Before and After

Photography definitely is not one of my strong points.  I snapped some photos before and after our remodeling project so I could see what we'd changed.

Since our home was built in the late 1960's, we have very few windows and it tends to be dark.  We've installed Solatubes in the kitchen and living room to bring in some much needed sunlight.  Before they were installed, you needed a lamp to read, even during a sunny summer day!  We even have a motorized "baffle" inside the Solatube so that we can adjust the amount of light that comes in to the room.  (which is really nice if you want to take a nap! lol!)

Before the desk and entertainment center were painted, the entire east wall of our living room was brown and it just sucked all the light out of the room.  My original plan was to remove all the wood on that wall and just have the sheetrock textured and painted but I needed the storage for books and our movie collection.

After discussion, it was decided to paint the wood and convert the "knee hole" in the desk to a storage cabinet and add doors onto the top of the entertainment center.   I'm quite happy with the way it turned out.

The popcorn ceiling was removed and textured in the living room, hallway and main bath; a half-wall was removed from the entry way to open up the living area, a new front door was installed,  new carpet and floor tile was installed throughout the house.  I opted to put commercial tile in my craft room/office so it's a lot easier to care for than the carpet.  We updated the bathroom too by removing the HUGE wall mirror over the vanity and replacing it with a smaller one,  putting up sconce lights beside the mirror, a new top on the vanity, and had the vanity painted white to match the wood in the living room.

Typing this, it sure doesn't sound like we did much! LOL!  But, our house was turned upside down for over a month!  Now, I'm slowly bringing boxes back into the house from Fred's shop and unloading them.  All the stuff I thought I had to have has been out there about 6 weeks now and I haven't missed much of it at all.  Hmmm....maybe it's time to toss some of it!

No craft room!

It's been one whole month since the remodeling project began and I'm sooooo ready for it to be completed!

Our weather has been really cooperative and we've only had a few days delay on getting materials but it seems like I've walked around and climbed over boxes forever!

The job was scheduled for last October so that it would all be done before the holidays.  But, in the real world, carpenters can't always stick with their schedules.  Knowing we'd be tearing the house apart, I stopped doing any real deep cleaning last September.  When our anticipated start date came and went, I just continued my hit and miss cleaning in case the job would begin.

I'd just about decided to give up and postpone the work indefinitely when we got the call that they'd start in a few days.  So, all the boxes I'd hoarded and stacked in the garage finally got to be used for packing up all the items in the living room, hall and bath.

That was a month ago.

The living room, hall and bath have been completed with the exception of the new carpet.  Now, I'm sitting in a totally empty craft room waiting, with my fingers crossed, for the flooring guy to put in my new tile tomorrow.

All my shelving, JetMax cubes and supplies are stacked, guess where?  In the living room.  More boxes to crawl over and walk around!

Later tonight, we'll disconnect my computer and stack it, the two countertop units and the base units in the living room too.  

My plan is to reconfigure my craft room as soon as the floor man gets in his truck to leave.  He better not tell me I can't put my things back on the new tile tomorrow !  LOL!  If he isn't going to install the carpet on Saturday, I'll have the weekend to get all my things back into my craft room. cleaned and reorganized.

I think moving everything out and putting it back is the only way I'll ever be able to truly clean the craft room! 

And, you may never hear me say this again, but, I want to clean my house! 

 There's sheetrock dust in every nook and cranny, sawdust and tile dust in the garage floor, and I need my house back!  I've never been a real picky housekeeper--there's always been so many other fun things to do than clean--but my house is always clean.  There's a sign in my kitchen that was a wedding gift, over 40 years ago, that says "This house is clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy." 

Once everything is back in place, I'll take some photos and post them to remind me how much work was done.  Am I going to scrap this?  No way!  Somethings are just better not remembered!  LOL!

Manual labor is hard on an old lady!

About 11:00 this morning I started getting ready for our remodel that's supposed to start Wednesday.  I stripped the wallpaper off the bathroom walls and then scraped the popcorn ceiling.

It made such a mess, even though I had sprayed the ceiling with water, that I decided to go ahead and scrape the hallway too.  I figured that way I'd have that much done and could save a little money.

There was no good place to quit!  I wound up scraping the living room ceiling too.

Fred had gone into town to run some errands and by the time he got home I was already in the living room.  He thought I was only going to do the bathroom.  But with the winter storm coming in I thought I might ought to do as much as I could.

His job was to take his shop vac and suck up the ceiling material that had fallen outside the area covered by my drop cloths.

If you ever have to scrap a popcorn ceiling, use a pump-up yard sprayer full of water to wet it first.  Keeps the dust down and makes it super simple to scrape.

It was after 5 p.m. when I finished and got into the shower.  My hair and even my clothes were full of dust and I felt like I'd been in a sandstorm.

Duane, our remodeler, is still planning on starting on Wednesday.  I'm sitting here listening to sleet hammering my window.  A major winter storm is moving into Oklahoma overnight with temps below 10°.  lots of snow and ice in our forecast.  Combine that with our winds that may reach 45 mph tomorrow and we'll lose power, for sure!

My biceps are getting sore from being used for the first time in forever.  My neck is stiff from looking up and reaching overhead to scrape the ceilings.  Manual labor is hard on an old lady! LOL!

I'm going to take a couple of aspirin, put on my snuggy jammies and go to bed.  I've done everything I can do to prepare for Wednesday and if the weather is as bad as they say it will be, I may just lay up in bed all day tomorrow! LOL!

Living room and bathroom update

East side of Living Room.  Tired of all that brown wood!

The half wall has got to go.  And isn't the light fixture lovely?

You can kind of see here just how brown and dark this stuff makes the living room!

Entry tile.  Can you say 1970?

Another 70's touch in the main bath.  The bad thing is, I like them! They put the light where it's needed when you're doing you hair, etc.  But they are soooo outdated!

At least the light fixtures go well with the Harvest Gold countertop!

Harvest Gold fixtures and tile have to stay, for now.  There's country style wallpaper on the walls with little blue and gold tulips on it.  That I'll be removing myself.

Here's photos I shot on January 30th before any work was done.  I had removed about 99% of the knick knacks in the living room getting ready to start tearing down the ceiling.  Unfortunately, I didn't take time to straighten up the bathroom before I made the photos.  Now you can see how messy I am on a daily basis! lol!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed (and my toes, too) that by this time next week I can post the photos of the finished redo.

We're painting the shelves and TV stand on either side of the fireplace, tearing out the popcorn ceilings and the half-wall in the entry as well as the entry tile. The front door will be replaced and hung so that it will open to the left instead of the right to give us better light and access into the living room.

I wanted to remove the fireplace too but got talked out of doing that!  Several years ago we did away with the flue and just have gas logs in it so it's not even a working fireplace any longer.  But the way it's built into the house makes it a real problem to try and remove it--especially in February since we'd be taking out the east wall of the room and opening it up into an unheated garage space!

In the bathroom, the mirror will be cut down, the fir-down above the mirror removed, sconce lights installed on either side of the mirror, popcorn ceiling and wallpaper are going away and a new vanity top and sink installed.

We bought our house almost 15 years ago.  Had it all painted inside and new carpet installed before we moved in.  This is the longest time we've ever spent in a single location and I'm ready to do a renovation! lol!

A couple of months ago, we installed new HVAC systems and had to go overhead with our duct work.  We put off doing that until we were ready to replace the carpeting so we can cover up the old floor ducts that have been plugged off.

When it's time for the flooring to be done, I'll have to pack up my entire craft room so the laminate can go down in here.  That's a good/bad thing.  It's going to be a hassle, but it's a great way to clean this room really well! lol!

The kitchen was gutted and completely redone last spring so when we get this project completed we'll have done about all we plan to do to the house.

Of course I'll have to try and remember to post some demolition photos too!

http://lindas-nothinfancy.blogspot.com/2010/10/vinyl-words-on-dining-room-wall.html  Here's a link to before and after photos of the kitchen remodel.