Sunday, January 1, 2012

House Progression

We've been spending a lot of time at our new house, getting some things fixed up on it.  

Correction:  WILL has been spending a lot of time at our new house fixing stuff.  He "lives" there now and comes home on Sundays for church. We miss him tons, and it only adds to the motivation to hurry and get this home renovation project sped up so we can be together as a family again soon.

The boys and I have taken two extended weekend trips down to the house to paint and hang out with Will.  Our most recent trip was the day after Christmas, and we stayed from Monday through Thursday.  Preston got a plastic tool set in his stocking and was excited to get to help Papa "fix" the house.

Several friends have mentioned wanting to see before/after photos, however, to be honest there is not a whole lot to show you yet.  Our "fixing it up" financing will finally be going through this week, which means our contractor will finally be starting work this week as well.  So everything we've done up to this point has mostly been prep-work. 

Will has:

- Pressure washed the roof and removed years worth of moss and gunk, as well as from the gutters.  
- Pressure washed the siding of the house - as we won't be able to actually paint until the summer.  But at least we'll look clean now.  
- Replaced all of the heaters with new units and new thermostats.  
- Replaced all of the gross old toilet seats with brand new seats (which means we can all pee in peace now).  
- Replaced all of the bathroom fan units.
- Installed our new dining room chandelier.

Fireplace

The most recent fixes we've done, is we got the new fireplace installed.  When we bought the house, there was no fireplace.  Well, I mean, the space was there, but the actual fireplace unit had been removed.  I'm not sure how many of you have had to purchase a new fireplace unit before - but it's not cheap.  But we did it, and are very excited to have future cozy fires in it.  We got one with a built-in fan in the hopes that it will be able to heat most of the house and save us on our electrical bill.  

Here is a before/after photo of the fireplace.


We plan to eventually replace the tile around the fireplace with granite to match the granite in the kitchen.  We will also be painting the current mantle white, and adding new white matching pieces that extend up to the ceiling with a arch.  The walls will eventually be painted a rustic light green color.

A project that I have tackled is getting some of the painting done.  Whoever owned this home before, I can honestly say that they never touched this house with new paint (and probably didn't clean either? Yuck).  The walls are all very gross and dingy, and so splatting some new paint on has given the home some new life, not to mention make it feel a lot cleaner.

Living Room/ Dining Room Progress

I have been wanting a red dining room for years, but have never been able to do it since we've been renters. Well now I have finally been able to do that.  It took a while to find the right shade of red though.  I tried 4 different shades of red, but the one I ended up choosing I had gotten from a neighbor's house who had red walls.  I ended up going over and asking her if I could steal her paint color, and she gave me her can of paint so I could color match.  It's sort of a "barn red" color.


As you can see from the picture above, I didn't take the red paint all the way up to the ceiling because we will eventually be adding white crown molding around the ceiling.  I'm going to have fun decorating this room.  I love very traditional styles, and while we are going for more of a "Craftsman" look for the rest of the house, this room in particular will be more chabby-chic/French provincial.  Or as I would like to call it, my Versaille (Marie Antoinette's palace in France).  

Will installed his first chandelier ever. We were excited when we flipped the switch and it turned on. :) Success.  I found that chandelier for an amazing deal at Home Depot - it was going out of stock. It is regularly around $200, and we got it for $49.99.  As you can see from the old 1990's chandelier Will is holding in his hand, the new chandelier is quite a huge improvement, not to mention a more updated look.  You can click to view it larger.

The funny part, is after we installed the new chandelier, we were finally able to actually have enough light to see in that room better, and I saw all the spots I had missed painting.  Next week will be coat #3 of the red paint. Ugh.

We will eventually be adding similar-style wall sconces, and nice white baseboards.  I hope to either eventually sew my own curtains for the room, or better yet find some at an amazing deal.  Any curtain makers out there have ideas, let me know.

The Kitchen Mess

So, being that the kitchen is going to be the most centralized and well-used area of the house, it will be one of the bigger and more expensive renovations we are doing.  

We are COMPLETELY re-doing it.



As you can see, we've got our work cut out for us.  Not sure if you can follow my little drawing, but that is the basics of what we're doing.  We will have hard wood flooring all through the kitchen to the family room (where the fireplace is).

We're still trying to figure out if we want to order completely new cabinetry, or try sanding these ones down and restain them. We would really like a dark cherry wood floor/kitchen with dark grey granite.  That is something Will is still doing some number-crunching on.

What's next...

This week our contractor is starting work on the back exterior.  One of the problems with the house is rain had gotten underneath the back siding and started seeping into the wall and going into the downstairs bathroom.  There is a mold issue. So is stripping the siding, fixing the issue, and then tear down the sheetrock/mold out of the downstairs bathroom.  We will also be adding the additional wall in the kitchen and then putting in the new back glass door.

Getting the water damage issue under control is the first priority, and then after that is done they will start on the kitchen.

Wanna see the rest?

I haven't really posted pics of the rest of the house, because I've been wanting to wait until we had more progress so you could see before/after.  However, now that you've already seen how dirty/dingy the home currently is, I guess I don't mind just going ahead and showing you the rest of it.  So here is your little tour....make sure to wash your hands afterwards. Ha.















































So there you have it. Our "new" home. Haha.  It definitely has a lot of fixing up to be done, but hey, we got an amazing steal on the home as it was a foreclosure.  We ended up paying only $117,000 for it - which for the eastside in Seattle is really amazing.  Once we are finished fixing it up all cute, we hope to have raised the value to between $250K - $300K.  We are putting so great sweat equity into it.  Literally.

Tomorrow morning I'll say goodbye to Will again for the next 2 weeks, and it's back life as a single parent for me.  I won't say it's easy.  It's definitely hard, and I'm exhausted from it. We will be so excited to finally be back together as a family.  We will be moving at the end of January. Obviously we won't have the house done by then, but we're hoping to at least have the kitchen done, the flooring, and carpets.  The rest will happen after we move in (baseboards, etc.).  We will also be replacing any and all doors in the house, not sure if we're doing that before or after we move in though.

I have Christmas photos to post, but will have to save that for another day. Until then, enjoy a few sneak peeks from our Christmas below...
















8 comments:

Luke said...

LOVED your pictures of your new home. Sooo fun! Can't wait to see it in person.

Seth Thomas said...

Nice home. And good job on the chandelier. I wired one once for a school dance and accidently crossed two wires which ended in a small explosion and me being blind for about a minute. If you want I can come help you guys :P

Annalea said...

Wow, Jenni. Thanks for the awesome post! Believe it or not, I would LOVE to fix up a place like that. It's got great potential, and I love remodeling.

(Fair warning: idea explosion ahead. Take it or leave it, please. :o)

Have you looked around Pinterest for ideas? When I saw your entry closet, I thought of Ana White's yellow mudroom (not that yours would need to be yellow) . . . that's such a perfect nook for that kind of thing. You don't need to keep the closet at all, as the built-in nature of the mudroom plan provides all of its own enclosure.

Your kitchen is a great chance to save a whole lot of $$$ by refinishing. (Have you seen Rustoleum's Cabinet Transformations? They're designed to put a durable surface on 90's oak cabinets just like yours.) You can move that great lazy susan cabinet to the corner near the fridge, reinstall the base & wall cabs along the wall towards the back door like you plan, and get a screamin' awesome range hood from Ikea. (Ikea's appliances are top notch, btw.) Young House Love has a series of posts on their recent kitchen reconfiguration, and it's turning out really well. Painting your cabinets (you don't neven need to sand with the Rustoleum stuff) will save thousands . . . and thousands that you don't have to pay interest on saves you serious money, which translates into fewer hours of Will's life traded for house payments. (I've got cabinets on the brain, as we're nearly to that point in our own place. I think we're going to build our own, but that's another story entirely.) I've had granite countertops, and while I love the look of them, I really prefer solid surfacing, soapstone or (gasp) formica. lol Granite is just so stinkin' hard, needs sealing, and always has those little tiny voids in it that make it hard to feel like you've got it reeeealllly clean. But that's imho. ;o)

Ooo . . . do you know what I think would be fun? Seeing if some home bloggers to play around with your before photos in a link party, and see what they would do with the space. Since you don't have many "after" photos, it's as wide open as the sky, and might give you some great ideas. I love being questioned and challenged and "what if'ed" . . . most of the best ideas have come out of that.

Have fun, and hang in there!!!

monica said...

Okay, so you're all a bit busy!! May this next month come and go without too much fuss. Congrats to you all on the house, it looks like it will be a great house.

As for the movie editing, i just use microsoft live movie maker. it comes preinstalled on the new computers.

The Happy Hippies said...

I love all the update you'll be making. I can't wait to see your place again. Let us know when you plan to move and we'll come help.

Every Star Is Different said...

Wow, I can't imagine doing all of that. Honestly, I had no idea you could paint siding. Good luck with everything. I would feel so overwhelmed. I'm trying to get our house ready to sell and all I can think is-one room at a time. Even then I can't decide which room to start with. Can't wait to see how it looks when you're done.

Brian & Veronica said...

Don't know if it's already been said, b/c I haven't read any previous comment. But, did you know that Home depot (and probably lowes) has a cabinet refinishing kit? It's only around $100 here and it's pretty incredible for the value. I haven't used it, but in talking with the man who worked there, who had done a few seminars about it for people on saturdays, he said it was pretty amazing and true to it's word in it's ability to completely revamp old wood (any wood furniture really, but it's specifically made for cabinets). I don't know how much you would need, but check it out online at least and see if it might help with your budget. It would save tons of money, and maybe even if it took 3 kits it would still saves hundreds/thousands on new cabinetry. :) Just a thought. ;) And yes, I still read your blog. I just caught up the other night and read your post about it being pretty silent in the bloggersphere lately. I agree. Everyone I usually keep up with on blogs has converted to facebook and only updates their blogs every once in a while. :( Who am I to talk though? I haven't blogged in a couple years!

Gotta jet, but I think about ya ALL the time. I love reading your blog and seeing your pics, makes me miss you OH SO MUCH! ;) love, V

Brian & Veronica said...

Jenni, I just read Annalea's post, she DID tell you about the rustoleum stuff, that's exactly what I'm talking about so go check it out! :D