We Changed Our Minds

When I worked with Tastefully Simple I heard tons and tons of inspirational quotes - and I loved them.  One of the many that has stuck with me came from the CEO of Tastefully Simple, Jill Strayhan:

I reserve the right to get smarter.

It's a good one, right?  We don't always make the right or best decisions but we can always learn from our mistakes and do better the next time.

So when Cory and I started this house renovation we decided to leave a couple areas of the house untouched for now and update them in the future.  The basement, large "master" bath and closet, and upstairs kids' bathroom were on that list.

However, as we got further into demolition and tweaked our plans we realized that it would be far less of a headache and FAR less messy to just do the bathrooms now instead of later.  Plus, doing the girls' bathroom now would allow us to reconfigure another weird space.

Remember this?

That is the lovely toilet that was IN the master bedroom.  Yes, IN the bedroom, not in the master bathroom.  

Yuck.

But on the other side of that wall is the girls' bathroom.  So if we took that toilet out, removed the walls of that little nook, and then closed the wall of the bedroom we could add that nook space to the girls' bathroom and make it a bit more spacious.

Here is the girls' bathroom before:

You can just see the current toilet on the bottom left.  Behind it is the toilet in the bedroom.

And beside the current toilet is the other vanity.

This bathroom really isn't terrible.  It is a bit outdated, but it's functional, has two vanities, and the shower is fairly new and clean.  But by taking that bedroom toilet nook space we will be able to push the bathroom toilet back and gain some open floor space.  Plus, the toilet will no longer be the first thing you see when you climb the front stairs.

My super hard-working stud of a husband spent a few days with a sledgehammer and a crowbar in here and this is what happened.

 First, the vanities and toilet came out.

The toilet nook walls were removed as well as the bedroom toilet.  And once the walls were removed we found that a huge cast iron vent ran right up the space between the toilets.  Oh joy.  This meant a hit to the budget as all that cast iron would have to be redirected somewhere else.

I took the above photo while standing in what is now Dixon's bedroom.  The bedroom toilet was where the front hole in the floor is, then there is the cast iron vent, and then there is the bathroom toilet hole.  The new bathroom toilet will move back to where the bedroom toilet once was, but of course it will face INTO the bathroom. *smile*

And this is a view from the doorway of the bathroom looking towards the bedroom.  The vent has been rerouted in the floor and new plumbing has been placed for both of the vanities.

Looking at this mess, I sure am glad we chose to be smart and redo this bathroom now.

And I sure am glad my hubby likes to vacuum.

At least with a shop vac, that is.

Kitchen Destruction

At first glance, the kitchen of our house wasn't all that terrible.  In fact, when we looked at it from a bit of a distance or even in photos it didn't seem all that bad.  A bit outdated, but not horrible.

The quirky island with opposing sinks and the refrigerator that was actually in the family room were certainly odd, as was the high counter under the windows.

But overall, it looked fairly clean, the appliances were mostly new, and if you didn't open any of the cabinets it really didn't look too bad.

However, upon closer examination . . .

things were certainly amiss.  Most of the cabinets were almost unusable, and several of them weren't even finished on the inside.  Check out the ancient mini-fridge hiding under the tall counters.  There were all kinds of strange configurations of makeshift shelving and weird spaces.  Plus, because some of the cabinets were unfinished inside, there was tons of mouse poop in them.  G.R.O.S.S.

So we knew the kitchen was going to be a total gut job right away.

Gutting this kitchen took many days, a number of people, and lots and lots of sweat.  It was a big job.  Thankfully, Cory's dad helped us remove all the cabinets, counters, and most of the appliances and flooring.

It was tricky getting the dishwasher out because it was literally built into the cabinetry.  Once it was gone the rest of the island came out with relative ease.  That is until it came time to remove the plywood around the sink plumbing.

Cory had to use a Sawzall to carefully cut around the pipes.  Let's just say he "missed" on one cut and we ended up with a literal waterfall in our kitchen.  Oops!  He hightailed it to the basement to shut off all the water to the house but not before the kitchen and family room and even the ceiling were quite wet.  We had to keep a Tupperware container under the pipe for over a week before the pipe was properly sealed off.

Slowly but surely we got all the stuff out of the kitchen.

In the photo above you can see the wall at the front of the house - it has the three windows.  That wall will be bumped out four feet so we gain a good amount of square footage in the kitchen.  It will be a huge help because I have big plans for this space!

In the next photo you can see the four - yes, FOUR - doors that were on the side wall of the kitchen.  The first one on the left goes to the garage.  It will be closed up and cabinetry / refrigeration will be in its place.  The second door in the middle was a closet.  It too will be gone.  The third door is actually behind the open front door.  It concealed the back staircase.  It will also be gone.  The open kitchen door will remain in that place but since that wall will be bumped out it will also be four feet further up.  That will also allow the door from the garage to the outside (it's just to the right of this photo) to become the new door from the garage into the kitchen.  So. Many. Doors.

Back to the destruction.

Once all the stuff was out of the kitchen, the guys started working on the floors.  And of course, it was layers of linoleum.  The top layer came off easily.  Then there was glue, a thin layer of sub-floor, and then the dreaded "asbestos suspect" material.  They tried to get that bottom layer off but it stuck so tightly in the center of the room that they had to just admit defeat and let it stay put.  It shouldn't matter since there will be new wood there eventually.

Next, the plaster had to removed from all of the walls.  Yep, more plaster.  My mom and sister helped us with this one afternoon and Cory and I did more plaster removal later.  It took quite some time to get it all off and cleaned up.  If you ever decide to do something like this, be prepared for a house that looks like this:

Pretty, isn't it?  Clean-up was made even MORE fun because of course there was heavy blown insulation in the outside walls.  I think I spent an entire day doing nothing but shovel insulation and plaster into buckets and dump it into the dumpster.  My arms and back were screaming in agony.

This is the view of the kitchen from the family room.  Wow.

And this is what it currently looks like from inside the kitchen looking into the family room.  It's all cleaned up and the carpenters have installed a new header to make the kitchen totally open to the family room.  It's taking shape!

The closet and back stairs are already torn out (thanks to my brother-in-law Barry for doing that task for us) and most of that wall of doors is open to the garage until the new wall is built.

The next step is excavating the porch in front of the kitchen and building the new outside wall.  Then the current wall with the windows will be removed and we will have the final defined space for the new kitchen.

I've always wanted a "Dream Kitchen" and it feels like it is actually within reach!  It's SO exciting!  I can hardly wait to cook meals for my family here, do activities around the new island, and entertain friends and family in the finished space.  It makes me a bit giddy just thinking about it.

I like feeling giddy.

The Green Monster

I'm not even sure where to begin with this post.  It's just so . . . gross.  Here goes.

When Cory and I bought this house we didn't plan to do anything to the current master bathroom / closet other than paint it and freshen it up a bit.  I knew our kids would NOT be using the time capsule of a shower because it was just . . . gross.  But it wasn't in our budget to gut the space so it was deemed a "down the road" project.

Fast-forward to today and this is what the space looks like.

The Green Monster is gone!

My clever little sister suggested that we split the bathroom / closet space in half to make better use of the space and give Dixon a bigger bedroom.  So Dixon's bedroom will be to the right of the doorway all the way to the back wall where the mirror hangs.  We will build a wall at the doorway which will allow Tessa to access the bathroom area which will be reorganized and modernized.  In the space to left we will have a laundry area for the upstairs bedrooms.  Confusing, I know.  If you look closely you can see the shower head and controls between the studs.  That is where the shower used to reside.

But let's talk about that shower for a moment.

That thing was a beast.  I'm almost certain that it could have served as a bomb shelter if needed.

And it was so attractive.  In an ugly sort of way.  Don't even get me started on the stains, mold, and soap scum.

Anyway, my job was to take off the tiles.  I was hoping that they would pop off easily like the tiles in the downstairs powder room.

No such luck.

I used a hammer and screwdriver and chipped away at those tiles.  But like everything in this house, they were set in thick concrete and didn't want to budge.  I was able to get most of one wall off bit by bit but it took for.ev.er. and I was not a happy camper.  It was time to bring in the big guns.

I called my burly man and he came over with a sledgehammer.

Cory took a different approach to removing the tile.  He first knocked down the plaster wall on the outside of the shower and then slammed the concrete and tile from behind.  Hard, sweaty, dirty work that was awesomely effective.

However, that was just one of the shower walls and there were several more that couldn't be knocked down so easily.  The tile was everywhere: walls, shower seat, floor, and even the ceiling.  It took a few days to get it all out of there and I think Cory gained 5 pounds of muscle in the process.  One evening we were watching an episode of Property Brothers on HGTV and Jonathan Scott was removing a similar shower.  He said, "Imagine breaking up and removing a sidewalk . . . that is on your wall."  Yep, that's about right.  Our sidewalk ran up four walls and the ceiling.  Cory deserves his own HGTV show.

So one project always tends to lead to another and that was the case in this bathroom.  We decided would need to remove the linoleum flooring because there would be a height difference between the current bedroom area / laundry area and the bathroom area.  Cory can't stand that.  And of course under the linoleum is more of the dreaded tile.

UGH.

I'm fairly certain that removing heavy flooring (once again set in concrete with metal mesh) is the most laborious and difficult task on the face of the planet.  Cory got it started and made good progress, but he was beginning to resent the house and dreaded going there because of how much work it was for him.

Thankfully we have an amazing church family.  AMAZING.  We put out word that we needed help one Saturday and we had a slew of awesome people show up to help us work.

These guys were able to remove almost all of the remaining floor and rubble.  Thanks, guys!!!!

So now the space is nearly empty.  The built in closet drawers and shelves are gone.  The two vanities are gone.  The Green Monster is gone.  The floor is gone.  The only thing that remains is the tub, and it will see a makeover as well.  It literally took weeks to get to this point, but I'm excited about how the room is transforming and about how much better it will function for our family.

And I'm SO very thankful that we tackled that mess during the renovation instead of waiting a couple of years.  I can only imagine the dust and rubble that would have permeated the house had we done this after moving in.  Yikes.

So long, Green Monster.  Enjoy your new life in the landfill.

Hey There, Studs

Our work downstairs was no where near complete, but at some point Cory and I decided to head upstairs and begin opening up the space.  If you recall, there were five bedrooms upstairs when we bought the house.  Our plan is to make two of those bedrooms larger, change the shape of a third, and leave the remaining space open as a hallway and kids' study.  The fourth bedroom for Sasha will be added over the garage during construction and our master will be built as an addition downstairs.  So here is a look at what the upstairs looked like before:

Four bedrooms are off of this hall and one bedroom, the "master", is behind the camera.

The first thing we did was remove the wall between the two front rooms.  This area will become the hallway / kids' study.

We quickly got a glimpse of how the space will look when it is one big space.

Demo is sexy work, man.

It took a couple days to get to this point.  The dividing wall is gone as is most of the flooring and some smaller walls that needed to be removed.  It's amazing how bright and airy the space feels now!

Our plan is to have two large desks that will each seat two children along the walls between the dormers.  I think it's going to be awesome.  If I were a kid, I'd definitely want to do my homework in a space like this.  Well, in a cleaned up and finished space like this, that is.

The next task was removing the large hallway wall.  Cory and I didn't plan to take down this wall because it will become the new back wall of two bedrooms, but the location of the bedroom doors needs to be changed and we need an access into the study area so it just made sense to take it down and start from scratch.

Let me just say, plaster is heavy, messy, dusty, ridiculous stuff.  Yes, you can do cool curves with it and it's very sturdy.  But oh. my. stars.  If I never have to remove plaster again in my life it will be too soon.

Goodbye, plaster wall!  Thankfully, we had a lot of help one Saturday which made the cleanup of all the mess go LOTS faster than Cory and I could have managed on our own.

That help was super important because we had to take the other hallway wall down, too.  You can now see that the back bedrooms picked up quite a bit of space from the hallway - hooray!

The only hiccup we've run into with these two bedrooms is that Tessa will not have a very spacious closet.  The corner where her closet sits has to be cut at an angle in order to have enough room to maneuver at the top of the stairs.  So it will only be a few feet wide.  We thought she was going to have more closet space on the opposing wall, but there just isn't enough room due to the placement of the windows.  I'm kind of bummed because one can never have too much closet space (especially a girl), but we'll make do.

Overall, I'm really happy with how the upstairs is transforming.  There is still much to be done up here, including removing a bit more plaster and getting clean edges along the ceilings.  We've been doing demo for so long and are absolutely exhausted.  It doesn't sound like a big deal to take down some walls and tear out floors, but it is a HUGE amount of work.  So hopefully we'll see some construction start soon!

One Question

As Cory and I progress through demolition of our house there is one question that we find ourselves asking over and over again:

Why did they DO that?

Don't get me wrong.  This house was really well-built and is sturdier than 99% of the homes built today.  The bones are fantastic.  But over the years previous owners have done things that simply leave us scratching our heads.  They also leave us with tons of work to do to get the house ready for renovation.

Exhibit A: The foyer.

Take a moment to soak in that lovely slate floor.  

Now come back with me to the dining room which is to the right of the foyer.

After I pulled off the wallpaper we decided to start removing the wood floors.  This is what the floor of the dining room looked like once the throw rug was removed:

No, folks, that isn't just a ring of dirt around the room.  The wood floor is actually stained that darker color all around the room so that you can see exactly where the rug once was.  I'm guessing this is a result of many years of dirt from wear and tear combined with dust and dirt being blown onto the floor by the radiators.  It's charming.  Or something.

We planned to replace these floors before seeing the condition they were in so this stain made it even less sad for us to start ripping them out of the house.  Cory got the job started along the front wall and between the two of us we removed the floor fairly quickly.  The boards were nailed down so it wasn't super easy, but it wasn't terribly difficult either.

We did have lots of nails to pull out of the subfloor, though.

Okay, back to the foyer and that awesome slate.

So guess what we discovered as we removed all that wood flooring?

Look closely.  Can you guess?

The wood floors run UNDERNEATH the slate!!!!  Seriously, WHY DID THEY DO THAT???

We were dreading removing the slate already because we knew it was set in concrete.  But we didn't imagine that the slate would have been plopped on top of wood.  It now makes sense why there wasn't a proper threshold at the front door: the floor was too high.

So Cory began attacking the floor.  It took days - DAYS - to remove this slate.  It ran all the way to the back of the foyer where the large family room begins, so there was a lot of it to remove.  The first day Cory just chipped at it a bit to see exactly what he was getting into.

And our suspicions were confirmed.  Slate on top of concrete on top of wire mesh on top of wood floors.  There was no less than two inches of material to remove and none of it would be easy.

Dixon was a great helper.  He loaded up buckets of concrete and tiles as Cory broke it up so it could be tossed into the dumpster.

But this job was really big and thankfully my parents came to help us for a day.  It was backbreaking work but they managed to free the foyer of all that unnecessary flooring.

Please folks.  If you want to change your flooring, take the extra time and effort to do it properly. Remove the old before installing the new.  

Spare future owners of your home the crazy amount of work it takes to do things the right way.

No one wants to do this kind of work.

It will all be worth it in the end though.  It will ALL be worth it.

The Powder Room

One of the rooms in our home that really embraced a retro feel is our downstairs powder room.  You may recall that it had lovely pink tiles and a matching pink sink as well as a very 70's inspired fabric for drapes and cabinet inserts.

The size of the powder room is great.  It is definitely bigger than our current home's powder room.  Initially we were just going to update it with new flooring and a new vanity.

Then we went to an antique mall and found the most awesome piece of furniture that we are going to convert into a vanity for this room.  I'm not going to show you the piece just yet.  I've got to keep some surprises up my sleeve for a little while.

Anyway, because of the shape of this powder room our newly acquired treasure won't fit into the space.

The main wall in the powder room backs up to the larger family room, and on the other side of this wall, in the part of the powder room to the left of the sink, is this:

Please excuse the really poor quality photo.  Once again, it was taken in the evening with only the light of one can light in the ceiling.  Anyway, these shelves take up space in the powder room.  So Cory and I had to decide if we wanted to leave the shelves in place and simply install a small vanity in the powder room or if we wanted to sacrifice the shelves for the really super cool amazing one-of-a-kind antique piece we both really really really love.

I think you can guess what we decided to do.

I started by removing the pink tiles.  Luckily, the wall tiles popped right off with just a tap.  But wall tile removal was as far as I got in this room.  I soon discovered that the tiles on the counters and the lovely pink sink were set in concrete and there was no way little me was getting them to budge. So from this point on my strong, handsome, burly man husband stepped in and did his thing.

Cory powered through the concrete counters and was even managed to remove the sink without breaking it.  He's da man.

Here you can see that the shelves are gone and so is part of the floor.  When Cory took out the shelves and the crown molding in the family room he discovered that another family had been occupying this home for some time.  A family of squirrels had clearly made themselves comfy as evidenced by the walnuts that tumbled out of the walls.  Cory even found a plastic Easter egg that a squirrel brought inside after the humans finished a hunt one year.  Silly squirrels.

So Cory had a lot of work to do in this little room.  It was a bit more than he bargained for when we started tearing things out of the space.  As he began to remove the linoleum flooring he found that it was layered on top of a mosaic tile.  Lovely.

It wasn't just any mosaic tile either. It was pink and blue mosaic tile to match the rest of the powder room.  Of course it was!

This meant that Cory pounded and chipped his way through layers of linoleum, tile, concrete, and steel mesh in order to get down to the subfloor.  I don't think I need to tell you how much work this was.

Slowly but surely he made his way around the room and cleared everything from the space.

It's not easy to see from this photo, but we also learned that the pipes were extremely old and fragile (and one even cracked when Cory touched it) and that the toilet was not properly sealed.  The concrete was soaked from water leaking for who knows how long.  And the subfloor is so damaged that it needs to be replaced.

So even though demolishing this room was a ton of work, we are very glad we did it.  Thank God we exposed a problem that would have gotten much worse had we done nothing.  It's moments like this one that make me thankful that we are tackling this project all at once even though we could have kept the powder room intact and just "lived with" the time warp that it was.

Lessons learned from this room: Don't put layers of flooring over top layers of flooring, and perhaps more importantly, check your toilet seals!