Our first BIG project!

So we have started our first big project on the house, and it involved tearing out a wall! We decided that before we put in flooring and paint in the master bedroom that we should address the closet issue first. The closet that the room came with was a 9 1/2' x 2' deep closet, your standard sliding door closet. We had just moved from an apartment that had a closet the same size and there is no way you can fit all of the belongings of an adult man and a woman with a shoe obsession in that sized closet. Maybe that closet would have been plenty of room for the people of the past with only 3 outfits that they brought with them on the wagon train, but here in the 21st century we need more room.

 Now I have begun to look at the closets in this house as another space to design, and I put together a great design concept for our new walk in closet. The idea is to push into the adjoining room to the master that we are currently using as an office. We would take over that closet, which popped into the room 3', and the alcove that the closet created. Also using the closet that currently existed in the master would give us a space that was 6' deep and 9 1/2' long.


Here are some picture of the rooms before demo so you can follow along.

 The tiny master closet.

The office closet and alcove.

Now I know what many of you are thinking, what about the closet in the office? If you take that away won't it no longer be considered a bedroom and your house would go from 3 bed to 2 bed? Well yes, yes it would. So my brother came up with a very unique and creative solution, which is what I have deemed the Jack and Jill closet. We are going to put 2 doors in the walk in so that you can enter from either the master or the office. There should be plenty of storage for both rooms, and if down the line the office becomes a used bedroom or we sell that house we can always put up a wall in the middle of the closet to break it into 2 separate spaces.

So we started the demo....

 

Now this took 2 weekends for a couple of reasons. First it was a big job, and it was just the two of us. Also as we quickly discovered this particular wall that we chose to remove was the original exterior wall of the house. If you look at the pictures above you can see where we found the framing of an original window. This was dry walled over when they put on the extension in the 80's. Now who can guess another challenge of demoing a space that is half in 1944 and half built some time in the 80's? That's right, half is drywall and the other half is plaster! Now the plaster is much heavier and took a lot of strength to take out, but the bonus is it came out in larger chucks, where as the drywall crumbled a bit. 

Now as we move on to the construction part there was another dilemma that put a wrench in the works for Zach and my father in law Larry. Since half (I mean literally half, the middle of our closet was right where the former exterior wall used to be) of the house was built in the 40's they used rough cut lumber which was exactly 2"x4", the other half of the house is finished lumber which has been cut down to 1' 1/2" x 3' 1/2". So in the spot where the beams meet up they are off by a half of an inch. Another challenge was the ceiling. As we didn't know if there was asbestos in the ceiling and you had the whole issue of 2 different ceilings meeting up, it was decided that they would just frame on top of current ceiling, lowering it about 2 inches.

Once all the challenges were worked through they got all of the framing done in 2 days, including installing the doors, and even one wall had the drywall up. I am in the process of designing the inside now! It's going to be so cool when its done. Stay tuned!

We have been so busy with our new home that I haven't had a chance to post some of the small changes we've made. I thought that I would take this chance to post some of the small projects that we have done over the last few weeks. Now Zach would probably not agree with the statement of "small" projects, but I just mean no walls were torn down.

There was a platform in our backyard that was built by the former owners for their hot tub. Now that the hot tub is gone we were just left with a 8' x 8' square wood platform that was falling apart. So Zach and I (mostly Zach) pulled the boards out and had them hauled away. We were then left with a 6" deep hole in the middle of the yard, so memorial weekend Zach rented a truck, picked up dirt and filled in the hole. Did you know that you can get free dirt on Craigslist? Well you can. Apparently there is an abundance of people just giving away their dirt. This was good for us cause who wants to pay for dirt? Not me.

Here are some pictures of the whole process, we have since seeded the dirt and have just started to see little baby grass coming up.

 

 

 

 

Another small project that I took on was to change out the knobs on my antique hutch. The handles that were on it were not the original ones. They were black, heavy and had a very Gothic feel. I wanted to lighten up the hutch, because it is a dark wood to beginning with, and I wanted to show off the art deco lines on the hutch. 

I love the new knobs! I think it simplifies the hutch and allows hand crafted beauty to come through.

Another change we made was to the kitchen, we bought off of Craigslist a diner booth and a old Wedgewood stove. They really add character to our kitchen. Eventually we will have a 50's diner style kitchen, for now these little details will help us enjoy our kitchen the way it is.

So these were just a few little changes that we have made since we moved in. We have our first big project coming up so stay tuned!

Oh....Bettie wanted to say hi!

When we finally got the keys to the house there were a few things that had to get done before we moved our furniture in. We had to pull out the old carpets in the bedrooms that looked liked they had been there since before I was born. The front two bedrooms are part of the original house so, as it turned out the original hardwood floors were underneath. All we had to do was pull up the carpet, cross our fingers, and hope that they weren't covered up because of there condition.

Lucky for  us they were in pretty decent condition. No major flaws, they just needed to be cleaned and eventually we will have them refinished. Now I just want to add that pulling up carpet is way harder than they make it look on HGTV. I assumed you pull it up and haul it out and there you go, but no, you need to pull up the tack strips and all the staples that they used to hold the padding down. Maybe this is a good time to say thank you Dad!

The carpet in the back bedroom which will someday be our master bedroom was part of an add on that was done to our house in the 80's, which meant that there was no hardwood floor underneath. Zach and I actually found some laminate flooring from Ikea that we love, so we bought that to install. It is still sitting in the bedroom in its boxes, more on that later.

I also need to thank my Mom who cleaned our whole house top to bottom. What a rough job, but she managed to make our kitchen actually look like a place that you could prepare food.

Doesn't she look happy!

My only other project that I insisted get done before the move was to paint the living room. We figured that we had so many projects to get done on the house that if we had just one room finished, or close to finished, that we could mostly live in that room and pretend that the rest of the house was not a mess.

Our house was built in 1944 but for some reason it seems to lack a lot of the character that homes of that time had. My best guess is that it has something to do with being built during the war. So I decided that I wanted to add some character to the living room in the form of a chair rail, and eventually crown molding.

Our old apartment was dark, with dark wood floors and brown paint, and we had to keep the blinds drawn all the time because we were on the ground floor. So when I saw what a beautiful bright space our new living room was I defiantly wanted to keep it that way. It took a couple tries to get the bottom color right, but I am very happy the way the painted living room turned out.

 After doing the top half in dove grey.

 

Finished product, minus the chair rails.

 

Our temporary seating while I agonized over the bottom color.

I have been scouring antique stores and Craigslist for the rest of the furniture to complete the living room. When I have it done I will post the pics. Until then its on to the next project!

 

We bought a house!

Well....we bought our first house! This is something Zach and I have wanted for a long time, and after we got our dog Bettie we decided that it was time to get serious.

One morning back in February I got an email with local housing listings, and there it was! A cute 1511 sq ft. 3 bed 2 bath home with a large back yard and a detached garage. And best yet it was right in our favorite neighborhood. My in laws were in town and insisted that we do a drive by of the house, and lucky for us it just happened to be having an open house that day. We found out that the house was actually a foreclosure and while it had enormous potential and was more than livable, it needed some work.

 Now if you don't know my husband and myself we are recently married and LOVE projects. My husband is the definition of Mr. Fix It. I swear there is nothing this man can't do! Now I may be slightly bias because he is my husband, but any crazy idea or undertaking I come up with he finds a way to make my ideas come to life. For example, one year for Christmas we decided to make hot sauce for the family, if your in our family you know that this idea quickly spread from not only hot sauce but to include BBQ sauce, chipotle sauce, jalapeno sauce, habenero sauce, seafood seasoning, Jamaican jerk seasoning, creole seasoning, chili mix, bloody marry mix and mango hot sauce. While Zach made all of these from scratch I made custom labels for each one involving a picture of a family member. Here is a picture of one (there kinda hard to explain!)

I'm only going into all this detail so that you know that while looking for a house we were not looking for something that was finished and ready to move in. We really wanted a project and a place that we could make our own. I am a very artistic and creative person. I am currently attending design school so I just couldn't wait to have an entire house to design however I wanted.

Well after a lot of back and forth and months in closing we have bought the perfect house for us! Here are some picture of the house before we moved in. We have been here for 3 weeks so far and have started many projects, finished none, but are very happy!

This blog was created for our friends and family so that they can follow what we're doing and watch as our home renovation progresses. If you do not know us personally I hope that you find this blog fun and maybe give you some inspiring ideas, but please know that we are not professionals and are learning as we go

so....enjoy the show!


Here are some pics of the house!