A Whole Lotta Grouting Going On

So, this past weekend was a slow one at the house.  We got a few things done, but not as much as we had hoped.  Most of Saturday was spent shopping.  First we headed to Pease to finalize the kitchen plans.  That was fun.  I can't wait to get all my cabinets in and have my nice, new, big kitchen!

After Pease, we headed to Lowe's to get a sponge so we could grout and to see if they had anything good on clearance.  It turns out they had the perfect vanity for our master bath!  And it was marked down from $700(ish--I can't remember the actual before price) to $422.  But, as it turns out, although they showed 1 in stock, the Fashion Bath guy couldn't find any other than the floor model which was pretty scratched up.  He was nice enough to look it up online and start calling other stores that showed stock.  Unfortunately, none of the stores that showed stock had any.  On a whim, he tried calling one last store.  They didn't show any in stock, but it turns out they had one, still in the box, and at that store it was $375!  At that point, we drove back to Milford, picked up the pickup truck, and drove to the Lowe's in South Lebanon to get our vanity.  Yay!

We had to drive all over the Greater Cincinnati area to find it, but it was worth it!

While we were glad to have gotten a vanity and picked out our kitchen, all that driving took up most of our Saturday.  So, we ended up dropping off our vanity at the house in Loveland, picking up the three old vanity tops that we were hoping to craigslist for free, and coming back to Milford so Landon could work Saturday night.

Sunday we slept in a bit (Landon was up until 4 am working), and then headed to the house to get started.  First things first, Landon mowed the lawn while I painted the vanity cabinets for the guest bath.  Once that was done, we started grouting the tub surround.  Yup, we finally got around to doing that.  And, first, let me say, don't follow the directions on the package.  It told us to wait 10-20 min after applying the grout to wipe it off, so we did.  And then we spent the next 2 hours scrubbing grout.  It was miserable.  So for the next batch, we applied it and then wiped it back off.  It worked so much better.   But no matter the headache, it was worth it.  The white tile with the pretty white grout looks fantastic!

In the middle of all of that, Landon also managed to get the wall between the master bedroom and master bathroom framed in for the pocket door.  So it wasn't a totally unproductive weekend.  It just wasn't as productive as we had hoped.

And, No, the door isn't going to be 60" wide.
But you have to leave a space 2x the width when you frame it in.  It will be a 30" door.

Did You Miss Me?

Well, while I intended to keep posting on the blog every day during the week, it looks like that isn't going to happen.  School is just keeping me too busy.  Who knew there would be this much busy work in Graduate School?

Anyway, work is still going on at the house.  We're progressing slowly but surely.  I finished up with the tile in the guest bathroom last weekend while my Dad and Step-Mom were up.  It looks great, but we still need to grout it and seal the grout.

 We also got the new vinyl tile floors laid.  We decided to go with the self adhesive ones to save time.  And, if in the future we want to replace them with ceramic tiles, it will be easy to do.  Oh, and the best part of getting the floors down?  It meant we could install the new toilet as well!  We can pee at the house again!  No more driving down the street to the park to go to the bathroom.

Dad and Landon also framed up the pantry and the broom closet along the back wall of what was the dining room.  Dad even got all the drywall hung before he went home.  It really started making the main area take shape.

This was before we got all the drywall up, but you can see how it looks.
 

And the ceiling fan from the dining room is gone.  

While the guys were doing that, Kathy and I were finishing up painting in the guest bedroom closets so we can get the floors down.  We got one closest totally painted, and one primed.  Just a coat of paint to finish that one off.  Oh, and Landon and I got a ceiling fan up in the middle bedroom which looks great.

Pretty, cleanly painted closet.

And, yes there are globs that go on the lights.  They aren't installed yet.

And, we got a huge delivery.....The floors came in!  All 2000+ sqft of them.  Three whole pallets.  They've been sitting for a week now, so as soon as we get the last little bit of painting done in the bedrooms, we can start laying floor!

One pallet chilling in the driveway during the delivery.

The second pallet.

Forklift right up to the front door.  

The first pile in the living area.

And a close up of the planks.  Autumn Maple. So Pretty!

Ch, ch, changes.....

In my last post I hinted at big changes afoot.  In fact, this is the single biggest change we are making to the house in this entire project.  Have you figured it out yet?  I'll give you a hint:  There's one section of the house that we haven't really done much work on yet.

Yup, that's right.  We finally settled on a floor plan for the main living area of the house.  And on Saturday, the walls came down!  And you won't believe the difference it made.  But first, some before photos to set the stage.

View from the front door.  Living room to the left.

The living room looking at the door to the dining room.

The living room looking toward the hallway & family room

The dining room looking at the door to the kitchen 

The dining room looking to the living room & kitchen.

The view down the hallway from the bedroom end toward the kitchen wall (with the "x")

The view from the other end of the hallway (I'm standing against the X from the last photo).

Got it?  No?  Well, here's an image of the floor plan when we bought the house:

We knew when we bought the house, we wanted to open it up some and expand the kitchen, but the question was how?  And let me tell you, this has been a huge source of stress for me during this process.  It seems simple, until you start looking at structural issues.  For example, we found out pretty quickly that the wall between the kitchen & the family room was the only load bearing wall in the house.  Which meant that if we wanted to open it up, we had to put in a beam.  

Ann, my designer friend, came up with a wonderful floor plan that opened up to the back with an island and a formal dining room.  But after consulting with the structural engineer, we found out that if we wanted to open the back all the way up, we'd need to either end the beam over an existing post in the basement or add a new post.  Now, we didn't want to add a new post since we hope to finish the basement one day and there are already plenty of posts down there.  And, if we wanted to end over an existing post, that put a column right in the middle of our island.  :(  

After much discussion and angst, we decided to leave the back alone and open to the front.  So, working off of another floor plan that Ann drew up for us, we finally settled on this:

Ignore the random island in what is really the 2nd/3rd bedrooms, it's left over from some design work.

Basically we took out all the walls and widened the doorways to the family room.  It's not perfect, but it is nice, and now with the walls down, you can really see the difference.

View from the front door.  Living room to the left. 

Living room, looking toward the dining room (left) and kitchen (right).

Former wall between living room & kitchen.

View from the former hallway looking into the kitchen/dining room.

Wide view of the entire space, you can see the family room in the background.

 So, I had to give up my formal dining room, but I'm getting a  huge pantry and a large island.  And I didn't have to add any more posts to the basement.  Also, we had hoped to put in a powder room on the main floor, but since the is not plumbing stack large enough on that side of the house, and it would have been expensive to add one, so we had to scrap that as well.  Maybe one day.

But that's the big change.  And with some help from Alan's cousin Rick, they already have the electric roughed in for the kitchen as well as a good portion of the plumbing.  Next week, I'm going to start shopping for cabinets....

Splish Splash, I've Been Working on the Bath

So, this weekend has been another busy one at the house.  The week was spent mostly prepping guest bathroom for tile.  The cement board was hung, the seams and screws coated with thinset, and the plumbing fixture pipes pulled through.  That meant that on Wednesday night, it looked something like this:

The next step was a trip to Lowe's to buy the tile.  We knew we wanted white subway tiles, but we weren't sure what we wanted for the accent tiles.  That led to this:

The large tile in the middle is our floor tile.  The white strips are our subway tiles, and the outside squares are the potential accent tiles.  After much debate, we narrowed it down to the bottom tile or the right tile.  Both were neutral enough to last, but had enough color to lighten up all the white.  Finally we decided to go with the right tile.  They looked like mini-subway tiles which we liked and they were blue!

We were ready to tile!  Almost...
After a long time spent hanging the first ledger board and measuring the center of the wall, (which took much much longer than we though it would), we did finally get some tile up.  Landon and I worked together on the first few rows with me cutting the tiles as he laid them.

Tile Cutting station.

Working our way up the middle.

By Thursday night we were here:

Friday night was a night off.  We all needed one.  But Saturday it was back to the grid.  While Landon and his dad were busy elsewhere, his mom and I tackled the tile.

Up near the top.  

Gotta get it right.

Landon did stop in to help us hang the ledger board for the back wall.

Did you get it right?

And by the end of the day on Saturday, we were done with the big wall and had a few rows done on the back wall.  The glass accents looked great.  

Sunday, the boys were busy in other places again, so Valerie and I knocked out the rest of the tile.  It was a long day full of lots of stops and starts.  We had to figure out how to navigate the plumbing fixtures on the front wall of the surround.  (Alan and Landon worked the wet saw.)  It took 4 batches of thinset, many boxes of tile, and lots and lots of time, but we got it all done, except for the corner shelf, the edge tiles, and the bottom row.

I needs to be grouted and sealed, but it looks so good!  And since I had never ever tiled before, I'm pretty proud of what I did.

We still have to put in the toilet (we don't have any toilets at the house currently, except for the two that are in the second bedroom), paint and reinstall the vanity, put back in the new vanity top, get a new vanity light, install the new vent fan/light, and get the mirror cut down and rehung, but at least we have a pretty tile surround.

Oh, and if you think that looks great, wait until you see what the boys were working on this weekend.  It's one of the biggest changes we've made so far.....

It's Been Awhile

So it's been awhile since I posted an update.  There are several reasons for that, including the fact that I started Graduate school last week which ate up a huge chunk of time and the fact that I was out of town for the holiday weekend.  But fear not!  Work went on at the house.  Lots of work in fact.

The last weekend I did an update, we had been working on the soffits and facia boards outside.  The boys finally got the front of the house done, as well as both sides of the garage.  The back still needs to be done, but it looks much better.

When I left last Friday, Landon and his Dad were working on painting some of the siding outside.  That turned out to be way more of a job than we expected, but they made some progress.

And, since it rained for a good portion of the weekend, they ended up starting work on the Guest Bathroom.  We hadn't planned on redoing that particular room, but since we discovered that the sub floor was rotted out beneath the tub, we had to tear it apart.  And, since we were going to tear everything out anyway, it seemed silly to not put it back just the way we wanted.  So, it's getting a makeover too.  So far the subfloor has been replaced, the toilet has been torn out (so no more potty at the house at all), the tub and surround are out, the vanity has been removed, and the vanity light is down.  Oh, and some of the drywall is gone.

Surround coming out.

Working on the tub.

Nearly out.

Keep going.

Vanity and mirror gone.

And tub and subfloor gone.

New green board up.  Plumbing fixed.

More wiring sticking right out of the wall.  No light box.

But we're getting it back together.  We've bought a new tub, vinyl floor tiles, plumbing fixtures, and vanity top (we are painting the old cabinets). The toilet we already bought.

The floor tiles

And the Vanity Top.  Clearance Baby!

Sink Faucet

Shower Fixture.

The tub is in.

New tub, as seen though the wall from the master bathroom.

The mortar bed for the tub.  

Tub protected and cement board up.  Ready to tile!

New subfloors and no more vent in the middle of the floor!

Toilet support shored up and redone.

There has been lots more work going on in the bathroom since Labor Day weekend.  So look for more updates soon!  You won't believe your eyes!