After Pics!

Well, we're overdue on posting again. haha. Sorry about the delay. Anyway, we moved in back in January. There was still a few weeks of work left to do so we were living out of boxes stacked in the middle of all the rooms for a while, didn't have a kitchen or hot water the first few days.
But we are settled in now, so it's finally time for.....drum roll please......pics of how it all turned out in the end!

Here's our lovely new kitchen. We are really happy with how it turned out. If you'll recall I did a photo realistic concept image several months ago of what we wanted it to look like. It came out just how we planned and followed the concept image really well:
Some various kitchen features...
white fireclay apron front farm sink
wall mounted gooseneck faucet
cherry butcher block countertops
glass faced upper cabinets
base cabinet lazy susan
white subway tile backsplash
vintage style partial inset cabinet doors
antique built-in shallow cabinet
walk-in pantry (that was there already)

we kept the stove and refrigerator, but the dishwasher is new.
In the middle of the pic below you can see the built-in we scored at an antique shop. It fits really great in that space. Kate stripped the old peeling paint off of it and we we had the carpenters do a small alteration to it to fit best in the space. We love it!


Here's a view looking down the new hallway toward the back of the house. In my opinion the antique transom window we had installed above the back door really "makes" this hallway.


Here's a picture of the transom before installation:

and a view from the other end of the hallway looking towards the middle of the house:


On to the pics of the finished addition! I designed the master bedroom so a king bed would fit nicely between these two windows. It worked out well:


On the back wall we have the built-in bookshelves and window seat. As a reminder, the double window there is the one we reused from the old back of the house.
Kate made roman shades for all the windows in here that you can raise from the bottom (shown on double window) or lower from the top (window on the right). That's great because we can let light in from the top pane, but still have the privacy shade on the bottom. :)


another shot of the built-ins. You can see a little sliver of the french doors on the left there. The room gets tons of great natural light!


French doors with a privacy sheers that Kate also made. The light fixture hanging from the ceiling is a 1920's antique I found on ebay and rewired:


The two dark doors are the master bath (left) and the master closet (right):

Again, it's hard to get a decent shot of the walk-in closet, but here ya go anyway. Not too huge, not too small....the layout works pretty good.

Our custom built double sink vanity and medicine cabinets in the new master bathroom!

We wanted to incorporate a historic aesthetic into into the new bathroom to keep with the era of the house. One of the ways we did that was by putting down a classic white hex tile floor. We went with 1.5" matte finish hex tiles and love em!

It's a bit unconventional for a bathroom, but we decided to put apron front sinks in there and I think ended up really working. I can tend to get a bit crazy about little details sometimes and searched long and hard for this small gooseneck faucet with porcelain cross handles, but ended up tracking a pair down and think they're awesome. They make me happy in their own little way. :)

Just a shot so you can get a feel for where the bathtub is in comparison to the vanity. btw, the counters in here are marble and the wainscoting is beadboard.

Although we didn't go so far as to put a clawfoot tub in here, we still wanted to tie in that classic 1920's feel to the bathing area. So, we used white subway tiles for the shower walls, installed matching porcelain cross faucet/diverter handles, and went with a nice cast iron alcove tub.

The relation of where the tub is to the door (just so you can get the full 360 degree view) :).

Looking from the master bathroom into the bedroom.

Dual flush toilet! Energy efficiency for the win!
A shot just to show that the bathroom has a window. The natural light is wonderful in the morning!

Here's the living room. For a quick recap on what we did the existing house, the plaster ceilings were all in bad shape, so we drywalled over all of them in the house (including the living room here). All the walls also had bad peeling paint and cracking issues, so they were all smoothed out and skim coated with new mud....Then of course it was all painted. We went with a fairly subtle light color in the living room to keep the front rooms fairly modest in terms of color and to contrast some of the bolder colors in the rest of the house. The floors were refinished (which you can't really see in this photo because of the rug). Other than that, we didn't want to visually change much in these front of areas of the house....just clean-up what was mentioned, rewire all the electrical etc.

The renovated bathroom. Besides the electrical, plumbing, wall, ceiling, and floor work, we also removed a funny little vanity that was put in at some point in the past and replaced it with a pedestal sink (it works so much better in the space), we added the beadboard wainscoting, and the ceiling light fixture. Repainting in here made a world of difference too, it used to be all multicolor pastel colors (I referred to it as an easter egg paint job).


Below is the middle hub/hallway area. Check out the redesign of the linen closet/cabinet built-in. When we bought the house there was something there that had been added at some point, but it didn't really utilize the space, or aesthetically match the house for that matter. Plus we wanted to move the big air return from the floor to the bottom of the built-in. (btw, I designed the pattern for the return grille and had it laser cut, rather than having the standard metal slotted grille....I'm a bit detail oriented. haha ;D )

Under the rug there is where the giant return floor grate used to be. We had it patched in with wood floor.

Below is the dining room. Just the standard electric, walls, floors, ceiling, paint work was done in here.

The breakfast nook area. Again just the same surface repair & electrical as the rest of the house.

A shot of the finished back of the house, with the new addition on the left there and the existing house on the right. Check out our lovely new deck which had lattice added and was stained since the last pictures.


The french doors into in the master bedroom and the back door with transom window.

That's it! We may update the blog with a few more in-depth process pics we hadn't posted before for those who are interested, but for now I hope ya'll enjoyed looking at our start to finish chronicle of our renovation. Thanks for stopping by!!

- Ben & Kate

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