The Laundry Room

This was our laundry room on our final home inspection ... doesn't look much like a laundry room does it! It was an addition, that was being used as a bedroom. It is the first room off of the deck and the driveway, so it didn't make much sense as a bedroom. It was very cold and drafty, and it was very awkward to walk all the way around to the front of the house with groceries. Also, the deck was off of this room, so if you wanted to sit on the deck, or BBQ, you had to walk through the bedroom, or all the way around the house.

So we cleared out the carpet and the ... lovely ... curtains, and added new wood blinds. We also ran new water pipes for the washing machine and added a vent for the dryer. This was quite the adventure as we had to drill through the exterior brick wall for the new pipes, since this was an addition.

We have the ceiling painted and the new lights installed, but still haven't finished the wall color and the flooring. We are planning on painting the walls a mossy green color, with a neutral and muted ceramic floor. We still have to change some of the heating vents around, and cut into the old subfloor to do that. Then onto new subfloor and all of the finishes.

I am just glad to finally have somewhere to do laundry that isn't covered in dust!! Everything else will come along soon enough.

The Dining Room

As promised, this is the story of how we created a dining room from a hallway!

Below is a picture of the hallway when we first moved in. It had a built in shelving unit on the right, and a fridge, washer and dryer on the left. The left is the back wall of the house, and the right is the back wall of the kitchen. The whole hallway was about 8 ft wide, and a real waste of space. There was nowhere to hang clothes, it was very dark, and really boring! Also, the kitchen felt very closed in with just two small doorways on either end. This resulted in a very square and dark kitchen. There are no windows in this part of the house, so lighting is a major issue. We decided that the best thing for us to do was some demolition!

Once we decided that's what we were going to do, we took a step back! I mean could we really take a wall down?

Was it supporting anything?

Would our house fall down?

Luckily one of our friends is a structural engineer so we consulted with him. We determined that it would be ok to take the wall out. So we grabbed some friends and told them to bring their masks and dust suits!

We found some real surprises in the shelving unit ... like an old chimney ... that was never properly supported ... super exciting! So taking the wall down took a little more effort than first planned, but we did it! The picture below shows the hallway with the freezer, and the start of the kitchen. The white board in the bottom right corner shows where the wall used to be.

After ripping out three layers of old linoleum, we got back down to the original pine floorboards in the kitchen and the hallway. We wanted to try to save them, but they were cracked and had too many holes in them. Also, because of the weight of the unsupported chimney, there was a major dip in the floor. From the far wall of the kitchen to the back wall of the hallway it was out almost 2 inches in the middle!

Our next adventure was down in the basement ... well ... more like glorified crawlspace! It's just under 6 feet at the highest point, so it made for some interesting adventures for my tall husband and his taller brother! We installed some steel jack posts after consulting with our engineer friend, and that mostly corrected the problem. We then used our subfloor to further level the floors, another weekend adventure!

The final stage was painting the walls a light sand color and installing a dark hardwood floor. It really highlights the high ceilings and the dark wood furniture that we have. Last weekend we installed our new ceiling light, finally replacing the contractor special that was up there!! Now the kitchen and dining room is one big room, over 200 square feet in size.

Ta-daa!! Doesn't look much like a hallway anymore!!

Our Journey

Well this is my first post on the new blog, so here we go!

A little background about me first. My husband and I were married almost a year ago, and we were getting used to being done school, living together, renting our first place, and being married. And just as we were getting comfortable, my husband was transfered for work. It was a great opportunity for him, and we are young with no children, so we decided to embark on this new adventure.

Great!

So we had about a month to find somewhere to live. He was transfered to a small town about three hours away from where we were. We both worked a crazy amount of hours, so it was difficult to get time off together. We did a ton of research on the internet trying to figure out what we wanted. We were looking for a place to rent, but because of the small town thing, there were not many places to rent. So we decided to jump into home ownership! After a few long days on the road we finally found the perfect place.

With our limited budget we figured out pretty quickly that it was going to be a fixer-upper! A little concerning for me since I have never been a part of a renovation! My experience consisted of ... painting ... and watching renovation shows on TV!!

Our new house is about 100 years old, and decor wise, is stuck somewhere in the 1970's?? It is a one and a half story, with a slope ceiling upstairs. There are three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, a living room, laundry room and kitchen. We also created a dining room out of a hallway (more about that later!) Makes for an interesting combination of colors and wallpaper!!

So this is the journey of our first (technically second) home, and our first renovation!