Boogie woogie woogie!

Here is the classic video for your 80's viewing pleasure. Trust me. It's worth watching. I think all those outfits are going to come back around soon :) Mom and Dad you should have saved those rad clothes of yours! You would have been totally ahead of the game!!

So, you may have guessed that this post is about my parents' bad clothes our house's electric. Or really lack there of. As I mentioned in this post, the upstairs of our house had basically no lighting and was void of electric outlets. Downstairs, there are plenty of outlets but they are all two pronged (with the exception of the ones located in the kitchen), the living room and guest bedroom have no overhead lighting, and the entryway had a pull-string light, minus the pull-string. Suffice it to say, we needed to do some work.

Starting at the beginning of it all, there was LITerally (name that show ;) ) only a 30 amp electric service to the house. Now, this probably doesn't really mean that much to me, or any other person who doesn't know much about electric, but 30 amps is absolutely ridiculous. When the electrician came to asses our house for a new service, he said that we were probably one of THE LAST houses in our town to have a 30 amp service.

Just to give you an idea, the average home will most likely have 100 amp or 200 amp electric service in their house. They need that much power nowadays to run say-a dryer, washer, and air conditioner all at the same time. If we even turned on two of those things a fuse would have blown. Goodness knows I hate when a fuse blows. So we decided our electric service was a priority and needed to be replaced immediately.

Oh and here is a horrible diagram I drew up to show you our original electric panel (since I forgot to take a picture of it.)

As you can see, there were three basic fuses and a random electric box off to the right with wires sticking out all over. Yes, the wires are those curly cues :) All of those wires were exposed and just waiting patiently to electrocute some innocent bystander. They were leaching out ready to grab their next victim!

To complicate things even further we had knob and tube wiring.

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Knob and tube wiring is relatively safe, but definitely not the best. Most old homes will have this early type of electric but it is much better if you can replace it as you update the home. Ours is in decent shape, but is beginning to become brittle and definitely runs the risk of being an attractive snack to rodents. Because you know, our house is riddled with the mini, four-legged creatures haha. Either way, Liz would feel a lot better knowing that all of this was out of the house and updated! (See that nice point-of-view change there??)

So, the electricians came and installed our brand new electric service. After this picture was taken, National Grid came and installed our new meter!

The outside box leads to this brand-spankin'-new panel on the inside wall of our basement. Isn't he ravishingly handsome? Plus, he has sparkling new accessories that the electrician was kind enough to add: the light switch and outlet to the right leading to the pretty new light on the left.

We think the new 100 amp service will suit us nicely. It leaves us plenty of ampage to expand and add electric anywhere we need to! Now, we just need to work on the first floor situation and tie-in our new electric on the second story! 

Our Ghetto-tastic Stairs

When contemplating what I should post about today, I realized that we haven't updated you on the progress outside our humble abode. We haven't done too much, but there were a few things that Jonathan had to throw together ASAP.

See, there is this thing called house insurance. Let me tell you, they can be a major pain-in-the-kiester. I understand the need to make sure a person's property is safe, but come on! The "problems" on the outside of our house have been there for years--why do we have to change them now? Oh that's right, because we purchased the home and had to have homeowners insurance because of our loan. And when you get a new insurance policy, they show up and inspect the house that you purchased that probably hasn't been inspected since the 1950s when those stairs were put on and might have actually been level at that point...so they show up and tell you all the things that have to be corrected asap that you don't really care about. Whew, sorry for the rant (and horrible grammar), I just had to get that our there! :)

But really, couldn't we just throw some yellow caution tape up and call it a day? --Well maybe that wouldn't be a good alternative...our house would have looked like a crime scene! Ha! I doubt she (yes I have decided our house is a female) would have looked this sexy wrapped in caution tape:

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Anyways, we were definitely lucky and honestly I really don't have any beef with our insurance company...they are really just doing their job. They told us that all we needed to do was fix our front stairs and put up a railing on both sets of outside stairs.

The problem was, we didn't want to invest a lot of money into this. The outside of our house is very low on our priority list. Basically we didn't want to spend too much money bringing her up to insurance standards as most of our money is going to renovations on our bedroom and bathroom. See the set of stairs to the left in the above picture? Here is a close up:

Well we plan on getting rid of them entirely and blocking off that door. We would like to turn the door into a window that matches the rest on the sun porch. Realistically there is no reason for that door when you have a front and back door. Plus,the sidewalk leading to it just breaks-up the front yard. We would be better served by a nice sidewalk to the front door instead.  

We didn't want to spend a lot of money on the front railing and stairs either. Eventually we would like to rip off the front entryway and redo it. When Jonathan was fixing the stairs (they weren't level at all) he realized that they were built and then just set into place. Perhaps they were a quick fix at one point? As he lifted them off, he found that there was a huge root that has protruded from the ground causing the stairs to lift and become off kilter.

That whole dark green set of stairs was just sitting there at a horrible angle. Dangerous to say the least. So Jonathan resolved that issue by building a concrete base under the bottom of the front stair and then attaching them with a 2x4 to the porch.  He also added the bricks to make the first step-up not so big. Finally, he brought it up to the insurance company's standard by installing a railing made with more 2x4s. The end result? Our ghetto-tastic stairs.

Definitely safer. Definitely completely cheesy and horrible looking. Our house now makes a fantastic first impression. She is proud of the silver bling she be sportin'. It's like the silver tooth in the front of her mouth or the classic rolled up right pant leg. Maybe its the do-rag to her bald head or the gold chain around her neck sporting a giant dollar sign. Either way, she is making a downright dreadful first impression.

Oh and to top it off, here our the side stairs with their new bling as well.

Let's just say that all of this is a temporary, inexpensive fix. We cannot wait to make her look pretty and sophisticated again.

What have you had to do as a temporary fix to your home? Was it as ghetto-tastic as ours? 

The Revenge of the Evil Bathroom!

At first glance our bathroom looked like a hole in the wall:

It was dark, dated, and involved a lot of brown. Oh and you definitely couldn't ignore the Marlboro yellow that had taken to the pull down shade, ceiling, and walls. It was a disaster and let's just say that we wanted it gone ASAP!!

So when we left the bathroom last (which makes it sound like an evil villain), it was contemplating its revenge on us. Our original plans were to spruce it up for the time being, but alas, it attacked. The end result was this:

Bathroom: 0; Wife and Carpenter: 1 

We ended up completely gutting the bathroom that had seen better days. Unfortunately, while Jonathan was pulling off the sink, he realized that the wall was collapsing behind it. A bit more on that here. And that is why we gutted the darn thing. We weren't going to take its threat of overtaking us any more! And again, the above picture is the end result.

I can't say I was horribly disappointed with the idea of a brand new bathroom. Our bank account was surely depressed though, we still don't think she (she?) has recovered. But we have been comforting her and coddling her hoping that she will forgive us....echm...moving on!

ANYWAYS, you know I love a good excuse to do some design magic, so I began to brainstorm. I began pinning bathrooms that I liked on Pinterest and my crafty side began to form an idea of what I wanted our new bathroom to look like. The goal was to make it as inexpensive, practical, and beautiful as possible. Here were some of my inspiration bathrooms:

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I loved the combination of gray, white, and accents of yellow. This definitely seems to be a color trend lately, but I think it's still pretty safe. My plan is to make all of the accents of yellow easily removable. That way, if I get tired of the combination, I have a neutral background that I can use with a wealth of different colors! 

I looked at a cornucopia (how's that for thesaurus use?) of color combinations, but I just kept coming back to gray and yellow.  Plus, to make the deal even sweeter, I already had a few things I could use for yellow accents! More on that to come :)

So here is my design board:

This is the starting point. The walls will become a dark, elegant shade of gray. All of the white in the bathroom will balance the dark color nicely. We have already purchased the wainscoting and floor tile. Jonathan will be building a custom linen cabinet and it will look somewhat like the one above but with one door. The cute little handle will be used on the cabinet. Then, we also plan on putting two open shelves above it for some open decorating space. 

As for the accents of yellow, I have a few tricks up my sleeve. I plan on DIYing the cute little print (but if someone is interested in paying for it, you can find it here). The towels and the shower curtain may take awhile. I am not the type to go and buy towels just because my old ones don't match the colors in our new bathroom and same goes for the shower curtain. Though, I do have a tentative plan of revamping our white shower curtain to look something like the one above. Finally, I have some yellow baskets that will look great on the open shelving and I am thinking of taking some yellow spray paint to a few accessories that I own. Sherry does this all the time:

We were given a claw foot tub (thank you Isaac and Mary!) and we purchased a vintage sink at an area reuse center. Both of which will end up looking something like the picture below, but in yellow of course. 

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Overall, I think our bathroom is going to be very cheery! I can't wait to get started! Now, its on to tackle the cast iron tub and sink. This should be interesting...I am determined to win!

Bare Bones

So we have been focusing our efforts on the upstairs. Our master bedroom is coming together quickly and I think I can see the end in sight! Jonathan has been doing most of the work up there, but I have been able to act as his personal assistant, so that has been nice. This past two weeks we have sistered the ceiling joists, insulated the walls and ceiling, installed the electric, and drywalled. 

First things first, this is where I left y'all last time: 

Jonathan (mostly) and I had the upstairs about 90% gutted. He still needed to take down the remaining half of the chimney and the wall beside it. Side note: that "chimney" is still a mystery to us. It was actually only a row of bricks that they built the wall around. There was no evidence of the other three sides to the chimney. So Jonathan just pulled it down brick by brick and we saved them to use as a border in our future garden. 

This is what everything looked like when it was 100% gutted:

After that, we sistered the ceiling joists. Basically this means attaching new joists to the old ones so that the ceiling is flat. Our house is old and because of that, nothing is level. This is a quick solution to that problem. Trust me, now that the whole thing is dry walled, it is amazing! The ceiling is perfectly flat! If you look in the above pictures, you can see the new joists peeking out just below the old ones. It was a lot of fun helping Jonathan with this! I held the beams in place at one end while he held the other and then nailed them all.

 

After that, Jonathan built out the closet:

It will be nice to have a big huge closet in our room. We are really looking forward to it as there is only one other closet in the whole house. Plus we don't have an attic, so this may be one of our most cherished storage spaces.

He also installed new electric. Previously the upstairs had only two lights. One in the smaller bedroom and one in the hallway. Also, get this, there were absolutely NO outlets at all! I don't know how the previous owners functioned without them. So Jonathan installed 6 outlets, wired 4 lights (one in the center of the room, one for the stairs, and two in the closet), and hardwired the smoke detector. 

After everything was framed and wired it was insulation time! I was able to help with this part, which helped to curb my hopeless-because-I'm-not-a-carpenter feeling. I basically put all the insulation in place and stapled it to the studs while Jonathan cut pieces specific to certain holes. We pounded out the whole upstairs in one night! It was a long three hours and we were horribly dirty after, but it felt like such an accomplishment. Due to the amount of insulation in the air, I never did get an after picture. But I am sure a lot of you know what walls filled with insulation look like. 

The final step to the walls was to drywall and mud them. Luckily, Jonathan's cousin's husband came over to help with this job. We have been helping them remodel their house for the past two years and now that we had our own house issues, he came to help us! That took the load off my shoulders (literally--can you picture me holding up sheets of drywall?? I can, but it wouldn't have been pretty.) It also allowed me to spend some time with these cute little ones: 

And finally, without further ado, here is our finished (well almost) master bedroom: 

 The staircase 

 The view when you reach the top of the stairs.

 Looking at the stairs.

 Our closet! 

 Instead of the railing that was there before, we put up a cute little knee wall. 

The access hole to the crawlspace above the back of our house. We are going to frame it out and make it into a removable bookshelf. I can't wait! 

Progress!!

I promised you progress pictures today and I am going to deliver! Hmm where to start? Well, first I would like to give you a run down of what we are working on and what our timeline looks like.

We are planning on moving-in in about a month to two months. It will all depend on what we can get done and how smoothly things go. Our list of things to do before we move includes:

1. Gutting the upstairs and making it into a big master bedroom
2. Gutting the bathroom and updating it
3. Sanding and painting the cabinets in the kitchen
4. Painting all the walls and ceilings in the house (the previous owners smoked, so all the walls and ceilings need to be painted to cover up the smell and color) 
5. Updating the electric
6. Updating the plumbing

So we have been steadily working on this list. Jonathan has been working his normal job during the day, coming home for dinner, and then heading to the house every evening. I have been helping where I can. Since my carpentry stills are *ehm* somewhat limited *ehm*, I do what I can. But enough of this background junk, on to the pictures!

So without further ado let's start with the kitchen:

As you can see all of the cupboard doors have been removed. The laminate tiles have been scraped off of the counter on the right side of the kitchen (top picture). I have also been sanding everything. First I pulled off the doors and all the hardware. Then I started pulling out nails and scraping down the cabinets. Now I am on to the sanding part. Once that is done, all the wood will be painted white (the trim, doors, and cabinets) and then we are going to just paint right over the walls. The walls are actually paneling and I am afraid to pull it all down, so a nice coat of primer and paint should do the job.

Now on to the rest of the downstairs:

We pulled the sink in the bathroom. Can you see how the wall sort of bows out? Well, because of that, we have decided to gut the bathroom. There was no way to fix it well without ripping out the rest of the wall. Oh plaster and lathe; how I hate you.

Then there is the guest bedroom and our living room. As you can see we pulled all of the carpet in each room and these rooms are just patiently waiting to be painted. I can't start priming and painting until Jonathan is done pulling all the plaster and cleaning it up. Otherwise my walls would be covered in dust and primer :)

And last but not least, the piece-de-resistance! The upstairs!!!:

 A view from the stairs

 No ceiling (I'm trying to convince Jonathan to keep it this way :) ) 

 Another view. Along the wall by the window is where the closets used to be.

 Where our bed will eventually be.

 Another view. Looking at the stairwell.

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From the stairwell looking at the doorway into the room. 

Eventually this wall will be completely gone. 

And there you have it! Can you start to picture what the upstairs is going to look like when it is all done?! When I took these pictures I kept 'ooo-ing' and 'ahh-ing' because it felt so open and airy. I can't wait till we start putting the drywall up!! 

Let's Catch Up

Sorry to all of our "fans" out there! I guess it is about time that we do a status report around here. Let's catch-up shall we?

The hubs and I have been busy, busy, busy tearing the house apart. We have our plan of action together and we are on the fast track to moving in. We would like to be in our new digs at the end of the month. Now we just need to pray that everything goes smoothly and that we can accomplish this grandiose task. Please pray! :)

So after this post, you may be wondering about the layout changes we referred to. We used floorplanner again to show you what our thoughts are. So here is the original house layout:

And here is what we would like it to look like in the end: (please note that the master bedroom is actually above the living room on the second floor)

You will notice that we are planning on adding on a bit. Here is a brief list of what we would like to do.

1. Make the kitchen bigger by bumping out the left wall to be even with the sun porch and the back wall to be even with the entryway into the house. 
2. Extend out the back entryway and add on a laundry room/entrance way. 
3. Add on to the guest bedroom making it into a office area.
4. Make the sun porch and the dining room into one room. 
5. Knock down the walls upstairs and make one big master bedroom. (We will eventually be adding on to the second story, but right now we aren't sure what that will look like.It will definitely include another bathroom and two more bedrooms though.)

So that is what we are working on now. We have decided that we want to complete the master bedroom, gut and renovate the bathroom, and paint everything before we move in. Its a lot of work, but we are up for the task!

Want to see what we have done so far? Come back tomorrow for some progress pictures!