Closer...

Welcome back!
Let's get right into it -- here's the exterior of our house!

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

We're going to be getting into the landscaping soon and it should start to shape up in a few months. We'll do before and after photos again once that's completed.


We're going to postpone the rest of the "before and after" photos for August. That's when we should be finished up with the interior! I'll do each room one-by-one in blog posts every few days - stay tuned!

Meanwhile, we've been working on finishing some of the odds n' ends. Top on the list was camouflaging the fact that I ordered our bathroom counter ~6 inches too small...
Jesse used the glass tile from the backsplash to continue the counter on the sides -- you can't even tell it was a mistake!
.
Here's a close-up of the backsplash and counter repair job


Jesse also finished the travertine backsplash in the kitchen. It's incredible and matches the travertine floor.



We plan everything, and I mean everything! And it's not just me. Here, Jesse is creating mock-ups of what he envisions the area above the commode will look like once it's finished.


Why are we working on odds n' ends? Well...we've passed our final inspection for our remodel permit!!!!!! No more major structural changes! No more dust! No more living without bathrooms! No more craziness! Smooth sailing from now on...maybe.

Here's our completed inspection card as proof:


Until next time!

After

Here we are. It's been two years and a little over two months since we bought our first home. We're not quite done -- but we're closing in on the finish line.

My dad was able to join us again after Jesse finished up his first spring semester at SDSU (by the way -- all "A"s except for two "A-"s!)

The first thing he wanted to do was take our awesome bike for a spin:

Once we were able to pry him off the scooter, he and Jesse got to work destroying our dining room floor (un-flat, un-level old sub-floor with old school linoleum on top).

Then they put it all back together.

Once that was taken care of, they made strategic cuts in the existing oak hardwood so that we could tie in some reclaimed oak that we had bought.  That way, when it's finished, it will look seamless.

We rented a flooring nailer to make their lives easier.

Once they were finished up inside, they headed outside to install all the fascia and soffit around our roofline.

We had some issues with the paint color, but what we ended up with works pretty well.  Can you spot both of them?

And now, what you've all been waiting for.  The "After" pictures.  We're not quite done, like I said.  But we were done enough to clean up and put all the tools and dust away...and to snap some photos for your viewing pleasure!

The living room, looking from the dining room

The living room, looking from the kitchen

The kitchen, looking from the living room

The kitchen, looking from the living room

The kitchen, looking from the dining room

The dining room, looking from the kitchen

(Note: it's not this blue -- it's blue-green but it sure looks blue in this photo!)

The master bedroom closet

The master bedroom

The bathroom, looking from the floor

The bathroom, looking form eye-level

(Notice those custom matching medicine cabinets!  Made from the same wood as the cabinets!!!)

The bathroom, looking from the...um...commode

The bathroom, looking from the doorway

The second bedroom with a very comfy sofa bed waiting for you to visit!

The second bedroom with a desk waiting for Jesse and I to both be in school at the same time!

A view from the second bedroom toward the master bedroom, linen closet, living room

Same view, open door!

I guess I forgot to take exterior "After" shots...woops! 

There's quite a bit of finishing touches to be completed.  We'll post true "before and after" photos once all that is done.  We should be closing out our permits in early July and we should be done done done done with the interior of the house in August!  Just in time for me to start my Ph.D. and Jesse to start back at school as well!  Next winter we'll landscape --- anyone handy with a shovel???

Dream Closet

Once all the edge-banding was applied and trimmed, assembly of the closet began.  It started out simple:

And progressively became more complicated and unwieldy:

It was assembled in front of the opening that it would be pushed back into once it was finished:

We decided on two xenon lights per bay:

Pretty much done!  Now we need to push it back into place:

Oh.



Um...



It isn't going.



"It should have 1/4 inch leeway," says Jesse.



"Uh oh," says Corinne.



"Go get the circular saw and the saws-all," says Jesse.



*wimper* says Corinne.

All better!

Once the bottom was in place, Jesse build the upper cabinets.  

The drawers and pull-outs will be worked on this week (Jesse's Spring Break) and the closet doors and upper cabinet doors will be made this summer.  Now that the closet is (mostly) finished, we're working on finishing the window trim so that we can move back into the Master Bedroom!  I'm hoping that within a week there will be no more boxes in our entire house!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Marching Along!

Happy March, Renovation Stationers! We're marching right along here at casa de Corinne and Jesse. Big things have been happening: Our living room is finished, Jesse prepared the exterior of our house for stucco, our stucco was re-finished, and our master bedroom closet extraordinaire is in the process of being built!

Let's start off where we left you last time: the living room.  We had a nasty crack in the ceiling and we decided to fix it the right way.  We screwed up the ceiling on either side of the crack, for the entire length, then we dug out around the crack to expose it and allow us to put fiberglass tape into the newly created groove, then we filled the 3-4 inch groove with joint compound, allowing it to dry before applying texture to match the existing ceiling.  Digging the crack out for 2-3 inches on either side of it allowed us to have a completely flat ceiling when all was said and done.  Here's the process in pictures:

Jesse removes the ceiling material around the entire crack:

The area is taped, mudded, and re-textured:

New paint goes up and we finish the trim around the windows:

Painting the trim was hard!

Finished living room!  Can you find the where the crack used to be? 

We've been waiting a long time to have our house re-stuccoed.  A long time.  In fact, we'll have been in our house two years next Sunday!  Jesse and I met with a few different stucco companies and decided on San Diego Stucco.  They specialize in re-stucco and offer a 30-year, transferable guarantee on all their work.  They were also negotiable in price...

We ended up choosing "Mesa Verde" after much discussion.  It's the top middle color, below.

Before the re-stucco process could begin, Jesse had some work to do on the exterior of the house.  We're eliminating the "rafter tails" and creating fascia that will run along the entire roof line of the house to give it a more modern look.

Here, Jesse cuts the ends of the rafter tails off to prepare them for the fascia:

We had some bad luck with rain, so we finished the fascia on the front of the house, but didn't get a chance to finish the rest of the house before San Diego Stucco came out.  The first day was sandblasting and patching.  I stayed home from work and boy was it horrible.  Sandblasting was super loud and we ended up with a lot of dust in the house from all the movement.  Here you can see some of the cracks that were exposed after the sandblasting: 

 

Next it was time to patch:

There was quite a bit of patching to do:

Hard at work:

Here is what the house looked like when Jesse and I got home after that first day:

The next morning:

Another view:

Time for the color coat!  They worked incredibly fast:

Here's the house when we arrived home on Day 2!  All finished.  The color coat will take about three weeks to fully cure and become an even color:

Here it is, almost two weeks later:

And now we are moving on to the other thing we've been waiting two years for: Master Bedroom Closet!  If you know us, you know that we've been more-or-less living out of boxes since we moved in.  We have most of the things that get used frequently in the dresser and second bedroom closet, but if we go climbing or out for a nice dinner, or some other not-so-frequent occasion, we have to go digging through boxes to find the proper attire. 

Below is the final drawing of our closet!

We went up to Frost Hardwoods last weekend to pick up all the pre-finished birch we'd need.  Jesse spent the next couple of days making all the cuts.  Then, this morning, we began the process of edge-banding all the cut pieces of plywood.  Cheeba wanted to help:

We decided the living room would be the most comfortable place to work on it:

Jesse's job was to affix, mine was to trim and sand.  Here are some of the curly trimmings that aren't lodged in my hand:

A view of the workshop:

Another view of the workshop and a better view of our new living room:

We'll take more pictures!  It's really exciting here.  Things are really really coming together.  Our house looks more and more like a home every day.  I couldn't have imagined all of this when we bought this house.  It's beautiful and functional and it's all thanks to Jesse.  His incredible skill and hard work have made all this possible.  I feel like the luckiest woman in the world.


A few side notes:
Happy birthday to Liz!!!
Happy birthday to Keith!!!
We're hoping to finish up the house by early August, which is good because in early September, I'll be starting the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Public Health (Epidemiology)!  Jesse and I will be at the same school for one year, then I head off to UCSD for class work there.