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Making Space Work; Surviving the Reno
Making space work; I touched on this “surviving the reno” experience in a previous post but it’s definitely worth revisiting. As we navigated the renovation, we had to be flexible and down-right creative at times. You learn to get resourceful with making space work during a whole home renovation. It was a struggle to feel “normal” during those days that seemed would never end. Days when the construction dust was thick and we were tripping over a variety of tools and materials strewn about. Even the tiniest amount of “normalcy” was the life preserver I was reaching for at the end of the day! Turning Chaos into Order by Making…
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Painting Round 2
With the hardwood flooring complete in the downstairs spaces, we could now turn our attention to painting some of those same rooms. Like the last post on the hardwoods, I’m going to just lump the painting in together. In real time, the rooms were painted as we completed other projects in each space over the course of several months. We previously discussed our paint color choices in an earlier post that you can read here. And here’s a discussion on painting the upstairs rooms, if you’d like to revisit that process! Painting: Color Makes All The Difference We wanted to have our cool color palette on full display in the…
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Hardwoods Going Down(stairs)!
We’re ready for the installation of the hardwoods downstairs in our Young Victorian! And while it will take a total of 5 months to complete the task (given there are 6 rooms to work through in stages), we’ll go ahead and cover all of the downstairs wood flooring in one post, just to button-up the topic! In case you missed it, or because I wrote the posts so long ago, you can go to this post to read about the flooring we chose. And you can go to this post on the first part of the process of laying the floors upstairs. And then go to this post to see…
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…Water (Part 2)
Water, it’s a thing! In my last post, I shared the saga of our flooded basement and the seasonal stream that began running through our property in the spring of 2016. And while the cause of the flooding was determined and subsequently resolved, there was yet another challenge just ahead for us. You Can’t Ignore Water About a week after the flooding issue (mind you the water was still actively flowing through our repaired drainage and would continue to do so for several more weeks), Warren made yet another water related discovery. This time, water made it’s presence known in the form of a damaged exterior wall in the foyer.…
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Enter: The Foyer
Before we move into the foyer work, let me just catch you up real quick on the progress upstairs. With the upstairs flooring done (remember that?), we were able to move into our own bedroom and sleep in our own bed! We finished up the guest room for anyone brave enough to visit during the “Pardon Our Dust” period. And we created a proper office space for Warren and I to run our businesses from (because we did have to make time to make money throughout this renovation chaos)! Time Flies At this point in the renovation, it is April, 2016. Hard to believe that it has been almost 3…
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Kitchen Cabinets: An Open and Shut Case
We Need Cabinets on the Cheap! Hey, it’s all about the kitchen cabinets today! So I’ve mentioned budget constraints before since we had so many renovation projects to complete. And those constraints definitely applied to the kitchen cabinets. While we had custom cabinets already in the kitchen, they looked crazy! Best we can tell, the choice to incorporate the reproduction stove and antique farmhouse sink was made AFTER the cabinets were ordered. Hence none of the upper or lower cabinets lined up with anything because both the stove and sink are asymmetrical. I thought I could live with it but I quickly discovered that I.could.not! To accommodate the only window…
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Getting To Know Our Young Victorian
Building a Dream Home In my last post, I mentioned that I would get into the backstory on Annabelle’s Place. While she is only 20 years old, she does have some interesting history that’s fun to share. This house was originally built as a dream retirement home for a Michigan couple planning to move closer to their daughter. The original plans for the house were modified along the way. Things like moving the master bathroom, making a guest bath into an upstairs laundry room, that sort of thing. Fortunately, we have all of the blueprints that were later adapted by a local architect, which is something that has helped us…
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Hard (Wood Flooring) Lessons Learned (Part 2)
Hardwood Flooring: Sanding and Oiling Welcome back! Ready to talk more hardwood flooring? Good, because there’s lots more flooring stuff going on in the Young Victorian we’ve dubbed Annabelle’s Place. In our last flooring post, we had just finished installing all of the upstairs wood flooring and were excited (may not be the right word) to get going on finishing the floor. First step? Prep the raw wood for sanding. We went around and filled some of the larger wood knots in the floor with a wood filler. Remember that the flooring we chose was a rustic, full-of-character wood that did have some imperfections. Consequently, there were spots here and…
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The Tale of One Ugly Kitchen!
Everything’s Got to Go! During the early weeks and months of our Young Victorian renovation, we had decided that everything needed to go in the kitchen! So we went ahead and began the kitchen demo project while we were waiting for our hardwood flooring to acclimate. Here’s what the kitchen space looked like when we purchased the house: We had also decided that we would need to get rid of the kitchen floor tile. While we had first wanted to try and keep it, we did come to the conclusion that there were just too many broken tiles and an impossible-to-work-with grout color to keep it. You can…
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Hard (Wood Flooring) Lessons Learned (Part 1)
Hardwood Flooring – DIY Style During the three months we were waiting to close on the purchase of our home (you can catch-up on that story here), and we had far too much time to make decisions on the renovation projects, we came to the decision on what to do with the floors in our not-so-old Victorian home. And for the most part, it was a choice to put-down hardwood flooring throughout the house. Mind you this was only going to happen if we did the installation ourselves because, well, it was simply a cost factor! With all of the other projects we needed to complete, budget was always a…
