Saturday, June 12, 2010

We're Done! But not really

Jason painted some interior doors!
These doors were yellowed and filthy, but now they are shiny and white to match the trim.  See the headboard and dishwasher in the corner?  We're still trying to get rid of these things on craigslist.  Any takers?  It is pretty annoying trying to park the car around them.  But hey, we can actually use our garage for its intended purpose!  I don't know if you remember some previous pictures of the garage, but it was basically a big trash can for us during the remodel.
This is the pantry door, all painted and cleaned up!  I looked back through the older pictures, and I figured out that we haven't had this door installed since we demoed the floor in the kitchen back in September.  September, my friends!  This is big!  

So you might be thinking, "hey, looks like they are all done with the remodel, what is there left to do?  Has my favorite blog reached a natural end?"  Now that we are moved in upstairs, settled in, and back to entertaining our friends like before, it does feel that we have reached a sort of completion.  However, looming in plain view there are several projects that refuse to let us relax in sweet wedded weekend bliss.  

One of the first projects we intend to take on next is installing the under cabinet lighting and the backsplash.  We want to do a simple tile backsplash that won't compete with the countertop.  As you can see, it is already wired for the under cabinet lighting, with a separate switch and everything!  I hope this isn't super dangerous having those wires hanging out above our appliances like that.  
Plus, we should really do something about this big gaping hole in the island.  We want to put the same backsplash tile in here.  Luckily, we haven't lost anything besides crumbs down here, knock on granite! 
Speaking of tiling, we ripped out the existing tile in front of the fireplace.  There was nothing wrong with the plain brown tile per se, but we weren't really in love with it either.  I guess we were kind of demo happy!  Now, we can't decide what we want to put here instead.  We've toyed with the idea of a granite slab, but some pretty tile could really look nice also.  Anything is better than this concrete mess!  
And speaking of the fireplace, we have another gaping hole in the mantle.  There used to be a florescent light in here with a piece of glass over it, but the piece of glass was broken on day one of demo.  That is okay, because we didn't really want a light in the mantle anyway.  Jason wants to build a more substantial wood mantle that flanks the sides as well.  He feels really confident about this, and I'm very intrigued to see what he comes up with.  I think he's been forced to watch too much HGTV!  Yay! 
And of course there is this monstrosity!  It is the bathroom, which we have not touched at all.  Those stick on tiles really have to go, not to mention the wallpaper covered with peach colored paint and the window with the shower curtain over it.  Jason particularly hates the pink tub, and I particularly hate the chrome sink mirror.  
I don't think I've ever shown you all this, probably because I'm totally ashamed and repulsed by its outdated ugliness.  It's a part of the wall, so guess what that means?  It means that we are probably going to demo this entire bathroom!  My, won't that feel good?  Demo has been my favorite part of this entire renovation, most likely because I can easily participate and because it gives me a thrill!  But for right now, it stays intact in its shamefulness. 
Another big project we want to do is restore the porch to a cement slab and add some landscaping.  Someone put in this wood decking over the existing porch, and I know it wasn't that long ago because the DCAssessor website has a picture of our house without it.  We hate it.  Our realtor nicknamed it "the dock," and the steps are really rickety feeling.  We had Brian take a look, and the steps need to be repoured, but it shouldn't be too expensive of a project.  I will do ANYTHING to get rid of that white wicker fence stuff!  When I saw this house online, I was completely turned off by it.  It wasn't until the price dropped below $120k that my interest was piqued!  Jason fell in love with it the moment he saw it.  I didn't fall in love until I saw the potential of the inside. We would also like to do some landscaping in the front of the house.  Brian drew up a plan for us and we really like it.  It will also help water drain away from the house.  We don't have a huge problem with this, but we don't want it to ever be a problem. 
Check out the little potted plants I put together!  This makes me feel completely whipped in domesticity!  I hope the flowers grow over the sides of the pot a little.  But I digress.
The last really big project we want to tackle is we would like to build a deck.  I've drawn one in so you can see my vision.  Aren't we glad I'm not an architect?  We would like to take out the dining room window and install french doors as well.  

There are also many smaller projects to do.  We need to patch the drywall in the guest bedroom, we want to move a built in bookshelf from beside the tv to the other side of the room, restain some of the wood paneling in the basement that has been damaged, fix the little door on the mailbox, finish the crown molding on the cabinetry, paint the trim in the back entry, and I'm sure there are many other little things I've forgotten about.  So have no fear, there will still be plenty more blog postings with more ambitious undertakings! 

1 comment:

  1. FABULOUS time at your house last night! Great housewarming party!

    Eric and I got tired of waiting for someone to answer our Craigslist ad for the dryer. So, we set it out on the curb with a sign that said "FREE, WORKS," ran a new ad that said anybody could have it, and by the end of the day it was gone.

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