Kitchen Takes Shape

Before: Loose Bricks

It's been just over a month since the work started on the house. The very first day involved ripping out the old appliances and general demo in the kitchen. Since then most of the efforts have been on getting the upstairs ready and some of the other larger projects. We've finally made a bit of progress getting the kitchen ready to roll.

One of the trial and error projects was fixing the loose bricks in the kitchen. The brick is a thin paver probably about an inch thick. They were laid down directly over the plywood subfloor with mortar. Needless to say the plywood flexes and the bricks don't so several were popped loose. The guys had to pop them out, clean out the hole, and then reattach them using mastic which will hopefully be a bit more flexible than the mortar.

Before: Broken Window

Before: Upper Cabinet Gone

   Next up was patching some serious holes in the wall and prepping to paint over the khaki brown color. While the color was ok, there were many bad spots where the wall was cracked, dinged or otherwise damaged. we decided that if were were going to have to patch and paint anyway we might as well make a color change. The guys pulled down the upper cabinet unit so we could check out the situation with the backsplash. Sadly it was in rough shape as I had predicted. Whenever they did the last renovation they just busted up the wall to run the electric. To make the upper cabinet sit back flush to the wall they busted out the to bullnose tile. It would be a huge deal to have to repair, so we'll end up covering it over somehow.

AFTER: Coming together!

The new counter tops were installed this past week, so we finally have a sense of what it will look like all put back together. The new paint color is up, new window is in, and new pendant lights are hung. All that's left is to install the new backsplashes, reattach the upper cabinet, and install the appliances. We may actually have a kitchen by the time we move it!

Stormy Weather

The water has finally gone down after near record rainfall a week ago. Things are mostly back to normal, but I thought I'd post a few snapshots of the basement during the "great flood" of March 2011. Here's hoping this isn't a regular event!

Water pours in at the bottom of the wall like a garden hose going full speed. It runs across the floor and into a little depression in the floor where there's a pipe through to the back room... Now we know what that pipe is for!

It comes through the wall here and joins the other stream in the channel along the wall. When we first looked at the basement I couldn't really figure out why there was a concrete trench randomly cut in along the one wall. It all make sense now!

Final destination is the pit of the sump pump. At the peak of the flooding the pump ran nearly continuously.

In the rest of the big room water just seems to bubble up and pour in from just about everywhere. Don't think we'll be storing anything of value down here any time soon!

Tore Up From The Floor Up

One of the first projects tackled by the contractors (aka Jason's dad's crew) was the bathroom flooring. Both bathrooms upstairs were in desperate need of new floors after water damage over many years had wreaked havoc with the sub floors.

The Original Flooring

The original floors in the main bathroom were a nasty speckled linoleum tile. When the guys pulled it out we discovered that it had been put down over what would have been nice hardwood floors at one point. unfortunately at some point they'd ripped out sections to run new wires or piping or something.

New Floors Prior to Grouting

When the white stick on vinyl molding visible in the photo to the left was pulled up it revealed a big hole where the floor had actually just rotted away over time as water splashed out of the bathtub. Strips of self-sticking molding were the perfect fix????? Right!

Since a complete gut job of the bathroom was out of the question, we decided that we would work with what we had and go with a floor tile option that would both complement the existing color scheme as well as tie in a bit of a historic feel.

The flooring in the baster bath was just nasty plywood sub-flooring since the master at one time had actually been carpeted. Yes... carpeted. Sadly I don't have "before" pictures of the floor in there. (Not missing much!) in that space we decided that since it is so tiny we wanted to so something unexpected and a bit fun. We found some really cheap porcelain tiles with a neat copper and blue glaze which in a large area might be a bit too much, but in such a tiny space really sets things off.

Master Bath tile job in progress. (Yes it really is that small!)

Rest For The Weary

I just realized that somehow two weeks have already gone by without an update on progress. While it has been a bit slower that I may have liked, there are definitely signs of progress. After the initial clean up it was time to lay out a game plan to tackle the rest of the project. What's that old saying about eating the elephant??

With so many things clamoring for attention I decided that the first priority for me would be to tackle the master bath and two upstairs bedrooms that will be getting new flooring installed. It obviously made the most sense to the walls taken care of before the brand new bamboo flooring goes in. Especially since doing so meant HOURS of scraping, patching, sanding, caulking, and finally painting. First up was the master bedroom.

This is what we started with... a plethora of peeling purple pansies... (Try saying that 10 times fast). They gave the room a distinctively grandmotherly feeling and therefore they HAD to go. 

The first step of course was the removal of the wall paper, which in this case ended up not being such a big deal. Everything came down fairly easily. There were only a few areas that gave me some trouble. Basically at some point sections of the paper must have started peeling away from the wall and so someone used some sort of mystery glue to attempt to re-adhere the paper to the wall. I scraped and sanded and scraped and sanded, and absolutely nothing would get rid of the glue lines. In the end I had to just do a thin skim coat of patching plaster over the affected areas and feather that out so that it wasn't all that noticeable. Luckily most of those areas are WAY up high on the wall, and I doubt that they'll be too noticeable once everything else is finished  up.

Here are a few shots of the progression from last weekend:

< Walls striped and sanded

Walls primed >

Walls Base Coated

We're planning on a faux finish for this room, so there's one more LABOR INTENSIVE coat to go... but it should look pretty good once things are finished up. Once I get the master bath and the guest room painted I'll be back over here to do the trim. I figured that's something I can safely do after the floors go in if I need to.