Projects in Progress

We tore out two old windows, one of which had seriously bad termite damage and needed lots of reframing. We were SO fortunate to have someone in our stake who is a contractor offer us a big window which had been sitting in his garage for free.

We still have to take care of the stucco outside, but all the inside work is done.

Isaac tore out the old linen cabinets, which didn’t offer very much space. He and my mom built new cabinets and installed them. We still have to do the finish work, but it’s sure nice to have so much more storage!

Now Isaac has been working on ripping out our third (and final!) bathroom. Jon E. and Aiden helped him out this week. Hopefully we can get it all put back together in the next few weeks before getting busy with other things!

Aiden’s Room!

Aiden’s room has been our most recent project. It has been one of the more fun rooms, small enough to not require ridiculous numbers of decisions and fun to decorate, knowing what kinds of things he loves.

Originally, the room was a dark purple… on most of the walls. It had 30ish year old carpeted, this ceiling fan, wires up and down the walls, and an old single-pane window. We tore up the carpet and baseboards, refinished the hardwood, and replaced the window with a double-pane window.

My parents scraped the acoustic ceiling and retextured it. Isaac got rid of/moved the wires, crawling around in the attic space. He reframed, mudded, textured, and primed around the window.

That purple needed two coats of primer before painting.

Isaac painted the whole room blue and white, changed out the old electrical plugs and plates that had been painted, and installed a new ceiling fan.

We got rid of the bent old curtain rod and purple curtains and installed new blinds. My mom painted a wall border reminiscent of the checkered flags used in racing.

We put in new baseboards, and my mom made a window valance from material with Disney Cars. Aiden is graduating to a big boy bed, and we moved in his furniture.

We decorated with letters to spell out his name, Cars pictures, and wall stickers from Grandma Snow.

He slept in his new bed last night, and he has spent most of the day in his room. I unpacked a few boxes of his things, and he loves having toys that he hasn’t seen in months. Here’s hoping he continues to sleep well in his new room!

Bathroom #2

New window, tile, tub, shower head/plumbing, paint, lighting, vanity, sink, shower curtain, towel rods, baseboards, and more! Here is Aiden’s bathroom!

Thanks to everyone who has made this bathroom so lovely.

Bathrooms

I never would have guessed there would be so many steps to updating a bathroom. Here’s what I have learned:

First, you have to tear out all the old and broken stuff. Sometimes that’s pretty much everything. Sometimes you find out there aren’t the right number of joists in the floor and wall, and you have to buy more wood to make everything stronger and up to code. Sometimes you find out that there is rot and black mold, and you have to rip out extra drywall and change it. Sometimes the subflooring is so rotted it crumbles as you try to remove it. Sometimes your foot goes through the floor and into the dining room. It you’re lucky, you didn’t like that ceiling anyway, and at least it’s interesting to be able to see between the bathroom and dining room. There is a lot of opportunity for surprises when you tear everything out of your bathroom.

After you tear everything out, you have to buy lots of new things. More than you would think… tub/shower, toilet, vanity, medicine cabinet, tile, sink, paint—that all comes to mind pretty quickly. You might also end up needing all the details though—the vanity details like kickboard, knobs, scribe molding… baseboards, tile adhesive and sealant, wall and floor trim, lighting, windows, wall texture, heat vent, electrical plugs and switches, towel racks… You might go to Home Depot 20 times in a month if you’ve never done this before.

You need someone strong to carry everything. Maybe that’s you. Or maybe you’re not up to heavy lifting these days, and you rely on someone else. Exhibit A:

It might be worth paying someone else to help with the things you’re not sure about… like plumbing or tiling or installing counters or whatever you think you might not be able to do quickly, efficiently, and well. You save a lot of money by doing what you can do yourself though.

So here’s where we are… the guest bathroom downstairs is done! It has been rebuilt from the bare bones. and it looks like a totally different room. I wish I had a picture of the original, but I don’t. I didn’t do a very good job documenting everything in its “before” stage. The upstairs hall bath is mostly done. We are waiting for the plumber to come back from vacation to install the shower and tub fixtures with Isaac because we’re not confident we could take the pipes sticking out of the wall and make them work properly. Other than that, we have some trim to finish… baseboards and door molding and the vanity light. We’re excited with how it is turning out though!

How excited is Isaac to rip out the master bath once the hall bath is done? Maybe not so much… so let him know what a great job he’s doing so far! I’m sure glad to have him around!

House Update

There has been lots of work going on around here: scraping ceilings, retexturing, removing ceiling fans, rewiring electrical, painting, laying and refinishing floors, installing a laundry cabinet, changing out a bathroom window, and more. The living room is nearly done now, and the downstairs bedroom is well on its way. Here are some pictures of the work in progress…

I wish these pictures did justice to what terrible condition the dining room ceiling was in… but here’s a sample.

…and currently… still a work in progress, but getting there.

Family Room

Living Room

Master Bedroom

Time to fix up the bathrooms… with leaking toilets and cracked tiled walls, rot, broken cabinets, chipped sinks, holes in the flooring, and termite damage, there wasn’t much to save… so Isaac tore out two of our bathrooms (we’re keeping one functional for now)…

… and we’re trying to put them back together… plumbing and tiling in progress!

House Update

We are unpacking in some parts of the house…

…and continuing construction in others… refinishing hardwood flooring, painting, laying laminate, installing new lighting and window coverings, etc. It’s a process. Aiden isn’t a fan of the loud tools, so that makes us doubly lucky to have somewhere else to stay during a lot of the work.

The Difference a Door Makes

We had a new garage door put on, so now we have an opener and don’t have to fling up a giant piece of wood!

Isaac and my dad put in a new front door and a few new windows upstairs and down.  Mom is doing finish work around the edges, and it’s amazing how different everything looks now.

Isaac’s latest project has been building a small walk-in closet in our master suite. He has done a great job.

Our house still looks like a huge construction zone, but it is coming along! Hopefully the next update will be our first completed room.