It’s Going Down For Real

Just like the subject line of this post, it’s going down. For real. I wanted to take a time lapse video of the demo of our house and have us do a crazy dance to “GDFR” by Flo Rida but now’s not the time to be messing around on a demo site. The song and the house demo aren’t really related except for that the house is coming down. For real. And that’s the song title. Moving on.

We started demo last Friday. They started by taking apart that heinous back of the house addition that was never permitted.
BEFORE:

AFTER:

It was really satisfying to see that piece of junk come down. The owners before us did some modifications on the house that must have been all unpermitted and all wacky. For this addition they laid tile straight onto concrete. It was basically a closed in patio. When the crew ripped it down there was mold and rotted wood. There were two sets of steps that led from the original house down into this addition. One was from the 3rd bedroom and one was from the 2nd bathroom. It was odd. Here’s a photo:

Look how janky these steps are in demo!

One set was wood, tiled over. The other set was brick, tiled over. I don't even want to know what lurks beneath our front porch, which will have to wait for a remodel round 2 when we build our savings back up!

Next, they started on the interior walls. They demoed the kitchen – removed the cabinets, the sink, the flooring. All gone! Before we purchased:

After we purchased:

Demo!:

They then removed the walls surrounding the kitchen and laundry nook and parts of the ceiling. There are a lot of rat nests up there. Luckily, it seems like the rats probably were long gone before we even bought the house 3 years ago.

We are taking down the wall that actually is supporting the house. We’re really interested in how they are going to do this. Here it is with just studs. The big ass beam they are using is laying down next to it, I think:

They removed the walls in bathroom #2. We now have a beautiful view if anyone wants a nature bath. They removed part of the wall that will start our new hallway from the kitchen to the bedrooms. The crew demoed the walls in current bedroom #2 and current bathroom #1. Sayonara. We noticed today that they also removed our floors. Well, the first layer of floors. When we moved in we put down laminate on top of the hard wood because it didn’t match everywhere and was too thin for us to sand down and stain. We put carpet in the bedrooms and removed the kitchen floor (see the before picture above) and put down simpler tile.

So that’s where we’re at as of tonight. It’s thrilling and terrifying to see your own house in ruins. We’re really excited for the rest of the demo to go smoothly (fingers crossed!) and for the re-building to get started. Stay tuned.

Big Things On the Horizon

It's been a long while since we've had an update but lots has happened! Over a year of marriage, 2 refinances (the 2nd has just been inked), and finally the renovation we've been dying to do since late 2012.

While we can't tackle everything on our wish list, this renovation will allow us to live more comfortably and allow us to expand our family at the same time! While we wait on the bids to come back from the contractors, I can tell you the plans:

We're knocking out each wall in the common area to create an open floor plan between the "living area" and the kitchen/dining area. Doing so removes the master bathroom, which really isn't that masterful to begin with. The master bath will be moving to bedroom #2, which is a small bedroom location right next to bedroom #1 (aka the Master bedroom). It will be a bathroom we can both stand in at the same time! Hooray! With a double vanity and a separate bath tub (that Jordan can fit in) and a shower (possibly a steam shower).

When you walk into our Master bedroom, the wall that houses the bathroom will be a closet. Yay! A real closet!

Next to the bathroom will be a laundry room and on the other side of that will be bathroom #2 for kids/guests. This takes to the end of our current house. Two bedrooms will be built side by side to fit on the back of the house. The internal hallway will dead-end at those rooms with a linen closet. Close by will also be a little coat closet.

Back to the common area and kitchen. We'll have an island that's around 7 feet long that will house our sink and dishwasher, among other things. The fridge will be on the left, next to a large pantry. Along the wall that is currently looking to our backyard but will become bedroom #3, we will have a built in shelf for a microwave and our stove. The rest is all cabinets and drawers. All the way on the right side of this area we'll have our table and french doors (probably) that walk out into our backyard.

That's the plan! We need all new electrical, a new roof, and a new HVAC. There are so many little details to remember. So many things we have to pick out!

Here's the current state of things:

Packin' it up!!!

STILL Half a Kitchen pt 1

I'm here to report that we've done nothing to the kitchen since the last time I posted. We both had a crazy busy few months; lots of work projects and lots of --what's it called?-- a wedding. Now that things have quieted down a bit, we can focus on our house!

We're looking into a refinance and a possible renovation, details coming soon.

Here's what we've been up to:
1. Furniture for our closet
We found these weird crazy bugs, which we think are carpet beetles, in our carpeted areas. We may have freaked out a little. We washed almost half of the clothes we own, since our closet situation was looking like this:

We vacuumed like crazy, sprayed some bug spray, vacuumed again and started putting together new IKEA furniture. This happened the weekend or two before our wedding. Jordan spent a lot of hours putting together 3 dressers and 1 wardrobe. Behold!

Don't judge us. I've been sick for over a week and we're in the middle of doing laundry and cleaning. Piles of clothes everywhere! Everywhere but the carpet. Anyway, the metal shelf-racks we have in the closet now just hold our shoes. All of our clothes (when clean and folded) get put into the new furniture. NO MORE BUGS! We had an exterminator come out and spray inside the house and outside. Even though we were only at our house a short time while the man sprayed outside, and then waited in the driveway for him to finish inside, I still got a massive migraine from the chemicals. He told us to leave the house for at least 4 hours. That shit was WAY strong more than 5 hours later. Those bugs better be dead. A couple days later we found 2 little guys. Jordan captured them in a baggie and they are now hanging on the fridge, just waiting for the exterminator to come back so he can positively ID them. Sounds gross, right? Not so bad. they are smaller than rice grains. I've also named them Fuzzy and Fuzz-Face. We realized today that they finally died, we think.

2. We tied the knot! After 7 months of planning and craziness, we had a really great weekend with family and friends. Jordan was a trooper but I was a mess, including falling down the stairs at my parent's house and skinning my arm 3 weeks before the wedding. (3 days after the wedding I burned my other arm with a curling iron... and today I'm getting over a bad sinus infection -- again). Anyway, everything was beautiful and beyond the stress of the planning we ended up with moments like this:

What was also special about our wedding day was that the city finally stopped by to plant our tree! I may have mentioned it briefly in this post. We took a couple of pictures when he was all leafy and happy. Today he only has a small patch of leaves...

Hopefully, we can keep the tree alive to take a picture next to it again next year. Another wedding gift for our yard is the lovely bird house we received! We're hoping for some birdies to make their home soon!

3. New Faucet! After the hot water handle stopped budging in our "master" bathroom, Jordan installed a new faucet! It's so much better!!

We have some other things going on but that can wait for part 2!
Stay tuned.

Half a Kitchen

This update is a little late. I was trying to wait until we had all of our cabinets painted and hung. Nope dot com.

We have 1 set of cabinet doors hung. Let me show some before photos.

Some cross-eyed painting action from me:


After!

Don't look at the mess!!



What we did was remove the cabinet doors and basically soak them in TSP. This whole kitchen was super gross. I don't know what those old ladies were cooking in here but EW man. Okay, cabinet doors off and cleaned. We gave them to my dad who cut out the middles at his factory. He gave them back to me and I painted them! Jordan then took them to a local glass store and had tempered glass custom cut just for these doors! He then used silicone to attached the glass to the doors and let them dry. They kind of sat around for a little while but recently he hung them up with the new hinges! And voila - amazing!

We haven't attached the knobs, or even put our dishes away. We kind of have a new set of dishes that we received for our wedding. Updated, prettier version of the above picture coming after next month! I've also been searching Craigslist high and low for a buffet/sideboard/cabinet thingy for super cheap that I can makeover and store a bunch of our stuff so that we don't have to keep it in the garage! Gross!! And by super cheap, I mean $50 or under. And shorter than 30 inches. I'll find my mini "china cabinet" someday!

That's the only update I have at the moment. It makes a huge difference AND Jordan installed new hinges so that when you shut the cabinet door it's slow and doesn't slam. I hate slamming. He knows me well. We should get married. Oh...

More updates soon!!

Summer's Finished - Our House is Not

Somehow September showed up and is almost halfway gone. I'm sorry, where did summer go? That went by too fast. Anyway, because it was 100+ degrees here most of the weekends during our summer, I didn't get much painting done. Last weekend I decided to get over it and paint.

Two more cabinets down, the rest of that orangey pile to go. And then Jordo has to hang them. And we have to put the pulls/knobs on them. More on that 5 years from now when we actually get to that!

I forgot to post pictures of our kitchen sink make-over. Jordan did some plumbing work while I was on a work trip in June. Now the water pressure is awesome AND we have a sprayer-thingy. Check out his handiwork!

It makes doing the dishes less crappy. So pretty and it was installed with love... ?

The rest of our house has a bunch of boxes/bags, wedding magazines and cards, and a pile of sweaters that I take off and put in the corner of the couch when I get home from work. I leave you with this last image of a table runner I got last month:

Bye.

Not Forgotten

It's been months. I've been slacking. Between a full-time job, full-time planning for our upcoming marriage, a trip to the Grand Canyon, and 2 sinus infections, house updates don't fit in so well.

Since April we have cut down the tree in the front yard. It was full of termite damage. Check out this before photo and then check out the crazy termite tree being cut down!

Thank god we had it removed! So now there is a giant circle filled with some leftover wood shavings. Good news though - an awesome neighbor was able to get the DWP to plant free trees! Hopefully, in the next couple of weeks we'll be getting our very own Chinese Pistache! It won't go in the same spot as the tree from termite hell - and maybe this one will fare better! Pictures to come when it's planted!

I was reorganizing part of our kitchen this weekend and decided to spray paint some stuff. Unfortunately, I didn't take before photos. The box was a pale wood and the tray was white. So exciting .. .. ..

I really wanted to make one of those no-sew blinds I keep seeing plastered on all those DIY home blogs. Specifically, one like this! Well, seeing as though I don't have a lot of time these days and our kitchen was boiling by 4pm each day, Jordan and I made a trip to Ikea to check out a quick fix. We ended up with this shade.
Before & After!

I wasn't able to paint the trim before Jordan erected the blind. I'm also painfully aware of the cabinets with NO DOORS! I still have to finish painting them and Jordan has to hang them. Need. Time. My dad is helping us cut shelves for the other kitchen cabinet. It's halfway there. By the time we finish all this it will be time to actually renovate the stupid room. Argh!

Other things that have happened include us moving our big ass coffee table (on loan from the family storage bin) into our junk room and replacing it with Jordan's Bubbee's smaller coffee table. It fits right in! I think I'd like to refinish it - it's got some scratches and things from a lifetime of love. We also got bedside tables from Ikea. And lamps. Maybe I'll put some stuff on my table, make the bed, and take a photo for the next post! It makes the bedroom look more like a bedroom. We still haven't hung any photos or art yet. It's been almost a year. Holy cow.

What else, what else? We planted patio tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, strawberries, and bell pepper. In pots. In the back we moved a couple of trees around and are watching dwarf apples grow. They are awesome!

Other than some small rearranging we haven't been able to accomplish a whole lot right now. With time at a low and funds at a zero we're kind of on hold for bigger and better things. Hopefully, we can draw our wish for what we'd like our house to be in the future - we'll see if actually happens in the next couple of years!

'Til next time.