Here we go again!

Jesse's spring semester finished up yesterday. Guess what that means? He started the second phase of our renovation bright and early this morning! He's got good help this go-around. My dad is in town for six days of hard labor (he considers it a vacation...), Tanner stuck around and is on hand to help again (!), and Derrick is coming down from Pendleton for the weekend to help out.

Jesse wasn't completely idle during the school year, I'll post some pictures later of "small projects" he worked on these last few months.

A few weeks ago we found out the Big Orange Box was having a promotion where they offered 0% financing for one year on large purchases AND we happened to have a Lowe's 10% off coupon (that Home Depot honors) so we made a comprehensive list of everything we'd need for Phase II of the renovation. The next day, we took our list (seven pages, single spaced, 10 point font) to the store. We spent a total of ten hours at Home Depot Saturday and Sunday writing down all the SKUs for each item. Then we put our order together as a will-call and put it on a shiny new Orange Credit Card.

Tanner and Jesse spent an entire work day transporting all the goods back and forth (not counting all the items we special ordered and ordered from the website.) Our back yard turned into a GIANT stack of lumber, the side area turned into a plywood storage area, and our garage turned into a mini-Home Depot. THEN Jesse took his final exams. My dad flew into town right after I had dropped him off at school for his last final.

The next morning, they got to work:

Tanner started out on the roof

My dad started tearing out the garage side of where the second bedroom closet is going.

This hole got patched. It's where the waste water used to leave the garage.

Jesse came back from dropping me off at work and started cutting away the drywall from the second bedroom to make the closet opening.

Tanner progressed on the roof.

A bit of sunlight peaks through the ceiling.

FYI: The reason we're taking the roof off is to get rid of the beam and the sloping ceiling in the dining room. We'll raise the walls up and put a gable over this part of the house -- we'll then have a nice flat dining room ceiling that we can hang a chandelier from AND the outside of our house will be a lot more appealing.

Jesse and Tanner crafted a dust abatement strategy. It wouldn't last long...

A skylight! And a false wall to carry the load of the ceiling and roof while we remove that beam.

No more roof for the dining room or the front porch.

The beam must fail!

There will be more to come later. My dad is yelling at me to sweep up all the debris from the above picture (because, "that's what Liz would be doing. Instead of blogging.")

We have several projects slated for this second phase of the renovation. Here they are:

• Gabled roof over the dining room
• Second bedroom closet created (by extending the room into the garage a bit)
• Decrease the width of the wall between the bathroom and second bedroom (it's 7" right now and we want three of those inches for our bathroom)
• Remove the master bedroom closet and linen closet to give the bathroom three more feet of width.
• Create a new master bedroom closet and linen closet by using up 2.5' of width from the living room.
• Change the footprint of the bathroom and install all new fixtures, including a six foot vanity and tall cabinet.
• All new doors for any that haven't been replaced yet (exterior garage door, kitchen to garage door, 2 solid bedroom doors and a pocket door in the bathroom.

The kicker is that this all needs to be finished before July 26th, when Jesse and I leave for New York for our WEDDING! Yup, we're making it official. :)

Cheers!

KITCHEN

Without further ado...our KITCHEN!

(*NOTE: photoshopped image. click on the photo to enlarge, then press the 'back' button to come back here)

Here are some closer-up shots:




Finally, a couple of close ups of the granite:



Left to do: Install toe-kick faces, choose and install back splash, install recessed lighting. That's it. :)


So...what do you think? Worth the wait?

Catching Up

As promised, two posts in one day! We're back from the granite yard - but we'll get to that later. First, lets catch you up on some of the things that have been in the works over the last couple of months.

Jesse didn't think we gave you all a good enough look at our pendant lights last time. Here they are again for your viewing pleasure.

We used to have a pretty ugly door coming into the house. We had bought a new one quite some time ago but it took us a while before we were able to install it. It turns out that it was a harder job than we had originally thought (if there's a theme to this blog, that's it!) -- but Jesse ended up doing an absolutely wonderful job on it. He had to cut out around the door, as it wasn't a big enough opening for the new one. Then he had to fill back in where he had measured incorrectly... Generally, doors come with a crappy metal threshold -- this was not good enough for Jesse so he constructed a BEAUTIFUL oak (to match our floors) threshold. I had never even thought about thresholds...but I'm sure glad he did!

Below is the old door and the hole that didn't quite fit our new door.

Here's our new door waiting to be put into its rightful place.

And finally, our front door!!! It's made out little house a lot brighter. It's not painted yet -- it will eventually be a glossy white (hopefully soon!) You can see the threshold down there at the bottom.


NOW...what to do with that old door. It looked pretty crappy, right? But it was Mahogany veneer...maybe it could be cleaned up? And we really do need a desk...they've been asking for those tables we borrowed back at work... Aha! We'll make the old door into a desk for our office! And I know just the person to tackle the job!

He really did a great job -- I didn't even recognize the door when I came home. I had gone off to procure us some legs for the table. The legs are a bit kooky -- but so are we. Even Jesse warmed up to them in the end. If you click on the picture you'll get a much better view.


Our cabinet doors are almost finished. We've got the panels and the fillers all done and ready to install but those doors have been giving us a heck of a time. Mistakes were made, tempers flared, but hopefully we'll have them installed in the next week or two. Below is a close-up of one of the finished panels. Everything is Maple and we finished it with tinted finish with an airless paint sprayer.


As I told you earlier -- we just got back from the slab yard. We forgot to take pictures of the granite we chose but I found one on the internet that looks pretty similar. As always, it cost double what we had budgeted but that just means that Jesse and I are giving each other the counter top for Christmas (and our next few birthdays...)! It's a variation on Ubatuba called 'Peacock' -- it's going to look beautiful in our kitchen! They come and measure on Monday and it will be installed by Saturday at the latest! If you're in the market, we ended up going with Amazonia, Inc. - they were fair and helpful, which is what we look for in companies to whom we will be gifting with our arms and legs.



That's it! You may also notice a new picture of Jesse and I over there on the right hand side of the page. It was taken at Pat and Jenny McAnany's wedding.

Cheers!

PS: My sister, Meshion, is in the process of buying a house. You can check out all of her ups and downs over at Meshiandthehouse.blogspot.com

New Kitchen! (Almost)

It's been a while. We've been stalled. Jesse started school again and we ran low on that stuff that makes the world go 'round ($). We've done a few little things, which I'll post later today, hopefully -- what I wanted to tell you is that the ball is rolling again! Jesse and I are about to leave to go to the granite yard to select our counter top! We've been rolling with that plywood sub-counter top for a couple of months now...longer than we had anticipated. It's getting grimy and it's time to cover it up with pretty pretty stone.

Here we go!!!

A Kitchen! (sort of)

It's been a while. I know. Should I explain why? Okay. Well, about the time we returned from New York, I began working 75 hour weeks with my normal job and a few side projects I took on (to fund the renovation.) Jesse was also working 75+ hour weeks on the house, but with nobody around to photograph him few pictures were taken. Also, with us both working so much, any time not spent working was spent sleeping. In addition, we had to have everything ready before last Thursday, July 31st - ready enough for three house guests and pre-wedding parties for 20+ people. Things have been tense.

We pulled it all of though, with very few hitches. We married off the McAnany's (Jenny and Pat) and had an absolute blast doing it. Some of the pictures made it online (facebook), some didn't.

For this post, I'm going to take you back to the beginning and bring you into the present.



The first two pictures are the kitchen pretty much as we found it back at the end of March.





Now we'll jump ahead to mid June after we had knocked the wall out between the kitchen and living room and Jesse had some of the kitchen framed in.






Late June: We have our cement backerboard installed over our subfloor and Jesse has fabricated the toe-kicks for the cabinets. Things are starting to come together...




Mid July: We have drywall! And the travertine floor has been back-breakingly lain/laid?




Mid to late July - we have cabinets! They came on a pallet - Jesse's job was to figure out how and where to assemble them. You'd think this would be easy - but it's only easy for a trained, experienced cabinet dude. Below is the progression of the installation. This took about two working days-ish. As a side note, this is maybe a week before our guests were to arrive.







You can taste it, can't you? Well, here it is - kind of. We still don't have any cabinet doors, drawers or hardware, but darnit, we have appliances. And shelves. And a plywood sub-countertop. I wish we had a picture of everything without all of the supplies - but please realize that this all took place the DAY that Shannon and Dave were scheduled to arrive. Thank goodness their flight was delayed seven hours or so...




As a reminder, this is the kitchen we had planned:




Just because I'm a bragger, check out the bannana hook!





Another set of before and afters: the dining room.

If you enlarge the picture below, you'll see what we moved into as far as 'window trim' goes. Not much.




Remember our makeshift counterspace from the time before permits? Last March - May?



And now, with the skill of Jesse, our lovely dining area. Our window trim is not finished - it's lacking primer and paint and such, but you get the idea.




Below are a couple pictures of our beautiful floor. Oye! The work that went into this. (I'm sure Jesse says that about everything, but the floor was the one thing that I really really can say that I did a lot of the work for.)




Just in case you wanted a close-up of our pendant lights -- there are three of these above the bar-height eating area that separates the kitchen and living room.



We also finally have window screens and blinds in the back of our house - the bedrooms. Here is a shot of the office.



We've still got a ways to go, but we're on our way. Jesse's parents are coming for a visit next week. After that it's:
1 - Finish cabinets (doors, drawers, etc.)
2 - Granite counter tops
3 - Backsplash

Then maybe we'll take a break before beginning the bathroom renovation - which includes moving, building, or removing five walls. Hahahahahahaha!!!

We'll keep you posted!