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Tag Archives: remodeling

Before and During – After Photos to follow

22 Thursday May 2014

Posted by thehistoricfoodie in homesteading, homesteading & preparation, Self-sufficiency

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remodeling

Changing the kitchen counter top from pink to a neutral beige. The tin panels we installed as a backsplash can be seen in one of the photos.

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The dining room cabinets have been removed and the room painted. The trim has since been painted and the cabinets moved to the laundry room.

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The living room before with it’s pink carpet, and after removing the carpet and finding the hardwood underneath it. The black spots are where the carpet pad broke down over time. The chore this weekend is to remove all those spots. If they can be successfully removed this room will not require sanding like the bedrooms.

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Ripping up 50 year old tile from the hallway.

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Installing a ceiling fan in the newly painted bedroom.

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Sanding the bedroom hardwood that was found under more aged carpet.

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It is easy to see why we fell in love with the place – I hope to have a lot of years watching these sunsets with my sweetheart.

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The Remodel Continues

20 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by thehistoricfoodie in homesteading, homesteading & preparation, Self-sufficiency

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DIY, hardwood, remodeling

The updating continues at a furious pace although we’re growing increasingly less energetic. I am not complaining because we can see an end to our labors on the horizon, and the home is going to be just what we want in every respect. By doing the work ourselves we know what went into it and it is not what some contractor slapped together that will last just long enough for him to make a hasty exit, check in hand.

Martin spent last weekend sanding two bedroom floors, and because we couldn’t find the sander he wanted available anywhere in a rental, he used what we could find and it took twice as long as we expected. The wood underneath the old carpet is beautiful though and with a little more tweaking and finishing it will be as beautiful as the day it went down.

While he worked himself to death on the floors, I pulled the weeds in a large bed, and spread 10 bags of mulch on the top of what was already there. Weeds, be gone!!! Once that was out of the way, I pulled out the painting supplies again and went to work on trim and bathrooms. I painted the window, window and door trim in the dining room, I painted the guest bath and all the trim and cabinets in it, and then I painted the vanity, inside and out, closet, and all the drawers from the master bath. Everything looks so nice and clean!!!

This weekend I plan to paint the walls in the master bath while Martin continues to work on the hardwood flooring. Once he’s finished sanding in the two bedrooms, I will paint those windows, trim, and baseboards, and guess what???? There will be no more interior surfaces left to paint, and installing porcelain tile in the hallway, living room, and kitchen will be the end of the flooring projects. Woohooo!

I bought pink and red Knock-out roses to put in the flower bed in front of the house to replace the raggedy boxwoods. I never cared for boxwood and couldn’t resist an opportunity to replace them with the roses that will provide color from spring to frost.

I have a day off work coming up and I plan to use it to make living room drapes. It took me weeks to find just the right fabric, and fortunately it was on sale for 40% off. It was still pretty pricey, but much less than ready-made drapes. (Those high school Home Ec classes have sure come in handy over the years). The fabric is gold, a touch of the sage green from the dining room, and rust plaid which will go nicely with the gold area rug with vegetable dyed light floral design we already have. I’m headed back to Ross for another extra-long curtain rod. The one I bought for the master bedroom was $19.95 there, compared to around a hundred bucks from department stores, overstock.com, or amazon.com.

Photos soon. -THF

Making a House a Home

07 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by thehistoricfoodie in homesteading, homesteading & preparation, Self-sufficiency

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remodeling

Work on the new place continues, but there is fortunately a light at the end of the tunnel. Martin took out cabinets we don’t need in the dining room and moved them to the laundry room. He took out a base cabinet in the kitchen and moved it in by 3 feet to make an island and open up a hallway, and moved the top cabinets that were over those to the laundry room to hang over the ones taken out of the dining room. It was old-school switcheroo but we love the end result. Antique pieces will fit into the spaces freed up in the dining room with the removal of those cabinets.

He replaced the counter top and back-splash, which unexpectedly necessitated moving all the outlets and switches on the walls over the counter tops. The counter top that we removed butted up flush against the wall, but the one we replaced it with had a 4 inch back-splash that covered the bottom half of the plugs and outlets. Once the outlets were replaced, he installed tin tiles from the 4 inch back splash to the bottom of the upper cabinets. It was loads of fun measuring and re-measuring where to cut the hole for the sink given the difference in where the base of the counter top sat in relation to the wall with the added 4 in. back splash.

It was completely worth it the extra time it took to adjust everything because I LOVE the new look. It lightened up the kitchen and gave us the vintage look we like. We used the same sink but installed a new vintage-style faucet that complements the new look.

The painting (including windows, facings and trim, the inside of closets and the laundry room cabinets) is about finished except I still have two bathrooms to paint. With the master bathroom paint job, the last vestiges of the pink that at first put us off from buying the place will be banished forever and replaced with a palette of sunny yellows, greens, and wood tones.

The next project is refinishing the hardwood floors we found under ugly pink carpeting in the living room and we are also refinishing the hardwood in the two smaller bedrooms. After finding the hardwood in the living room you should have seen how fast we dashed into those bedrooms to peek under that carpet! Finishing the hardwood will eat up a full weekend but then we will have beautiful wood floors. If all goes well, we will tile the kitchen and dining room the weekend after and then we can slow down and tweak little details over time.

My next project will be to hang custom window treatments throughout – either curtains of fabric too nice to discard that are refashioned to fit different sized windows in the new house or made from scratch for the remaining rooms. Every room will have a different type of curtain and fabrics will be different patterns, but in the same yellow, green, and cottage white color scheme.

Martin has tackled every aspect of the remodel with an open mind and has done an absolutely remarkable job. It has sometimes meant buying tools, or renting tools such as the floor sander for the hardwood or the wet saw for the porcelain tile we’ll be putting down, and sometimes we spent time online researching the best materials for our lifestyle or deciding the best way of doing something, but we are on the downhill stretch and I simply love everything he’s done. I am going to have the nicest kitchen I’ve ever had. The work he’s done means so much because he will be the first to say he isn’t experienced at this kind of work, but he’s done it and done it well.

We fell in love with the place, but most of the interior of the house was pink (including pink counter tops) and we’re just not pink kind of people. We are so thankful we bought it because we love the place more every day and the house is going to be exactly what we want. You can’t get the kind of attention we’ve put into this house from a building professional you have to love it enough to put your heart and soul into it.

Last night I made a meal that said, “Thank you, I love you”. I stuffed catfish fillets with crab meat, seasoned it up with the same attention to detail that my Love has put into the house, and served them with cheese grits topped with roasted cherry tomatoes. I made crab cakes out of the remainder of the crab meat which are in the fridge waiting to be the star of tonight’s meal along with the rest of those Heavenly roasted tomatoes. I am thankful every day for someone in my life who shares my interests and who I can laugh with even when working our fingers to the bone. At the end of the day, I know he loves me even when I’m covered in drops and splotches of two colors of paint and sporting a big glop of it in my hair. (Don’t ask me how that happened). Life is good. No, Life is Great.

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