Day 64

Concrete is the word of the week!

 

I think I have mentioned this in another post, but the garage and front porch were both sinking when we bought the house. I obviously do not know much about concrete work, but it is my understanding that the sinking was the result of poor craftsmanship when the concrete was first put in. The existing concrete needed to be busted out and brand new needed to go down.

 

This is the video I got on my phone last week. Yikes!

 

 

Here are some other pictures of the progress.

 

 

This is the garage floor, it was sinking to the back right corner (if you are looking at this picture).

 

 

We decided to go ahead and take out the existing back patio as well. It was not visibly sinking, but it did have a slight slope to it that was causing any water to run right into the house and flood the basement when it would rain hard. The easiest way to fix the problem was to re pour the back patio. We are going to take the opportunity to tie in the concrete to the new back patio, so we are working on a design right now. We will probably wait until the spring to finish this project up.

 

 

There has also been a lot of work going on inside the house that I have not gotten pictures of. Walls coming down, walls going up, etc... I am going over after work today to try and get more pictures.



 

We also got to meet with the kitchen designer last week! It was a lot of fun picking out the layout of the kitchen. The designer is going to come up with a 3-D animation for us to see what it will look like. He is also going to do the same for the master bathroom. I cannot wait to see them both!

 

The roofers are coming at the end of this week (if the weather cooperates) and we are getting ready to order all the new windows. Once we get the new roof on, windows in and concrete poured, we will move all of our attention to the inside until the spring. We will be painting the brick (if I could ever decide on a color!) in spring as well.

 

 

Day 58

Things are starting to pick back up at the house. Gavin was released from the hospital and is recovering at home now. He still has a long road, but we are so thankful that he is going to be ok!

 

I stopped by the house on my way home from work to take pictures and try to catch the blog up. While Ben and I spent most of last week in the hospital, we did have someone working around the house peeling wallpaper and doing other things. He got 2 rooms of wallpaper down and took up some old tile flooring. I did not remember to get a picture of those things, but will try to do that.

 

Yesterday they worked on the roof to the addition. We have someone coming later this week to repair the structural part so the existing shingles needed to come off. Once the shingles are off and the roof is repaired, then the roofers will come and put a entirely new one on.

 

 

 

When they were up there together, I kept saying "are you sure you are safe??" It made me so nervous! I was expecting one of them to fall through it. I am happy to say that there were no injuries : )

 

 

I also went inside and took some updated pictures of the kitchen renovation.

 

This is what it looked like before.

 

And this is what is looks like as of yesterday.

 

As you can see, the wall that was dividing the kitchen from the breakfast area has been taken down. It really opens things up!

 

This is the wall that was dividing the kitchen and former dining room. We have decided to push back the wall a few feet in order to expand the kitchen. The refrigerator, ovens, and more cabinet space will cover the wall when we build it back. The former dining room will become Bens new office. If you look past the office, into the room with the large window, it will become the new formal dining room. The room was the formal living room, but we would not utilize it that way, so turning it into a dining room made the most sense.

 

This is the ceiling in the kitchen currently. I nearly died when I walked in and it had been taken down. Bens comment was "well, it may have fallen down, with my help." Ha! It's a good thing I completely trust him!

 

Day 51

Just wanted to check in and let you know that things are still coming along at the house, but it may be a few days before I can get a real update up.

 

We got a call Sunday night that one of Bens best friends was in a 4 wheeler accident. We have been spending the majority of our time at the hospital spending time with Gavin and his family. Please pray for Gavins total healing. He has a broken pelvis and is currently in the ICU. We just got word that the doctors had a very successful surgery today to put pins in his pelvis. He is on the road to healing but has a long way to go. He is looking at 6-8 weeks before he can walk and then several months of therapy following that. It has been a reminder that your life can change in an instant, make sure you hug the people you love extra tight tonight.

 

God is so good, all the time.

Day 44

A lot of work has been going on in the master bathroom this week! The existing master bath is super small. This is a view standing inside the bedroom looking in. If you look closely, you will notice the toilet has a bit of a lean to it. Fancy!

 

 Here is a little closer view. As you can see, it was in bad shape. The wall behind the toilet was covered in mold and had rotten wood.

 This was the master closet. It actually wasn't terrible, considering how small the main part of the bathroom was but we still decided to take it out.

 

We knew when we bought the house that we would really need to expand the master bath. We could renovate it at its current size and that would be ok for us, but if we ever go to re sell it, people would want a bigger bath. There is a bedroom that comes right up to the current master bath that we decided to sacrifice in order to expand. Initially I was worried about losing a bedroom, but that is why we decided to add a full bath in the front bedroom by the kitchen. This will allow it to still be a 4 bedroom house, which is plenty, and the guest room is separated from the other bedrooms. We are taking the "sacrificed" bedroom and using half of it to expand the master bath and the other half will be the laundry. The laundry was on the opposite end of the house, it is where we are making the new full bath.

 

Here is the bedroom before. We will be putting a wall up just to the left of the window. The left side of the room will be the master bath expansion and the right side will be the new laundry. I am excited because we have plans to have a door going right from the master closet into the laundry, which will be so nice!

 

They have worked for several days to get it all ripped out and here is their progress! I was having a really hard time visualizing how large it would be, but I am thrilled! It will end up being the perfect size.  This picture was taken in the former bedroom, looking into the master bath.

 

This is after they got it all cleaned out. You can see where the wall used to be.

 

The next big question is how to lay it out. I am having such a hard time picturing what I want. The good news is that it is pretty much a big square, so the possibilities are endless. I just have to make some decisions!

 

We met with the concrete person on Sunday after church, he will be re pouring the front porch, garage and back porch. Ben is also still collecting bids to put a new roof on and new windows in. It seems like they are making great progress every day!



Day 37

Demo continues at the house...I always stop by the house after work to see what has been done and almost always walk in to a wall being ripped out, tile being pulled up or ceiling coming down. It is fun to see the progress!

 

There is an office off of the kitchen that we are turning into a guest room. The other side of the house currently has 4 bedrooms, but we are removing one of them to expand the master bath and put in a laundry room. I really didn't want to lose that bedroom, so we are converting the old office to a guest suite. It has a half bath off of it right now that we will be turning it into a full bath. It will be the perfect place for guests because it is in its own area, away from the other bedrooms. We have affectionately called it "Aunt Anns" room for Bens Aunt :) 

 

The walls in that room were covered with a grass cloth that looked horrible. I keep saying it looked like they had a cat locked in the room and it clawed the walls. This picture doesn't do it justice, but it was so stringy and half was torn off. When we started to think about ripping it off, we realized it would likely just take off pieces of the drywall with it, so we decided to just go ahead and take out the drywall. In the end, it would be more expensive to patch and repair what was there versus putting up brand new.

 

 

 

This is the view from inside the bedroom, into the half bath. Like I mentioned, this will end up being a full bath when we are done. Its not huge, but perfect for a guest.

 

This is a view from inside the bedroom.The door is looking out into the breakfast area. Just as a side note, these before pictures were taken right before we closed, so you are seeing the previous owners things. If I were to take this picture again, you would look out and see the wall studs because the entire kitchen has been taken out.

 

This is after the drywall was removed. The room you see on the right is the current half bath. I was standing in the doorway when I took this. One other thing, if you look on the right hand wall, you will see a white box. This is where the old washer and dryer hookup was (on the other side of the wall). We are removing those and putting the laundry on the other side of the house, but we will use the existing water lines to put in a shower for the guest bath.

 

 Another view from the doorway

 

 

The other BIG project that we have gotten started is removing wallpaper. Mom and I started work on the former dining room on Sunday. The old dining room will end up being Ben's office. The room has at least 3 layers and it appears that the first layer was put directly on the drywall, with no primer. Ay yi yi! I am really wishing it was in the budget to rip out all the paper and just put up new drywall. We worked all afternoon and didn't even get half of one wall done.

 

This is mom when we first got started. I forgot to take a picture of what we got done, but you aren't missing much. We were able to get down to the last layer but it doesn't look like we can get it off without ruining the drywall, so we may just have to pain over the one layer. Wallpaper is now a dirty word in my vocabulary!