Almost there!

I haven't posted since August but wow we have done a lot of work to the house. We just have a small list of jobs left to do. Since August, we have finished all four bedrooms upstairs as well as the bathroom (besides painting some trim) and the upstairs hallway. I'm not going to post pictures of the finished products quite yet though. I will however share with you what we have been working on this week. 

As you might remember, the downstairs hallway had a bathroom in it including a bathtub tucked in under the stairs. When Dad pulled the bathtub up we discovered that the hardwood that had been in the rest of the hallway was missing. Thankfully, dad had a stockpile of maple hardwood flooring left over from an old job he did years ago.  The problem was it wasn't the same type of wood and so it obviously looked different.  Can you see it? 

 

Last weekend Dad inquired about renting a floor sander to sand the hallway and one of the living room floors but was told there was a waiting list. Well we didn't want to wait so we got out the trusty old palm sander. Have you ever sanded something with a palm sander?  It really is meant for small jobs. It took a long long time. Dad and I would come in for an hour here and there the last 5 days and did what we could. I gotta say my shoulders did not like the repetitive movements. But it saved us a ton of money doing it ourselves. Which reminds me of a commercial I heard on the radio today. It was a travel commercial and the announcer said "this is the sound of sand on your tropical vacation" then another voice saying "ow its hot!"  Then the announcer says "with our low prices you will be saying this!" "Ow ow but I saved money!"  Haha. I laughed at it this morning as we complained about how sore our knees were. Anyway originally we were going to sand the floor down and then put some polyurethane over top. Leaving it the same color. But the color contrast was so much that we began entertaining the idea of staining it. Here's where we ran into trouble. Different types of wood take stains differently. So I took a scrap piece of each type of wood to the paint and stain experts at the local hardware store. There we tested a few different stains. We tried lighter colors first but the difference between the two was so different. Then the genius woman suggested going with a darker stain. She showed me one called Kona. It's a nice dark stain with some warm undertones which we needed to go along side the reddish yellow stained trim.   She said the darker you go, the harder it is to see the different types of wood. So we decided to take the leap and stain the floor dark. I am partial to dark stains anyway so I was thrilled!  This morning I let the kids have a break from school and went over to the house bright and early. I even beat my dad there which has never happened. Took us just over an hour but the downstairs hallway has been transformed. Tomorrow we start the polyurethane process. Here's a few pictures for a glimpse of our work.  

 

The difference between the sanded floor and the stained floor. 

 The finished result 

 I love the contrast between the light stairs and the dark floor!

It's hard to see in this picture because I was leaning over the stairs  but you can't really see where the original hardwood ends and the maple hardwood begins. 

So there you have it. A new post!  So I will put together before and after pictures and post them. But for now, I'm keeping the house a secret as I have a special reveal idea for those followers who are local!

Good news

Things are moving along in the house. My husband and I are toying with the idea of moving our family of 6 in when it is done. But before that decision can be made, we needed to make sure it was safe. The first thing we need to do is test the water. Considering no one has lived in the house in over 20 years, it was a factor we had to consider. Soo a couple of weeks ago I took a sample to submit to the lab. We got the results today and I am happy to say that the water is just a little hard but completely free of anything harmful and that makes us one step closer to our decision.  Next up? Finding the septic!  Lol 

Here's our results if you are interested!

And here's the acceptable numbers chart. 

As for what's up with the house, we are completely finished oft he dining room and have closed it off to keep dust out. We've been working hard on the attached living room (mostly my dad since I had taken a week off when friends were visiting)  All that needs to be done now is a second coat of paint on the walls and a bit of trim put up. In the dining room we settled on Benjamin Moores "Bunny Gray" but when it went on, although we liked it, it was a little two light. So we went a shade darker on the swatch to "Thundercloud" which I loved as soon as I saw it on the wall.  Here's a peek at the colors we chose for the rooms. 

A closer look at the color in both rooms. The dining room is so light that in the picture it looks almost white. 

So that's that. We are working hard and I think within the next few weeks we will have the entire downstairs finished!

July! The things we have done since March.

Wow.  A lot has happened since March.  First of all, my dad had some health issues which landed him in the hospital for a week and a half.  Adding in time for his recovery, it has slowed down the progress of the renos significantly.  But we have been working on it here and there. Here's what's been finished.

The downstairs bathroom is completely done now,

Here is what the room looked like before.

And now it is a wonderfully big downstairs bathroom/laundry room.






























The kitchen is mostly done aside from some drawers and cabinet doors needing to be built. I"m going to wait until that is done before making an official after picture.  But here are a few pictures I had taken a month or 2 ago after we moved some appliances in.

When my dad was in Saint John, I went over to stay with him.  When he got discharged we visited the local Habitat for Humanity Restore and got a great deal on a bunch of tiles  So we decided to do a backsplash in the kitchen.  It was my first time tiling and it was really fun!

When we first put the appliances in, we ran into a bit of a problem.   See this door?  Well the stove came out further than we expected and that door no longer opened.  

After weeks of thinking and deliberating, we came up with this simple solution!  We made it into a bi-folding door!

  The walls are all insulated now with blown in insulation.  The house should be plenty warm this winter,  Dad has also done a lot of work on the outside of the house. Lots of landscaping.  It's relaxing plus on beautiful days, no one wants to be working inside.

This picture I took from google maps.  It was taken in 2013. 

This picture I took today.  Dad cleared so many big bushes and trees away.  He planted flower beds and added wonderful chairs.  We are also in the process of painting the deck so it will not look so dingy.  

There.. that's the progress we've made.. Today, I spent the day priming the deck, staining some trim, (I found an almost exact match of stain to the original trim Yay!) and I also did some crack filling in the dining room and attached living room.  

Oooh and We also picked up paint for said dining room and attached living room. 

Benjamin Moore's Bunny Gray for the dining room and living room.  Spiced butternut for the entryway and hall. 

Since the hallway leads into the kitchen, I had to make sure it looked alright with the kitchen color.  I love it!

Here it is with the wood trim.   There is a lot of yellow in the wood trim so it goes well there.  I just love grays and yellows together too!











While I'm at it, I will show you the wallpaper we got for the 2nd living room.  This will go on the upper half the wall and then the bottom half will have some kind of paneling or something.. we haven't decided quite yet.

So there you have it.. A big update on what we've been up to in the house!  I'm hoping this next week, I can convince my daughter to babysit so I can work on it every day and finish up the crack filling, so we can sand and paint!!

Kitchen lights.

 I haven't updated in a while. Even though a lot needed to be done, none of it needed pictures taken. Lol. Lots of plumbing work done in the last few weeks.  

I did want to write this post to tell you what we did with the kitchen lighting. We were having a hard time working at night in the kitchen because the one little light fixture was not bright enough. So we needed to change that. 

The kitchen ceiling unfortunately had plaster coming away from the lattes so Dad made the decision to drywall the entire ceiling. He wanted to make something cool in the center of it. We played around with all kinds of ideas but ultimately he came up with this. 

See that light fixture?  Originally there was a fan there but in order to put this piece up, he had to put a temporary fixture in instead. This one came from the bathroom I think. It was not near bright enough. 

So once this wooden piece got put up we had to make a decision on what to do for lighting. Since the kitchen island will be under this, I wanted to put something in that would give lots of light straight across it.  Dad and I went to some furniture stores to get ideas. Light fixtures are so expensive!  Like 50 dollars for just one pendant fixture.  We wanted something that matched the style of the house. Something old looking but not outdated. 

Finally we went to Facebook for opinions.   

True to form, my lovely Facebook friends gave all kinds of ideas.  We looked on Pinterest again then went shopping! Our supplies cost us less than one pendant fixture and it was enough to make four!

Have you guessed what we decided yet?  If you guessed mason jar lighting, you are right!   So exciting!

I got to learn some electrical work to boot!  I was in charge of attaching the wires to the sockets and the jar lids and Dad did the attaching of the sockets to the actual electricity in the ceiling. 

Since it was night time when we finally got to the project and we had to turn off the breaker to the kitchen we ended up plugging a spotlight lamp into the bathroom and shining it into the kitchen.  We also had to resort to using the flashlights on our phones to see what we were doing.  

Finally they were done. Dad had some led light bulbs that we put in. These bulbs are perfect for mason jar lighting because they don't get as hot as normal bulbs.  

Now we had another decision to make. What to put in the holes to hide all those wires? Well that was an easy decision. We already had some drywall leftover so we cut pieces to fit. 

 This was taken just after we put the drywall in. Now we had to paint it. We could have painted it white like the rest of the ceiling but Dad had the thought that if we painted it the same color as the walls it would really make the piece "pop" and boy was he right!  

Now since I am behind in blogging our progress I have to say. The bathroom is done!  I haven't been able to get pictures yet because I wanted to have it cleaned up a bit but we finally have one room done!  And I went in on Tuesday and painted the last of the kitchen cupboards and Dad was in last night laying kitchen flooring so we are so close to finishing the kitchen as well!  I love the progress!  I am hoping to go over there today and get some pictures soo maybe there will be a new post tomorrow!

Painted kitchen and a Dutch door.

So I managed to sneak away today with my oldest boy to go over to the house.  When we got there we discovered that dad had gotten the first coat of paint on the entire kitchen!  I am in love!  I love the crisp white with that dark gray. It looks almost blue in some lights. Dad even put a strip of his crown molding up to see how it looks. I took a moment and took some pictures of the room.

 

He even painted the tops of the stairs

 

 

He also painted inside the glass cupboard the gray color. The insides of the other cupboards will be white. 

When he made these tall pantry cupboards (there is this one by the stairs and one by the door on the other side of the room) the original plan was to have four cabinet doors on them but because the pantry by the door was so close to the door, the molding would prevent being able to attach doors to the top part of the unit so we decided to leave both cabinets open on the top and put doors on the bottom. That gray on the doors is the other gray I posted about picking up. That's our accent color and will be in the panels of the cabinet doors and on the island. 

The other project we have been working on is a Dutch door. I had always thought it would look nice to have a Dutch door leading from the back porch to the kitchen and mentioned it to dad. He took my idea and ran with it.  

He cut the door and made a really nice ledge for the middle. He stained it the same color as the banister on the stairs. 

Then he set my boy and I to painting it. 

Once the paint dried we were able to hand the door and see how it looked. I love it. Just think about how nice it will be if there were a dog in the house or small children in the house. You could keep them out of the porch but yet still be able to greet company as they come in. I love it!!  

In the above picture you can see what I mean by the molding not allowing the upper part of the pantry to have doors. 

Back to the Dutch door!  

Look at that beautiful wood ledge!  

Well that's all for this week anyway.  I don't know if I will have any time this week to get back before the weekend but I will definitely try! 

Staircases and paint colors.

I'm super excited to write this post.  I have written in past posts that there was a second staircase that opens into the new kitchen and that we opened up the wall on one side to make it look more open. My dads friend had a bannister, post and spindles that he donated to the cause so the staircase looks great.

Problem was, the bannister was stained one color, the spindles a different color and the post was just unstained wood. It would be impossible to try and match everything. So I took it upon myself (with Dads permission) to sand down the bannister and stain it in my favorite "English Chestnut" stain. Sanding down the bannister didn't prove to be too hard. I used a rotary sander for most of it.  The spindles on the other hand were another story. Trying to sand those down by hand right down to the wood so that we could apply stain would take hours and hours and it would just be too much work. So.... New plan. Stain the bannister and post and paint the spindles and trim in white.  It ended up turning out beautifully. 

 

Now what to do with those ugly stairs?? Well first thing that needed to be done is to tear up those dark brown whatever they were. Grippy things. Lol.  Once those were pulled up and the tacks pulled out, I put wood putty into the hoeles and cracks and primed the whole thing white. Including the trim that ran up the sides. 

Regretfully I forgot to take a picture of the staircase primed. But here's the plan. The trim and the instep will be painted white. Originally we wanted to find a brown paint that would complement the stain of the bannister to put on the tread or top of the step.  We even got some paint swatches that we liked last night.  But while we were at the hardware store though, Dad looked over the cans of discounted paint (the mistints) he found two cans of gray paint for ten dollars each. One of them was a light gray that will complement the green sink he had for the bathroom and the other was a much darker gray that had almost a bit of blue in it. Both grays complement each other well so we decided to put the light gray in the bathroom and the far gray in the kitchen. We painted a little bit of it tonight and I love it but I digress.... Back to the stairs.  So original plan was to paint the stair tread brown but once I saw that dark gray I began to change my mind about it. I think I want to put the gray on the top of the step. Dad is thinking the same. So I took a picture of the colors on the primed stair tread to show you all. What do you think?

 

And so there we are.  And since I'm so excited about this color, here is a sneak peak of the kitchen color. Keep in mind that the paint was still wet, it was dark outside and we were working by the light of the dim kitchen light and a spotlight when I took the picture. It looks a bit darker than it actually is. I will hopefully take better pictures tomorrow. 

The cavity where the fridge will be. 

Above the trim near the ceiling. Oh and look I did take a picture of the primed stairs!  I love how the dark gray looks with the white of the trim and the cabinets. 

Dad is also toying with the thought of painting the panels of the cupboard doors the light gray for an accent. He did a couple of the doors to test it out. What do you think?

Well that's all for now. I will take some daylight pictures tomorrow and post them!  Hopefully tomorrow we will get all the crown molding that Dad hand made up and the room will really start to look like it's coming together!