Kitchen Remodel take 456

I knew when we bought our house that I'd want to re-do the kitchen.  The tile, while cute, was NASTY.  It was cracked, the grout was creepy, and tile on a countertop just didn't make sense to me.  Plus, it was really shallow.  The owners had done a crappy, quick, and thoughtless "update" before we moved in and laid sheet linoleum, sprayed the cabinets (in and out - with the contact paper still in and with shitty paint).



When we had the wall of tile removed, a giant two inch gap was left between the wall and the linoleum.  That was in 2011.  Two years later, I decided to do something about it.  We knew that there was a plywood subfloor under the linoleum since we could see this:

 

I was going CRAZY with the ugly linoleum.  I thought  painting the floor a cool color might be a great solution...

So one Saturday afternoon when the baby was asleep, I started ripping.  And steaming.  And ripping.



Only to find...ASPESTOS TILE!!


Ah, what luck.  So now we have an aspestos, paper, linoleum tile.  The greatest thing was when we ripped up the lino and was steaming the aspestos tile, the smell of 50 year old cigarette smoke and burned food wafted through the entire house - it was dreamy.

Now, my $60 project has just gotten much more expensive.  We could have had the aspestos removed for approx $500 (we just had it done at the riverhouse, so I knew approx. pricing) OR we could just put something on top of it so as not to disturb it.

I had ordered some samples from ifloor for the river house and liked an imitation slate vinyl plank.  I placed the order and waiting for the shipping confirmation...

Meanwhile, my kids were dropping food - a lot of food on this nasty paper/aspestos floor.  The black beans were getting smushed into the paper, broken glasses were getting lost in the layers, etc.

Growing up, my parents removed the carpet in our house looking for hardwood underneath.  What they found was full of nails, holes, and paint.  But, since they didn't have the money to replace it, we lived with it like that for what seemed like years (though it could have been weeks, really).  It was not cute.

Anyway, TWO FRICKEN WEEKS LATER, my flooring arrived.

And, while the children were asleep...this happened.



It took a whole 4 hour period to figure out what we were doing.  But on day two during naptime, we finished.

This was our kitchen after our mini remodel two years ago...after running out of money for the floors and table...
 

Here it is today (well, bad in the dark picture with all the dusty stuff piled next to the sink).


And our stove...
 

Today!  I think it looks particularly awesome next to the chalkboard!


Bubbs cut our table a few weeks ago when I had just had it with the nasty original tabletop.  I painted the base last week, but I have to put a coat of voc free poly on it when the kids are out soon.  The poster above the bench is getting repaired b/c our ikea frame just fell off the wall and broke the other day.



Bubbs also created this genius pot/pan closet a few years ago and I always meant to paint the shelves and clean it up. 
 

Two years later I finally got around to it :)


We're going to have to finish the trim next weekend, but for now, I'm so happy with the results.

Bedside tables for a room with no room!

Our new bedroom is working out marvelously.



It feels like a secret adult place in our totally kid house.



But...I like to read in bed, and drink water before I fall asleep.

So far, we've been reaching into the bedside "closets" to put the water down, but as I thought about breastfeeding in bed, I started to get nervous about how that would work.  Plus, with my giant belly, I'm having trouble sitting up on my own and it required a little reaching.

At ikea the other day, I saw the Ribba picture ledges and knew they would be perfect!

I bought 2 and wish I had bought more.



I don't LOVE the way they look, but they hold a glass of water nicely, my book perfectly, and require no getting up at all.

Plus, surprisingly, we don't knock them at all when we get up.

Quick easy solution.

Love it.

Au Pair Room / Basement Remodel Take 2

As both my boys snore in my bed, I'm awake at 4am again.  I've had a cold plus I'm 32 weeks pregnant which means mama goes to bed at 8pm - then the boys find there way in there and T takes turns rolling between me and bubbs cuddling.  It gets awfully hot in bed with three of us and I'm a little concerned what we're going to do when the baby comes.

***

Our rumpus room was initial built so Bubbs could have a music room to play guitar in while T was asleep, as a guest room, and a general storage area for our family.

When we bought the house it was a garage, plain and simple.  The original 1948 gravity heaters were in place as well as some 10-15 year old water heaters.  They took up the majority of the space.  There were also cracked sinks, broken doors, funky work benches, and a creepy room we hear from the neighbors was a recording studio.







We upgraded the furnaces and water heaters, made the windows bigger, added a real door and sheet rocked the garage.  We had some cabinets built to store all of our junk plus the stackable washer and dryer and added some ikea doors to hide it all.






Some of this happened there:


We had a place for our 1000+ records to be stored (and played)...


Our Manstad sofa bed did its job for lots of folks hosting grandparents for overnight stays:


And our storage, well, it stored a lot of baby junk (that now lives upstairs in our house):




I think we'll be done today - with construction - of the Au Pair's room.  The laundry is now out in the main part of the garage (excuse the mess) - can you see it on the left side of the photo?  I'm actually thrilled to have it in a more easily accessible place.  Carrying loads of laundry through four sets of doors is annoying - now I only have two to fight with while I bring it up and down the stairs.



We had the plumber do hookups for a small kitchen while the walls were open so eventually this could become a little inlaw unit that either inlaws actually live in or we use as a guest suite once again.


When you walk into the room, what used to be a large open space with a huge beam in the middle, is now an L shaped room with a small bathroom to the left.  I wanted them to incorporate the beam into the wall as much as possible.  The crazy thing is that the room seems just as big now as it did with the beam there b/c that thing made it impossible to use the entire room in a cohesive way.



This is the old space...(in the middle of our last round of construction):


Same angle now (in the middle of construction):

(you are looking into the bathroom from the Au Pair's bedroom, and through it to the hallway which allows us to still access the backyard).



The flooring didn't turn out so bad for 99c a sq foot!  We might use it in the river house if we get totally desperate and run out of money.


There's a tiny corner shower - and two doors to this room.  One that leads into the bedroom, and one that leads into the hall. 

Since our Au Pair needs a private place to live, had we not created a hallway and added a new door to the backyard, we would be in for a year of no backyard access.  And while we use it pretty infrequently, there are a few days a year that we love it out there.  Plus, T really wants to paint.  And he's SO not doing it in the house.



I think her bed will go here (I scored a great frame off Craigslist last weekend) with our old side tables and lamps beside it.


And in this mess of furniture and storage, we'll add a small loveseat, desk, TV and a microwave and mini fridge.


(what the area looks like minus the storage :)


Here's our hallway with our door to the backyard.


Don't worry, they are creating steps for us...and a cat door for the cats...

 

And this is her door to the backyard  - that will only be accessible by our Au Pair.

I'm exciting to get all the furniture in place and get construction out of our hair (and that damn dust out of my house).

Since we now don't have a guest room, our guests will have to come visit and stay at my mom's (upstairs) or visit us in the riverhouse :)  In the meantime, we have tentative plans for my best friend to come up from LA to stay in our room before the Au Pair arrives so a deadline is fast approaching...

Most people are out buying cribs or clothes for their new baby - our big purchase was building a bathroom for our Au Pair.  She comes in 5 weeks!

Cutting and Sawing and Drilling and Dreaming - Closet Fun

This monstrosity was my closet.

I don't have drawers small enough to be useful underwear and sock drawers so I used these cubes that sat on my closet floor along with 50% of my shoes.

My closet has a single narrow door with a lot of space on either side - but it is super dark and not set up in any way that is useful.  Plus the bar looked like it was about to snap.

I headed to my local cramped hardware store (if you've only been to home depot, you haven't lived).

There were white plastic options for cheaper, but I bought three sets of these.



They sat in a bag in the front hall for about a month.

Then, one day, during my lunch break, I got a bug up my butt to do something about my closet (that bug might have been the house exchange coming up.

First, I took got out the drill.

Second, I looked up you-tube videos so I could figure out how to use the drill.

25 minutes later - I figured out how to load the screwy thing into the zizzer thing.

Then I removed the pole.

Um, it was PVC pipe.

Seriously.

In yet another stupid idea from the people here before us (to be archived with painting latex over oil based paint), rather than spend the money on a wood closet bar, they bought PVC pipe.

In yet another stupid idea from US, I just cut the PVC to the lengths I wanted it rather than buying wood.

I used the only saw we have that you don't plug in and cut the PVC into equal (sort of) pieces (after measuring the closet with a flimsy tailoring measuring tape.

Once they were cut and the totally poison PVC sawdust was floating throughout my garage, I went back in to start to re-assemble.

Using my handy dandy thinker hat, I figured that I could start the drill holes with nails.




After an hour of prep, I got my first bar up.


On the other side, I placed two bars - one on top of the other.  I figured dresses and coats could go on the tall bar and shirts and pants could go on the stacked bars.

There was a bookcase that had been abandoned in the garage, so I singlehandedly (well, actually, doublehandedly) carried it back upstairs and loaded my shoes and my underwear/sock boxes on top.

I also took some spare nails to hang belts and bras.



Ta Da!




Oh - and I finally put a lightbulb in (it has been over a year) and the light doesn't work in there. Figures. Thus, aside from my crappy photography skills, the crappy pictures.

And we re-arrange the dining room once again!

This wall has kinda always bugged me.



When we moved in I had this idea for rustic floating shelves to display all of my pretty white bud vases against the blue wall, but that never happened. Instead we found this great midcentury piece that has done the job okay.

Problem was, the wall was just too big for it. I hated the mirrors and the wedding pictures on it. But, no real solution had appeared so we just kept it and I continued browsing craigslist.

We were supposed to buckle down this weekend and get the house totally ready for our upcoming house exchange (strangers staying in our house while we stay in theirs).

Then, on Friday night, I found this!
And the dimensions were PERFECT for either our living room OR our dining room.

They were asking $300 for it, but that was definitely not in our budget, so I asked if they would take $150. They said yes! The thing is GIANT (112" long by 89"tall). I figured we could sell one of the other pieces and make $150 to make it an even trade.

Let the re-arranging begin!

Like I said awhile ago, I was kinda over the expedit in the living room. The books were always getting messy looking, I couldn't hide the TV in any way that looked great, and it just didn't feel like a grown up home to me.

Here's what they both looked like...





As we were planning what to do with the expedit my mom came down and told us she would buy it from us. Not having to post it on craigslist is awesome.

We called the movers and they would pick up our new bookcase at 3, bring it here, put it back together, then move the expedit up to my mom's.



When we moved the expedit into the hallway, we realized someone had been stashing snacks behind it for a LONG time.


The plan was to put the TV in the Rumpus Room and put the new bookcase in the living room.

Then we realized the TV would fit in the display from the dining room...PERFECTLY. And all the equipment could fit in the storage underneath...and the speakers in the spot above! I didn't even mind that the TV wasn't covered. Because it fit in the spot perfectly it wasn't too offensive.



Did a little switcheroo...(see the expedit awaiting the movers in the hallway)...


Bubbs hooked up the electronics while T modeled his "robot pants"


To make a long, boring, and whiny story short - the movers stank like pot and were horrible at their job. Bubbs and I ended up paying them for two hours (plus tip) and we put all the furniture together ourselves, dissembled the expedit, moved it upstairs and put it back together (not an easy task).



Apparently Elmo was riding a train in this photo.



Our entire Saturday was eaten up getting this beauty together and mounted to the wall (to avoid toddler death by climbing). Then we spent Sunday morning putting everything back together again.

We still have holes to patch, but I love the results.


The dining room looks giant with this in there. It seems a little busy with all the colors of the books, so I might arrange by color some afternoon during naptime, but for now, I like it.

I need so much help in the shelf styling department, but I see many garage sales in my future to make these shelves pretty :)


Ta Da!