Our House {Bathroom - 98% done}

Remember when our bathroom looked like this...

Well, now it looks like this...

Our House {Bathroom Sneak Peek}

Our House {Progress...Finally}

Happy day! We have finally made some real progress on our house.

Here's what we've done so far.

Bathroom:

1. ripped out old vanity and tub/shower faucets.

2. Removed ugly medicine cabinet/mirror (pictures comparisons coming soon).

3. Removed old light fixture.

4. Removed all baseboards.

5. Refinished bathtub and tile wall surround. We wanted to re-tile, but due to our unexpected plumbing emergency last month our budget got cut in half so refinishing was the next best thing.

6. Patched, Plastered, Sanded and Sanded some more.

7. Two coats of paint.

8. New flooring; yet to be installed (fingers crossed it will be by next week).

 

Hallway:

1. Removed chair rail (may or may not have been a good idea).

2. Patched, Plastered, and Sanded.

3. Refinished original hardwoods under carpet.

4. Two coats of Paint.

Living Room:

1. Removed chair rail.

2. Patched, Plastered and Sanded.

3. Refinished original hardwood floors.

4. cleaned, cleaned, cleaned.

5. Two coats of paint (which is still wet in the pics - I got excited). 

 

Master Bedroom:

1. Cleaned, Cleaned, Cleaned.

2. Patched/Plastered/Sanded.

3. Two coats of Paint.

4. Removed old carpet and refinished hardwoods underneath.

5. Hung our first pictures.

 

The living room, hall and bathroom are all the same color - "winter's day".  It is a pale blue sometimes grey. I really love it and it makes the spaces where it was used feel so open and airy compared to the darker browns that the previous owners used.

All three bedrooms have been (or will be) painted the same color - "chocolate froth" or our version of it.  It is a brownish grey that apparently reads a little pink in the pictures above. I loved it on the swatch, but we definitely should have painted a tester first. I like it more now, but it has taken some getting used to. 

We've still got a long way to go, but it's finally starting to come together.

The Bucket Bath

 We have lived in our house for a month now, well, as of tomorrow anyway. Woo hoo!

That means that our bathroom (the one with the tub in it) has been torn apart for a month now. Boo!

Luckily for Gabe and I there is a functional shower in the basement, so at least we have somewhere to freshen up. Unfortunately, as Miles is not a fan of the shower we had to come up with another solution.

  Thus the bucket bath was born.

Our House {"Adventures" in Home Ownership}

Well, we finally moved into our house.  It took a little longer than we thought it would and we ended up having to spend a few nights in a hotel.  The oh so strong polyurethane smell from refinishing the floors lingered a little longer than expected.  Since I'm prego (see Christmas post below) neither Gabe nor myself felt comfortable with me being in the house un-ventilated.

Anyway, we finally moved in on January 1st and the next day (Jan 2nd) we decided there was no better time than the present to start with some major demolition.  We brought in reinforcements (Gabe's uncle's) to help us start the renovation on the main floor bathroom.  

The tub and tile wall surround need to be replaced or refinished, the walls need to be painted, the floors need to be addressed and the vanity just needed to go.  It was an original, built-in unit straight out of 1952.

The demolition went a lot quicker than we thought and before we knew it we were left with this.

Not so pretty is it? 

We have cleaned it up a bit and started preping the walls for paint, but overall it still looks like this.

Since it was a holiday my mom had the day off and was coming down to help me organize the kitchen and keep Miles entertained.  When she got to the house she said, "Umm, your front yard is flooded."

WHAT?!

Gabe and his uncles went to investigate. They seemed baffled, went downstairs to make sure we had turned the water off to the house and when they came back upstairs Gabe said, "The basements flooding and the water's coming in fast!"

WHAT?!

To make a long, oh-so-stressful story short during the process of our bathroom renovation and turning the main water valve on and off the main water line to our house busted. Yea, busted - after LIVING HERE FOR ONE DAY!  Our neighbors tried to make us feel better by telling us that ours was the last on the block to have the main line break.  Yea, didn't really make me feel better.

We had some plumbers come out and assess the situation. After getting a few estimates we found someone who was actually reasonable, only problem is they couldn't come back and fix the problem for 3 days.  So they hooked us up with "temporary" water until they could fix it for good.

Finally on Friday (a little later than expected) they brought in the heavy equipment to tear up our front yard and replace the main line.  

The pipe they removed was covered in rust holes and they suspected that it had been leaking for a very long time. We had also noticed that our water had a weird smell and taste, which has since been resolved. So in the long run it was probably a blessing that is broke so we weren't drinking contaminated water.

At least someone enjoyed the whole experience.

*PS - notice our beautifully refinished floors in the above picture. They make my heart happy.

Our House {First Things First}

Wow, it has been a crazy couple of weeks...and we're not done yet.

As noted in our last post we closed on our house on December 22nd.

We decided that we wanted to get in there and clean and prep and paint as much as we could

before Christmas, yea that only left us two days (including Christmas Eve) to work our little tails off.

 We started by washing walls, removing the chair rail that ran through the living room and down the hallway, removing wall paper, patching holes, sanding, washing walls again, and taping. Finally we started painting the night of the 23rd.  We only got one coat of paint in one bedroom. Can we say behind schedule?!

Christmas Eve was a little smoother since we had done most of the wall prep already.  Since we were so behind schedule we decided to shoot for getting at least our bedroom, Miles' bedroom and the living room painted.  By that evening we had successfully finished painting the two bedrooms and got one coat in the living room.  Phew. Now it's time to take a break for Christmas.

The next step is having the original hardwood floors refinished.  This process is scheduled to being on December 26th.

Here are a few before pictures.