progress continues

Progress continues in the basement bathroom. Michael got the drywall done on the ceiling and some wall boards up in the sink 'nook.' It was a messy job, but looks great!

Then, he got the shower tiling started! It looks beautiful! Although...we're changing our grout colors after seeing it done this far. We were planning on a gray grout for both the walls and floor. We thought the gray would match the pinstripe in the white tile and keep down on the hassle of cleaning the white grout. BUT...it turns out that you can't see the pinstripe at all unless you're up really close to it. So, we're switching to white. It will look clean and bright which is perfect for this dark basement.

He laid out the stone tile on the floor but hasn't installed it yet. Instead of gray grout, we are switching to black and hoping it will blend in better on the floor. Once the floor is installed Michael will cut the last row of shower wall tile.

We had talked about accent tiles and lots of fun things, but in the end, we just went with a straight subway pattern. Boring? Maybe. But it looks really nice, is cheaper, and less fussy than trying to squeeze an accent tile in here. This is a bonus bathroom and we're trying really hard to stay on budget. $2,000 doesn't go very far in a bathroom...even though we're using existing lights, mirror, sink, and faucet. But so far, it's all shaping up nicely. (Please pardon the yellow toned pictures, there's no natural light in this room...and I was too lazy to white balance.)

inch by inch it's a cinch

The basement bathroom project continues...little by little.

We have a new 'deadline' in mind now because we have people coming to stay with us for a few weeks in May and it would be great to have the basement projects buttoned up by then. The basement could be a nice 'guest suite' to give friends and family space when they stay here. They can have the whole floor to themselves, it's off-limits to the kids, it should be warm and cozy once the carpet is in, they'll have a nice tv all to themselves, and a beautiful private bathroom.

Here is the most recent picture I have of the progress:

Admittedly...it's not looking beautiful yet. In this picture I'm standing in the still unfinished part looking into the finished room. You can see the studs for the new wall we had to build as a little 'nook' for the sink. (there was never a sink in this bathroom...weird) The concrete board is all up and ready for tile, and since I took this picture the studs have been closed in! We're getting closer!

Here's our mental checklist of what needs to be done still:
- drywall and paint ceiling
- install tile (I ordered it this week! Yippee!)
- install wall 'treatment' (you'll have to wait and see what our plans are for the walls)
- install new toilet and sink
- hang lights
- hang mirror

Then the B.I.G. next step is to get carpet in the rest of the basement (since we should be done with the dusty projects for a while), and hang the oh-so-special barn door track and doors. I CAN'T WAIT for that part! We made progress on it this week and I am super excited to see the details coming together.

choosing tile

The basement bathroom is coming along. Slowly but surely.

We have gone back and forth a little bit about the materials we wanted to use throughout the bathroom. We know there's a possibility of this room getting water in it from the basement walls, or through the floor if there's a high amount of rain...so we have to choose something that won't get ruined if it gets wet, and won't mold.

For a while, we were talking about putting a bunch of loose rocks at the bottom of the shower. Hey, rocks don't mind water, right? But then I came across a polished sheet of rocks at The Tile Shop and have started to build the room around them. The grout will be a concrete mixture...which also doesn't mind water on it. Rocks and concrete. It might sound weird but it's shaping up beautifully!

I have chosen three tiles so far.
The rocks for the shower floor:

We want the walls to be light and bright...and cheap! We don't want to spend much in this little bathroom. But we also want it to look great. After searching through cheap ceramic options, I fell in love with a white ceramic that has a very subtle gray stripe in it (almost impossible to photograph - but beautiful in person). It's bright, and still interesting. The price is also right. Retail it's only $3.99 per square foot.

 

Then I wanted an accent tile to put about eye-level in the shower. I thought of something sparkly, like glass but couldn't commit to a color. I didn't want clear glass. I love the look of blue or green glass in a shower, but wanted to stay as neutral as possible so I wasn't stuck with that color scheme forever. I stumbled across a mirrored mosaic and it seems perfect! Although, you should have seen the look on the salesman's face when I asked if it would stand up ok to being in a shower. Ummmm...you want mirrored tile all over your shower? Ha! Yes, but it's an accent - I'm not mirroring the whole thing! I think it will be interesting and reflective to put a couple rows of this tile around the whole shower.

It's very pricey - but since we're using such a small amount it should work just fine.

Here are the three together:

I still need to choose a main floor tile. It will probably be a dark ceramic or maybe even a slate like our kitchen floor. We will be using a gray grout everywhere, even with the white tile. We've learned how difficult it is to keep white grout clean in our other bathrooms. I'm still happy with the white grout with our marble tile, but I don't want to fight and fuss with keeping white grout pristine in a basement. So, gray it shall be.

I'm starting to think about light fixtures for this bathroom too. We are reusing a pedestal sink and mirror from a bathroom we gutted, but instead of reusing the ugly lights, I'm leaning toward a mercury glass fixture similar to the look of our bedroom pendants.

I love the design process. I just wish I was spending someone else's money. :)

the beginning of the end

We have finally begun the L.A.S.T. major house project we feel like we have to do before we can call the house 'done.'

'Done' doesn't actually mean that we won't have anything else to do on the house. Far from it! We have a gazillion projects we want to do, but we're getting down to the last of the things we have to do to get the house to appraise for a decent amount and prove that the water damage is fully corrected. This room will make it so we're able to say the whole house has been renovated and updated.

Right now, even if we had to move for some reason, we don't feel like we'd get top-dollar for our house...but once this last major project is done (and some touch-ups throughout the rest of the house are completed)...the house should be good for us or for someone else to move into (if they give us the moo-lah).

So here we go...the beginning of the work in our third bathroom. The basement bathroom.

There's a little hallway in the finished part of the basement that leads to this bathroom. The picture below shows a wall on the left that is actually the back of the staircase coming from the family room. On the right is the bathroom in question. And oh, what a beauty it is!

Every inch of this bathroom makes my skin crawl right now! ICK!
Nasty, leaky window and concrete block. A super old, nasty toilet. A little doorway that goes to the laundry room and had an old barn door looking monstrosity on it. Weird.

Quite a luxurious shower right? The holes you can see in the concrete block walls went to a sink that was directly behind here and drained into the shower. Strange! And the worst part of this is that when Michael was living in the house by himself during the major part of the whole house reno...he had to use this shower and bathroom every day because the others weren't working yet! Phew...so glad those days are behind us!

At one point in the life of our house, the entire basement was finished. But then sometime in the 80s we've been told that the sewer backed up into the house (and all the houses on our entire street)! So everything in the basement was ripped out. Whatever they had on the walls in this bathroom (maybe paneling??) had probably just been glued to the walls because the block now looks like this:

Then it's been painted various shades of icky. The paint has been the biggest problem for us in figuring out how to finish off the space. Paint molds if it gets wet. It's not a good idea to EVER paint concrete block in an old basement - especially on an exterior wall. It will make it so you can't waterproof it well without sandblasting the paint off. Such.a.pain.

We're working on some solutions and we'll share what we're doing along the way. Our goal is to spend as little as possible (under $2,000) to make this bathroom light, bright, and gorgeous! 

It's the last major project in the house and it will be fantastic to have this one crossed off the list! We have held off on basement carpet and touch-ups because we knew we'd have to deal with dust mess while finishing the bathroom. Once it's done, all the finishing touches and decorating can be done to pull the house together. I can't wait!!

Hoarders...of sorts

Do you ever watch the show Hoarders? I admit...sometimes we get sucked into it and are just amazed. One of the most memorable ones we've seen was about a man who hoarded books. He had tens of thousands of books in his house and they could hardly walk through it anymore.

Depending on what projects we're doing in the house, and how busy our work schedules are...I totally feel like we're hoarders when I go into the unfinished part of our basement. That's where Michael keeps all of his toolboxes and it's a make-shift workshop. Plus, we have extra furniture and exercise equipment sitting down there that doesn't fit anywhere else. It's also where my laundry room is and on laundry days there can be 4 different laundry baskets in the mix too.

It's great when it's organized but when we're in the middle of a project and all the tools are out, and stuff is moved around...there seems to be endless piles of stuff everywhere! It's overwhelming!

Last weekend we took some time to clean it out to move more stuff in from the garage. Since it's gotten cold now, the garage workshop area is too cold so extra tools move inside. :)

Thankfully we were able to get rid of a LOT that shouldn't have been there anyway. When we moved into our house, the past homeowners left all of their paint (along with a fridge, and a bunch of trash that we didn't want and had to pay to get rid of). We never had a chance to go through all the paint they left, until now. We also had lots of paint cans from our previous house (that we still own and rent out) but the colors aren't even used in that house anymore. It was definitely time for it all to go!

This was the pile of paint we were able to get rid of:

 But sadly, this is the pile of what had to stay:

Can you believe that we need this much paint? Everything here is currently being used in our house or is stain/varnish for the hardwood floors. What were we thinking by deciding to paint every room in the house a different color?

It's crazy to see how much 'stuff' we own that's just used on the house. (tools, paint, wood, extra doors, extra cabinets, etc.) Although, the nice part about it all is that we basically have our own hardware store. Take caulking for instance, if we need it...we've got it.

And right now, even though the basement is kind of a mess, it's a beautiful mess to me! This is my almost-finished office/craft room:

There are a lot of details left to do, but I can already picture it done in my head and I can't WAIT!

5 years in the making...a basement update (and a mistake)

This is what our basement wall looked like exactly 5 years ago (pictures taken September 16, 2007):

Elliott was so tiny and just played in his bouncer while we measured and planned out the basement renovation.

Fast forward about 6 months and this was the progress: (the fireplace stone was on and the structure was coming together.

Fast forward again to September 12, 2009. Two years after we started planning the project, the drywall was all done, fireplace mantle on, and the cabinet building began. Most of those two years were spent moving a doorway upstairs, and then cutting a hole in our family room floor for the new staircase to the basement. (see this post for more pics of that area)

Elliott and Emma loved 'helping' Daddy build the cabinets while Mommy was in the hospital after Isa was born! (It's hard to believe Isa will be 3 next week!)

With a few days off work to welcome home our new little bundle of joy...lots got done in the basement. :) The cabinets were pretty much done and were painted near the end of 2009.

They looked beautiful. Michael thought of every detail, like heavy-duty hinges that won't close on tiny fingers, accent lights, TONS of storage spaces, and removable bottoms in the lower cabinets so we can dry out the floor in case the basement ever gets water in it. (thankfully, the finished part of the basement has been dry all these years!)

THEN the water damage happened in the rest of the house in January of 2010 (!!!). The time for making progress in the basement abruptly ended so we could deal with gutting the rest of the house.
Remember 2011 when Michael was living in the house fixing it up while the rest of us lived with my parents? Well, this is what the basement looked like then. It was a campout/storage area. Ugh!

One year later and we're caught up to today...the rest of the house is coming along nicely and we've been thinking about the basement again. The cabinet area has seemed really bare and the hubs keeps asking for color somewhere in the neutral basement. I decided a cushion was needed on the bench and finally got around to buying some foam and figuring out some upholstery techniques.

I used a combination of white canvas and a gray chevron, made my own piping for the first time, added a zipper so the whole slipcover could be washed (cuz...you know...kids are messy!), and made the cushion reversible in case we'd ever get sick of the chevron.

Voila! a finished cushion. BUT WAIT...what color is that on the wall? I decided to try a fiery orange-red. It's AWFUL! As soon as I figure out what color to paint it, this color will be a distant memory. But I was excited to finally get to hang the silhouettes I did of the kids about 6 months ago. Hey, progress is slow...but it's still progress, right?

 Here's a shot in black and white (ahhhh, that's better).

 Now we need a better color, some pretty pillows, and CARPET. We're still living with the subfloor (it has plastic grooves underneath it to let water run under it if needed). We also need to finish off the exercise room so I don't have to look at this view everyday.

Baby steps. It might take forever (like 5 years!) but at least we can clearly see progress in the right direction!

An annoying project

If you're anything like me...you have a long list of tiny, annoying house projects that seem to pile up. I remember my sister-in-law saying once for her birthday that her husband's gift to her was finishing up a slew of those kinds of projects. Lucky lady!

We have a gazillion annoying projects that aren't earth-shattering...but need to be done! Hanging our basement TV on the wall was one such project.

After getting almost completely done remodeling our basement...we had to stop because of the water damage. So...for 3-ish years the basement has looked pretty much the same. When we were 'homeless' Michael slept in the basement and the TV was put on a bench at the far end of the room. (with no service...he could only watch DVDs or whatever we had recorded on our DVR before we moved out of our rental) Warning...this picture is scary...and shocking to think back to Michael living like this for almost 6 months! (Mostly because this picture was taken a couple months into our homeless phase. When Michael first moved into the basement there were kitchen cabinets and stuff stored down here and he just had to make enough room to lay down.) SO glad this is behind us!

We always meant for the TV to be above the fireplace. So when we all moved back into the house we put it there...but never hung it on the wall. It just sat there in a pile of dust as debris from projects going on in the rest of the house made its way down to this area.

But hey...even though it looks really rough and icky (to me, anyway)...the fireplace used to look like this: (whoa...it's good to see how far we've come!)

The kids like to watch their little shows in the basement and the Wii is there. We're constantly afraid that they'll try to climb up on the fireplace and pull the TV down to get to a game, etc. So, it was time to hang that baby up!
After a few disappointing minutes when we realized the TV hanging hardware we had wasn't going to work (woops)...we just used one that was intended for our bedroom TV (which we still don't have) and plan B worked just fine. (despite the extra holes you see that had to be cut out so the cords had enough room to actually plug into the back of the TV...woops again)

After 4 hours (I wish I were kidding...our speedy project took a long time)...the TV was up. And tuned into hockey, of course. :(

One annoying project down...only 100 or so left to go! Ahhh...the joys of home ownership!

Clean clothes

Six people in a family = massive amounts of laundry

Thankfully, we have had very understanding family and friends who have let us do laundry at their house for the last 7 or 8 months during our 'homeless' stage and then once we got back into our house but didn't have the washer and dryer hooked up. A BIG thanks to Mom & Dad, the JoMos, and Dawn for letting us crash your laundry rooms from time to time.

So, why didn't we hook up our washer and dryer the instant we moved back into our house? Well...it's a little complicated.

We got rid of the staircase that went to the basement from our kitchen...and it also just-so-happened to be the only way to get the washer and dryer into the space where the hookups were. Woops!

We have a little nook area off the finished basement room that we had planned on becoming a new laundry room...but...we couldn't find a layout that made sense since the washer/dryer combo was too big for the space.

So...what do you do when you can't get your appliances to where they need to go? You break into the wall (or at least widen the existing doorway)!

We have big plans for the laundry area now that everything is hooked up. Someday our extra kitchen cabinets will be put next to the washer and dryer and we'll finish off the area to be light and bright (and not look like a storage room). It will all happen in time...but the laundry refinish is quite a ways down the project list.
Oh well. For now, no complaints because at least we can wash the mountains of laundry we create...and we can wash it in our own house!!

As a side note...the area you see in the picture on the left above is the little nook that used to be a kitchenette - complete with gold/crackly mirrored back-splash and a wood hinged countertop like you'd see in a bar in the Old West. Here are a couple pictures of the beauty it once was.

And you should really thank me for not getting pictures of all the dead mice we found in the cabinets you see here. (they were a nice little housewarming present we found when we moved in) Trust me...the bare concrete and wood studs is an improvement! :)

 

A little sneak peek...

Did you know that we've been remodeling our house? :) Ha, ha - I think everyone and their brother knows about it because it's been going on for SO LONG and consumed so much of our time! We actually started some of the pieces almost 3 years ago, pretty much immediately when we moved into our house. But the majority of the work has happened within the last 6 months or so. I can't wait to have official 'after' pictures to show - but for now this will have to do. Here's a little peek at the project.

This first picture is a small part of the way the basement was finished when we moved in. Ick! These cabinet things were a home to many mice (double ick) and looked crazy! The first thing we did in the basement was rip all of this out.


This is the opposite wall in the basement which had an 'interesting' fireplace.


Here's the beginning of the staircase being built. This is the part that has taken the most time BY FAR! Once Michael built it up far enough, he started to cut the hole in the floor upstairs and that's where the big mess started (see pics below). Thankfully that part is almost over! You can also see the partially done fireplace on the left.


Here's a more recent picture of the staircase pretty much completed except for the railing. Michael hand-tied some rebar and started making the top of the curved railing piece. The next step is to cut the same stone we put on the fireplace into little pieces to create the inside curved wall. But you can see here that the lights are in (after rewiring all of the electricity to the room), the drywall is done and primed, molding is up, and we're ready to finish wallpapering the back wall, build the built-ins, finish the mantle, paint, and get carpet! Believe it or not, the end is in sight!


This is the 'before' of upstairs directly above the room that we finished in the basement. This is from Christmas 2006 but you can see the odd fireplace, the huge fan in the middle, and that the door to our 3 season porch is in the middle of the far wall.


Here is Michael working on the fireplace upstairs after tearing out the old one. It's pretty much done now...but I can't post the complete 'after' pictures yet - you'll just have to wait!


This is the upstairs once it was torn apart. The door to the 3 season porch was moved, a hole was cut in the floor for the new staircase, all the electrical wiring had to be redone, we insulated, etc., etc. Then Michael built a wall and a bookshelf back in to surround the staircase, we hung new lights everywhere upstairs, wallpapered, put up new molding, and the list goes on and on. Hard to believe we've come so far!
Actually, when Michael got to the big demolition I took the kids away for a few days so he could work uninterrupted (and we could escape the mess). He called me after getting this far to discuss whether we just change the plan and winterize the 3 season porch so we could open the room all the way up. It would have been great to have it all open like that - but wasn't in the plan so we abandoned the idea.


Here's a top-down view of Michael working on the stairs so you can see the shape. It's actually quite a bit wider than a normal staircase so we can easily get furniture up and down and eventually expand our kitchen into where the other stairs to the basement are. (although that project will not be happening for quite a while - we need to get some energy back and enjoy living in a 'put together' house for a while before tearing into it again)


Here is a somewhat-finished upstairs...although you'll still have to wait to see the whole thing done. You can see the fireplace (before the mantle was built), new lights, the door is moved and drywall is done. Since this picture we've added the mantle, crown molding, a little 'photography gallery' on one wall, and many finishing touches. The 'sparkly tree' wallpaper (which you can't see very well in this picture) is one of my favorite things and I have another wallpaper that will go on the back wall by the new staircase. I had to do wallpaper because all of the original walls are stucco and the new walls are smooth. It looked weird and disjointed until I added the texture of the wallpaper - now we love it!


It seems like we will never get done, but I'm always encouraged when I look at the 'before' pictures and see the progress we've made. It's wonderful to be able to live in the upstairs family room again. Now I'm looking forward to getting the basement couch out of the kids bedroom and the pool table out of ours! Eventually, we'll have a little more work in the basement to redo the full bathroom and a little kitchenette down there - but it will be so nice to have a place to keep the kids' toys, watch movies, and just hang out. Stay tuned for the 'after' pictures SOON!