Kitchen Floor

We FINALLY got to see the house's original kitchen floor!  It's been peeking through a little hole in the underlayment, where the vinyl tile was missing.  I could see a green floor under there, and it looked like linoleum.  And it was!

When we got home from vacation, K's brother had gutted our kitchen and our first floor bathroom.  The kitchen cabinets were gone, except for the small section that held the sink and dishwasher.  K and her brother took care of that within a day.  He had also pulled up all the gross stick-down vinyl tile and the wood underlayment.

This was underneath:

It was tricky to capture the exact color, but the tiles are apple green and emerald green.  And all the many spots are rusty nails.  Soooo many nails!  That's one of the main reasons the floor isn't salvageable.  It also might be unsafe (i.e. asbestos), so we're covering it back up.

I hate that we have to cover it up, though.  I love the colors.  Since we bought this house, I've been begging K to let me put green Marmoleum in our kitchen.  Pretty much the same color as this apple green linoleum.  And with the green walls, I can just imagine how cute this kitchen used to be!  Green floors, green walls, white cabinets, some kind of Formica on the countertops?  I bet it was adorable.  I'm sad to cover up this floor, so I took a bunch of photos.

The original kitchen had a slightly different layout.  Looks like a little panel of cupboards angled out here.

The border as it meets the hallway hardwood floor  

The emerald green continues into the small hallway leading to the mud room, and through the mud room itself.

I love this beautiful swirly green

And here's the bathroom!  The toilet is perfectly fine, so we're keeping that.  Everything else has been removed, all the way down to the subfloor.

The kitchen is the #1 priority right now, but we'll do the bathroom as soon as we can.  I'm not sure that we needed to gut it this soon-- if we're not going to be working on it right away-- but it's still a LOT of work DONE!

VACATION

K and I are in Puerto Rico this week for VACATION!!!  The timing worked out for her-- before she starts up another project for work.  And we both needed a break from working on our house. --We spent about a week working on our walls and ceilings, and then the week after that was when our hardwood floors were getting done, and we were mostly sleeping at our neighbors' house...

And while we are gone, K's employee/brother is demo-ing our entire kitchen!  And the first floor bathroom!

Emptying EVERYTHING!

Main floor bathroom

We're excited to see the progress, for sure.  It's not going to be an easy couple months-- I know that.  These are big remodels that we're just starting, so I'm glad we're getting some rest on vacation before we have to get started.

Hardwood Floor Progress

As of today, there is PROGRESS on our floors!  Our hardwood floors were sanded today, and they're already looking fantastic!  Tomorrow, the floor guys will start the staining and sealing process.  We've picked a nice dark color for the stain, that will really show off the grain of the maple. 

It looks like there are 2 burns in the living room floor that didn't sand out-- they're just too deep.  (Honestly, I thought there would be so many more burns and scratches that were too deep!)  They'll fill those in, and I think once the floor is stained they will just look like knots in the wood.  I don't think they'll be terribly noticeable.

Living room

Our bedroom

Baby's room

Room Craziness

It's been a rough week.  Whew.  Poor K is wiped out...  I can't keep up, either!  We've been working on the walls and ceilings in our rooms with hardwood floors, in order to get those walls before the floor guys come in to do the refinishing on Monday.

So, patching, mudding, sanding, painting our plaster & lathe walls.  Trying to repair years of damage and neglect.  It's totally working-- the walls look 100 times better!  It's just a LOT of work.

K used a sprayer to paint all our doors and windows, which were previously all a very industrial-looking tan (which we're SO sick of!)  We figured this would be a big improvement until we replace the windows, and visually, it is definitely much better!

Newspaper & painter's tape = cheap stained glass

Living room window, mid-taping

Post-spraying

She also sprayed all our vent covers, just so we didn't have to go out and buy all new ones right now, on top of all our other expenses.  Some of them were painted weird, just like our trim, and some were just old-looking.  Now, they may not all look perfect when you look closely, but they sure look better. 

Repairing progress in Baby's room

Above, the baby's room now has a smooth painted ceiling, painted windows and doors, and wall repair is mostly complete.  This room will have painted white trim around the windows and doors.  The other rooms will have stained wood trim.

Our room has a newly painted ceiling, painted walls, painted windows and closet doors.  The door to our room was too damaged, so we'll need to get a new one.  We decided not to mess with the texture on our ceiling.  I guess the look of it grew on us over these last couple years. But it was so much dingier than we had realized-- once K got painting it with the bright white paint, it was like, "WOW!"  It looks so clean and crisp, and the chandelier looks even nicer now.  Yay!

And ohhhhh, the living room.  I'm in love.  Seriously... we've never had a usable living room, in all the time we've owned the house.  For a few days, here and there, we've set up a sitting area when we needed to, but it was always on top of a big sisal rug, on top of the ram board from when we were working on the ceiling.  And there was always wrapped-up bookshelves in the corner, and storage stuff against the wall.  So, just never an actual "living room."
But it's already so pretty.
I'm so excited!

Living room, in progress

The ceiling and coves are smooth, painted, and gorgeous.  The windows are sprayed, which is a huge improvement.  K had to do some major repairs on the entryways to the room because the plaster had gotten nicked away over the years.  She built them back up, so now the corners are sharp and crisp once again.  And the walls, though still in progress, already look sooo much better.  :-)

Rough week, true, but it's so fantastic to see this progress and know we'll have actual finished rooms SOON!

Floor Prep and Room Progress

More progress on the rooms!  The ceiling in the nursery is now all scraped.  K was surprised at how nice it all came off-- much better than in the living room.  She thinks it will be really easy to mud and get cleaned up.

The hallway ceiling is also scraped.  This is the hallway that connects all the rooms on the first floor.  Just a small little space, but the ceiling looks a lot better already.

The trim around the living room windows has been pulled.  We'll just paint the inner wood parts, until we replace the windows.

Our floors are also accessible now, with the trim pulled in all the rooms.  We have some floor guys coming to refinish them in just a little over a week.  Can't wait!  K could do them herself, but she thinks it's just easier to have them do it, since it's such a messy process.  I'm excited to pick out the stain color.

These beautiful floors need some LOVE!

There are lots of little burns on the floors in all the rooms...   :-(

In our bedroom, the trim was painted with a black glossy enamel paint.  But not painted well-- just slapped on with one pass, with the brushstrokes showing on each piece.  And they got the black paint on the floor quite a bit when they did it.  Dummies.

Black paint from the trim

But it's all going to be good.  I'm so excited to see them all sanded, stained, and glowing.

Starting On the Bedrooms & Main Bath

I had no idea when we'd start working on the rooms of the house, but it's suddenly happening!!  K and her bro did a bunch of work on the house today-- pulling off the painted, wrecked-up trim and starting to scrape off the popcorn ceiling in the nursery.
... Did I just say nursery?  That's right, I did!!  K and I are expecting a baby, due at the end of June.  We're over the moon about it.  And so, the spare bedroom is now being prepared to be the baby's room, just as we hoped it would be someday.

Popcorn ceiling on its way out

K had also spent a large part of her day in her office, so by the time the evening rolled around, she was itching to do some wrecking!  Getting rid of those things in the house that she's so sick of.
So... she took a jackhammer to the bathroom on the first floor.  She pulled off some of the tiles, and pulled down the storage above the bathtub. 

We have wanted to improve this bathroom since we bought the house.  I think that it may be original to the house...?  Or maybe it's a 70s remodel?  Not sure, but it's never been very functional for us.  The worst is how filthy it was.  After years of renters, we never could get it clean.  The bathtub, though iron, is a typical size, so a tall gal like me can't take a bath in it without my whole torso or all my legs sticking out of the water.  And with the storage above the shower, I'm too tall to take a shower in here!  The storage up there also wasn't necessary because there's a spacious cedar-lined closet in the bathroom already.

Our goals for remodeling this bathroom are to put in a deeper bathtub, make the shower usable for a tall lady like me, replace the worn-out vanity and maybe even put in two sinks.

I did make sure to keep those chrome pulls on the cabinets!

Again, I'm not sure if this bathroom is original or a remodel?  Once K started taking down some of the storage and tile, we could see that the walls under the storage used to be painted yellow.

Garages Are the Best Things In Wintertime

There's not much else to say about this.  We have a garage with a garage door and security system, and it's keeping our cars free from snow and ice this winter.  It's incredible!!

Next year, K plans to run electricity to it, and she'll need to use an AC unit in there come summer.  We have some small finishing to do-- more painting on the trim, etc.  Little things that won't be a total pain to do when it's nice outside, and now that we're not rushing to complete it.