market would turn and he could sell as is. One day he came to the realization that we wouldn't be moving for quite sometime and we better get making this house a home.

Now J works 4- 10 hours shifts 2:00 pm until 1:00 am Monday-Thursday. He wanted to try and do as much of the remodel as he could, I would help from time to time but I'm not the handiest lady out there. I was there for moral support and supervision really.

We live in a 1 1/2 story house that was build in 1933. So when we talk about remodeling it is not fun. This do not go right or on the time frame we think it will go.


Project #1:We started with the upstairs/loft area.
This was what it looked like after our renters moved out. (J moved into my apartment with me and he rented his house out. When my lease was up we moved into his house) They did a great job painting, just not the colors we would have picked out. We did leave it like that until a few months ago. We started with painting the trim/window frames and carpet!!! We pretty much finished there with the upstairs. Knowing that one day we would move downstairs into one of the bedrooms we wanted to focus our attention downstairs.