an engineer trying to be artistically creative: April 2008

I suppose if we're going to have a housewarming this summer, we should pick a date now to make sure people know about it. But I wanted to show anyone who actually reads this blog what we did to get our swanky house.

Back story: Ryan's Great Uncle Roger is 97 (or 98?) years old and lives in an assisted living house. Roger and his wife, Ellen used to live in the house we now live in. Roger knew that unfortunately he would not be returning to the house and so he told Ryan that he could move in and live there if he wanted to.

And so we did.

But not before doing some major work to it.

Before we even touched the house, we had it tested for mold (I got wicked sick the fall before we started work due to the mold in the house). Yup, there was lots o mold in there.

So, there were ~~a couple~~ 5 dumpsters. I think 5 is the right number. And we're talking 30-yard dumpsters. The first couple were just to get rid of the stuff that was in the house. When Roger went to assisted living, he didn't take anything with him really so there was all his furniture, a full kitchen, and closets full of clothes to take care of.

After we got rid of almost everything that was in the house, then came the demolition/mold remediation. The crew we hired to do the mold remediation were also going to do most of the demolition for us because it was easier for them that way.

Here are some pre-demo pictures:

Laundry room.

The kitchen. Through the arch is the living room/dining room. The hallway (to the right) leads to the main bathroom and the bedroom.

Another shot of the kitchen. Lovely, no?

The living room... with the lurvely wall mural.

The main bathroom (there was also a 1/2 bath off the kitchen). Seafoam green and pink, baby. Pink sink, pink toilet, pink cast iron bathtub. That bathtub weighed a ton.

The basement. One biiiiig, empty, green room.

Before we did anything to the outside.

Now when I say that we completely renovated this place, I mean it:

This is me standing in the kitchen. The window you can see in the background is the other end of the house. There used to be a full staircase going up to the attic somewhere in between me and that window.

The new kitchen cabinets and sink. (Blue Corian countertops, custom-made maple cabinets).

Master bath cabinet & sink unit. Custom cabinets done by the same place as the kitchen cabinets. White Corian countertop/sink.

Finished basement. Dark blue/gray-ish walls, berber rug. I did the majority of the framing down here. *pats self on the back*

Living room/dining room area after the paint & floors are done. Floors are cherry (real wood).

Dining room area. We did a chair rail to make that area a little more formal. Top of the wall is a light tan - same as the living room and office. Bottom half of the wall below the chair rail is a dark blue.

Here are two pictures that were taken from the same spot. It really shows how much we opened the house up - we eliminated the little archway going into the rest of the house. We also eliminated the hallway that ran down the middle. The wall you see a chair resting against is gone - that was part of the stairway going up to the attic, but since we didn't see the point in having a full staircase going up there, we took out that whole wall. Right now there is still basically just a hole where the stairs are going down to the basement, but we are planning on putting in a railing at some point.

When we first started this project, the contractor we had for mold remediation thought we were crazy. We started in March and we told him we were going to be moved in by June 1st.

And we were. Earlier than June 1st, acutally.

I think we were crazy. Ryan was finishing up senior year, I was working full time + being a full time student + going to roller derby practices. Yikes.

Writing this has made me realize I should take pictures of the house now because we've finished up a lot more and actually have some furniture too. ;)