Layers

Today I went to the new house to do some serious scrubbing to prep for painting. The water wasn't on yet so I drove over carefully with a bucket of hot water in the passenger side floor board. Just a few drops escaped when I turned into the drive - success! One hearty splash of vinegar and a few big squirts of blue Dawn dish detergent later and I donned my yellow cleaning gloves to get to work.

It was there on my knees crawling along with my scrub brush that I began to think about the family who had lived in this house before. I found a quarter peeking out from the edge of the baseboard and pocket it. I'm up about 86 cents since we started. See? This house is already turning a profit! But back to the history of the house. I wonder about the previous family.

In no time at all thirty minutes had passed and two men from the water department arrived to turn on our water out at the street. After ensuring nothing came gushing out at the valve down in the basement, I thanked them at the door. The one in the neon jacket told me he'd been in the house multiple times turning the water back on for them. I explained that the house had been foreclosed on when we purchased so that kind of made sense. He mentioned the previous owner had driven a little volvo. That struck me as so odd that he would remember that little detail. The family is now gone from the house, but not forgotten as it's residents. As we peel back the layers from the house, we get to see a little glimpse into the lives they lived in this house too.

Now back to the work we're doing. The main bathroom had powder blue tiles going halfway up the walls. I spent some time chipping them off with a hammer and pry bar one at a time. Every once in a while, I would hit the jackpot and four tiles would come off at once! Underneath the blue tile I was surprised to find... more tile! But this tile was flush with the drywall so I left it. We will tile over it with something fresh. The bottom layer of tile was originally white before being painted a burgundy color and then a minty green color on top of that before it was finally tiled over with the light blue tiles. Whew! That's a lot of styles for one bathroom. I ripped out the linoleum floor next. Daniel took out the vanity, toilet and pried out the rusty inserts from the built in medicine cabinet. We'll be trying to salvage the tub with a good deep clean and just spruce it up with new controls, spigot and fresh caulk.

Daniel is the true visionary in this marriage. He can always visualize the way something will look in a room. Sometimes he has an idea and I'm skeptical. I usually give in to his idea and find out he was right and it looks awesome. Here's yet another example. He picked this tile for the bathroom. I wasn't sold on it but we needed to make a decision so I agreed. 

 

I think the floor looks awesome! Here's a little secret. This isn't real tile! It's a stickable vinyl tile that you can grout between. I love it. It was a good price and he got the whole thing done in just a couple hours after church Sunday night. I should know better by now and trust his judgment. After all, he did choose me. :) 

Next to go was the wall tile, vanity and linoleum in the master half bath. When he pulled the mirror down, he found a fun little surprise. You can see the original siding from before the master was added on. Neat! This bathroom had pink wall tiles painted over with white. Under the vanity was a layer of the tiny 1" by 1" tiles. The floor must have been this style before they put the linoleum down.

 

Every single house we have bought has wallpaper that has to go. Wallpaper removal is basically the bane of my existence. For once though, I was pleasantly surprised. I don't know what type of paper this was, but it peeled off extremely quick in large strips. I didn't even have to use the steamer. Under the wallpaper in the hallway, I found some three color sponge rolled paint someone had taken a lot of time to do. I'm pretty happy this paint technique has gone out of style... In this picture, the paint is on the left, a strip of the wallpaper is on the right.

Our biggest concern now is the kitchen floor. Daniel pulled up a layer of linoleum, two sheets of of plywood and a layer of the thick linoleum tiles he had to painstakingly chip up before he finally found that there was indeed hardwood at the bottom of it all. However, the hardwood is covered with some sort of tar glue. We are having all the hardwood floors throughout the house professionally refinished. Yes, this is something we could do ourselves. But we just don't have the time before our move date. So we'll trust the pros with that job. We're crossing our fingers that they'll be able to sand through this crazy layer of black to get to the wood underneath in the kitchen.

 

So that's where we are. Just peeling back a little more of the layers of this house each day, discovering more of it's secrets. A house is just a structure with four walls and a roof, right? Yet somehow this little building is so much more. Even with this house, knowing we don't plan to stay in it long and are investing in it with a "business" mindset, I can't seem to hold it at arm's length. Every minute we spend working, planning, cleaning, renovating, I pour a little more of myself into it. It's not just a house. It's a home. And while it may not be our home for too long if things go as planned, it will be someone's home. That's what makes it special. We get to add our own little layer to this home. We become a part of it until someone comes in later and peels our work back just as we're doing now.

Until then, keep dreaming with us!

Meet our latest project!

Last week we did it. We bought a foreclosed house. I tease my husband that we're really doing this whole home buying thing backwards. When we got married, he already owned a nice little two bedroom townhouse. After about a year of marriage, we sold it and bought  a 4500 sq ft (square footage includes finished basement areas) 5 bedroom, 3.5 bath dream house for a great deal, albeit the short sale process was truly brutal.  Three and a half years later we sold that house to buy our current home - a pretty average 2500 sq ft two story with 4 beds and 2.5 baths that was again, a stellar deal.  Now here we are, just over two years later, selling this house to move into a little bitty ranch. Seriously, our current furniture is not even going to fit... But no worries! It's just another step on the road following our dreams!

So why on earth did we sell our comfortable, beautifully finished home to downsize yet again? Here comes the dream aspect. It's a goal of ours to, Lord willing, own 3-4 rental homes eventually. We'd also like to own our own home outright and live completely debt free one day. It's a ways off, but this house is the first step! According to the terms of our purchase agreement, the house must be owner-occupied for one year. So after we move in next month, the clock starts. Once we reach the last six months, we'll start looking for our next project and hopefully buy another rental type home to fix up and move into while we rent this one out. But I'm getting ahead of myself. For now, let me tell you about the new house.

The house is a small ranch with 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a fully finished basement, and a one car attached garage. It's actually pretty cute I think, with a few funky aspects. It was built in the 1940's. A den and master bedroom with a half bath were added onto the back side of the house at some point. Here are some initial photos of the house.

Entry into living room

Front Living Room

Dining area of kitchen

Kitchen (doorway goes to garage & basement)

Den addition (located off of dining area)

Master Bedroom addition

1/2 Bath in Master Bedroom

Smaller bedroom (has 2 doors, one into Master, one into hallway) 

Larger front bedroom

Main Bathroom

I haven't taken any photos of the basement yet but it's actually pretty neat. The stairs are a bit steep to navigate but it's completely finished with a full bathroom, a non-conforming bedroom (no windows), a small living room with a fireplace and believe it or not a complete kitchen! I assume they had another adult living down there full time. There's some water damage and repairs needed but we won't even think of getting to that for at least a few months.

The house has some quirks, like the door shared between the smallest bedroom and the master. But both rooms also have a door leading in from a common area so you don't have to pass through the small room to get to the master. Also there's a door in the kitchen dining area that I've opened twice now thinking it was a pantry and instead finding super steep attic stairs. I've never lived in a house with an easily accessible attic like that before so it gets me every time. Being a 1940's home, there's also a few things I think are neat like the telephone shelf in the hallway and the shape of the open doorways.

Seriously, I need an antique phone to put here...

So now you've seen most of the house! There's quite a bit of work here and honestly we're pretty short on time thanks the hubby's busy job and upcoming travel (being in Tokyo for a week for a work conference isn't the best thing for our project timeline). Can't complain about that though as his job does all the funding for both houses! :) The work we're doing here will be a bit different than our last project. Knowing our goal is to rent it out, we want to make it look fresh and welcoming while spending the least amount of money to do so. Sometimes it's hard to remember that when we're talking about what we want to do! But on this house, every dollar spent is a little chunk out of our profit. We've got to view this project as a business venture instead of making decisions with our personal tastes and preferences.

Stay tuned! The work has already begun. Updates will be posted as I find time between raising a toddler and baby, keeping this house going, packing all our worldly goods for the move and working on the new house to get it ready in time... Good thing I don't sweat the small stuff! Buckle up! It's gonna be a ride and I can't wait to share it with you!

Keep Dreaming!

Kate

Weeks 7-8 - Living in the belly of the beast

On Thursday, April 24th, exactly 7 weeks after our close date, we took a leap of courage and moved into the house.  That may sound dramatic to say it was a leap of courage.  Ok maybe it is a little over the top, but with so many things left to do at this house, moving in with a 7 month old baby has been... challenging.  Warning, this will be a long post since we've got a lot of catching up to do!

I thought moving in would be so helpful for me to be able to get more done.  As a stay at home mom, with visions of sugar plums dancing in my head, I imagined myself skipping around the house completing so many "little projects" while Daniel was at work.  Then there's reality.  I have a baby.  And that baby has recently decided that I cannot be out of her sight for more than 2 minutes at a time  and most of our waking hours should be spent holding her or entertaining her.  And until she adjusts to the new house, napping two hours in her crib is a distant memory.  Ah well, I said all that to say this, I was hoping we'd have more done by now but we don't.  And that's ok.  I've learned to adjust my expectations and be more realistic.  For me, Maria's always the top priority.  So let me tell you what we've been up to these past two weeks.

Thursday afternoon Daniel calls me from work to say he thinks we should move in that evening when he gets off.  While freaking out in my head, I calmly respond "Ok, sure."  Between entertaining Maria with bursts of song and weird faces, I packed like crazy to get things ready.  Daniel's friends had helped us move boxes from his parents' basement a few days earlier.  The boxes contained all the things we'd been living without these past six weeks.  I had been unpacked most of the kitchen by Thursday so that helped a lot.  It took us two very full van loads and one full SUV load to get the rest of our things to the house.  Daniel set up Maria's crib first so we could get her to bed and go to work.

We quickly found ourselves unprepared to live in the house.  Having packed our boxes over a month prior, I couldn't remember where anything was.  The sheets to our bed were nowhere to be found.  At our previous house, our shower had a glass door.  So we're hot and worn out from the move but can't take a shower because we don't own a shower curtain.  We don't have any blinds on the windows so I try to make due by hanging extra towels in the bedroom.  All I could find was painter's tape, which wasn't strong enough to hold the towels up.  You should've seen how I bolted up in bed when the first towel came peeling off the window noisily at 3 am.

So anyways it was pretty crazy to just move in like that totally unprepared.  But I have learned to make due with what we've got so I took a bath that night, made the bed with some threadbare sheets that used to belong to Daniel's granny and the next day taped black trash bags over the windows with the painter's tape.  I'm happy to say, we now have blinds and a shower rod and curtain.  We're becoming more civilized every day!

I can't really remember the details of the things we've been working on in the past two weeks, but I can tell you that the trickiest part is prioritizing.  We have boxes everywhere from the move to unpack, but we also have a thousand more projects that need finished around the house.  Which comes first?  I waste time every day deciding.  The first week I was just overwhelmed.  Being here all day with the baby was like living in a hurricane.  We didn't even have internet in the house until four days ago.  Talk about living in the Dark Ages!  Just kidding :)  This past week it started to feel much more livable, and it looks more like a home every day!

We worked on finishing the counters and cabinets in the kitchen.  The counters were created with a Travertine tile that should be sealed every year.  I'd never natural sealed stone before but there's not much to it.  I was surprised that the consistency of the sealant wasn't much thicker than water.  Just paint it on and then wipe it off in 15 minutes.  Easy!

The cabinets took a lot more work to finish.  First Daniel had to rebuild some of the drawer frames because they were in too bad of shape.  He also installed new tracks to make them operate more smoothly.  Once we glued the old drawer fronts back on, we applied several painstaking coats of poly acrylic lacquer to protect the paint on all the cabinets.  Before the lacquer was applied, the paint chipped off at the slightest bump.  Now, after three coats, it's holding up much better.  I'd actually like to put one more coat on just because it's tricky to get it even each time so one more would make it even smoother.  Daniel installed the brushed nickel hardware and we're in business!

 

We went with faux wood blinds for the house and so far I love how they look!  I still have to go around to adjust the length of each blind for the window.  According to the blinds guy at Home Depot, it's an easy but time consuming task that I should do on a day I've got nothing else going on.  So... never?  Just kidding, I'll get to it eventually.  But for now each window can just have 10-12 slats stacked on the sill.  It's not going to hurt anybody!  I have to paint the quarter round trim around each window so it will be white to match the new trim.  Here's a photo of a window, post-blind but pre-trim.

Speaking of trim, Daniel just started the ginormous task of trimming the entire house.  While Daniel does the harder work, I came behind him with the putty to fill in all the nail holes.  That putty is like magic for making it look great!  Since the walls are not perfectly square, it's nearly impossible to get the angles just right.  Here's an example of a corner that looks about a million times better after filling the holes and gap with putty.

We ordered the trim for the house right after we closed on March 6th.  The crazy thing is, Lowe's is STILL delivering pieces!  Good thing we didn't need to start sooner!  They've probably made 5 deliveries now of the baseboard trim and casing to our house.  They don't even know if they've delivered it all and to be honest, neither do we.  The last time they called they told Daniel to just let them know if he needs more delivered because they think they owe us more.  It's a weird situation.  I will be VERY glad to get the trim up in the house.  Closing the door to Maria's room to keep out the light and noise doesn't help as much when there's a big gap all around the door.

This past weekend we went up to Minneapolis for a little getaway to celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary.  Being the house remodel junkies we are, we spent most of our three days there at the Ikea.  It's our dream store!  We bought organizing systems for the pantry, the linen closet and both our master closets.  The linen and pantry organizers are metal frames with mesh baskets.  You can choose between a large and small basket.  We did a mix for both.  So far we assembled the system in the pantry and I love it!  It's so handy to be able to pull out the baskets to see all the contents.  Having a pantry is awesome any way it's structured, but I always missed stuff at our old house because it had been pushed to the back behind something else.

Today I picked up some new lamps for the living room.  I prefer overhead lighting with lamps more for decor, but our living room was designed (as many are) with just some of the plugs on a switch.  I bought four at TJ Maxx and I'm loving how they look!  They're modern without being too funky I think.  I like modern but nothing that's too contemporary or edgy.  I had purchased two lamps in a different design, but after we moved in I realized that wasn't enough light for the room.  Of course TJ Maxx doesn't necessarily have the same thing twice so I exchanged them for a model that had more lamps I could buy.

The last thing I'll share tonight is a picture of the new light switch Daniel just installed in our entryway.  It's also a modern design, and I think it's pretty slick.  Wait, did I just say that?  I just sounded like my grampa there for a minute (misspelling intentional).  Anyways it's kind of cool for a light switch.  I thought we'd just go with a regular rocker switch, but sometimes Daniel finds these neat little things that take it to the next level.

I'm trying hard not to let myself stress about getting things done around here.  Our big convention at church is coming up Memorial Day weekend and my mom and some friends of ours will be staying with us.  I'm thrilled to keep company but also know we won't have everything done that quickly (only two weeks from Thursday!).  Fortunately, we like these friends a lot, and we think they like us too.  So they won't mind a few things unfinished or some boxes stacked in the closets or our complete lack of decoration in the house.  That's what friends do, look past your flaws! :)

To all our other friends out there, soon you should stop by for a visit at the new house.  Just be prepared for a little construction dust.  It's become a way of life around here.  In the mean time, keep dreaming!

Days 33-40 - Our Plumber Is Our Hero

This house became our house almost six weeks ago.  From that first demolition day til today, hardly anything remains of the original fixtures inside!  By next week we should be able to say, "Welcome to our 'new' house."

As much as we like to "Do It Yourself", this house - especially the plumbing - has taught us to appreciate the value of professional help a lot more.  From that big gash in the major waterline to an incredibly heavy old tub to leaky shutoff valves, we are thankful for the pros.  Even the laminate floor install turned out to be a blessing since the professional installers did way more repairing and leveling than we would have thought to do.

This past week we definitely need them again.  The "plumber" we've been using is really more of a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to home repairs.  His son helps and his brother is a trim carpenter so between the of three of them, they can accomplish a lot!  We hired them again to come out Monday to install the new banisters for the stairway.  It looks amazing!  The balusters we chose are metal and have two "twist" designs in each rod.  We put these in upstairs on the landing and on the bottom half of the stairway.  One thing I really appreciate about this crew is their attention to detail. On the bottom half of the stairs, they put a baluster every 3 inches so little Maria can't fall through (the previous balusters were 9 inches apart!).  On these balusters, he lined them up with care to create a perfect diagonal line between the tops of each twist descending down the stairs.  It's a small thing, but I love the precision.  Daniel had sprayed the new handrail and newel posts white over the weekend.  They need touched up, but it's already a major improvement!  Here are some before (taken before we even owned the house) and after photos.  Carpet goes in on the stairs next week.

Daniel has finished tiling over the gross old counters and it looks great!  He also put in a small 4 in. back splash matching the counter tile.  Right now the edge of the tile is pretty sharp so we're going to soften the edge a bit with a tile grinder.  The hardware for the cabinets is "coming soon". We chose a granite composite sink.  Supposedly they are excellent for resisting scratches and staining.  I'll let you know if that's true once we move in.  Daniel put in new white trim around the window.  And now appliances have all arrived so this place is starting to feel like a kitchen again!

 

Just a reminder of what it looked like before we bought the house:

Daniel pulled out the old sink and planned to hook up the new one himself the next day.  The next morning when I went to the house, I found a slow leak coming from the water line, flooding the cupboard and pooling... you guessed it, on our beautiful new laminate floor.  I had terrible visions of warped floor boards in my head as I scurried to wipe it up.  So much water had leaked that it was dripping through the basement ceiling.  We set up three fans to blow on the floor for the next 18 hours and prayed for the best.  Thankfully, none of the board have warped so far.  Since John (our not-really-a-plumber plumber) was already coming Monday with his brother to do the other work, we just added this shutoff valve repair and sink install to his list.  I'm glad we're finding all these leaks and getting them fixed BEFORE we move in!  Shutting off the main water valve is not as much of an inconvenience when you don't live there.

John was also tasked with installing the over-the-range microwave.  He was a lot cheaper than Lowe's install rate and, as with so many of our projects, there were issues.  The electrical cord that had connected the previous vent hood was actually dangerous and a fire hazard.  So John and his son ran a new breaker for the microwave and installed a new plug.  Again, thank goodness for professionals!  Had we done it ourselves, we would have never known it needed rewiring.  It's possible we could have burned the house down when we started using the microwave... gulp. 

John's son handled the drywall repair.  He was able to blend the textures pretty evenly.  Now we just have to paint those areas (again). 

I attempted to install the new light fixture in the powder room while Daniel was at work.  Sometimes I like to pretend I know how to do these things...  I really do think I could have done it myself had it not been for issues with the mounting screws not fitting the box.  Apparently they had used an outlet receptacle instead of the larger box for a light fixture - weird.  We found some other screws to fit and Daniel finished the job.  I'm going to put up a mirror in here instead of replacing the medicine cabinet.  We didn't patch the hole though since it will be covered by the mirror and leaves the option open for a medicine cabinet later.  So if you ever come over for a visit... don't look behind the mirror!

A tip on bathroom vanities - We chose the Allen + Roth Norbury vanities in different sizes for all three bathrooms.  The largest vanity for the guest bath had a cracked counter due to being shipped without the center support piece.  When we went to Lowe's to exchange it, 2 out of the 3 other vanities were also cracked due to shipping!  The powder room vanity was supposed to go in Monday.  It had a hairline crack in the sink.  Surprise surprise, the other two vanities in that size at our local Lowe's were also cracked.  Aargh!  I ended up driving to another Lowe's 30 minutes away just to get one vanity that wasn't cracked.  Overall, I love how these vanities look and so far (without really using them) they seem to be of good quality.  I think they just package them poorly for shipping.  So word to the wise, if you're picking one of these up, make them open the box to check the counter and sink before you take it home.  Save yourself the extra trips to the store.

So as you can see, the house is coming along.  I've started the cleanup process, and it's going to take awhile.  Just the amount of dust on all our furniture will be a lot to clean up.  But fortunately, I have friends to help!  Faith came on Saturday and we spent some quality time together sharing a bucket of soapy water.  Good company makes every job easier!

By this time next week, we hope to be moved in!  Wish us luck.  We'll update you after the move. It's starting to make more sense to update the blog weekly so I will be shifting to more of that type of schedule.  Daily is a little too much for this busy gal!  I got tired of staying up past one in the morning writing. :)

In the mean time, keep dreaming!

Day 28-32 - Harder Than It Looks!

Friday
The installers were back at it Friday to finish laying the laminate floor.   They had poured a few areas with self-leveling concrete on Wednesday to even out the sub floor.  But by Friday, a few areas were still not completely dry and set.  They'd never seen that happen before and even called the  local sales rep for the product to come out to take a look.  Not wanting moisture to seep into our new flooring, they came back Monday to do the last two areas that still were showing moisture from the drying concrete on Friday.  We are very happy with the floors!  Here are some before and after shots - excuse the dirt. The walls in the hallway look kind of yellow in the photos, but they are the Autumn Mist color that is in most of the house.

Saturday & Sunday
Guess what!  I got to paint more!  Thrilling stuff folks.  But it is nice to have fresh paint everywhere.  Over the weekend I focused on painting inside all the storage closets - hallway linen, over the stairs,  master bath linen, coat closet and pantry.  We're using a semi-gloss white paint for all closet interiors and doors to help cover wear and tear.  I've never really painted with semi-gloss before, but let me tell you, it is slick!  The first coat I put on looked like a two year old had painted it.  I rolled, then cut and the paintbrush took more paint off than it put on.  The second coat went on much better.  And now the closets looks so fresh it made it worth the time I spent painting in places most people will never see! 

There's a neat storage closet on the upstairs landing that goes over the stairway.  I didn't realize it until I climbed inside to paint it but that thing is huge!  I stood straight up inside it so it's at least 5'3" tall and about 4 feet deep.  I'll be honest, while I was standing inside it painting I thought to myself, "I think we'll use this closet to store extra bedding.  Then as soon as Maria is old enough to really play hide-and-seek, I'm totally hiding in here!"  It's true, I'm still 10 years old at heart. 

Daniel sanded, primed and painted all the cabinet doors and drawers.  It was fairly nice outside so he was able to work on the covered patio.  I can't wait to open all the windows at the house when it gets closer to 70 later this week!

Monday
We're finally ready to start reassembling the kitchen.  As much as we would have loved new counters and cabinets for the kitchen, for now we are making the old ones work with just some sprucing.  Unfortunately, the drawers are in pretty bad shape.  One was actually supported by duct tape on the bottom...  Yikes.

 But we can make it work - it's what we do.  When we brought the doors back in to start reattaching them, we made an unfortunate discovery.  Somehow, when we detached the doors from the hinges, we broke the pin that held the two pieces of the hinge together.  It was a hidden hinge, but an outdated design.  After a quick trip to Home Depot, we found that the only hidden hinges available in the store now were the kind that require a cut out in the doors for the hinge.  Of course these ancient doors don't have the cut out so we had to put up visible hinges.

I'll be honest, I kind of assumed that to hang a cabinet door you just screwed the hinge to the door, then held that sucker up to the frame and screwed down the hinge.  Yeah, not so much.  It's a lot more difficult than I thought it would be!  Those hinges were tricky to get just right.  You'd think it was lined up, but it wasn't flush against the wood or the top was right but the bottom slid out of place.  Goodness.  The first three doors were tough, but Daniel got pretty good at it after that.  We banged up our paint job pretty bad so I will need to touch that up this week.

Daniel's dad had wired all the ceiling fans for us but left off the blades so we could paint the ceilings around the fan bases.  Attaching the blades was another job that turned out trickier than I would have thought.  There's very little space to work with the screws that attach the blades to the unit, and of course I kept dropping the screws.  I did get one fan finished though.  I love that I'll get to have a ceiling fan in the kitchen!

We're starting Maria off in the "family business" of home remodeling early.  I had her at the house for a bit before I took her to a friend who offered to babysit.  She "helped" me touch up the paint on the cabinets.  During the process, she managed to almost stick her hand in the paint bucket, eat my hair, and grabbed a paper towel for a pre-dinner snack before I got it from her.  Needless to say working on the house is much easier when she's with someone else!  But hopefully we can instill a good work ethic in her from the start.  You've got to work for the things you want and sometimes that means holding a baby in one arm while you paint with the other!

Keep dreaming my fellow DIY-ers!