Before & During (Part I of 736,824,061)

We've finally made some progress in most of our public spaces-- living and dining rooms, kitchen, laundry / utility / mudroom area.  The photos below are obviously not shot-for-shot before and afters for a couple of reasons: 1) it turns out I am AWFUL at taking pictures and can't seem to duplicate a shot even if I'm the one that took the original, and 2) these are not afters so much as durings.  We still have a lot of work to do in every one of these rooms.  So following each photo is quick rundown of what we HAVE done and a little bit about what's left to do.

We'll go about this as though it were raining (which it will be for about the next ten months) so you've decided to park under our carport and come in through the laundry room door.  Which, by the way, we do not encourage.

LAUNDRY AREA:

This is the inside of the door you just walked through ca. August 13, 2012.  To help you orient yourself a bit, the kitchen door is to your right and the third bedroom door is on your left.  You can see a bit of the tool-storage area on the left-hand side of the photo, and the electrical panel is just to the right of the photo frame.  It's dark and scary in here, no?  You're just about ready to run screaming from the house, but you don't for whatever reason.

Instead, you back up and take the long view of the same corner, though now the security door is just out of your photo frame on the left:

 Oh no!  Check out that ill-fitting plywood (see those gaps?  Is that safe?  You don't think so) into which the electrical panel is screwed!  This place is terrifying.  The walls are a lovely mélange of plywood, vertical paneling, and shiplap.

Fast forward to September 21.  The below photo is sort of a combination of the first two views, with just a few modest changes: 

What we've done:  painted everything obsessively, added drywall to the wall behind the electrical panel, gotten a gorgeous new washer-dryer which we could never have afforded but for my sister and brother-in-law, covered the tool-storage closet with a curtain.  

What still has to happen: the place needs ceilings-- the acoustical tile that's currently overhead is unspeakably ugly and actually missing in places, leaving the attic open to the laundry room.  And did I mention we have roof rats in the attic?  Yeah.  So just have to find out if our tiles are asbestos.  If not, we'll rip them down, avoiding showers of rodent crap, and drywall the ceiling.  If so, we'll pay someone else to rip them down.  And then drywall the ceiling.  If you look carefully, you can see I still need to caulk the top of the seam between the drywall behind the electrical panel and the wood paneling.  Obviously the ripped-up linoleum flooring is on its way out, to be replaced by 12"x24" peel-and-stick faux slate.  We'll grout of course.  What do we look like-- savages?

Before heading into the kitchen, you turn around to check out the other side of the laundry room.  Flashback to 8/12/12:

It's too horrible!  You close your eyes.  When you repoen them, you're back in the present day:

Remember to take the tag off that area rug before you photograph it again, you remind yourself.  And you turn around and head into the...

KITCHEN.  

Flashback:

Ew!  Everything about this must be gutted, obviously.  It is gross.  Those weird doorless shelfless cabinets-- who did that?  And there's no place to put anything in here.  Though you can't see it from this view, there are also no cabinet doors on the left side of the kitchen.  And that fridge holds roughly two bottles of hot sauce and a six-pack of Natty Light-- perfect for a college boy, but not going to work for someone who produces three elaborate meals per day.  The oven has no timer, and all the eyes are so tilted that your pots and pans slide off immediately.

Today:

Better, no?  Functional stainless appliances (made possible, as with the washer-dryer, by unbelievably generous gifts from our families) make this much more workable and a lot more attractive.  My IKEA Billy bookcases were relieved of their book-holding duties and brought in for some extra storage on either side of the stove.  

What still has to happen:  Um, everything.  New cabinets all around, new floors, new countertops, real baseboard molding, new light fixtures, blah blah blah blah fifteen thousand dollars. 

You head for the door at the far wall.  Well, now you're in the...

DINING ROOM.

You walk through and stand in the living room so you can get the full view in flashback mode:

Yep, that's what it looked like in July (obviously not our stuff).  Anyhow, you're standing in the living room, and you can see the kitchen door at the left of the photo, and out the french doors is the electric green lawn brought to you by the Pacific Northwest.  I don't really feel the need to say anything about this photo, except that I think that thing hanging on the wall on the right is a snakeskin, not... what it looks like.

And as of today:

Just got that table today.  I'm not sure I love it, but maybe once we get some chairs?

Still to do: install new light fixture, hang art, find chairs (preferably cool antiques).  Maybe a skinny dresser on the right-hand wall to serve as a buffet and store my kitchen and dining linens?  Thoughts?

You turn around to check out the progress in the...

LIVING ROOM.

Circa 8/10/12:

Left side, awful lighting.

Right side.

You're like, wait, why are those window mullions not painted?  Why is that gross woodstove jammed into the fireplace?  That tile is ugly.  Nice archways, though.  You close your eyes and flash forward. 

Combo view:

What we've done: painted the window mullions (ask my mom about that-- it took SO MANY coats of paint and primer because the wood has some sort of super-tannins that CANNOT be blocked by mere mortals, so Mom painted it for six straight days while Dad reno'd the bathroom), painted the fireplace, ripped up the icky tile, painted the walls and trim, added curtains (love you, $9/pair IKEA Vivan!) and hemmed them, hung a few things.

Still to do: hang way more things, make new throw pillow covers, reupholster the golden corduroy armchair my mom purchased new in 1983, tile fireplace surround, repair damaged wood floors.

If you're digging my old threadbare Persian, you can thank my grandmother, who has told us at different times that 1) it belonged to her mother and is a priceless antique, and 2) she herself bought it at a yard sale in the 60's.  I prefer version 1, so I'm going with that.  The rug is special to me anyhow-- if slightly too small for my space-- because it was in my parents' first house and also my sister's, and now it's come out to the West Coast to make my first house a home. 

Hope you enjoyed the tour!  You can just show yourself out the front door.  And while you're out there in the front yard, give Ray a high five-- he's probably digging up some bamboo roots, removing a massive hedge, rat-proofing, mowing the grass, etc etc etc even as we speak. 

Fireside Chat

In our idyllic little Pacific Northwest town, there are two kids of houses: the long skinny 1960's ranch with three tiny windows that are all jammed right up under the roof, and the kind that costs $600K.  We were looking for neither of those, so we knew we'd be unlikely to get anything else on our long wish list.  Forget the basement, forget the spacious kitchen, forget the master bath, the second story, the four bedrooms, etc etc etc.  One of the things we thought we'd probably have to live without was a fireplace.

Under the patient guidance of our awesome realtor, we looked at lots of houses.  We even seriously considered buying some of them, but each one had a fatal flaw. There was the cool mid-century modern house on the hill that was just way too big and expensive to update; the gorgeous craftsman located on a way-too-busy street; and my ultimate dream house, the 1944 Cape Cod with beautiful views that was literally sliding down the hill atop which it was perched.  We were about to offer on the groovy mid-century pad when one of our friends alerted us to the For Sale By Owner on a great street in a quiet neighborhood right by campus.  We went to see it right away.  

 When we walked into the living room, this is what we saw: 

So the place had some issues-- notice hatchets and guns hanging on the wall, cat tree (plus freaky evil-eyed cat in the foreground!), etc.  But there was a fireplace!  Granted, there was a woodstove stuffed into it, and and there was a huge white-painted wooden frame around the ugly tile the woodstove installers had used to extend the hearth.  I asked our realtor if he thought there was original hardwood under that gross tile, and he basically told me not to hold my breath.

Here's another view:

When we finally moved in, the awful woodstove was gone, and I had to know what was under the tile.  I got some good news right away: first, the tile wasn't glued directly to the floor as our realtor had feared-- it was sitting on some cement backer-board.  Dad (who-- mid-bathroom reno-- really wasn't busy with anything else, har har) ripped the whole thing up in one fell swoop...

... and now it's sitting on our back deck, where it keeps our charcoal grill from starting a fire.  

Underneath, as you can see, there was slightly damaged but definitely salvageable hardwood and a clear indication of where the original hearth had been.  Yesss!

So the three-phase game plan for the fireplace became:
1.  paint brick surround white
2.  refinish damaged wood floors
3.  tile with white marble subway tiles

Phase one is complete.  I'm making it sound really simple, but it actually required like 52 separate steps.  Bor-ing.  Here's the finished product:

 Blurry, I know, and the lighting is horrible.  Sorry.

Next up-- refinishing floors and tiling!  We know nothing about how to do either of those things, by the way.  Updates to come.

 

Dear Wood Paneling: A Letter From Your New Landlord

Dear Wood Paneling,

We, the new owners of the home in which you reside, write to introduce ourselves and talk a bit about our future plans for your places of residence (namely the laundry area and third bedroom of our house).  After much discussion, hair-tearing, and budgeting, we have reluctantly decided to allow you-- at least some of you-- to stay.  

We do have our concerns about you, however.  First, you've been living here rent-free since, what?  1970?  And I think you'd have to agree that you've done little to improve the residence.  You're riddled with enormous unfillable knotholes.  You've made no attempt whatsoever to get along with the tenants in the rest of the house (Original Plaster in the living and dining rooms and Halfway-Decent Drywall Job everywhere else).  There is neither wallboard nor insulation behind you, which-- we concede-- is not your fault, but you should at least take responsibility for absorbing all of the light in our windowless laundry room.  And your friends in there-- i.e., Bare Light Bulb dangling from  Acoustical Tile Ceilings, Weird Doorless Closets, Ripped Linoleum Floors, and Vinyl Cove Base-- must also share some of the blame for making the room look like a horror-movie torture space (or, at best, a classroom in a terrifying elementary school).  Admit it-- it's bad.

We are prepared to support our case with photographic evidence.  This is what you looked like when we first saw you, buried under mounds of The Tenant's stuff:

Storage closet in laundry area.

Right-hand side of laundry room, with two odd closets.

To be honest, our fondest dream was to evict you immediately and completely.  Unfortunately, due to the astronomical difficulty of DIY-drywalling a ceiling and walls in such a tiny space and the ridiculous cost of hiring a contractor to do it for us, we've determined that we must permit you to renew your lease for at least another year.  We will, however, be renegotiating its terms.  In fact, we have already begun to proceed with some changes we're sure you'll agree to.

I refer to the five (count 'em-- FIVE) coats of paint I've already applied to you in the laundry room.  While you still look pretty horrible due to the aforementioned knotholes (which cannot be filled because there is nothing behind you), at least the laundry room no longer resembles a shiny black hole.  And you've surely noticed that your dirty yellow vinyl cove has also been painted and will be permitted to remain until we gather the wherewithal to apply actual baseboard.

Further, you must have become aware of your new roommate, a sheetrock wall which replaced the several ill-fitting pieces of plywood to which the fuse box was precariously attached (we will provide photos shortly).  Please thank my father for helping me install it when next you see him.

Here you are in your present state, peacefully cohabiting with our new washer and dryer (thanks to the generosity of my sister and brother-in-law!):

Storage area now-- soon to get a curtain to cover up all of our tools.  Just so you know, there are 6 coats of trim paint on that door.

Same view as second photo above.  See the huge knotholes?  Sigh.  Still, much better, right?

Soon your pal Acoustical Tile Ceiling will be removed and replaced with drywall, pending an asbestos test-- at which time we will also be replacing Bare Bulb dangling overhead.  And the Weird Doorless Closet that we have half ripped out will be completely demo'ed pending some professional structural examination-- to the untrained eye its framing would seem to be supporting a few attic joists that would otherwise be floating in air.

Please await further correspondence from us soon.

Thanks for your cooperation in these matters and all future changes to your lease agreement, 

Your landlords.    

The Magical Vanishing Cabinet

So when we moved in to our house, it had a huge weird cabinet / shelving unit (oddly, like all the other "cabinets" in our house, it was an open-backed box with shelves sitting on ledger boards.  Also like all the other "cabinets" in the house, this one lacked doors-- some previous owner had a serious fear of cabinet doors) in the master bedroom.  We decided it had to go right away, so this happened about two hours after we closed on the house:

Yup, we started tearing it out.  We were whacking it with hammers, ripping it off the wall with a pry bar, and laughing like maniacs.  It felt great.  And then we were left with roughly 37 million square feet of damaged wall.  Not just a little messed up, but, like, DAMAGED.  The wall had really bonded with the shelves thanks to fifty years of paint (mostly peach, ugh), and our enthusiastic demo actually pulled the paper layer off the drywall in spots, leaving old crumbling gypsum.  Also, there was some dark brown stuff-- the whole thing was kind of like that video we all watched in Family Life class where the lady gives birth.  You know the one.  Anyway, after a quick trip to the Home Depot, we attacked its postpartum funk with a huge tub of spackle.  And we'd forgotten to buy putty knives, so we applied it-- quite thickly, I might add-- with old butter knives.  Classy:

At some point in the middle of all this, we also hung our old velvet blackout curtains and new blinds in this room (chronology is a bit fuzzy for me at this point) and moved in the furniture.  And after letting the inches-thick spackle dry for a couple of weeks, I sanded it.  For hours.  It sucked.  I was sneezing powdery white stuff for days.  The cleanup was even worse than the sanding-- basically everything we owned was coated in a layer of fine powder.  But I felt so proud when it finally looked like this:

Ready for paint, right?  You can barely even SEE it!  I patted myself on the back.  All that sanding really paid off!  Yet another awesome DIY project completed.  I am an unstoppable force in home renovation! Hear me [sneeze spackle dust]!

We picked paint (read: I brought home 67 different greige paint chips and asked Ray which one we should use;  he picked one without looking up from espn.com; I shrugged and bought it) and started painting.  

Right away I could tell that my beautiful, perfect patch looked like utter crap.  It was high in some spots, low in others.  My bedside lamp shone up upon the completed paint job, helpfully pointing out every tiny flaw.  I decided to ignore it.  Who's going to be inspecting my bedroom walls anyway?  We turned out the lights and went to bed.

I tossed and turned.  The next morning, I woke up knowing what I had to do.  Out came the spackle and the trusty ol' sanding block again.  A couple hours later, it looked like this:   

And I looked like the abominable snowman.  But it was much flatter.  Still not perfect, but significantly better.  Two coats of paint and a new light fixture (still not sure I love this but it cost me a total of $12, not counting $85 for the electrician that had to come and reassure us about the ELEVEN WIRES stuffed into the junction box, plus reconnect the bathroom exhaust fan that had somehow been routed through said junction box), and it looks like this:

Next up in the bedroom: art, new pillow shams and throw pillows, new bedside lamps, painting our old green dresser gray, and spraypainting all the mismatched hardware to match the antique brass the in the rest of the house.