Counters

Our new countertops were installed today - sand-colored laminate. We'll probably replace them with stone in five years or so but for right now it saved us several thousand dollars that we're spending on other things! I think it looks great, anyway. We're hoping the whole job will be finished within a couple more weeks. However, I just gave the contractor another job today - installing marble flooring in our half bath and a couple new toilets. It's always something!

New cabinets

Still being installed, and no appliances nor countertops in place, but at least it's progress!

Here is the "before" photo of that stove area in the center. We are keeping the same stove, in the same location (only it will have a microwave above it instead of the vent hood), but that's all that remains of the original kitchen and layout:

Bad photo, but at least you can get the gist of the 2-sided glass cabinets between the sunroom and the kitchen:

This is about the same view, before remodeling (nothing in this photo is still in place other than the doorway I'm shooting the photo through). The new dishwasher is going approximately in the same place as the old one that is barely visible on the right far side.

Catherine is satisfied

. . . with the color of their new room. (Lucky thing, because it was a single mis-mixed gallon that I picked up at a huge discount). Just finished painting this today - one room and 2 bathrooms to go! Plus miles of trim to get the white semi-gloss treatment.

Before and after, interior painting

Definitely a work in progress, but here are some photos of the interior painting I've been doing. All the carpet is going to be replaced in a week or so, so I haven't done the baseboards yet either because they'll probably get torn up in the process.

Before and after, from upstairs hall:

Before and after, upstairs bathroom:

Before and after, living room (looking toward front door and through to dining room on left):

Bring on the new carpet!

In midstream

I haven't done much swim-bike-run to speak of this week, but I've worked on the house 3+ hours each day. Call it upper-body cross-training camp. It must be some level of exertion, because every day my hands and shoulders are sore, and I was down to my lowest weight of the year this morning!

Things are progressing! After much spackling (two quart tubs worth) and sanding and wall prep, I've finally begun the real painting fun. This will be an "Ariel" bathroom for the girls when I'm done, but here's a "before" shot:

And here's midway:

I started preparing another upstairs room for painting by removing the outlet covers and came across this big nest of disgusting. They're teensy ants, fortunately, and not termites - and shortly after this shot all the soldiers died horrible but mercifully quick deaths from an overdose of Raid.

Things are progressing outside, too - finally got most of the bushes chopped down from 12 years of overgrowth and I'm gradually whipping the place into shape. The Bradford pear blossoms have just passed. I still have to decide what to do with that little raised garden in the foreground that formerly featured a broken birdbath and was formerly edged with attractive rotting wood. The enormous oak on the right will come into its leaves very soon and nicely shade the house in midday all summer.

The house is bigger

Well, it's not actually bigger, but it's starting to FEEL more spacious and open already. I love it! Well, more accurately, I love envisioning what it can be when it's all done.

Today I went on a shopping spree and bought a dishwasher, a refrigerator, a microwave, and an in-sink garbage disposal. Whee! Fortunately I learned of a 10% off coupon for Lowes (at your post office too, inside the change-of-address moving packets).

And oh yeah, today I locked the keys in the house for the first time. Whoops. Fortunately I found a sneaky way in. There's nothing really to lock up yet except numerous full cans of interior paint, soon to be half-empty cans of interior paint.

The new kitchen, gutted

The gutting began today! We're combining three small rooms (family room from where this shot was taken, sunroom through the sliding door at the left, and kitchen behind the wall to the right).

View at the end of today with the sliding door (which will be removed) to the left, kitchen to the right.

The original view of the kitchen interior a few months ago (before we bid on the house):

Almost the same view today:

Turning around in almost the opposite direction, the original small kitchen closet and inexplicable nook to the right of it. The open doorway to the family room is to the right of that.

Today, starting the process of combining the closet and nook into one larger pantry closet:

Turning slightly right, the former area that held the kitchen table, and shelves for the little TV they apparently watched during meals:

Today, minus the little TV shelf, and the walls and cabinets and window too:

Spackling

The renovations are beginning! This is the part that I've been working on for a couple of days. There are settling cracks all over the house that aren't serious, in nearly every room, but that should have been patched (and re-patched) some time since 1985. Well, they're getting it now. This is above the front entranceway at the landing of the stairs. Before:

And a preliminary after shot, below - I'll be painting these walls some time in the next month, perhaps a nice toasty orangey-tan-brown color (whatever you call that). Cinnamon? Only not nearly that dark.

About those carpets

In 28 years, terrible things can happen to textiles. Even very formerly-expensive textiles. Ask any museum curator.

Especially bad things happen to your carpet if you never move your table in 28 years.

Or your (empty) plant stand.


Apparently, this carpet once was all a uniform color of eighties "dusty rose". Now it's a chameleon carpet.


We alternate between laughing hysterically at it and agonizing over how much it's going to cost to rip out and replace every stitch of carpet throughout the house. Which is fully wall-to-wall carpeted in every room except the kitchen and bathrooms.

This will not stand

I went through the whole house today and took extensive pre-renovation photos. Hopefully the view from this perspective will not even be recognizable in photographs as the same spot when the renovation is complete! Lots of before-and-after shots to come, in time.

Darwinian pruning

If they were meant to live, they will. The bushes on the new place haven't been trimmed back in a dozen years and were constricting the driveway and dangerously cutting off the view of cars down the street.

Before to the north:

After to the north:

Before to the south:

After to the south (it had completely grown over 3 other smaller shrubs!):

Maybe they'll live. . . .