Next House D'tails!

Remember this one?

Although there are still bunches of little things left to do at our first house (I'll post separately about those remaining things), we have taken strides to start on our second house project.

This is the existing layout of the house we bought:

The house was bought last August and after a failed experience trying to rent the place through the winter, we started seriously talking about the renovation plans.

Dad and I drew up plans, revised them, ran them by a realtor, and settled on one we liked:

As you can see this means taking 1000 sf (square feet) and making it 3000 sf.  There will be a two car garage under the Great Room, and hopefully we will be able to put a mother-in-law suite in the basement so we have a separate space to either rent out or use for family.

The size of this renovation overwhelmed me since we had a 6 month old at the time and a home we were trying to finish to get on the market to sell (our first flip!!).  It felt like there was just too much to take on.  Dad agreed that it was too much for him right now with his work load and we decided to put the major renovations on hold.  We plan to "phase it out" meaning we will take it in phases or try to do the renovation in another time period.

Since then, we have been working on two houses.  Whew!!  This has proved to be quite the challenge!

This is how the inside of the home looked when we bought it:

Living room space:

Kitchen:

view from the back door

view from the living room door

Small bedroom adjacent to the kitchen (from here on it will be referred to as dining room/office):

Master Bedroom:

Additional Bedroom (10' X 10"--we will use it as a Baby room):

hey purple!

And, drum roll please, (the only) bathroom:

As you can see, the color palette leaves something to be desired.  Kiiiiiiiinda yuck.


You must also see the basement--we are looking forward to having some semblance of storage/workspace of our own again.

The outside--which is what sold us in the first place!

And a few more showing different exterior elevations of the home:

Front of house, from street, looking south

Back of house, looking north

Side of house, from driveway, looking west

Side of house, looking northeast

A few of the things we did to the home before "renting" it out were to change out the old washer for a washer/dryer.  We also needed to replace the furnace, moving from one end of the basement to the other--thinking that would be a better location.  The air condensing unit got moved too--from the east side of the house to the south, right under the master bedroom window.  Yay.

When we ended up having to evict our "renters" after 3 months and no payments, this is how they left the premises:

That was a low blow.

My mom was so gracious to do a lot of the cleaning of the house before they moved in and after they left.

It was then that we started to tackle small projects at the house with an upcoming move- in mind.  Our first order of business was to have the interior painted.  We had someone come in an paint a good bit of the house--every where but the bathroom and kitchen cabinets.  We had more extensive plans for those.

This neutral paint color for the majority of the space:

The kitchen and master bedroom were painted this color at 50%:

The trim, ceiling, kitchen cabinets and bathroom will end up being painted this white:

Remember, color on computer screen is not accurate to real life

Trim, cabinets and bathroom will all be semi-gloss and the ceiling (except the bathroom, that was also semi-gloss) was painted flat.

Here are a few pictures of the difference:

in living room

in master bedroom

in baby room

in dining room

Gabe's parents came for an extended weekend in April around Easter and were able to help out with preparing the kitchen cabinets to be painted.  Mom Cropsey helped me strip existing white paint off the hinges and Dad Cropsey was helping prepare surfaces by roughing them up and sanding off old paint (some surfaces had grease under the paint that we cleaned off).  Even though we were painting white cabinets white, they were pretty dirty and it felt good to give them a freshening up.  The cabinets were probably built when the house was in the 60's since they were solid wood construction and not standard sizes.

Here is a pic of the cabinets right before we attached the doors (also note paint color):

I spray painted the hardware (hinges and handles) a glossy black to give a nice contrast to the white cabinets.  Here is a good "before" pic of the handles and hinges:

Here are a few pictures of the updated kitchen cabinets:

You might be wondering why I chose blue to go with this color green countertop.  I am going to go with an analogous (colors side by side on the color wheel) color scheme in there and will have accessories that help it make sense :)

Which leads me to the ugly kitchen vinyl 8" X 8" tile with asbestos.  Instead of remove it, we decided we wanted to select a cheap peel 'n stick vinyl tile to cover it.  This was a Memorial Day weekend project.  To go with the 1960's flavor of the house and the laminate countertops, I selected a black and white checkerboard 12" X 12" vinyl tile.  A pic and link to the product here:

Preparation for installation of the tile involved a deep clean of the vinyl surface, removing the quarter rounds from the perimeter of the room, cleaning under that, and moving the refrigerator.  Gabe started with the center of the room, measuring so that he didn't end up with a sliver of tile around the perimeter.  It went down pretty quickly until he got to the cuts he had to make around the edges.

Here are a few pics of the process:

Getting vinyl tile under the stove proved to be a tricky task:

It took part of two days to finish laying the tile.

Next, I cleaned up the quarter round trim:

I also rubbed them down with a Danish oil to help them shine up--they were looking mighty dingy.

Before installing them, I touched up the base trim with paint:

Here are two different angles of the all tiles laid:

We applied a sealer wax later that would help keep the little corners from popping up over time.

Here's a pic of the vinyl floors finished and sealed:

I am toying with an accent wall color-which you can see painted above the stove in the above picture--it will not be applied there--but in another location.  Undetermined at this point, but potentially under a chair rail in the dining room.  It is teal, naturally.  :)

We have a backsplash tile picked out for this wall in-between the cabinets and the countertop.  It is a peel and stick stainless steel subway tile.  Here is the idea:

http://backsplashideas.com/t/tile-backsplash-layouts

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Instant-Mosaic-6-in-x-3-in-Peel-and-Stick-Brushed-Stainless-Color-Metal-Wall-Tile-8-tiles-1-sq-ft-pack-EKB-03-101/204312769?cm_mmc=shopping-_-googleads-_-pla-_-204312769&skwcid&kwd=&ci_sku=204312769&ci_kw=&ci_gpa=pla&ci_src=17588969

We will probably install this tile after we have moved in since there are other more important things to be done first.

We will move the refrigerator back into place once Gabe replaces the outlets behind and installs the water line for the dishwasher to come.

We bought new outlets and covers that Gabe has been installing in his spare moments at the house, in between playing with our cute little sonny boy.

Here is why:

Blecka

Next major project was to do something with the hardwood floors.  We had many discussions whether we wanted to spend money to have the floors refinished or if we just wanted to temporarily give them a good cleaning/put down area rugs until we do the major renovation in a couple of years.  We decided to  take the inexpensive route.

See how badly the floors looked before?

My mom and I gave the floors a good cleaning--think old school hands and knees scrubbing.  First we swept, then mopped, and then scrubbed every inch with Mr. Clean and a rag.  We started in the baby room, then master bedroom, then living room and finally the dining room.  We also vacuumed out the old ash from the fireplace and scrubbed the hearth brick.  The plan is to buy a fireplace insert so that instead of losing heat from it in the winter, we would be able to control the heat better.

After the scrubbing, I applied a "stain" to the floor with a rag.  It really made a difference!  It filled in some of the scratches and warmed up some of the dry, dingy looking areas.

Here are some pics of the progress:

in master bedroom

in master bedroom

in dining room

Hopefully you can see the difference--the line of demarkation where the stain has been applied :)

in living room

We were so surprised how well this product worked for the money!  It was less than $10 for the container and it almost covered all four rooms!  This is the product we used.

Following the restorative finish, we applied a beeswax to seal the floors. It served to even everything out and brighten it up.  Here is a link to this product:

Here is a comparison to see how well the products were working on our floors:

                          Before stain finish                                                       After stain finish, Gabe applying beeswax

After the wax was applied, we waited at least a half an hour, and then scoot across the floor, covering all of it, buffing the surface, removing the excess.

the wax wiggle

It's not perfect, but it  so much better!

My motivation started with a rug order that I had placed and wanted to have the floors prepared when my rugs arrived!  I ordered a 5' X 8' tan shag rug for Judah's room.  It is 100% polyester--I steered clear of the wool option, because they shed quite a bit and I didn't want to find out if Judah would be sensitive to it.

Here is the rug in action:

             

Here is the 6' X 9' silk rug I selected for the master bedroom:

Detail in the sunlight

The large rug in the living room is a 100% nylon Pantone rug with a 1/4" pile.  Here is the 10' X 13' rug with our cute little sonny boy:

Gettin' excited over here!!

I bought them on rugsusa.com website during the Memorial Day sale and got all three for approximately $950.  I thought that was pretty good!

Baby room shag rug:

http://www.rugsusa.com/rugsusa/rugs/rugs-usa-soft-shag/snow/200WICL1A-305.html

Master bedroom silk rug:

http://www.rugsusa.com/rugsusa/rugs/rugs-usa-horizon-sari-silk/blue/200NEMA5A-47067.html

Living Room Pantone rug:

http://www.rugsusa.com/rugsusa/rugs/pantone-universe-73158/green/13273158-9801210.html

I bought two simple rug pads from Amazon (no-slip option) for the smaller ones, but for the large living room rug, I got a hypo-allergenic felt rug for our son's sake, since he seems to have a sensitive little system, especially his skin!  The thickness is 1/4", so added with the 1/4" pile of the rug, it makes for a 1/2" of yummy thickness :)


Our next project is to prepare the bathroom for paint.  We asked the painters to hold off on painting the bathroom because there were some modifications we wanted to do first.  We did ask them to remove the awful safari wallpaper though.

In case you forgot:

:P

You can't see the mirrored medicine cabinet very well in any of the pics of the bathroom--it was pretty ugly and rusted anyways and we removed it pretty early on.  I shopped for a replacement of similar size, and found one that was slightly smaller, so Gabe made some modifications to the opening with drywall and spackle.  We also discovered some peeling lead paint in the corner ceiling.  So Gabe worked his magic with his respirator to remove the peeling paint in the corner and did a little spackling over that.

Here are some pics of the bathroom after we removed the medicine cabinet and after the painters removed the wallpaper from the walls:

yucky green walls

It's really a narrow space.

We will be painting the walls of the bathroom semi-gloss white as detailed before.  The peach tile will be staying.  I wanted to find a way to make the bathroom not read as a "pink" bathroom, so I decided to pair it with two shades of green: kelly green and lime green.

Here is my inspiration:

http://www.hgtvremodels.com/interiors/pink-bedrooms-8-fresh-ideas/pictures/index.html

Of course, I will be using these colors for a bathroom, not a bedroom.  Hopefully you get the idea.

I selected a shower curtain as my own personal inspiration.  It combines the peach color with different shades of green, and it has black and white in it, which will are being weaved throughout the house.

Here is a picture of it:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/158402305/artistic-shower-curtain-emerald-isle?ref=listing-shop-header-1

So for the time being, you will have to imagine the space, just I like I have to, until things come together!  I am hoping all of these things make for a beautiful (and not too busy!) space.  It is a small bathroom, and it will be our only bathroom for right now.  We have also received a house warming gift (a little bit early) from my parents in the form of a new toilet.  Yay!

Here it is:

We also have a new vanity in mind to replace the pedestal sink for more storage.  But, this purchase will have to wait for a little while.  We are planning ahead with this piece for what our needs will be when the renovation happens.

Here is the vanity:

I have taped out the area where it would go:

The cabinet part is 12" deep except where the sink bowl juts out at 19" and it is 36" wide.  It's a little tight, but we are going to make it work for the time being.

We will also be replacing light fixture in the bathroom.

Here is the new one:

pretty basic.

After priming the space you can see how the light color brightens it up:

Not to forget the outside!!  I did a little makeover on the mailbox planter--it had chipping paint and fake flowers buried in some old soil.  So, I freshened it up with some black spray paint and a couple plants:

Also, one day we came to the house and discovered some pink poppies had bloomed!  What a nice little surprise.

Lovely.

Well, that's all for now!

Hopefully it won't be too long before I give another update on how things came together.