steph's stuff

Home Renovations: Part 3.5

Okay, back to the living room! This was my absolute FAVORITE part of the home renovations we've done to date because it's where we spend all of our time. And it was such a huge transformation for us. And, to be perfectly honest, there were some tears and some regret mixed in. We've hated this room for so long and realizing that we could have had these beautiful hardwood floors all along really filled us with a lot of regret. We almost decided not to sell the house this year simply so we could enjoy these floors. That didn't last for more than a little bit, though. :)

So, here's some photos!

Let me remind you how the room looked before. Once again, I'm totally kicking myself for not taking before and after photos of the rooms. We just didn't think we would be renovating so much. Anyway, all I have to show you for before photos are whatever candids I could find on my computer. As you can see below, the carpeting was just totally trashed. When we moved in, the carpets were almost white. In this photo, not so much white left. The entire carpet was tan. Which matched the yucky tan walls and yucky tan trim. It was all just dirty and blah and the furniture and toys were very dominant againt all the dirty tan.

 

Here's another photo that shows you the stained carpeting. Look at the bottom of the photo and you'll see all the stains on the floor. And, as you can also see, the walls and the carpeting and the ceiling were all so blah that I had put up dark drapes to try and bring some life to the room. Unfortunately, all it did was make the room darker and smaller. By the way, I love this photo of the girls and their cousin playing Wii last year. :)

 

So, here's some afters. Again, here's the floors we found after we cleaned them. I had already painted the ceiling, the walls, and all the trim, so when we pulled up the carpeting, all we really had left to do was clean the floor and put the room back together.

 

And, even though we didn't have to pay for the wall-to-wall carpeting, we did have to buy a very large (HUGE) area rug. I really struggled with choosing a color. Our furniture was red, our woods were mahogany tones, but this room is open to the dining room and that rug is black. I was also worried about a dark rug making the room feel small again. But, in the end, I simply had to choose a burgundy rug. And I really like what it added to the room. It grounds it. And that's what I wanted. And Maggie seems to like it, too.

 

I also really liked redecorating the room using pieces we already had. We reused most everything just in different vignettes. This is one of my favorite prints of all time (it's pencil sketch of the circle in Indianapolis and I grew up playing around this monument) and I love the way it looks in this corner. And the lighter drapes look soooooo much better than the dark drapes!

 

We did have to buy one new lamp for this room but that was about the only new thing. 

 

Oh, and I did buy a couple of plants, too.

 

And here's the whole room looking from the foyer. :)

 
  

And did I ever show you the photo of the foyer? That was part of the hallway and I forgot to post this photo. I LOVE having a white door. Love it!

 

And remember how the room looked from the dining room BEFORE?

 

Here's the after from the same angle.

 

It's still a small house and it's still cramped for a family of 5 but it feels like we doubled the size of it by getting rid of that carpeting. The transformation still shocks me everytime I walk in there!

And now for the budget. This is where a lot of it went. Well, here and the kitchen. I'll post the kitchen details later this week.

Cost breakdown: The area rug was $258, the paint cost approximately $70, the floor cleaning supplies cost $40, the drapes are from Target and were only $34, the drapery rod was also from Target and was $45, the plants were on clearance for $4.99 each and I bought 2 for a total of $10, the pots for the plants were $35, the lamp was $25, a small frame from Target was $10, and a small organizer for our Wii supplies was $45.

Total cost for the living room: $572

Total cost so far: $838

Daily December

 

Full credits can be found in my Designer Digitals gallery.

I've decided to do another Daily December album. This year I'm doing just a digi album using one of Cathy Zielske's templates.  I'll write more about it next week (and finish up the renovations posts) but I totally forgot that I'm going to be out of town for part of this weekend for Emily's final Speech Team meet. So, for now, I'll post my first two pages of the album.

 

Full credits can be found in my Designer Digitals gallery.  

Back on Sunday. :)

Home Renovations: Part 3

The third room that we worked on caused us the most anxiety and the most joy so I'm going to split this up into 2 posts so that I can tell the whole story. I mentioned in a previous post that we were totally shocked to find hardwood floors under our carpeting in our dining and living rooms. Honestly, we were both totally shocked and heartbroken at the same time.

We were totally shocked because we had checked under the carpet to see what was there. We had checked years ago when the carpet became stained. We pulled up the carpeting where it connected to the kitchen and there was simply plywood underneath. We could see back a couple of inches, saw the carpet tack strips nailed to plywood and that was it. All we could see in either direction was plywood.

So, we knew when we took on this renovation, we would have to pay for new carpeting and that it would be a huge expense. And it was. It cost us $1100 for carpeting. And that was with us tearing out the old carpet on our own and us moving all of our own furniture. Otherwise, it would have been $1800. Knowing that we were hosting Thankgiving this year, I ordered the carpeting in October so that it would be installed by Thanksgiving. And I had to pay the $1100 up front.

Fast forward to the evening of November 17th - two days before the carpet was to be installed. I had already painted the dining room and the living room and the only things left to be done in those two rooms was the floors. So, Tom and I started moving furniture out of the rooms and got ready to rip up the carpet. We were practically giddy at the thought of finally getting new carpeting later that week.

And then Tom knelt down and pulled up the first corner of carpeting. I heard him say something ominous under his breath. I couldn't tell what he had said but the tone of his voice told me something was not good. I looked over at him and he was holding his face in his hands. We had joked about how beautiful hardwood floors would have been in there and that conversation came rushing back to me. My blood ran cold and I said, "No. No. Tell me that there's just plywood under there."

All I could think about was the $1100 that we had paid for new carpeting. He slowly looked up at me and said, "I don't know how we missed it but it's all hardwood floors." He was devastated and it was all I could do not to burst into tears. We had just spent $1100 that we really didn't have and now it was totally wasted. It was not a good night. Yes, we could tell the floors were going to be beautiful but we were heartbroken about the money we had spent.

And once we pulled up the carpet, we could see why we had been fooled. Where the hardwood floors ended, there was a larger than usual gap between the wood and the kitchen flooring so the first row of carpet tacks had been nailed down into plywood. There's no way we would have seen the hardwood in that location. Because it wasn't there.

I called Lowe's right away and explained what had happened. The man on the other end of the phone was very nice but he said I'd have to call back the next day and I could tell that there wasn't going to be anything they could do.

I don't think I slept at all that night. I cried and cried about the new kitchen countertops that we could have bought if we hadn't had to pay for the carpeting. I cried about how long we'd been working without a break and how I was just sick of renovations. I cried for a lot of reasons but most of them involved exhaustion, I think.

The next morning, I called Lowe's back. I had to speak with numerous different departments and a couple of managers. I explained it over and over and got a lot of sympathy but not a lot of hope. Finally, a sales manager said she would handle it herself and she would try to get me at least some of the money back - at least a couple hundred dollars since we weren't going to need their installation services. I was thrilled to get anything back. Losing $900 is better than losing $1100 was all I could think.

A couple of hours later, the sales manager called me back and this was the conversation:

Chris: "Hi Stephanie. Well, I'm sorry to tell you that I couldn't get it all refunded for you. You're going to be liable for the shipping charges but the manufacturer will take the actual carpeting back."

Me: "Okay. How much are the shipping charges?"

Chris: "$56.80. I'm so sorry I couldn't get those refunded for you."

Me: Hysterical laughter and screaming.

Chris: Dead silence then she burst out laughing. "I guess you're not upset with me then."

Me: "You just made my day! I love you!"

Chris: Still laughing so hard she can barely talk, "I'll consider this a good start to my work day then."

We hung up the phone and I screamed out loud again, called Tom and told him the news, and then cried again. Our lovely, beautiful, GORGEOUS hardwoods floors had cost us $56.80. It felt like we had won the lottery!

 

I'll post the rest of the living room photos and budget tomorrow. :)

Long live the crazy puppy!

 

All supplies can be found linked in my gallery at Designer Digitals.

Remember the crazy puppy? He was given total crate confinement for 8 weeks and nearly-total crate confinement for another 4 weeks after badly breaking his leg this past summer. (For the entire story, click on Crazy Puppy Stories at the top of my blog.)

He spent the first 4 weeks tranquilized to help him adjust to the confinement and the next 8 weeks simply being depressed. It hasn't been easy on him and it hasn't been easy on us.

But, a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated his 1st birthday and his release from his crate. He is back!

His prognosis is good, assuming that we're careful with his leg. That leg will always be more fragile than the others and he will definitely have arthritis in it. In fact, I think he probably already does. He definitely does not get up off the floor very quickly and he struggles to change positions if it involves getting up with his hind legs quickly. My guess is that he's going to struggle a lot when he's older. But for right now, he's doing great.

  

He runs around the yard with Tom chasing balls and frisbees as much as he can.

 

He's getting really, really big and strong! Look at him next to Libby - he's over 80 pounds right now from what we can tell. He has a huge head and is very broad for a Golden Retriever. His dad was enormous so we kind of expected it but it's still a surprise to see how big he's getting.

 

And he's getting snuggles. Lots and lots of snuggles. This was supposed to be a grooming session.

 

Not much grooming going on. :)

 

He still makes me crazy. He still gets into stuff and nips the kids. He still eats all of our socks and jumps on us. He still barks like mad when someone rings the doorbell and puts his huge head and tongue all over my laptop. But, he's our crazy puppy and we're so happy that he's still with us. :)   

  
 

Home Renovations: Part 2

The second part of the house that we decided to work on was the dining room. We didn't really plan on doing much in this room but it was the little things in this room that made all the difference.

I don't have very many photos of the dining room before for some reason. But I'll do my best to describe it to you. It's a small room - almost perfectly square and placed in between the kitchen and the living room. It has nice crown molding in it but the crown molding and the trim around the floor were painted the same color as the walls. Actually, the ceiling was painted the same color, too. It was as if the previous owners just took a gallon of paint and threw it on the entire room - no contrast anywhere and no thought to highlight the architectural features of the room.

And it had the most horrible gold chandelier you've ever seen. I have no excuses why we had never replaced it. I'm guessing laziness is the primary culprit.

 

And, yes, that is me out of focus sticking my tongue out at myself. :p  But I think you can see the reflection of the horrid chandelier and the walls and molding in this photo. It was all just blah.

 
 

As you can also see in this photo above (sorry it's so bad - taken long ago with my cell phone), the carpet was almost the same color as well and flowed directly into the living room carpet. So, imagine a carpet that was light, light cream in a dining room (why would you ever want carpeting in a dining room????) and used daily by 3 kids, a dog and a cat. The light cream carpet was definitely tan by the time we ripped it up.

You can see some of the lovely stains in this photo, too. (Hard to believe this was Sawyer just a few months ago!!!) Oh, and more of that lovely gold floor stripping. Ugh.

 

Our goal for this room was to simply change the light fixture and paint. The carpet was going to be replaced, too, because we were replacing the living room carpet and this was all one piece.

And this is where we hit the lottery. We fully expected to find sub-flooring under the carpeting based on a previous check of the flooring under the carpet. 

But look what we found!!!!!!!!!!

 

Gorgeous hardwood floors!!!! We were stunned - but I'll write more about the carpeting surprise in another post. :)

So, after we stopped jumping up and down with joy about the floors, we realized that the other changes that we had done really did make a huge difference.

New chandelier and new paint:

 

I painted the ceiling white, the walls Benjamin Moore China White and the molding and trim Benjamin Moore Simply White. The China White is such a beautiful neutral color - I want to use this everywhere! It provides a beautiful contrast to the bright white trim, yet is still so light and neutral. The undertones are more taupe than yellow and I like that, too. The chandelier is from Lowe's.

 

We also repurposed photos that I had in the room but grouped them together on the same wall and that made a huge difference. And, once again, the contrast between the white mats, the black frames and walls is nice.

 

I added a bright flower arrangement on the table to give the room a pop of color, too. There's some red and black arrangements and details on the buffet, also, but I thought that it needed a bit more color than that. We also kept the same black area rug that had previously been in there, as well as the sheers. (There had also been heavy burgundy drapes on top of the sheers, but I took those down to allow more light in.)

And, finally, the room in its entirety.

 

Cost breakdown: The chandelier cost $38 at Lowe's (I bargain shopped for every single thing), the paint cost approximately $70, and the decorations cost under $10 at Michaels. Everything else was repurposed or reused.

Total cost for the dining room: $118.

Total cost so far: $266.

Part three to come soon. :)
   
  
 

Home renovations: Part 1

As I've written about previously, we decided to put our house on the market this winter. But, before we could do that, our house needed some serious updating. We had put off updating it for years because we thought it would be too expensive and we were hesitant to invest much into the house because........well.........it's hard to put money into a house that you don't like and that you don't want to live in. But, we finally realized that we had to put money into it in order to sell it. So, we dove in full-steam ahead. And we had no idea what a transformation we were in for. And how cheaply we could do it all for.

Basically, we've done 4 out of the 5 rooms that needed to be done so I'm going to break them down into 5 blog posts, showing you before and after photos and a running tally of how much it all cost.

Today, I'll show the photos and the cost for the hallway and the stairs. This was the first thing that we did.

Our house was built in 1966 and there were still some original pieces left in the house. Like this horrible iron handrail that you can see behind Libby in this picture.

*Disclaimer: Because I didn't plan on doing this much renovating (we were just going to paint a few walls), I didn't take any before photos. So, all I have is whatever candids I found on my computer that showed you parts of the house that we redid. LOL! And, the after photos were mostly taken at night so they are very grainy.

 

That iron railing had to go! And, as soon as we discovered that the carpeting had hardwood under it, that had to go, too. This carpeting was just ugly, ugly, and filthy.

  

 And, yes, that's Andrew's bum last winter when I took a photo of him vac'ing the stairs with his play vac. :)

We also decided that this metal stripping that was between the hallway and the kitchen had to go!

 

And this is the difference after replacing the handrail and removing the carpet:

*Disclaimer: This is our one huge mistake in the entire house reno. We totally screwed up the ballisters. In our defense, we had to make this entire handrail ourselves and we had never built one before. We weren't paying any attention at all to the decorative parts of the ballisters and simply cut off the top part so that they were the correct height. Duh! We cut off the decorative part. So, we have more ballisters that we're going to replace these with. :) It looks very goofy right now but I think you can still see how much better it's going to look than that old, ugly iron railing. 

 

The carpeting extended all the way up the stairs and throughout the entire upstairs hallway so we ripped it all out and this is the after photo.

 

We had to put a carpet runner and padding down because the echo was tremendous once that carpet was all gone.

The materials for the handrail cost us $100 and the carpet runner cost us $48.  

Total cost for hallway and stairs: $148.

Part 2 tomorrow. :)
  
 

One month later

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. On October 16, we decided to start working on our current house in order to get it on the market this winter. We're going to finish up a few more things this weekend and then take a few days off to enjoy Thanksgiving. But, it has now been 33 days since we started and I wanted to record our giant To Do list here so that I don’t forget what we’ve done. Photos to follow after this weekend.

 

• Clean out all the kitchen cabinets and pantry DONE
• Clean out all the closets in the house and pack away all out-of-season clothes DONE
• Clean out the basement DONE
• Purge toys/clothes/books from all 4 bedrooms DONE
• De-clutter all bookshelves in the house DONE
• Install new hot water softener DONE
• Touch up paint in the bathroom, den, and kids’ rooms DONE
• Touch up paint in the upstairs hallway
• Paint Elizabeth’s ceiling
• Paint Andrew’s ceiling
• Caulk Emily’s ceiling
• Repair Emily’s window
• Paint all exterior windows DONE
• Paint porch DONE
• Rip up carpet in the hallway and on the stairs DONE
• Refinish hardwood floors
• Get tub refinished DONE
• Strip wallpaper in the kitchen DONE
• Paint kitchen DONE
• Paint kitchen cabinets DONE
• Fix 2 closet doors DONE
• Paint kitchen windows DONE
• Put on new cabinet hardware DONE
• Install new kitchen countertops (waiting for delivery)
• Paint dining room DONE
• Install new chandelier in dining room DONE
• Install new hall light fixture DONE
• Paint living room and hallway DONE
• Rip up carpet in the living room and dining room DONE
• Move all furniture out of the living room and dining room DONE
• Install new carpet in the living room and dining room (MORE ABOUT THIS LATER)
• Build new handrail for the stairs DONE
• Paint new handrail for the stairs DONE
• Fix stain on bathroom cabinets DONE
• Touch up paint in the basement
• Fix ceiling in master bedroom DONE
• Fix crack in master bedroom wall

At least I didn't get tasered

Today was just an ordinary day.

Paint, paint, clean up, paint some more, clean up, paint some more, go to school to pick up the kids and head for home to paint some more.

Except that just as I was pulling into my driveway with the kids in the van, I noticed that I had a police car on my tail with his lights on and he was seriously trying to get me to pull over.

Since I was halfway through the turn into my driveway, I just kept turning and pulled into my driveway.

Lesson #1 - do not pull into your driveway when a state trooper is trying to pull you over.

The state trooper jumped out of his car just as I was climbing out and as I gave him a big (albeit confused) smile, he wiped it off my face with a very stern look and an order. "License, registration, proof of insurance." "Oh," I said. "Okay," and turning back to the kids who were totally flipping out, I said, "It's okay, kids."

Lesson #2 - do not talk to your kids when the trooper is barking out orders.

"License, registration, and proof of insurance, Ma'am. Now."

Oh. Crap.

As I fumbled to find all my stuff and still utterly confused as to why I was pulled over in my own driveway, my kids ran crying into the house. And, since assuring them that it would be okay was out of the question, I simply let them go.

Which was good. Because the cop proceeded to chew me out big time for.................wait for it.........................

.................................

...................................not using my turn signal and not coming to a complete stop on a deserted neighboorhood road.

And since I was such a danger to society, he proceeded to let me know that he wants me to learn to drive more safely especially when I had my family in my car.

Because slowing down to 3 miles/hour at a deserted neighborhood stop sign is driving dangerously. Especially when you don't use your turn signal.

Whew - so glad he let me know about all of that danger, ya know? I had no idea that I was an unsafe driver.

At least I wasn't tasered.

(Although when I went into the house after my scolding, Libby was crying because she thought that I was going to either be tasered or go to jail.)

Like I said, at least I wasn't tasered.

MJ lives!

 

I'm procrastinating cleaning my kitchen, finishing the wallpaper stripping, and washing the walls. So, what better to do than post a recent digi page?!

This is another Cathy Zielske template and I don't think I can scrap without her templates anymore. I am that addicted. Full supply lists can be found in my gallery at Designer Digitals.
 

Halloween 2009

 

Can you tell which pumpkin is Andrew's? Not too hard, is it? LOL! While I was sketching his pumpkin, I mentioned that I had seen a photo of a vomiting pumpkin somewhere and Andrew loved the idea. Tom overheard and you would have thought the house was on fire by the way he ran to his computer to find a photo. I was not allowed to carve Andrew's pumpkin at that point and Tom laughed out loud the entire time he was carving. And this is why I tell people I have 4 kids. :)

Our Halloween was super-busy because Emily and I were at her first Speech Team Meet (she won a 3rd place ribbon!!!) until late afternoon and Tom's family was coming over to trick-or-treat with us. The kids just LOVE trick-or-treating with their cousins and we love the chance to hang together with all the adults. It's a great time with family and a nice, relaxing evening.

 

And about the costumes - Andrew refused to wear his helmet, Emily almost refused to go trick-or-treating and then threw together an awesome "Anne of Green Gables" costume, and Elizabeth was the only one truly into this year. She has been obsessed with Michael Jackson since this summer and I made this costume for her. She was totally into it and had a ball with the glove and carrying around Bubbles, the monkey. I'm just loving this age that she's at. :)

Today is back to more wallpaper stripping and house construction. Sigh. Happy Monday!