Prep is everything

Preparation is everything when you are remodeling a house. It's painstaking at times. It's a step that is easily skipped to cut corners, but it will come back to haunt you in the end if you don't do it. We have a lot of  "I wish we  would have" comments. There is a fine line between perfection and efficiency, finding the balance is the key.

We put the finishing touches on the walls and ceiling in preparation to receive paint. The ceiling was sprayed with drywall mud and we did the "knock down" method to finish it off.

We have to "tape and drape" so we can paint the walls and ceilings and then make sure the floor is as even as it can be. Hardwood flooring will be the next step. 

we rented an industrial paint sprayer to make the job go a little faster. You would think this would be an easy task. Go to the rental place, pick up the sprayer, and come home and paint....well it went sort of like that. Mike and Mike's friend Marv picked up the paint sprayer brought it home and it didn't work. For the next hour, they tried to "fix" it. Finally after they talked about vacuum, pumps, ect... they just took it back and got another one. The paint sprayer, in the long run, did not save us time and definitely didn't save us money. The walls did get painted so all was good. 

We picked out a Thomasville mahogany engineered flooring from Home Depot.

Mike and his dad nailing in the wood floor

The floor was easy to install.

The call of the fairway

Mike working on the reach in pantry

This house did not have a pantry. With two teenage boys and a hard working man around, I needed a good size pantry. We decided to take the full length of the wall in the old dining room area and added a reach in pantry. We installed wire shelving and are very pleased with the amount of storage we have. 

Pantry doors installed. No case molding yet

Mike and his dad installed the doors. Not exactly sure what happened that day because I wasn't home. I just know a job that was suppose to take a couple hours took 8 hours! They said they had to re-frame?  HUH? I don't know, but I was happy I had doors on the pantry when I got home from work. 


The pantry was door-less all summer long. As soon as golf season started, all construction stopped.  That is why I'm making a strong push right now. It's my only chance to get things done. Golf is right around the corner 
and once again my house will play second fiddle to the call of the fairway. Many wives can relate in one way or another. If it's not golf, it's hunting, or fishing, or football season, or many other things that cause the "honey do" list to collect dust on the fridge. It's a pull more powerful than gravity. It's a law that Newton forgot. An energy that can not be created or destroyed, it just changes form. So what's a girl to do? We join them, of course!! I learned to play golf. Never touched a golf club before then. With determination and a little "I'll show you" attitude, we hit the driving range. Michael was my coach and as with most coaches, it was a love/hate relationship. All kidding aside he was a very good coach and I was playing decent 1st year golf by the middle of summer. We went from house renovation to the golf course, but we still spent time together, learning more about each other, falling more and more in love. He was happy to be able to balance his love of golf with his love for me and I was happy to see him pleased. We had a fun summer. The house? well... it could wait :)

They make it look so easy on TV

Thanks to the DIY and HGTV channels I think I can do anything! They magically do whole room make overs in 2 days, do backyard landscape complete with outdoor kitchen in 3 days, and never make a mistake that would set them back. Okay so it's the magic of 
television but they make me believe! They made me believe I could transform my 1980's cabinets into a modern work of art with nothing more than a few gallons of paint and a little glaze. Maybe not a work of art and it sure wasn't over night, but I came up with something I'm happy with. This is what I started with----------->
Luck for me I did have real wood cabinets. I was able to sand all the cabinets so they would accept the paint. We also reconfigured the layout of the cabinets. We had to figure out how many existing cabinets we could still use. For the Island, we just bought unfinished stock cabinets. We were able to use most of the old cabinets with a few modifications. I can now say I have custom cabinets! We cut some in half, cut the bottom off others, and just rearranged others. We got very creative. 


My "new" dining room became the work station with a make-shift work bench. I had mountains of cabinets and cabinet doors. It felt never ending!! 

 It was sanding then painting then sanding then painting again, sometimes it took a third cycle. I used Behr Premium Plus Ultra paint from Home Depot. It has the paint and primer in one. It's very thick but easy to work with.

 I just used a Purdy brand brush and brushed all the cabinet doors to get a nice smooth finish. I used a fine nap mini roller to paint the sides and shelves. I used a spray paint to finish the insides of the cabinets.

I was very pleased with the final finish of the base coat of the cabinet doors

Chocolate colored glaze was applied

Once this was done we glazed all the cabinets to achieve a "antique" look. We added new hardware and we are one cabinet away from being totally finished. Even though this was a long process and a lot of work, I saved a $2,000-$3,000 or more on cabinets. I will post photos later of the completed kitchen and island when everything is done. I plan to do a before and after slide show later also.

A Little Help from Family and Friends

Mike's Dad Helping with the demo as Larry Perry and Mike's Brother-n-Law watch

Mike's friend Marv covered in drywall dust

Mike. It's a dirty job but he's still smiling

We appreciated the help we got from our friends and family with the demo. It was a very nasty job. We had to remove popcorn ceilings and repair the holes in the ceiling and walls left from the removed walls. The popcorn ceiling was very messy but not as messy as the sanding of the drywall mud. It felt like a disaster area. A fine layer of dust was in every crack and on every thing. This was also very time consuming work, but we made it through with a little help.

Operation Demo

Small wall between dining room and kitchen

We closed on the house a little over a year ago, January 29, 2010. The day I signed my name on the note, Michael started operation demo. We made the choice to remove a load bearing wall between the kitchen and the living room and another small wall between the kitchen and the dining room to make one big "great room." 

The wall on the left of the photo is load bearing

Same wall behind the blue sofa if removed will open into the kitchen.

The 1st obstacle was removing a load bearing wall. I thought at the time, "this could be a problem because I think they call it load bearing because it bears a load." The load being the roof of the house. My husband doesn't want to leave a header so he comes up with his magical beam idea. This a very heavy piece of wood that he will place in the attic to hold the load of the roof. I'm very skeptical and I want to call a structural engineer. You know how a man never wants to stop to ask for directions? Well they don't want to call a structural engineer either. So Mike builds the beam and it weighs A LOT, but he gets it in the attic by cutting a large hole in the garage ceiling. I remembering him obsessing about this beam. He talked about it all the time until I finally agreed and let him install it. He is still very proud of this engineering feat. Since our house has not fallen in he considers it his biggest accomplishment to date. He actually wanted me to climb up into the attic to look at his magical beam. I did not, but I told him to take a picture of it and I would put it in this blog. He has not taken a picture of it yet so I will add it later.

 

  Now we have the house secure so we can officially start Operation Demo. It took less than an hour to destroy both walls. The photo to the right is the old dining room and kitchen. the photo below is the living room view while standing in the kitchen.

So what did I learn? I learned that Mike can become very emotionally attached to inanimate objects like large, heavy load bearing beams and that I should trust my husband to properly "bear the load" when he says he can. :)

House Therapy

I once had a patient tell me  "you have been through a major tragedy, multiple tragedies. I can feel it. Not just death because death happens in every person's life. No, this is something different. You have a pretty smile and a happy heart, but there is a sadness in your eyes. Am I right?" and to him I answered "Every person has tragedy in their life. I think that's what made Shakespeare famous!"  He laughed but he knew, I knew he was right.

It was not long after one of these life tragedies that I decided to make some major life changes. Once I made the choice to make the changes, things moved very fast. I bought a house, got engaged, got married, ended a business, and decided to have another baby (my youngest is 12).  And this was all in one year, last year 2010! 

Some people think I'm crazy, others think I'm brave, I personally think I just don't have it all figured out yet. One thing I know for sure is I purchased a house that has helped me figure out a little more than I knew before. I call it "house therapy."

The house was built in 1981. It is an 80's house with 80's fixtures and 80's paneling. Pretty awful really. But we have 10 acres for the kids to run around on and a big lake for them to swim and fish in. It is a beautiful property. The house just needs a little TLC. My husband, Michael, and I are renovating this house and in the meantime we are also building a marriage. One a metaphor for the other. Many of the lessons are the same. It takes patience, accuracy, hard work, problem solving, creativity, communication, compromise, vision, the ability to work together, and this all being done with blood, sweat, and tears. So the two are not so different. 

Renovation can be very therapeutic.  You learn things about yourself and sometime you learn nothing at all. Sometimes it's just a routine, time consuming task (like filling nail holes) but it takes your mind off stressful things happening in your life, a stress reliever. The creative process can very rewarding, at least for me it is. I love to take something less than attractive and turn it into something beautiful. I have found that while completing some of the projects, my husband and I have long conversations about a wide variety of topics. We bond over drywall dust and paint fumes.

I will be sharing our journey of "renovation ever after."  Recording our follies and triumphs, inspiration and creativity, pitfalls and pearls of wisdom. This might be fun!