Friday, April 27, 2018

FULL HOUSE Renovation, Part 4

Day 17:  Paint.  Mostly the detail work today, but still, it was a full day of painting:
It takes a lot more paint than I realized to cover an entire house.

The carpenters arrived in the afternoon to take care of some more millwork:
 
Shelves for the coffee station are going up!
Of course I had to give it a little test run with a mug. 
 
They also installed the half shelf inside the corner cabinet - I knew we'd talked about this, but somehow it didn't show up when the cabinets were installed.  This will be great - I can store seldom-used items (like my bundt pan and other bakeware) on the shelf, and fit my Kitchen Aid mixer on the bottom...out of the way, but easy to get to when I need it.
They hung the laundry room cabinet at ceiling-height, as was the plan.

You know how sometimes you can't really see something until you actually SEE it?  Such was the case with the laundry room cabinet.  We thought I'd be able to reach the bottom shelf, but as it turned out, not so much:
Reaching for the invisible container of Tide - and this is closer than I'll actually be, because the washer and dryer are quite large.  What to do, what to do...

Day 18:  Paint.  I know, what a lot of paint!  He actually finished up around 1:00 pm, and won't need to come back until the flooring has been installed - he'll do the baseboard trim and touch ups then, as well as painting the new front and back doors.  We decided to hold off on that until after the majority of the work crew and supplies were finished passing through.

Jeremy came by in the afternoon to discuss the laundry room; I'd come to the realization that the cabinet looked out of proportion to the room.  It's only 30 inches long; I did some looking online at ready-made cabinets from Home Depot and saw that they had 42 inch long cabinets, which would give me a better shot at reaching the bottom shelf, plus we'd have more storage space - and it would look better, too.  We talked about this some more and after getting a quote from Robert, the cabinet maker, I decided to go with his wood cabinets vs the particle-board cabinets from Home Depot.  I'm going to have so much storage that I won't know what to do!  Jeff has already claimed the extra cabinet to hang over his workbench in the garage, so it's all good.

Day 19:  Electrical!  Rafael arrived to install light fixtures, which was so fun to see.  We replaced quite a few of our old fixtures; you can either spend a small fortune on a light, or go the Lowe's/Amazon/Houzz route, which is what we did.  I suppose if I was working with a decorator who found the most perfect light fixture ever, I might have been swayed into choosing something more expensive, but I'm happy with what we ended up with, except for one.  Here's what was installed:
This is over the dining table - not a traditional chandelier, but we always dimmed the old six-bulb fixture that was there before, so this felt like a good choice.  Light is from Lowe's - click here for more info.
We got a fancy Edison bulb for this fixture - did you know they come in LED now?  It's been a long time since we've really looked at light bulbs!
I replaced the uplight sconces in my office with these, one on each side of the window.  I ordered them from Amazon - they don't seem to have the silver color in stock, but here's a link to the brass, which is also nice (affiliate link).  It wasn't until I started looking at sconces that I realized, no wonder I can't see in my office...the sconces are projecting what little light they produce upward!  This should help immensely.
Hallway lights - these are a silver finish, similar to the dining room light, but it's hard to get a picture showing that.  From Lowe's - this was Jeff's favorite, so we went with that.
Ceiling fan - the old one was antiqued brass and more of a traditional style, so we were happy to get a more modern looking fan.  The blades are black, which I was a little worried might be too stark against the white ceiling, but it looks good.  In looking at ceiling fans, I came to the conclusion that you can either spend $200 or $800 - there was very little in-between.  I liked this one because it came with a remote control...and it was just under $200 (although we did need to buy the silver downrod).  It's a Hunter brand and I bought it from Amazon - here's the fan link and the downrod link.

The only light that we bought that didn't work out was one for the entry - I kind of thought it might be too small for the area, but honestly, we were tired of shopping and just picked a smaller version of the dining room light.  When the electrician took it out of the box, we nixed it pretty quickly.  I went online looking at other options, found a few I liked, took note of the measurements and compared it to what is hanging there currently, and ordered one.  Luckily the electrician still has another day of work here toward the end of the renovation, so he won't be making another visit just for that fixture.

Day 19:  I left for my volunteer job in the morning and came home in the afternoon to orange floors:
This is the Schluter Ditra underlayment, which we have to do in order for the tile to not crack.  All the tile in our house cracked within the first six months when we first moved in, so we used this when we had our master bathroom retiled five years ago and there's been zero cracks, so it was a no-brainer to use it again.  
The garage was loaded with tile and supplies - but the crew made it so I could still pull my car inside at night, which was considerate.  They understand how I feel about the Duchess...
Kitchen
Dining room

Day 20:  More floor tile - it's a big job:
 
Progress...
Getting a glimpse of having the same flooring throughout the living areas - so happy with it! 

Day 21:  Saturday tile.  Did I mention that this is a really big job?  Getting closer to being finished:
This is about as far as he can go right now - the refrigerator is just off to the right in this shot.
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!
Family room, swoon.
Once it's grouted, the fridge can be moved back into place - and the stove, too!  
Down the hallway - the two bathrooms will get the same tile, too.

That ends the fourth week of renovations.  I'd hoped to be done in about four weeks, but realistically I think we'll be lucky to finish at six weeks.  It'll totally be worth it...but right now, we're getting a little weary of living in a renovation zone.

9 comments:

  1. Love, love, love all that you've done so far! That tile is amazing!

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  2. Your new tiling looks similar to what my sister installed in her brand new house. I love the fact that it's tile that doesn't really look like tile. Beautiful!

    Let me just tell you, Hunter is a great company to work with. Previous owners of our house installed Hunter fans and the couple of issues we've had, Hunter has sent us parts for free, and once replaced an entire fan for the cost of shipping. So, they might not cost as much as others but they are a very good company with a good product.

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  3. So fun to see so much done! It must be amazing for you to see such big changes in your house. I love that when something's not quite right, you can discuss and change it before its permanent. And I love those hallway lights!

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  4. That tile!! Wow.
    I'm glad you're making changes right away for things that don't seem right. Now is the time to do that, imho.
    The cupboard where the mixer will be has me curious. Feel free to post more pics and angles of that. I'm
    quite interested to see options for the corners.
    The coffee bar--so fun!
    I can't believe poor Paco isn't in any of the pics. Chrissy

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  5. Shelley - this is turning out gorgeous!! We have some half shelves in our lower cabs and just like you said, it's perfect for putting things like the bundt pan, muffin tins and seldom used stuff on. then the Instant Pot fits in there as well.

    I find lighting choices to be one of the hardest things in renovation. It's so hard to judge how a fixture will look until it is actually up and something you thought you loved turns out not to be so good. We still have one light fixture to go in our house and I still haven't gotten around to it after having to choose a dozen others :D

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  6. I love the tile. Everything is looking amazing. Hang in there, only a few weeks to go!

    The countdown to closing on my new house is at 6 weeks. The waiting is hard.

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  7. I also love the tile you chose. Beautiful. Everything is definitely coming together. Excited for you!

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  8. The flooring looks SO pretty. I can't wait to see it finished!

    The new lights are such a great upgrade. I feel like light fixtures can REALLY age a house! We need to replace all ours too, at some point, to be more cohesive in design. I love what you picked!

    Yay for figuring out how to get MORE storage that you can REACH (ha) in the laundry room!!!

    I can't wait to see that shelf full of mugs!

    And living through this sucks. Nothing else to say about that, other than I hope it does end in that six weeks. It's gonna feel so good when it does!

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  9. I love the floor! Looks like laminate but tiles are so much easier to clean.

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