I really thought it would be done by now

The kitchen project is making progress finally...but still much to do. The whole experience has been fraught with difficulties. Partly due to oddities of having an old house (such as uneven floors and crazy wiring), partly my fault (I didn't like the original counter I picked out) and partly to unreliable contractors (e.g. it took months for the electrical work to get done). One contractor has been great throughout, though, and he has done a lot of work on the house this summer besides the kitchen, including rebuilding the bathroom wall, one of our chimneys and a little cupola on top of the garage.



Here are some photos of the current state of the kitchen. I love the new countertops, cabinet, floor, built-in bench seats and lighting. I still need one of the contractors to come back and finish up moldings, etc. Mostly we have the DIY part left to do: tiling the backsplash, patching and painting the ceiling and walls, and making curtains and seat cushions. Also I need to find a new kitchen table and chairs and install some shelving. Stay tuned!

Kitchen Renovation, Part 2

Before you put in the new stuff, you have to take out the old stuff. In other words, demolition time! John took out the old cabinets, which turned out to be basically shelves nailed to the walls with sides and doors attached. Probably dated back to before they made prefab cabinets. We ended up putting the doors and drawers out on the curb, and some lady driving by saw them and was so happy to take them. The ugly bifold doors we set out also went quickly. That's one perk of living on a busy street--we can get rid of just about anything within an hour. John burned all the scrap wood that was leftover in our fire pit on the patio. We had gale-force winds, pouring rain and even hail, but he kept that fire going all day!

Then he attacked the floors. One of the really neat things about owning an old house is finding clues to what it looked like in previous eras. Peeling back the layers, we found:

Dingy white linoleum, circa 1990. Under that was a layer of plywood.

The next layer. Faux brick linoleum, circa 1970.

The next layer. Geometric pattern on yellow faux marble linoleum, circa 1950.

Under that was underlayment that was attached with about 200 nails and/or staples per square foot, making for a difficult job. It probably contained asbestos, too. Under that is the original wood planks of the floor. Some of the cracks are large enough to see right through to the ground under the house. Our suspicions that there is no insulation under there are confirmed!

There were also multiple layers of wallpaper. Here they are in reverse chronological order:

There was also light blue paint and cream paint in various places. The cream paint covered our brick backsplash, which turned out to not be real bricks, just tiles made to look like brick. Can't you just see what the place must have looked like in the 1970's with the fake brick on the walls and floor and the "country" wallpaper?

Kitchen Renovation, Part I

I've been wanting to redo my kitchen for a few years. When the second child thing didn't seem to be working for a while there we started looking at kitchen cabinets. Then we found out Aaron was on the way and decided to put that project off in favor of the office renovation (so that he could have a bedroom).

The biggest reasons for wanting to reno the kitchen:

1) I hate the floor. It always looks dingy and dirty, and there's nothing you can do about it.

2) The cabinets were poorly constructed, poorly painted and starting to fall apart.

3) The radiator is awful. It takes up a lot of space and only manages to heat up the drawers holding my plastic bags and aluminum foil.

4) Just to update the style.

So about 6 weeks ago, a big cabinet door ripped off (not off the hinges, the wood came apart), and that was my excuse for really needing to get this done. It was great timing since my sister, who happens to be an interior designer, was visiting. I had also just spent about 8 weeks watching HGTV while on maternity leave. So together we came up with a design for the room and went shopping!

Here are two sketches that she made:

Low countertop with glass shelves above.

New built-in seating.

Timing is Everything

The nursery was done just in time for Aaron. Here's the "after" picture I promised. See here for the "before" shots.

The Classic Pooh crib set was Genevieve's when we lived in Downers Grove. My mom and I put up the decals the night before I went to the hospital.

If you look close, you can see the cat sleeping on the rocking chair in the first picture. She loves to sit with me when I nurse Aaron. Below you can see that she likes some of his other things too!

More floors

We went ahead and had the rest of the upstairs floors refinished. That means Genevieve's bedroom and the hallway, both of which had dark red carpeting. Getting rid of that really brightened things up. There were some issues with the floors, including a patch that needed to be replaced in Genevieve's room and odd floorboard arrangements in the hall, but in the end I'm happy with it.

Before, with carpet:

Under the carpet the floor was painted pink:

Genevieve's room, after:

The hallway went from a dark cave to a bright, friendly space: We have to wait a few more days before we can put the furniture back. I can't wait to have it all put together right!

Floors

As I mentioned in a previous post, we are refinishing the floors upstairs. This is part of our nursery creation series of renovations.

I don't have a good "before" picture of the third bedroom, previously known as the office, but here is a photo from about two years ago. You can see the yellow walls, blue carpet, bookshelves and yellow curtains.

The first thing we did was to tear up the stained carpet, and we discovered that the wood floor had been painted light blue. This was weird, but not entirely surprising since the master bedroom floor was painted white. We painted the nursery walls light green and redid all the trim in clean white.

Then the floor guys came in and got rid of all that blue paint. It turned out to be a very pretty Douglas fir underneath.

Yesterday we moved the main furniture in and got an area rug. I also bought new curtains that I still have to put up, and I had to order a new crib, so I'll wait for the final "after" picture when it's all done.

As long as we were doing one room, we decided to go ahead and do the entire upstairs... These projects always snowball! The master bedroom was done at the same time as the nursery. Genevieve's room and the hall will come next.

As I said, the mater bedroom floor was painted white. Inside the closet it was painted dark red. I have peeked under the hall carpet, and it's that same color. I'm not sure yet what's under Genevieve's carpet!

The master bedroom floor wasn't red fir, it was yellow pine. Not quite as pretty, but still looks good. This house is a patchwork of different materials from different eras.

Last night we finally got to sleep in our own bed again. But there's still a lot of stuff to sort through before we move onto the next step...moving everything out of Genevieve's room and tearing up her carpet.

Strange weather we're having, ain't it?

In the past week or so we have had blizzards, rain, extreme cold (down to 0 degrees F), very warm weather (in the 60s yesterday), and now a huge windstorm.

Sometime in the night a huge Silver Maple in our backyard got blown over. As you can see here, it wrecked the fence that separates our yard from the Country Club parking lot as well as taking out a few smaller trees.

It extends quite a ways beyond the fence into the parking lot.

The tree service guy was just here. He says that our insurance will cover the removal since it damaged a structure. I think the fence actually belongs to the Country Club, so their insurance will probably take care of repairing it. We're also going to take out the tree next to the one that fell. Ironically, that was the one we knew was dead and were more concerned about.

It's one of those things we've known we had to deal with for a while but kept hoping we could put off the expense another year. I guess we're just lucky it didn't fall toward the house.

Getting there

I haven't shown the room in a while, so here's an update. It's now a functioning office, although we still have a lot of work to do to finish it up. The ugly door and window are slated to be replaced professionally in the near future, and we have lots of molding to put up and other small touches.


One thing that made a surprisingly big difference was re-staining the paneling. We had to stain the areas that had been hidden by the old drop ceiling for years, and we found a color that was close but not a perfect match. So we ended up redoing the whole thing, and I like it much better now.


For comparison, see this previous post.

Starting to look like a room

We're in the process of converting our laundry room into an office. Last year we removed the old ugly drop ceiling and put in a drywall ceiling. This was tough, especially because the new ceiling is not flat, there were lots of wires and cables to deal with, and there isn't a true right angle anywhere in the room, but it looks so much better now.

Then we had the whole room insulated. It had been a porch at one time, so it was never properly insulated, and we've been having the whole house redone anyway.

Sorry I don't have a true "before" picture, but here you can see the ceiling in progress. Also the old steel cabinets above the old washer and dryer.

Next we had the sink, washer and dryer moved to the other side of the room, where they can be hidden behind doors, pulled off the old pressboard walls and patched up the paneling. Turns out the paneling is quality vintage stuff, so we decided to keep it for the character.

Then we got a new, stackable washer and dryer set. Yay!

Next put up drywall and installed a new floor.
It really is starting to look like a real room, isn't it?

Creepy

Someone was in our house while we were at work. We had been working on our laundry room to office renovation and had removed the interior door frame which meant that it couldn't be locked, although no one would have been able to tell from the outside. It's strange that this happened on the one day that the back door was unlocked.

The TV was moved, although the burglar apparently couldn't figure out how to get it entirely off the wall. Upstairs a small chest that looks like a jewelry box but actually contains batteries and other junk was moved, and papers were scatterred on the floor. Nothing appears to be missing, even though several items were around that could have been taken, like our camera. So for a long time we tried to figure out if it really was a break-in, or if it could all be explained some other way. Then John found a footprint on our front door, like someone tried to kick it in. All we can think is that the burglar must have gotten spooked and ran off before he found anything worth taking.

So now it looks like we're getting an alarm system. Ugh, I hate them. But it's better than feeling unsafe in your own home.