We Have A Floor!!

As I suspected, the floors did not go in at the end of October.  Luckily that was only delayed about a week.  

They actually hammered each piece of wood in by hand.  No pneumatic gun.  Why you ask?  Gluttons for punishment?  Nah.  They like to do things old school because they feel that using the pneumatic gun results in some boards being tighter or looser than others.  Granted it goes much faster with automatic tools but they feel better about it and we couldn't be happier.  Forget that the floor is gorgeous...even though it still has to be sanded and polyurethaned.  It's a floor.  It represents one more step in the direction of us getting out of the carriage house and into our home.  Our spacious home where I'll have a kitchen and more than 300 sq ft to move around in.  

They're coming back to finish up the family room and hallway this week which already looks better now that the old wood has been removed.  

We would have liked to restore the old floors, but even the wood installer agreed that they were beyond repair.  So new floors it is.  

We should be getting the windows and new back door installed this week.  Another thing that will make a huge impact on the way the room looks.  And then, cabinets.  I may just pee myself I'm so excited.  

The Carriage House Bathroom Reveal...At Long Last

I won't lie.  There are still a few touch-ups, but nothing that you can tell from the pictures.  It's just me being super anal about things that probably no one else would notice.  Maybe my mother did rub off on me.  Hmm.  Anyway, here it is (drum roll please)...

You might be thinking that it looks a tad stark.  It does.  Originally I was going to paint it BM Woodlawn Blue which is what I painted the main room.  But, different light equals different look, and in the bathroom that color looked like a pastel Eastery color.  It also made the Travertine look pink.  No bueno.  I couldn't decide on a color and we had to move in so I just went with good old white.  We were going to use the original cast iron tub but it had a crack so we bought a new one.  We added (new plumbing/electrical/plaster) bead board, new vanity, toilet, fixtures, light and voila.  I would have liked to have switched the vanity to sit on the wall across from the toilet but there wasn't a lot of room and it would have cost a lot more to move the plumbing around.  We bought the little white cabinet off of Craigslist.  It's a little cramped there but we needed storage so it's functional.  It still needs a pop of color other than the shower curtain.  I'm taking an oil painting class right now and am working on something that may (or may not) work.  Either way it's probably going up just so that I don't have to look at a blank white wall.  

Just in case you forgot what it looked like before...enjoy!

Bad Blogger, Bad!

I know I haven't posted any updates of the house in a while but we've been so busy just trying to get the carriage house room up and ready for us to live in that there just hasn't been any time.  As it was, we were living with our neighbor for two weeks since we had to be out of our old house and the carriage house room took a wee bit longer to finish up than we were anticipating.  You know how things always take twice as long as you think they are going to?  Well for us it's ten times longer.  Go figure.  The delays started with the plasterer.  It took him 4 days instead of the 2 we thought it would take.  Apparantly it was quite humid and it wasn't drying as fast.  Then my husband and a friend put the tile in the bathroom.  Let's just say they were a little out of practice and it took a few days.  My husband also sanded the floor...kind of.  He really needed a belt sander but made due with what he had.  Needless to say it didn't turn out too good, but it's clean and sealed.  When we finish the house and I'm looking for something else to do (and I have some extra cash) I'm going to revisit this room and really fix it up.  For now we just need a clean place to stay.  We ended up putting down some really cheap carpet tiles that I found online.  Not completely stylish, but it looks a hell of a lot better than it did.  After two weeks at our neighbor's house I was ready to pull my hair out.  They're amazing people, but you never feel comfortable at someone else's house, you know?   So the carriage house is livable now.  We've got our Ikea daybed that folds out into a king bed, two nightstands that I bought at a consignment store that will eventually be painted and go in my daughter's room, an antique that my husband made into a tv cabinet (yes we have tv/cable/internet...heaven!), a mini fridge, a baker's rack that serves as our kitchen/pantry with a microwave, and a fold out table where we eat our meals.  The room is tiny, but I'm getting used to it.  We're still tweaking the bathroom a bit but once it's done I'll show some before and afters.  Keep in mind, this is not high style we're talking about, but when you see the before's you'll be amazed.  I know I was.

Anyway, now for house updates.  Here's some pictures of where we are now in the new kitchen.

Where the plywood remains is where the windows will eventually be.  

This is the left wall looking into the kitchen.  They haven't finished with the drywall yet so they haven't cut out the window openings.

Looking from the kitchen into the new family room chock full of our belongings.

Hallway leading away from the kitchen and family room.  First door on the right will be a full bathroom.  Second door is the butler's pantry.

New entry from dining room into kitchen.

So there has been some progress.  The electrical, plumbing, and insulation are done in the kitchen.  Drywall is almost done and then the kitchen, family room, hallway and butler's pantry get new wood floors.  Supposedly  the new floors are going in at the end of this month.  Supposedly.  I think the cabinets go up after that.  The cabinets and appliances have been sitting in the house for ages so it will be nice to have a little walking room:) 

The Swan (Home Edition)

Well, work has begun on the garage apartment.  The plumbing is almost done and I have to say it's kinda beautiful.  They used all copper piping and the way they have it layed out makes it almost look sculptural.  Our plumbers rock!  We've got a hot water heater, washer and dryer (left by the homeowners), and a utility sink in the garage which is where we'll wash dishes (Suck!).  The electrician is almost done doing his thing.  Then it's time for tile in the bathroom.  We're doing Travertine tiles instead of the marble that's going in the rest of the house.  Eventually this is going to be my husband's "man cave" so I'm trying to pick more masculine things for the room but I'm having a tough time.  Luckily he's been ok with what I've chosen...so far.  Here's some of the things that are going in the room...

The curtains are thermal lined from Target.  These were the only ones that we could agree on.  I think they are nice and neutral and have a masculine-ish look to them.

The light is definitely not masculine but it's the best we could do.  We bought this one for the room and bathroom at Lowe's.  I think it looks kind of period and fits in with the house even though I really don't care too much about preserving the history in the garage.

I wanted to go with a dark masculine color but the room is so dark that we really have to stick with lighter hues.  I let my husband have the color fan deck and he picked out a few really nice blues but they were way too dark so we agreed to use one of these.  The first is Benjamin Moore's Palladian Blue and the second is BM Woodlawn Blue.  I think he's leaning toward the Woodlawn Blue though they are so similar in color that I don't think he would even notice the difference.  Basically this means that I'm just going to choose the one that I like best (hee-hee).

So hopefully I'll be able to take some pictures next week of a completed bathroom.  I think drywall is going up next week so painting may be a bit delayed.  Then there's the floor which needs to be sanded...and the list goes on.  The finish line is barely in sight, but at least we can see it.

Plan B

This is the reason that we bought the house.  We live in a historic district where garages are few and far between.  Let me tell you, this is the mother of all setups.  A driveway AND a three car garage?  Unheard of (if you don't count the 12,000 sq ft school that has been turned into a home which has a porte cochere and a 4 car garage...whatever!)

 Anyway, we're on a deadline.  We have to be out of our other house by the 15th.  Yes, that's the 15th of September.  We've been wondering if we were going to have to rent a place since we still have yet to see any one room done in the house.  Not even a functioning toilet yet to speak of.  My husband was talking with the plumber the other day, and in his infinite brilliance ( the plumber's, not my husband's) he brought up the idea of fixing up the room over the garage as a place to live while the renovations continue on until the end of time.  My first thought?  Why in the hell didn't we think of this?  Duh!  It makes perfect sense.  That is until you go inside.  I haven't been up there since we first got the house and I'd forgotten what a mess it is. Seriously, it looks like a crack house.  No joke.

Here's the stairs leading to our Shangri-la. 

Top of the stairs with lovely shelving to the left.

And here it is folks.  Welcome home!

Plenty of room in that closet, right?

And now to the bathroom.  Or what I like to call the crapper.  I'm not referring to the toilet, but the whole bathroom in general.

I swear I saw a swarm of flies and black goo coming out of the toilet as I distinctly heard a voice say "Get Out!"

So here's where we'll be while the renovations continue.  Don't worry about us.  We'll fix it up a bit so we don't catch some sort of skin infection.  It certainly will be cozy.  Just the three of us and whatever else is living there.  The good news is that we don't have to the decorate for the Halloween party we have every year.  It's all ready done.   Ahhh, home crap home.

My Vacation

I'm on vacation.  Where did I go you ask?  Two blocks down the street to work on the house.   Yep, that's how we roll.  No Europe or Caribbean for us.  I've officially taken off my professional hat and put on my hard hat.  While construction is going on outside my husband and I have been working our butts off inside.  I'm working on the windows and he's working on taking some walls down for the plumbers.  That's right, I said plumbers.  Remember way back when when I said that the plumbing was almost done?  Well we got that work inspected and it didn't pass.  Our new contractor brought in his plumber who agreed with the inspector that the best thing to do would be to rip all the plumbing out and start fresh.  That was fun news.   It took a few minutes to comprehend and then a few days to decompress, but we've moved on and the work is finally getting done properly.  We've really learned a lot from this process, like never buy an old house again.  Ever.  Oh, and apparently you really do get what you pay for.   

 Anyway this week has been in slow motion.  I started the first couple of days taking down wallpaper in the old kitchen.  Then I come to find out that we're going to be hiring someone to finish the walls with a skim-coat.  So that was a big fat waste of time and sweat.  The past few days I've been working on 3 windows.  Yes, days and 3 windows.  I am beyond frustrated.  Imagine a hundred plus years of painting and sloppily repainting the window sills.  It's bumpy and chipped everywhere.  At first I was really gung ho and thought I was going to strip the paint off every window.  Now that I've returned from fantasy land I am thinking that I need to get some really nice curtains to both cover and draw the eye away from the hideousness.  I gave it the old college try though.  I've been a sanding, spackling, caulking fool and they still look like crap.  I'm getting ready to throw some paint on them and call it good.  On to the thousand other windows in the house that are equally as awful.  

On the up side we officially have progress with the new kitchen and porch.  We really are going to have windows but we haven't ordered them yet so for now we've got plywood.  Whatever gets us into the house!

Here's the porch coming along.

This is the old kitchen (and my nemesis...the windows) with the new kitchen opening to the right.

Here's the shell of the new kitchen.

The kitchen looking into the old kitchen which will now be the family room.

So there is progress, but we still need HVAC finished up, new electrical, a bathroom and a kitchen.  

Serenity now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bathtub Sneak Peek and Kitchen Update

Well, here's a sneak peak at what I've been working on in 100 degree weather in a house with no air conditioning. 

 I painted the tub the color that the bathroom is going to be and then did a stencil over it in a couple of shades lighter for contrast.  I'm not going to say that it was easy, especially around the curves.  There were a few times when I was sweating profusely surrounded by what I'm sure was lead dust that I wanted to say f-it and leave it painted without the stencil.  It's not perfect in spots but I think that unless you're really hunting for mistakes it's pretty good.  Now I'm working on the clawfeet which at first I was going to do a gilded silver treatment but then realized that A) I wasn't sure if I'd like it and B) it seemed like a bigger pain in the butt so I'm now going with white feet.  My husband wants me to paint the nails a different color.  Not sure about that but maybe.   The tub color is actually a bit darker than it appears since it is now sitting in the master bedroom which gets a bit more light.  This is more what the actual color of it is:

And just to recap, this is what the tub looked like before.

As you can see, it's a vast improvement.  I had to share my progress with someone since it doesn't look like it's going to its final resting place in the master bath anytime soon.

On a different note, there has been some work on the new kitchen.  The joists and subfloor are down, and the studs are up for one wall.

It's finally starting to look like something.  In the next week the rest of the framing and outer sheathing will go up and we'll have someone come to give a roof estimate.  I knew this was going to be a long process but... wow.