Office

Finally, I can post something that isn't finished yet. Here are some before pictures of the space that will become our downstairs office. We have added this whole wall to divide it from the garage. I also added a new ceiling light fixture, some more electrical outlets, and a new switch. The wall has been framed with a nice big door, yet to be filled, and some creative layout to avoid the HVAC system above. When it comes time to hang drywall, later this week, we will see how good my framing really was.


The space beside the stair and behind the office will turn into a relaxing library and retreat for my wife. She plans to setup all her sewing equipment down here. Maybe in the future we can update the electrical panel, which is full and very confusing, and add a doorway into the crawlspace beyond.

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Playroom

UPDATE: More found pictures.


The basement was a major selling point for this house. It was unfinished when we bought it, with a little wood framing in place. We have slowly been adding and completing this part of the house. The large room that opens onto the side yard we have turned into the kid's playroom. The first winter we added insulation to the ceiling, which increased the heat in our master suite by at least 10 degrees.


We have also drywalled, sanded, and painted the walls in a light purple color. We have temporary window shades up, but I still need to finish the trim around the windows. We tried to stain and seal the concrete floors, but it turned out more like a paint than a stain. Eventually, we found a whole stash of Interface floor tiles from a friend that we really wanted. These floor tiles are great, as we can pull up each one and hose it off when the girls get it messy. We still need a few more to finish the floor, but it looks great so far.



Part of the concrete block wall is showing and we have also begun sealing to keep the moisture out. In the future, we will frame and drywall this section, but for now the paint will have to do. You can also see the horrible brown paint that was supposed to be concrete stain.

Girl's Bedroom

In a bit of disarray, but here is the girl's bedroom. The first step was to remove the wallpaper from the walls. This involved using a round scrapper that tore up the paper all over the wall. Supposedly this was to help pull the paper off, but we seemed to run into more problems. In the end we found that just wetting the wall down and tearing at it seemed to work. After we ripped it all off, some of the drywall had been destroyed and needed repairing. We skimmed the wall with some drywall mud, and sanded it down a couple of times. Painted a pretty pink and installed a new chair rail all around the room. We painted the underside white and sealed the whole setup with some caulk. The bottom has since been painted purple.

Bathroom Remodel

UPDATE: I found the photos that I took on our first visit to the house, pre-purchase.



So, this was the first major undertaking in the new house. I will try to find the first photos we took of the house when we were hunting to help show how much this room was changed. Originally, the sink was huge and the cabinet left little room to walk in once the door was opened. The toilet stayed and we didn't change the tub. We did cover up the small hexagonal floor tiles with this birch hardwood. This required me filling the space of the old cabinet with a couple of sheets of plywood to get the new floor to flush out. We also had to modify the door transition strip to work. We painted the room a lively blue and added an oval mirror and eventually a cabinet over the toilet.

New House - sorta

Here it is, the new house. A lot has changed since we moved in, so I will try to recap and find photos for all the changes. In the future, I plan to catalog a lot of what we do here.