Laundry Room

The laundry room is done! We trashed the original washer/dryer so we need to replace those and apply our finishing touches but the laundry room is "move in" ready, just in time for winter. See-ya later laundry mat! ;)

Before:

Taping/prepping for paint:

Zach installing the chair rail.

Painted, Chair-railed, new floor & base installed.
Stay tuned for the finishing touches...

A whole new Blog

At the beginning of the year we decided to uproot ourselves and move to Vestal-NY (where Zach grew up), and renovate a house. For those who have been following along, you have probably noticed our postings become more and more rare, which thankfully means the house is nearly done!! Don't worry; we're not going to post about every transition strip or piece of trim we install but we are going to continue the blog and also expand it to some new topics.

If you have any suggestions drop us a comment!

Upstairs Bathroom

Hope everyone had an enjoyable Labor Day Weekend! This is how we spent ours....demo in the upstairs bathroom.

Remember that orange counter top? It is up for grabs in our front yard! :)

Sinks from Home Depot:


Rather than deal with hours of wallpaper removal, spackling and sanding, we opted to strip the walls down to the studs and put up new drywall on two of the walls. Zach measuring the drywall:
Making sure the drywall is level:

Side by side sinks....temporary install so we can get ready for work this week.

Ripping up the floor:
New Floor:

Mary's handy electrical work:
One last "before" photo....
After:

Blue won on the poll we posted on here so we tried it out. We are not SURE about the color but we will keep it for a while until it drives us crazy or we get used to it. We still have more to do such as lighting. moulding and baseboards but the major stuff (vanities, plumbing, electrical, floor, walls) are done..... :)

Carpet & Crown Molding

Crown molding in the living and dining room!

Guest Room

The beloved "before" photo of the guest room:

I have to say that I love my husband's ability to visualize design. Take a look at this, what do you see?

Zach saw a dark stained, wood paneled wall. Using a chop saw and two different size beams (a square beam and a 2x4) we cut slices of each, allowing the depth of each to vary. Using thin set, Zach applied the wood slices to the wall as though they were tile. Below is a close up photo of the finished product:

After sanding the edges of each piece we either stained them (using Minwax's "English Chestnut") or applied them to the wall then stained them using a spray bottle. We don't recommend the spray bottle technique as it quickly makes its way to the floor and surrounding walls.

To finish the look we applied a border (made out of 2x4's) around the perimeter of the "wood wall". We used a chop saw to cut the complimentary angles - yay trigonometry!

Back Porch & Things

Our back porch was in pretty bad shape and we are having company in early August so that project took priority this month. Zach demolished the entire thing however we are not rebuilding it ourselves becuase we are finishing interior work. Below are some before/during:

Before:

Demo time (old frame)

New Stuff!

Floor and railings:

new steps:

After ripping the existing steps off the back porch Zach realized that we could re-use them as bleacher type seating around our outdoor fire pit/lounge area in the back of the yard. We still have a lot of work to do to the steps to make them look nice but here are photos of our current/makeshift outdoor lounge. Consider these the "before" photos. I will create a new blog post for this project later.

The fire pit in action:

We are still chugging away at the guest room/2nd office upstairs. On Tuesday the carpet for the stairs and upstairs hall will be installed and the master bathroom is also underway. Demo photo below:

Goodbye textured metallic wallpaper!

So long hot orange vanity!

1st Floor Half Bath

Before:

During:

during...

After: