Finally Cooking!

So it has officially been one year since we moved out of our old house and in with my parents. On July 9th, it will be one year since we purchased this house.  Almost done, but we still have a lot to do. But there has been great progress made, so wanted to share a bit of that here...


The kitchen is well on it's way. We have assembled all of the cabinets and have to put in a few filler pieces and the baseboard around the bottom before it's complete, but it is usable and functional and I am grateful. There have been several mishaps along the way...

 Not ordering enough countertop was one.  We bought butcher block intending to use it as shelving. For our kitchen countertops I had grand ideas of Joe building polished concrete ones from scratch. That takes a lot of time and expertise, so in the interest of getting into our house this year, we decided to use the purchased butcher block for our countertops until we had a little time and freedom to do what we wanted.  The problem is, we didn't buy enough, as you can see in the picture on the left. So we will head off to Ikea soon to get another piece. Until then, we have easy access to the drawer underneath!

 Also we discovered that our large farmhouse sink had a crack in it right out of the box.  Thankfully, Joe's grandpa hopped up to Ikea for us and painlessly exchanged it. While we waited for a sink, Joe got the backsplash taken care of.  It went a lot more quickly than the shower, and this will be the last subway tile we install for awhile. It's small and tedious.

 When we did get the sink exchanged, the drawer meant to be installed underneath suddenly didn't fit. It banged against the bottom of the sink.  We tried lowering it, to no avail. Joe decided to raise the entire countertop slightly, since the sink rested on that. Success! But now we have a bit of a gap in between in the cabinets and the bottom of the counter so we have to get creative with covering that up.

 Once the sink was in place, I sanded down the counters and oiled them.  This looked nice for a little bit, but I think it's more maintenance than I'd like, and may seal them.  If you have any pointers on that, I would love to hear.
 We also got the stove hooked up.  It is interesting cooking completely with gas, but so far I can't complain!  I'm so glad I went with the extra wide stove. When we host things, it will come in handy!

 We have not installed lights in the kitchen yet, so we have the lovely work lights (see left) plugged in help us in the dark.  We have the range hood above the stove screwed in, but have not installed the pipe that leads the smoke/steam outside so for now it's just our work light so that we can see what we are cooking.

A few weeks ago, some friends came into town for the sole purpose of helping us get the house ready.  The guys were able to put up most of the baseboard trim around the house and begin working on the windows.  These are the things I didn't think about when we were gutting the walls and redoing floors. There are TONS of minor details to take care of. We installed baseboard throughout. Then you have to go back and install quarter round moulding on that, followed by caulking the seams and painting everything.  When you have a whole house to do, this is quite daunting!  Thankfully, we're on the tail end of it. Everything is now installed, most of it caulked, getting started painting. We've been blessed with selfless family who have come alongside us on these simple, but incredibly time consuming, tasks.  Shout out to Joe's dad, Michael and grandfather, Poppy and my dad, Phil! Window trim means that I finally get the window sill of my dreams in the kitchen.  Look at how wide that is.  Love it and can't wait to grow some more cute plants.

Since Joe redid all the plumbing in the house himself, I asked if it would be possible to have a pot filler. Joe came through, but we've had a hole in the tile waiting for a bit now. We hadn't had an opportunity to install it, trying to work on other parts of the house.  Some dear friends came into town and decided to help us tackle a few tasks, including installing that beauty!! The kids love it, and are very excited about water coming out of a weird place in the wall. I wonder if they make child locks for those things...




All in all, it's coming along. Lots of finishing touches to be done, but it will come.  We are very excited to welcome Joe's step dad, Buddy, who is coming into town just to help us finish up.  No words. I am just grateful.  Until next time..

Status update

Hello ladies and gents! This is a long, rambling blog so bear with me...

I have fallen behind in the blogging lately, much in part thanks to our fun new addition who is now almost 2 months old!!  We are a family of 6 and I love it! It hasn't been as much of an adjustment going to 4 kids as it was to 3, so I am thankful for that. The baby is super easy and it is wonderful to see his siblings love him well.

We have been slowly, slowly trucking along on the house. In our last update, we were prepping for dry wall to be installed throughout the house. If we thought the prep time was taking awhile, the actual installation took way longer... In retrospect, we should have ripped all of the existing sheet rock and dry wall out of the house and started from scratch. Instead, we patch worked a lot of the places which added a lot of time to the project. But with a TON of help from our family and friends, we finally got it done.

 See the patchwork sheetrocking in the picture to the right?  So tedious... I'm sorry to everyone that helped with this.. This house has definitely been a learning project every step of the way, and next time we will just start from scratch!  Also you'll see the floors that Joe just finished had to be covered in plastic to protect them from the insane amounts of dust produced when sanding the mud in between dry wall sheets.

 Seriously, dust for MILES. The plastic under Joe's feet used to be clear. If we do anything like this again, apparently they make a vacuum attachment that will suck up the dust as you sand. It would be a worthy investment for sure.

 One good thing is that our master bathtub arrived!  I spent a good bit of time researching a soaking tub that also would not be too high up to step in for a shower and came across this gem that had good reviews and was the right price compared to the $1000+ tubs I was coveting. Our master bathroom still looks like this, but when we get around to finishing it, I'm so excited to use this baby.

Once all the walls were sanded and even, it was FINALLY time to paint!! Some gracious friends loaned us their paint sprayer and we were able to prime the entire house super fast.  I wanted separate colors for the rest of the house, so recruited some friends and we had a ladies night paint party. It was

 so fun and got done really quickly with everyone working together. I was really glad to actually get to DO something since most of time I am with the kids instead of working on the house. The times when I try to do both are hit or miss, for obvious reasons.  So the house is now painted and so we got to remove all of the plastic off of the floors and windows. I can't tell you how glad I was to do that, because of the Dexter vibe that all the plastic was giving off. When we removed the plastic, we cleaned the floor really well and decided that it needed one more coat of polyurethane so that we would be be confident that it was protected and would last awhile with our 4 kids and a dog.  We went with Bona Traffic HD in Satin.  Bona is a water based polyurethane which is different than the oil-based we originally used. Water based dries much more quickly and we wanted to be able to continue working on the house soon after applying it.  So far it has been perfect. I will share some pictures on the next update.

After painting was done, I could finally start to set up the kitchen!! All of our cabinets are DIY assembly so I got to work on that as soon as I could.  All of the bases are assembled and now we have to install them or attach them to the walls before we add doors, kickboard, drawers, etc.

         
 You get a glimpse of our ceiling in this picture, which I am stoked about. I wish I could convince Joe to add it throughout the house, but alas... I will be satisfied with the kitchen since that's where we'll spend the bulk of our time.

  My stove also is in it's place (although not functional yet) and it is a beaut. It is gas, which I've never cooked with, but imagine I'll learn quickly.  I went for a 36in (standard is 30in) 5 burners, stainless steel gorgeousness.  The things I get excited about now... my 20 year old self would be in shock.

Rambling aside, what you really wanted to know was where we are in the renovation process...

To move in we need :

• Functional kitchen 
• At least one functional bathroom
• Baseboard installed (not necessary but I really want it done before I try to set up furniture)

Where we are with that list:

• Kitchen is pictured above, so we are halfway there.
• Bathroom is *almost* done but not quite. We do have a toilet and the shower is halfway tiled thanks to Joe's mom and my dad. The sink is functional and here's a sneak peak of it to the right. 

I'm still trying to work out small details like backsplash and hiding the plumbing underneath. But I like how this turned out and will share details of how it was put together on a future blog.

• Baseboard was delivered to the house yesterday and Joe will probably get to work installing that this weekend.  

So we are very close, but not quite there. Once again, shout out to all of the wonderful friends and family (framily?) that have helped us throughout this process. We totally could not have done it alone!  

Guest Bathroom and Dry Wall Update! (alternately: We finally have a place to pee)

Disclaimer: There are no awesome before/after shots in this post... Someone asked me why I wasn't keeping up with the blog and I said "There hasn't been any photo-worthy progress lately."  I think my dear husband may have been a little (or a lot) offended, so in the interest of showing that things ARE progressing... here we go:


One of the many unknown issues we have ran into was that the plumbing was on it's way out. Like, "replace it now for cheaper or replace it later for way more money because something might burst in a wall somewhere", out. Because the Great Water Management Project (GWMP for short) and all of the tiny projects that entailed (french drain, new floors, dry well, etc) drained our budget significantly, this was a project Joe decided to take on himself.  He has a basic knowledge of plumbing, and our city has to approve any plumbing plan, so with a lot of preparation and a little YouTube, set to it.

Joe's plumbing diagram. The man is thorough!

 Because all of the old plumbing had to be ripped out, we didn't have a toilet for quite awhile.  We aren't living in the house yet, so it's not THAT big of a deal.  It does, however, get kind of tiring since when I am at the house I usually have 3 tiny bladders in tow along with a baby kicking mine, so we have become very familiar with the local restaurants and stores. (My bad, Walgreens.  You were totally being used for your potty, not your pharmacy.)  But I am excited to report that Joe got the plumbing done, which means that (drum roll please...)

We can use the bathroom in our house again!!!!  

Here is the guest bathroom before:

Guest bathroom before

Bath before

This bathroom is original to the house, but had been "updated" a little here and there along the way. The house sat empty for 6 months so mildew creeped up on a few things, like the toilet.  The subway type tile on the walls was actually a cheap plastic veneer, and chipping off badly.  There was no shower. It was only a bathtub. To complete the look, in it's very best 1970s fashion, was a carpeted floor. Nothing says luxury like carpet in the bathroom!! (Kidding....)



The bathroom was also a Jack-n-Jill style, meaning it was accessible from 2 doors, usually between 2 bedrooms.  This was the case here, but since we turned one of the bedrooms into our kitchen, we decided it wasn't SUPER practical (or sanitary) to have a bathroom directly beside the kitchen, and so it was an easy decision to close the door up.

The first step was to gut the bathroom completely, right down to the studs.  Sometimes you can save dry wall underneath the tile but apparently I'm a bit heavy handed when it comes to prying tiles off and after all the holes created by my crowbar skills, we decided to just take all the dry wall out.  I am glad we did.  Apparently a squirrel had stored acorns behind the sink at some point in the life of the house. We also discovered an active roof leak behind a wall.  Again, let me reiterate the importance of a good inspector.... Underneath the carpet were a few layers of linoleum along with some icky looking sub-floor. My dad and I (okay, mostly my dad, but I definitely helped) patched the subfloor and then installed cement board as a base for the tile.  You CAN install tile directly on sub-floor, but it is highly likely that someone at some point will want to change the flooring, and if you install tile directly on it, they will also have to rip out the sub-flooring to install something new, which is a giant hassle. Plus, like in the case of our 60 year old sub-flooring, it is 2x6 boards that may or may not be even. With tile, it is imperative your floor is even, or tile will be crooked and crack.   With cement board installed and a tile saw in hand, I set to work tiling the floor.

With that and grout complete, Joe could finally install the toilet!! There is nothing else done in the bathroom, other than a few sheets of dry wall for some privacy, but without further adieu, here is our first new toilet in the house...There is dust all over the floor and the grout still needs a good scrubbing, but we finally have a bathroom!  This does my pregnant heart (and bladder) a lot of good! We will continue to work on the bathroom and I can't wait to show you the final product! I'm ready for the picture in my head to have some life!

Now our update on getting walls... apparently City inspectors care a lot about that and how it's done and what's behind it, so it has taken awhile to get it to where it passed inspection and we are able to begin putting sheet rock on the interior perimeter of the house.

Spray foam insulation

Joe and a few awesome friends have worked through the last week or 2 trying to get the house ready for dry wall, which means insulating like crazy. We had to, per inspector, use expensive spray foam insulation on parts of the walls where the outside brick was exposed and on the rest of it, cut small rectangles of insulation to fit between the studs. Thank you to all that got fiberglass all over their being to help us!! We now have the "okay" from the city to start putting up the dry wall, so Joe has been working on that for the last couple of days. It's a slow process, but as soon as walls are up and mudded, we can start priming and painting and are THAT much closer to moving in!

Kids hanging out while we work 

 We are seriously so grateful for everyone that has helped us out so far!  Everyone should have a village, y'all... For real.

Stay tuned!  It can only get more exciting from here:)