Shingles, Framing, & Drywall, oh my!

I'll just jump right in and share what we've been up to with the house projects in the last month and a half.  I have split it up into two separate posts, for easier readability:

For those of you who are list people, here's a list of the things we have done on the house in the last month and a half:
Completed shingled roof
Insulated ceiling of great room
Removed brick on existing house at openings
Shopped for walnut slabs for countertop (some but not all surfaces--we are mixing with granite) in my parent's side yard
More windows installed
Interior framing: peninsula and pantry in kitchen/DR, closets in MBR
HVAC installed on all additions
Cut a hole into our existing living room
Drywalled
Some mudding/taping
Cleared out the existing kitchen
Demoed kitchen!!
Expanded kitchen
Leveled out the flooring from existing to new
Received cabinet delivery
Installed electrical and plumbing in kitchen
Cut another hole into our living room
Removed old flooring in kitchen
Installed cabinets

On the design end of things:
Ordered received cabinet handles
Measured for countertops
Ordered appliances
Ordered hardwood flooring
Ordered some light fixtures
Ordered sink/plumbing fixtures
Shopped to match existing brick/mortar
Ordered sectional for new Great Room!
Designed a built-in walnut desk/TV area in Great Rm
And lots of other things I'm sure I missed!

Here are some details/pics of the process for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing--

Starting with finishing up the shingles on the roof:

An in process shot--not too many of those here, not sure why!

Didn't realize I didn't have any closer up pics of the finished shingled roof until just the other day! So here you go: green grass, blue sky, dirt piles, and little boys with shovels:

Couple windows installed:

Dining Room window about to go in

Large ones going in!  Contractor Dave had Gabe's help on that one:

Sadly, it will be a while before the trapezoid/triangular ones on top are ready to go in:

All suited up with tarp

On to brick removal of the wall coming down to create a bigger kitchen:

A couple of loud days later, the brick was finally removed.

Don't mind the blurry child flash of lightning in the lower right hand corner :)

Dave diligently cleaned old mortar off of the bricks to be used for patch jobs on the west addition, bricking over a few windows.

In which one is seen here:

He removed brick where the doorway will be into the master bedroom.  Where the window is will be another doorway into an ensuite master bathroom (formerly Zoe's room).  The other window being bricked over is to the right of the doorway:

Judah is not super happy his window is being bricked over!

One weekend we went over to my parents place to "shop" for some walnut slabs.  My parents had a walnut tree come down (accidentally landed on their car--but that's another story for another time ;) and got it sawn into slabs for an opportunity such as this.  They have been sitting in my parents yard under a tarp for quite some time now, so we went to go take a look.  The plan is to use live edge walnut for the west wall countertop and the bar top.  We also have in mind to put a built in live edge walnut desk to the right of the brick stack in the Great Room.  So, we were looking at the slabs, and decided on taking two roughly 15' long slabs, approximately 2" thick to get planed down to 1.5" thick for the countertops and a roughly 8' long slab for the desk, this one being about 17" wide.  There were other smaller slabs to be planed down to 3/4" thick to use as live edge shelves on the brick and open shelves in the kitchen.

Isn't this exciting???  I can't wait to see them all cleaned up!!!!!  !!

Next, Dave installed baffles in the Great Room ceiling to vent the air up to the ridge vent to go under the insulation.

Yes, they are pink

Next, here's a before and after of the "cut through" to the existing living space:

Woo hoo!!!

A perspective from the other side:

Some kitchen framing pics:

This next picture shows the opening Dave uses to get into the space so he didn't have to come thru our living room all the time.  It was connected to the front porch by a 2'x12' plank that spanned about 14' and at one end was about 10' off the ground.  Which, ahem, Zoe NEVER walked across without us....

And then, it was time to drywall the ceiling.  But not without first, the excitement of watching the delivery truck unload it.

Dave had someone come help him with drywall for the ceiling, since he was using long 12' pieces.

And then, over in the west wing master bedroom addition:

From inside one of the closets:

Back to just Dave still in the west wing:

Moving around the room clockwise:

More drywall pics in the east wing:

Taken from my existing kitchen window

On to some mudding and taping of drywall:

Taking a walk thru the space, counter-clockwise:

Take one last look at this window wall as it's coming out in a couple days!!!!

Amongst the drywall, mudding and taping, Dave worked with Furlong's Sheetmetal subcontractor to get HVAC set up for the new space.  Fortunately, right after we bought the house in 2013, we decided to outfit it with a bigger furnace (and moved to a better location) that would accommodate a major renovation we were only toying with at the time.  Well, down the road, we DID decide to take on a major renovation/addition project now, didn't we?  So that worked out nicely to not have to deal with that all the while.  It was a relatively smooth 2-3 day process, with a team of about 4 guys working in various parts of the house adding vents, ducts and things.  I asked Gabe one day, "our bedroom (in the basement) is the only one that won't be touched, right??  a sanctuary of sorts with all this reno???"  Nope, think again.  The main trunk line duct runs straight thru our room and Gabe created (since we did our bedroom in the basement ourselves) a removable panel over the duct for just such an occasion.  We had to clear out a space in our room (mostly Gabe's closet) for them to tie in the new venting system with the existing one.  So that is what we did, and boom-bada-bing, back in business, with very little hassle and mess.  I call that a Gabe win!

So, we now have working HVAC for the new spaces.  But, being that there is still one crucial window we are waiting on, exhibit A:

we still have most of the vents closed.  Thankfully, it just so happens to be warming up weather-wise so we aren't needing HVAC quite as much now.  The weather will be a consideration with the cabinets coming in to have a climate controlled space to put them.

Here's the cliff hanger I'll leave you with---

Pictures of a cleaned out kitchen, ready to be demoed!!!!

My "make do" kitchen has a shelf life!!!!  But, we will keep a few things to add to a mud room/kitchenette in the basement directly below this kitchen.  These few cabinets (one base cabinet, microwave shelf, and glass front wall cabinet) we added in the last couple of years will stay in the house, the dishwasher will move into the new space and this butcher block countertop will be made into a kids table eventually...  This old 36" refrigerator will stay downstairs as well.  The sink will move downstairs and we plan to keep the old vintage stove vent we restored back in 2014:

Not keeping backsplash (it's a peel 'n stick tile, meant for temporary use)

Demo day, here we come!!!!

Stay tuned.....

2nd house Updates! Kitchen projects

Onward to the kitchen.

Last summer when I wrote, we had painted the kitchen cabinets, stripped & resprayed the handles and were working to lay a black and white checkered vinyl flooring tile.

Check out the upstairs floor plan from the last blog on the house here to find your way around.

A reminder of where things started for us:

Where we left off last time:

This was all before we moved in last July.  We were scrambling to "finish" the kitchen before moving in.  It was already functional, but we had gotten a dishwasher for free from a friend that we wanted to install next to the refrigerator on the opposite wall.  Also, the space had no existing pantry and I wanted to add a bit more storage too.  When all was said and done, we added a butcher block countertop, more cabinets, dishwasher, microwave cabinet, and pantry.

Here we go!  This is our process.

Some of the parts of the puzzle:

dishwasher laying on floor, 24" upright pantry and 24" base cabinet

Before beginning, Gabe had to do some creative work with electrical.  The existing outlet above where the counter was going to go was connected to the refrigerator, so adding a microwave to that wasn't going to be able to bear the load, so Gabe added another outlet/circuit nearby (ended up being hidden behind the microwave).  So before we could put the fridge back in it's spot, Gabe had to get all the electrical squared away.

Then Gabe moved the refrigerator back into its place in the corner:

Then a dry fit of the base cabinet and dishwasher in place next to the fridge:

And then dry fitting the butcher block countertop and pantry:

This really was a puzzle that just so happened to work really well.  The low profile pantry we already had, the countertop we bought was 4' long which worked with a standard 24" base cabinet and a 24" standard dishwasher.  The cool thing is that we had about an inch or two to spare along that whole wall :)

The butcher block was originally a table top that Gabe removed the legs from and gave it a good sanding and reinforcing of the individual slats.

The upper cabinets worked out too, because we already had the wall cabinet box from the first house project--we just needed to buy a door-so I decided to go with a glass door :)  And since we don't have as much countertop space to begin with, we decided to buy a microwave cabinet shelf, which fit nicely above the base cabinet.

Upper cabinets installed:

Then, Gabe worked to install and hook up the water line for the dishwasher that was going in.

Shown below, Gabe is almost done with the installation of the base cabinet and countertop support installation:

Also, the original outlet has been patched over because it fell right where the countertop was going and had to be moved up a few inches to be accessible once the countertop was secured in place.

Nearly finished, the kitchen, even though it isn't as much of an eat in kitchen still has an open feel to it.  A bistro table will eventually go under the window as an attempt at a partial eat in kitchen.  Around the corner from the pantry is the basement door, so there must be enough clearance to pass through comfortably.

Lastly, I bought handles like the ones we already had and spray painted them to match to bring cohesion from the old to the new.

It was at this point that we could move into the home because this was the last thing that needed to be done before we could do so.



Much later (months later) we were able to take the time to work on the backsplash.  This was a winter activity, since it would be solely an indoor job--not taking up valuable warm weather projects time.  I believe we tackled this around Thanksgiving break.

I had bought these a while back:

I somehow don't have too many in process pictures, but here is one:

The hardest part for Gabe was all the cuts he had to make with a utility knife around the cabinetry, outlets and exhaust fan:

And ta da!  I present to you the finished backsplash.  I like it!

I especially like this paired with the vintage stainless steel edged laminate countertops!  :)

And a detail shot:

we bought stainless steel outlet covers too

And, I don't know how I forgot to get a good before shot of the awful condition this exhaust fan was in before we spruced it up!

It was caked in many layers of paint and grime, so Gabe stripped the paint and sprayed it with a fresh new coat of paint and added new screen behind it as well.

I think this is a mighty fine transformation if I do say so!!

Additional shots of the fan:

And a view of the other side of the kitchen with the same backsplash tile to pull it all together:

And you can see that the countertop is all oiled up and ready to go with a walnut oil/butcher block oil to keep it from getting dried out.

The last update we made to the kitchen is the light fixture.  What we had was a ceiling flush mount fluorescent light.  This is the only picture I could find as a "before" pic of it:

This is what we came up with--a semi-flush mount light fixture with diffused ambient light for the kitchen:

Now to share a pic of the bistro table I bought for under the window in the kitchen:

The succulent plant stand is temporarily taking up space in the kitchen during the winter (so it doesn't die).  The table fits very well into this space--a perfect place to park and eat a quick meal in front of the window :)

Here is another view of the table, showing a little bit more context:

A corner of the pantry can be seen on the right as well as a door leading to the back yard.

The curtains on this window (and over the kitchen sink) I adapted from scarves that I bought at Pier 1 Imports.  For this one, I had a wide sheer curtain that I cut in half, hemmed one side, and attached the scarf at the top.  The only problem (that I still need to fix) is that even though I did both of the sheer pieces (seen behind the scarf) the same length, when they were both done and hung up on the window, I noticed that the scarves were different lengths...something I didn't consider as a possible problem initially, so I'm still scratching my head about how I might fix it.  Or I might just leave it because it's barely noticeable!!!! (but I notice..) :D

Moving around the corner for a closer look at the back door, you can see the curtains I made:

From the basement stairwell looking up:

This photo was taken from the top of the basement stairs looking into the kitchen:

You can see the profile of the bistro table from this vantage point.

For the curtain swag over the kitchen sink window I used the same scarf idea from the other window and had a sheer checkered (gingham-esque) curtain that I got that pairs up with the scarf swag quite nicely.  It is literally just draped over the curtain rod--nothin' fancy :)

Here are a couple more detail pics of the kitchen space--a few fresh herbs stayin' alive: basil and rosemary along with some beautiful roses from my sweet husband ;-)

Here's a pretty cactus flower by my sink that I got from a large community yard sale last spring along with some succulents chillin' on the sill:

Notice the condensation on the windows.  This is what single paned windows do.  Who knew?  It's absolutely gorgeous when it crystallizes in freezing temperatures and the morning sun hits it.  Yes.

And that is a wrap for the kitchen space!