Sunday, December 27, 2009

Trim, Cabinet Progress and Interior Paint

Happy Holidays! We haven't posted in a while, so I wanted to get some updated pics on here. There has been some behind the scenes stuff happening, like redoing our entire electrical system, but that doesn't make for good pictures. The biggest visible changes since last post are the custom made trim to match the old craftsman trim in the rest of the house, progress on the cabinets & built-ins, and first pass interior painting.

Check out our awesome new built-in bookcase and window seat in our new master bedroom:
The back surfaces of the bookcases are beadboard paneled and since you couldn't really see it in the previous picture, I threw in the pic below. They still need to build the cabinet doors and drawers for the bottom, but they are working on that right now.

French doors with trim. They still need to be painted brown to match the other doors in the house and there will be a dummy knob on the other door, as well as old fashion surface bolts.
Again, it's hard to get pictures of the walk-in closet, but you can kinda see the rod and shelf setup we have going on:
A view from inside the closet looking out into the bedroom:
They started building the vanity and installed the custom made medicine cabinets that match our window trim. I was able to find someone on the internet that made the medicine cabinets exactly to my specs for much cheaper than it would cost buy premade similar medicine cabinets from a store.
There is still plenty more things to be done in here, but it's exciting to see the rough in.
They put up the subway tile in the master shower (still needs grout)...and also installed the beadboard wainscoting around the walls. (this picture was taken before they started building the vanity).
A shot looking the other direction of the tile in the shower and trim work around the door. We scored the doors for the master bathroom and closet on the cheap from habitat for humanity's salvage shop. They will be painted brown to match the rest of the doors in the house. Another bonus to getting actual vintage doors rather than replicas is that they were already set up for old fashion mortise locks! I bought some old doorknobs, backplates and mortise locks that match all the rest of the ones in the house on craigslist for cheap too!
Here's where the master throne will go...

The back end of the hallway with the old backdoor we reused and the beautiful antique transom window I found from an antique shop online. All the glass in the door and transom really help bring light into the hallway. The wood flooring still needs to be laid at this end of the hallway.
The new double doors we added to the laundry cove...These are the only brand new doors we got for the entire project! The antique doorknobs we got at a great store in Durham that has tons of salvaged home parts from old houses. Unfortunately they went out of business, but we were able to take advantage of their going out of business sale when buying these knobs.
A pic with the double doors swung open. Our stacked washer and dryer will go in here. There is not much room for anything else, but we crammed a few small shelves on the right side there for detergent, dryer sheets, etc.
Here is our redone linen closet/built-in cabinet. I designed it to incorporate the hvac return that we are moving from the floor there in front of it. Still needs some more shelves and doors built. The walls also haven't been painted the right color in here yet.
The existing bath that we added beadboard wainscoting to and also repainted with this soothing white and green palette. If you'll recall the easter egg colors it used to be painted, this is much nicer. The tub is still purple and yellow, but it will be painted white soon.
medicine cabinet side, where we are installing a pedestal sink:

Here is the living room painted a nice mellow yellow shade. ;)
We went with a semi-rich tint for the dining room. Since a dining room is a bit more formal of a space, we thought this medium tone brown/tan would be elegant, without being too overpowering.
And the kitchen is being built as we speak. This first picture show a sweet antique built-in cabinet the fits perfectly in that space. Kate stripped the old peeling paint off it, so we can either do a wash of paint or a solid repaint. It's not totally decided yet.
Stove side with a lazy susan in the corner base cabinet:
The upper cabinets will have glass doors on the large sections. We also really want to make the cabinets feel more like part of the room than just a box tacked on the wall. So we designed them to be closed soffit, going all the way to the ceiling. We added crown molding around the perimeter of the kitchen to help tie in the cabinets more as well.
Standing in the pantry taking this picture:

Our electrical service is being upgraded. Yay for meeting safety code!

Below is a pile of junk we found scattered throughout the yard. There was actually way more than this but it already made it to the dumpster before I took this photo.
Just the back of the house again. Not much has changed here since the last post, except for the back door being added, the trees loosing their leaves and the pile of junk at the bottom of the stairs.
We're in the home stretch, so check back for photos of the finished product! :D

Saturday, November 14, 2009

If these walls could talk......

...they better say thier favorite color is yellow. ;)
another view showing the exterior paint on the addition. It seamlessly blends into the old paint about halfway down the side of the house:
In this shot from standing on the deck you can see the old part of the house (back kitchen wall) on the right, and the new construction (master bedroom) on the left. You can't even tell the difference really:

And we have dry wall in the addition! The hardwood flooring is laid too!
Master bathroom door on the left and walk-in closet on the right:

The window in the master bathroom:
Where the vanity will go:
Tub alcove:
view from the other side:
Below is just a shot of the the master bath floor so you can see a comparison once the tile is laid:
It's hard to get a good shot of the walk-in closet. This about the best I could get. :P
A view standing by the master bedroom door looking down the hallway towards the center of the house. The laundry cove is on the right there and the door to the middle bedroom on the left:

Standing in the doorway of the middle bedroom looking across the hall to the laundry:

They sheetrocked over all the ceilings in the house as well. The paint color in the central hub makes it easy to see where they taped and mudded the edges where the new sheetrock ceilings meet the old plaster walls:Dunce toilet is in time out. haha. ;)

I know it's not really exciting to look at a bunch of pictures of ceilings, so I won't post every room. But it's exciting to us because of the state the old ceiling were in. If you'll recall these pics from the first post (example 1 & example 2). So anyway, here's just a few shots of the new ceilings...starting with the dining room:

Kitchen ceiling. This picture makes the ceiling appear low, but it's actually 9 ft:

Existing bath....this ceiling used to be pastel green (I can't wait till we can wrangle the rest of the easter egg colors in here too)....

And one last ceiling pic of the living room:If you'll recall the living room used to be green, but now it's just gray because they sanded down peeling paint, taped over settling cracks and skim coated mudding over most of the plaster walls in the house. (They'll be painting all the interiors soon, so stay tuned for pictures with all our new colors).

Just a view looking at some construction materials on the floor of the living room, through the dining room, on towards the breakfast nook and the kitchen all the way in the back there:

A view of the other direction from the breakfast nook looking towards the front of the house:

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Plumbing and Insulation

The house is actually a bit further along now, but for the sake of chronilogicaliness I'm going to do this post first and post the very latest pics a little later. That way ya'll can get a feel for each step of the process.

We are doing a wall-mount kitchen faucet, so they had to tear open the wall to put the plumbing in there. Also there was no insulation in there and we gotta keep those pipes from freezing so they stuffed some batting back there. It doesn't drop below freezing very often here, but still gotta be prepared, eh:

It's a bit scary seeing the kitchen in this state, but it will make it all the more gratifying when it's clean and complete. :)
There was dorky little vanity in this bathroom. We're going to put a pedestal sink in there, so again, more ripping apart of plaster commenced. We'll also have to plug the holes in the floor where the pipes used to be. If you are curious why the wall is ripped off to the side there, it's because they had to run a plumbing vent pipe up to the roof and they had to go around the medicine cabinet. One good thing about having no insulation in your walls is that it was easy for them to feed the pipe down from the roof without having to tear open the whole wall:

Gotta give props to Kate for scoring this sink for us...for free! The pedestal sink's temporary home is in our pedestal tub. ha!
We'll be adding beadboard wainscoting in here too. Right now it's just a disaster zone:
On to the new master bath. Our cast iron alcove tub is in place with plumbing roughed in:
A shot of where our double sink vanity will go. In that box is the kickspace heater we're having installed. It's going to be nice on those winter mornings:
This is looking into what used to be a bedroom closet, but now that it was absorbed by the hallway, it's going to become our laundry cove:

Kate looking up at the hole for the drop-down stair to the attic they're going to put in. On the left wall there is the opening to the aforementioned laundry area. Also, look to the ceiling to see where the house used to end. It gives a frame of reference how we're tying in the new to the old:
Looking out the Master bedroom doorway into the hallway:

And we have insulation in the addition! Yay for energy efficiency:Insulation and the double window we salvaged from what was the back bedroom, but is now the middle bedroom:

New windows matching the four over one style from the existing house. (They're double hung as you can see from the one on the right):
Up next....drywall. check back soon.