The little touches...

So this post is delayed by 3 months. After the marathon floor installation I thought putting in trim was going to be a breeze. Now that I am writing that I can't stop laughing. It's okay though, this project was just more ammunition for our next house to be in 'turn key' condition. :)

Ben went out of town to help his brother move for the weekend and my parents were dying to see our new floors so I conned them into helping me paint all of the base boards for the upstairs. Again this project was supposed to be easy. We already had most of the trim for the family room and all I had to do was go to Lowes (where Ben positive he bought it there...or Home Depot, but definitely not Menards) and purchase the trim for the kitchen and hallway. So parents arrived on a Saturday in April, we loaded up in the Prius and headed to Home Depot with a sample of the existing base boards. No luck at Home Depot. Granted, Ben had purchased the base boards about 4 years prior, so I wasn't so sure we were going to be able to find the same thing. Next stop Lowes, nothing even close to similar. I googled the sku number, and came up with nothing. I figured it no longer existed. So I call Ben...he doesn't answer. Time for an executive decision. I find some base boards I like, and I decide to just buy all new baseboards for the upstairs. Problem solved. Or...so I thought. We got all of the baseboards home, and had a very productive afternoon painting everything white. The baseboards already were white so they just needed a quick coat of paint so they were the same white as everything else.

My dad- (aka Mr. Detail Oriented) was assigned the task of painting my favorite door in the kitchen white. I was extremely nervous about this, because I loved the door in it's current condition but we already had enough colors of wood going on the kitchen. Luckily, it turned out lovely.

Fast forward to Sunday evening when Ben gets home. He sees the baseboards I purchased and he instantly hates the material they are made out of. They are not styrofoam but something similar-ish. I offer that we can return them, ignoring the fact that they are already painted but Ben decides we can keep them. We spend the next 2 weeks installing these baseboards. There were lots of colorful words to go along with this project. The first saw blade we used to cut the boards melted them. Cue my laughing and Ben's colorful language. We tried another saw blade and had no problem. Next up, we don't have a 90 degree angle in our house, so every cut was frustrating. I officially became the fixer...Ben would cut, install and I would follow behind with putty, filling in the gaps. Then I spent my day off the next week laying on the floor doing touch up painting. Fun...not!

The next weekend we had to run to Menards to get some trim for around the cabinets and my worse nightmare happened. We are walking down the trim aisle and low and behold there is the baseboard I was looking for. Cue Ben's laughing and my immediate frustration. Ben was so sure he hadn't purchased the trim at Menards...he was positive, and he was lying. We did decided to buy enough of this baseboard to complete the family room. The bad news Menards takes terrible care of their trim so it was all nicked or dented in spots. We negotiated with the guy at Menards and walked out with $50 worth of trim for $11. It didn't matter that it was beat up in some spots since we had to trim the pieces anyways.

I think it took about 6 weeks from start to finish until the trim was done. I hated most of this project. I have no desire to repeat it but it does look really nice.

Here are a few pictures:


First a few to remind you where we started:

My favorite door before....

The old hallway view....

And now for the after- SO much better!!!

I love this door...it is the only cool anything we have in the house, I wish all the doors were original. 

The windows finally have trim, that only took 7 years :) 

The new hallway view!!

Absolutely nothing to do with trim, but it is my favorite spot in the house.
My best find on craigslist yet! 

I so far behind on blogging I cant even remember what we have done since then. I will be honest- not a lot. We did undertake a little landscaping project but other than that we have just been enjoying spring and summer. To finish the upstairs we need new countertops, appliances, and a window above the sink. The new window has been purchased and I think we may hold off on the countertops and appliances until after the wedding.

On a side note...some crafting disaster posts might return in the next few months. I was looking at one of my pinterest boards last night and there were a few projects that I forgot about that looked like they might be fun. We plan to spend the rest of summer outside as much as possible and trying to delegate as much wedding planning as we can to other people (ha)!

Until next time (which may be a week or 6 months)!

Cheers,
A

New Floors!

 By far the most dramatic change we have made in this house is the floors. It is amazing how it has changed the feeling of the whole house. For 3 weeks we had 15 boxes of flooring sitting in our family room, and every time I looked at them I had major anxiety. This was a project I was dreading more than any other project we had completed. The floor has been one of the more expensive things we have purchased for the house and I wanted it to look perfect.

We were lucky enough to have my aunt and uncle volunteer to help us install the new floors. I buttered them up with dinner at our house a few weeks before and they were nice enough to spend an entire Saturday at our house helping Ben and I install the flooring (and I do mean entire Saturday, over 15 hours worth). They not only made sure our floor looked beautiful, they made sure Ben and I didn't kill each other- haha.

Ben and I started laying the underlayment at 8:30 on Saturday morning and my aunt and uncle arrived at 9 am to help. Right away my uncle and Ben started strategizing and I was happy to not participate. :) The boys started laying flooring while my aunt and I continued with the underlayment. I had one goal for the day- only use 3 rolls of underlayment. The guy at the flooring store said we needed 4 bags of underlayment but once we got home, I calculated and figured out that if we were very careful we could get away with 3 and I could get $80 back. My aunt and I were very talented at patching the underlayment together at the end- we were quite crafty. In the end we ended up with 3 feet left over- mission accomplished.

The morning went smoothly and we were moving pretty quick in the kitchen. We had to move the appliances as we went, put the flooring in and then move the appliances back. In theory this should be no problem and for the stove it wasn't. When we moved the fridge right away we realized there was a problem. The linoleum was peeling and it was pretty obvious there was water damage. Ben and I quickly went to work tearing up linoleum, tearing up sub floor and replacing it while my aunt and uncle continued to lay flooring in the dining area. It delayed us a little while but not a big deal. I thought that was going to be our biggest delay of the day....boy was I wrong. ha. The boys continued flooring and it was time to move the fridge back. I was in charge of placing the felt movers under the feet of the fridge while the boys tipped the fridge and then moved it back into place. It soon became apparent that we forgot to calculate how much higher the floor would be than the old floor and now the fridge was too tall to fit under the cabinets.

I was quickly put on a googling mission to find out if there was a fridge that would fit under the cabinets or if we would be better off trimming the cabinets. I found a fridge that was going to work but it was 4 cubic feet smaller than our current fridge, not really a great option. We decided to put the fridge back in it's general area and tackle that problem later (Really I kept googling and sent everyone else back to work). The boys got back to flooring and got to deal with our awesome crooked walls. At about 4pm we started the hallway area and I was thinking we would be done by 8ish. Again, I was wrong. The hallways came with all sorts of issues including having to cut the door frames so the flooring would fit under them and attempting to place transition pieces between the laminate flooring and our carpet/tile areas. I spent the last two hours of flooring placement sitting on the couch trying to stay awake. Finally at 11pm we let my aunt and uncle go home. At this point all the flooring was laid with the exception of the closet floors and the transition strips. I fell asleep before my head even hit the pillow.

The next morning Ben and I woke up to find out that we felt like a train had hit us. Ben's legs were completely bruised from his knees to his ankles. We could barely move. Regardless, we were pretty determined to get everything else done that day. The transition strips were terrible to install. The one going into the bathroom was easy but our bedroom was a pain and we broke the one for the office (and we still haven't fixed that one). The stairs were also a challenge. We had to glue the trim pieces around the top of the stairs which was a 3 day process but it turned out well. We then braved Lowes and Home Depot to go refrigerator shopping. We found the one fridge that would fit under our existing cupboards and it was teeny tiny. We went home, cut the cabinets and moved the fridge back. You can't even tell we cut the cabinets. We spent the rest of the day cleaning and putting our house back together.

Now for some pictures:

Before Pictures:

The gorgeous linoleum we have been living with.....

The after....

Ben and I are in agreement that after these past couple months of working on the house we are both ready for a break. We are committed to putting in trim and then taking the spring/summer off from working on the house. We might do little projects here and there but no big projects.

I will update again once we have the trim installed- this weekends project!

Cheers,

Ali

Floors and Doors....

I am laying in bed looking out at my kitchen (yes the house is that compact that I can see the kitchen from my bed...ha), and I can't believe what we have accomplished in the last year. About a year ago we were finishing our bathroom re-do and still had a very long list of things to do to finish the upstairs. Now we are down to just a few projects and the upstairs of the house will be done. YAY! 

Two weekends ago I had the great privilege of going to Home Depot 2 times, and True Value 6 times. Our plan for the weekend was to prep for flooring installation and install a new back door. On Saturday we prepped the floors. Our kitchen has two layers of linoleum in it that we did not want to rip up because it was really old and we had no idea if there was asbestos in it, and our hallway just had the sub floor. We had to bring the hallway floor up to the same height as the kitchen. We went to Menards and they suggested using self leveling compound to do this. I looked at the bag they recommended and instantly started having flash back to mixing up thin set for tile. I instantly hated this idea but I was tired so I threw a bag in the cart and headed for home. Ben and I did a lot of research during the week prior (aka watched YouTube) to see how to use the self leveling compound. It looked relatively easy if you have a square room. We instead have a hallway, with stairs, 2 doorways with carpet, a doorway with tile and freshly painted walls that I did not want full of this cement like stuff. I could just picture what was going to happen and I didn't like it. Honestly if we would have used it we could have a pretty good disaster blog post...but Ben saved me from this disaster. The floors were an 1/8" lower in the hallway then the kitchen. Ben found 1/8" compressed boards at the home depot that we could just screw into the floor and voila a floor the same height as the kitchen. 

Getting the boards home was another matter, they came in huge sheets of dimensions I can't remember but lets be honest, they weren't fitting in the Corolla. Ben and I thought maybe True Value would have the same boards and we could tie them on top of his Focus and drive the 1 mile to our house. I get the giggles just thinking of that mental picture. True Value didn't have the boards which I think was a blessing in disguise. Instead we went back to the Home Depot and had them cut each board into 3 pieces so we could fit them in the Corolla. Problem solved. 

We got home Ben started cutting boards and I was supposed to screw them into the floor. It took me about 25 tries to get the first screw into the floor. I think Ben was ready to rip the drill from my hands, but I told him I had to figure out how to do it on my own. Eventually I got the hang of it and we put about 150 screws into the floor. If a tornado takes down our house, I promise your our sub-floor will still be in tact. I honestly thought this project was going to take about an hour but somehow it managed to take all day. 

On Sunday it was supposed to be 45 degrees outside so we decided this was a good day to install our new back door in our kitchen. I was very nervous about this project. The wood on the bottom of the door jam was rotting away and I was afraid of what we were going to find when we took out the door. To my surprise 2 things happened: 1. The only thing that was rotten was the door, everything around the door was fine, and 2. The door opening was actually square and level. I didn't think there were actually 90 degree angles anywhere in our house. So installing the door wasn't a terrible disaster. We did have to install an extra board underneath the door to bring the door up higher so it would clear our new flooring. Once we put the door in, leveling the door was a tad bit challenging. Ben's strength is definitely not following directions. I swear he reads the directions and picks the step that he likes does those steps and skips the rest. So after some reading and re-reading the directions we had to undo most of our work and start at the beginning again so the door would be level. After we had been working on it for a few hours, I got really hungry, but I knew Ben would want to power through and just get the door done. I was on the edge of being hangry (angry from hunger) so when Ben ran downstairs to get some tool or another I quickly warmed up some leftovers. He came back upstairs to find me sitting at the table eating lunch. I informed him I was on my union mandated lunch break. Ha! I was only allotted about 7 minutes to eat and then it was back to work. We eventually finished installing the door, installed the new lock, put some spray foam insulation around the door and we were done for the day. 

The floor before, our lovely sub floor

The floor after, all ready for the new flooring!

The door before

The door after

Please admire that beautiful linoleum. :)  Next time I will update you on the floor installation!

Cheers, 

A 

And we are working again....

So we took most of the summer off from projects and had plans to become productive this fall. But the fall came and our lives were busy and the house projects didn't move. Then it was Thanksgiving and Christmas so we didn't do anything. Finally at the end of December I started a new job, got myself set into my new work schedule and found the motivation to start house projects again.  Ben would like to summarize these last couple months as "sucky" but really that means productive.

We finally changed the paint the color in our hallway, stairway and family room. It was a cream color, but now it is a dark taupe. Overall painting was really uneventful. Except for a few slips of the roller onto the ceiling that had to be fixed (3 of them were from me), and when Ben finally messed up he yells at me "I just pulled an Ali". Funny to him, not to me. :) Last time we painted in our house, my dad came and did all the painting and wouldn't let us help (darn!). This time we decided to give him a break and do the painting ourselves. We had to do a ton of edging/cutting in which was a pain. Our whole painting project took about a week to complete. We painted all of the trim white, which took 4-5 coats but now I love it.

We also decided to replace the doors in our hallway. The challenge with this is, our truck has been broken since October, was sitting under 4 feet of snow. We had many discussions on how we were going to get doors from the store to our house. We also debated whether just to replace the door and get "slab" doors or to buy pre-hung doors. We were in Menards looking at doors, and I pulled up a video to see how hard it is to install slab doors.  We watched the video, and at the end they rate the project a 4 out of 5 on difficulty. It is like the video was challenging Ben to prove it wrong. Ben right away decides on slab doors (It isn't going to be that hard!). I agree for 2 reasons, 1. They are way cheaper, 2. We might actually be able to fit one in the Corolla. We only bought one door that night, the 24" door for the closet and it fit in one side of the corolla with the seats down, no problem.

Ben got home worked on the door in the afternoon, and it actually went pretty well. So the next week we went back to Menards to get the rest of the doors. We needed two 30" doors, and another 24"door. Somehow I thought this would be no problem to fit into the Corolla. Well we get to the parking lot and figure out that the only way we can get all the doors in the car, it to put the passenger seat all the way forward in the car, and tipped forward., and have all the back seats down. At this point it is clear that only one person is going to fit in the car. But it is 9pm, it is dark, cold and we live 30 minutes away from Menards, so if Ben is going to take the doors home and come pick me up, I will have to kill an hour of time. Instead we decide to test my acrobatic skills and I squeeze into the passenger seat (which is shoved against the dash), and basically lay sideways in the seat. The whole time we are driving home I keep telling Ben to be careful because if we get in an accident my head will be blown off by the airbags. Lovely. Luckily we made it home and Ben spent the next week slowly working on the doors. Now we have 4 beautiful doors which look way better then the new doors.

For our next projects, we are installing new laminate wood flooring and a new back door in our kitchen. I am going to try to do more real time blogging so I can remember all the ridiculous stories.

Now for some before and after pictures:

The stairway before...

The stairway after...

The hallway before....

The hallway after...notice the new trim. and doors...

The family room before....

The family room after, with our new flooring in the picture!!

 

More family room....

The family room after

Still a work in progress, but we are getting there!

Peace,

A

Moving on up....

No no, we are not moving. But we are getting pretty classy in these parts! Here is a quick update of the projects we have completed this summer. We have delayed all large renovation projects until fall (or winter), and have decided to focus on the outside of the house.

Front Door

Our house is all white...and I thought it was too boring. After spending two weeks begging Ben to let me paint to front door yellow, we compromised on blue and I really like it. I thought it would take about 2 coats to cover the door but it really required 6, and I only got 3 coats done before it decided to rain for 2 weeks straight. I am sure our neighbors loved looking at a half painted door.

The before...BORING!

Half way done...

The finished product...don't worry we did take the sticker off the glass of the door. 

My lovely aunt and uncle also scored us a free storm door!! Huge win and pretty easy to install except for the 900 mosquito bites we got, and the fact that we finished the install in the dark....

Landscaping

The planters along the garage have been neglected for a while but I decided it was time to fix these up. Luckily for me, my brother moved into a new house decided to redo his landscaping and got rid of day lilies, peonies and hostas. He was going to throw them in the garbage but my Dad rescued them for me. Thanks Dad!

It took about 6 weeks of on and off work but finally yesterday I finished this project. I think it is a huge improvement.

The beginning....

All done!

Another view

 My dad also came and trimmed trees (one of his favorite activities), I didn't take any before and after pictures of this but it has made a huge difference.

Garage Door

And now for the grand finale, the garage door. Ben and I referred to our garage door as our security system. Who would steal from anyone who has a garage door like this?

I personally think the plywood adds character to the place!

But finally after 3 more panels fell off this summer we decided it was time to buy a new garage door. We contemplated installing this ourselves for about 5 minutes (until I looked at the manual and decided it wasn't going to happen). Luckily we found a company to install this beauty for a reasonable price.

I am feeling pretty classy now.  I think our neighbors might send us a thank you note! :)

We have done a few other updates inside the house but I will save those for another day.

Hope you are having a great summer!!

Cheers,
A

House Series: Bathroom Project Part 5

The previous post is about a week late....life got a little busy. So where to begin on the updates on the bathroom. Exactly 30 days after we started this project we have a functioning shower, toilet, and sink! But lets not get ahead of ourselves the last week has been ridiculous.

So we finished mudding, taping, sanding and finally started painting. Let's just say having a small bathroom is somewhat of a blessing because we can paint the whole room in 30 minutes!  So last Thursday Ben and I painted the first coat of paint, went out to dinner, came home and painted a second coat. I was feeling good about our progress but we still had a ton to do.

On Friday night I worked and Ben kept texting updates of what was happening at the house. He installed both the toilet and the vanity/sink. Score! I felt like we were in the home stretch....wrong- we hit major speed bumps after this.

1. We went to install the sink we had bought for the vanity but the hot/cold water hook ups on the sink wouldn't fit through the holes on the vanity. Fail. We discovered this after Home Depot and Menards were closed for the night so that delayed us. I put my trust in Ben to pick out a new sink on his own that would fit the vanity. Luckily we have spent way too much time in the faucet aisles so he easily picked out our second choice faucet and installed it, no problem.

2. LOWES!! Oh yes, in the continued awesome customer service experience that Lowe's provides, I called on Monday for an update on our still missing tub faucet/shower head. Talking to customer service was PAINFUL!
Me: I am looking for an update on our order status.
Lowe's awesome customer service: It is on back-order.
Me: Any idea of when it will ship?
Lowe's awesome customer service: No.
Me: I would like to cancel the order then.
Lowe's awesome customer service: Well Ma'am, I could first connect you with our sales team to see if they can locate the product at a store near you.
Me: (First thought why would a store near me have it, and it hasn't shipped to me) No, I have already had them search the stores in MN and they don't have it in stock.
Lowe's awesome customer service: Well they could search all the US stores and have it shipped to you.
Me: Please explain to me why it would be at a store in the US, but has not shipped to me in 20 days.
Lowe's awesome customer service: I don't know.
Me: Cancel my order. I am going to the Home Depot or Menards and going to buy one off the shelf.
Lowe's awesome customer service: Ma'am are your sure you don't want me to connect you with the sales team?
Me: Yes, I have given you 21 days to get me the product and you haven't. Cancel my order.
Lowe's awesome customer service: I need to figure out how to cancel the order.
Me: Ok. (In my head....how does someone who works for customer service not know how to cancel an order?!?!?!?!?)

After being on hold for 7 minutes my order was finally cancelled. I seriously do not know how this store stays in business. They definitely need a re-vamp of their online ordering process and they need to retrain their customer service people.

3. Shower handle, tub faucet, etc.: Ben and I discovered that the shower handle we ended up buying at Menards didn't fit our existing plumbing. I started freaking out because it looked like our only option was to take out tile....which was NOT happening. Instead after a major freak out by both Ben and myself, the two crabbiest people you have ever met went back to Menards to see if we could find one to fit our existing plumbing.

The customer service guy at Menards asked me how my day was going while I was returning the faucet set that didn't fit.....bad idea...but at least I had the decency to sensor myself and only say "oh, I am on day 30 of a bathroom remodel so...I am exhausted". His response: "Wow. 30 days? I have never heard of it taking so long". I smiled politely and walked away. :)

Ben went straight to plumbing to see what he could find and we discovered that there was 1 Delta faucet that we thought might fit the plumbing. We bought it. I love the we agonized over faucet sets for 2 weeks, ordered one from Lowes, cancelled the order, picked out a new one, returned that and bought a new one after looking at it for 10 seconds.

Last night Ben installed it. We did have to chip out a teeny corner of the tile so we could screw in the shower handle plate thing. We had to make a few minor modifications and be a little creative in installation but it is functional and I will even go as far to say as it looks nice.

We rewarded ourselves with hot fudge shakes....this has become a bad habit.

And here are some pictures....

Our new toilet, and you can see the new floor:

The 'cubbies" with the new baskets! I am so pumped about this new storage space! 

The functioning shower (and please notice how shiny and clean the tub is)! 

So we are actually wrapping up our project. I work tonight and Ben has a list of about 15 things to get done tonight before his Mom comes to visit tomorrow. Thank goodness we have a functioning bathroom again. :)

I will post final pictures soon, once we finish all the little things.

Cheers,

A

House Series: Bathroom Part 4

I have the day off today and I was supposed to be painting the bathroom but as usual...we are behind schedule. When I started this project my mom told me to expect it to take twice as long and cost twice as much. Well...as usual she was right. We honestly thought we could get most of this done in a week to 2 weeks. We are now into week 4. I could give you all of our excuses, work being the main one but also we have taken a few nights off...you can only go to Home Depot so many times in one week. As for the budget...who knows, I haven't totaled the receipts and I am not going to- it is better that way, trust me.

Awesome point of last week: We ordered a new shower head/faucet set shower from Lowe's after the one we wanted they didn't have in store (even though they had it displayed). We had to call them to order the faucet because their website wouldn't let us order it (annoying) but the lady on the phone said we would have it by last Wednesday. On Thursday we still hadn't received it so I called Lowe's. After looking up the order they informed me that my item was back ordered.....
Me: "Where you planning on informing us of that"
Lowe's awesome customer service: No.
Me: "Ok....well when is it supposed to ship"
Lowe's awesome customer service: "You should get it by the end of March."
Me: "Will we receive an email or notification when it is shipped?"
Lowe's awesome customer service: "No, we will just send it to you".

Lowe's is not impressing me with their customer service at all. Let's just say it was a good thing that I was the one on the phone and not Ben (surprisingly he has less patience for these people than I do...and I didn't think that possible...as I always say I can't stand incompetence..ha).

Beyond that, Ben installed the floor last weekend. We opted for vinyl tile and I think it looks great!

We also had the tub professionally resurfaced...and it looks awesome! They did a great job and the tub looks brand new. I was so excited when the guy showed it to me that I almost cried (sad I know but it has been years since I have had a clean bathtub, that I can take a bubble bath in).


We are currently in the process of finishing the drywalling, mudding, taping, painting project. New pictures next week!

Cheers,

A