The NEW Closet Doors

When I purchased the house there were no doors on the laundry room closet. I decided to go with full six panel doors on the laundry instead of the more typically found bi-fold doors for this opening. As we started to work on this opening we decided to carry the new flooring in to this space as well as open up the hallway which was a 30inched cased doorway into the area.

Here are the finished doors and you can see the new drywall going up to the right where we are opening up the doorway in to the hallway.















Here you can see the doors from the bedroom side of the house. As you can see the dogs are never far from me. You'll notice that in between the doors isn't finished in this photo, I'll be posting the finished look very soon as we completed this detail last weekend! Below is another view from the foyer.

The 9 footer!

As many of you know I've had a 9 foot hole in an exterior wall for a few days that goes in to my living room...This in itself has been an adventure. As the plan continues I'm replacing all the flooring in the house, next room = the living room. After discussion with my Dad I agreed that it was best to go ahead and make changes prior to putting down the new floor, what came next even surprised me a bit! We had talked about french doors or a sliding glass door but that it would be really great to bring light into the living room by adding a 9 foot sliding glass door. This for those of you like me (who didn't realize) a 9 foot sliding glass door is an expensive and heavy purchase! The bargain shopper in me took over, I found one on Craigslist that a guy was trying to get rid of at a reasonable price. So we hooked up a trailer and brought it back to the house, I should have gotten a photo of this, days later even the neighbors were asking what we were up to with the big door going down the road.

Here's the original door

You can't even imagine the process for putting this door in, as we started to pull up the tile floor surrounding the original door my Dad found several rotten pieces of wood, which would all have to be replaced prior to putting in the new door. Should I mention that that was a possibility when I went to work and let my Dad cut a 9 foot hole in the wall that my roof could fall in? ...mmm!

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Yes, he is standing on the crawl space floor working on replacing the rotten wood.

Below is what a nine foot hole in your wall looks like!









Why I haven't been asking everyone to come over for a cookout just yet--->







And a not so hot photo of the semi-finished product

...it's painting it's dripping the old man is ...

PAINTING! Lots of painting!

In my effort to catch everyone up I should share that there has been A LOT of painting going on. Did I mention the house was a terribly neglected one? The first goal, besides a new stove was to paint everything, from the ceiling down, and at some places the floor - when necessary to seal some things up! A trip to ollies and I had inexpensive white paint for the ceilings. So far the bedrooms/bathrooms/hallways/dining rooms have all been done. There is fresh wall paint in the bedrooms/one bathroom (one still has yucky wallpaper up)/kitchen/hallway and what we'll call the "foyer". I wanted a brown/taupe color for the bedrooms, but ended up with something called toasted almond after two tries! Here's a hint of what the wall color looks like in the bedrooms/hallway...notice my bed, yes that's my bed. I came home from work today only to find that my Dad has put his tools on my bed while he's working on recasing all the doors in the house, but today it was my bathroom's turn.


* Stay tuned for "wacky windows" as we plan to replace the windows in most of the house, such as here this is the only window in the master bedroom, but I plan to change that and bring it lots of light!... well I plan to fund this change that my Dad will create :)










Here you can see the difference in the painting of the "foyer" and the kitchen.
The color in the foyer is now "stony creek" and the kitchen is split with a chair rail
and a red and "granite" which turned out more blue than anticipated. Not that I'm against the dark trim but the plan is to replace with white bigger trim, but then I have lots of plans for the kitchen, such as new counter tops, tile floor, etc.
The new paint scheme, minus the updated trim!




This is the updated hallway shot, including new "golden amber oak" flooring! Yay for not having new floors which I give the credit to my Mom, Dad and brother!


Even Beau likes the new floors! Yes, you are looking at my washer/dryer, of which we have already put in and pulled out two times because I wanted them installed immediately, you can't imagine the amount of wash to be done in a house that creates this much dirt, and then we had to lay the floor under them, put in new baseboard and place back!

Hah...You caught me!

So... you've caught me, I need to catch everyone up as to what is going on in my world. Most of you know I bought my first house, which has been a very excitable process. The house closed and I put my wreath on the door.
Yes, day # 2 and I'm putting my pretty girly wreath on as to tell the neighbors "hey I promise when all is done, or at least mostly done, you're going to like what I add to the neighborhood, just forget about all the chaos you're about to experience for the next undetermined amount of time!

For this first post I'm going to try and catch you up to speed, there's a lot that has gone on in the past 34 days I've owned this house!

Let me post some "original photos" of the house, you may be asking what enticed me to be interested in such a home in need of so- many repairs. If you're asking this question, you obviously haven't met my family or been out to the house- I fell in love with the neighborhood on the first visit and as for the frogs in the pool, well, I'm growing kind of fond of them too.

The Kitchen Stove

So... I'm still figuring this :blog: stuff out. I want to put my text and photos in specific places and haven't figured that much out yet, however I know there is a pressing need to see photos of what I've tried to explain to many of you about the house! (Above is a photo from the real estate listing)

If I remember correctly, the second day into the renovations I happened to come across a new convection oven on deep clearance. This was meant to be, oh say, phase 238 of the renovations - but seeing as I found it on clearance and the old stove gave me the chills -I snabbed it. This in itself was hilarious, again- if you know me this makes sense- I was trying to get it even cheaper so I was pointing out any issues I could find with it, the older Home Depot gentleman takes out his hammer and starts banging on it to "fix it"- if you could have seen my face! He also tells me "well we can't deliver this because we're practically giving it away"...oh buddy we brought the truck, I come prepared! Who takes a car to home depot/lowes?!

The stories I could tell you so far that keep coming to me as I write this but I will try to keep to one portion at a time. We get the stove home and it's not the easy switcherroo because the old stove is a drop in. My Dad begins to dismantle the old one, cut the countertop/cabinet because the new one is bigger, already night of day two and the wood particles are swimming around my house. This will lead to my daily battle to sweep the floors, so if you come to visit during this phase and you think I haven't swept in a week- take a look around and see it through my eyes.

This is my "old stove" and "new to me fridge" I snagged off of craigslist for cheap and although I originally wanted stainless, decided going white would be just fine!









Here Dad and Steven are getting to work on making the space for the new one!







...And now we've got the finished project! Yes, I know I could have taken a better photo, but for now this is what I have!