The power of paint

I think back to when I posted the top 3 things to upgrade your house that show the returns.... Check out sweat equity post. I will say nothing is more true. Two of the 3 were paint and the kitchen. I love the open concept of our new kitchen, but what gives my husband and I more satisfaction- getting rid of the oak.

I'm a maniac trying to paint our trim. Shoot I would have never guessed looking at other houses what a difference trim will make. Every room that I get rid if the natural oak trim instantly transforms into a more modern, brighter space.

I'm on the kitchen. Just finished the babies room.

Trying to keep up

Summer is officially over and so starts fall. I am finally not pregnant and so its time to get back on the renovation train. We finally moved our pantry cabinet upstairs to the kitchen. It's not exactly in place because we need to move a light switch. We also have the giant cabinet placed above the fridge, we need to screw it into the ceiling.

It's an interesting design the brown next to the eggshell. I just like that the fridge is closed in.

My red door

I love a good New England home and I especially love a red door. I officially have one!!

I love it. But I will say I thought something wasn't quite that New England feel. So I think we'll paint the shutters.

What's awesome is that the awesome black hardware? That's my chipped, terrible gold hardware from 1987 with some spray paint. Whew hoo!

The inside: 

Hardware: 

It does chip a bit, but it looks awesome!! We also did a terrible light that was green with corrosion, I wish I had a before pic.

Cheap and looks like new! Ahh I love my red door!

First officially completed project... well mostly?

So it is official, we have new floors in the kids bathroom. After the mold incident, we decided that it was priority #1 to get some waterproof flooring in that bathroom.

Now, if we look at our list for what was needed in this bathroom....

Take off shower door
Shower curtain bar and curtain
Flooring
Paint
Paint ceiling
New vanity light
New Faucet
Towel bars
Toilet paper bar
Hook on door for towels
More shelving in closet
New vanity countertop (?)
New mirror - Painted mirror white

Let me add a few things:
New toilet
New handles for shower
Paint hall door 

Even with the new adds, I would say based on our original ideas of what needed to be done to transform this bathroom from this:

To this:

Its looking good. The shower handles are hidden by the shower curtain. The toilet works and has no visible issues. I WILL get to the last door and paint it by the end of the summer. But, I guess it goes to show you, is anything really done?

When the house picks your projects

In renovating an older home sometimes the house chooses the next project in line.

After a few weeks of reprieve on indoor improvements, the hubs and I started plotting our next indoor projects. We've spent the majority of the spring and any small scraps of $ and energy (free time) we have on the landscaping. I will get pictures up soon.

One thing that has become apparent in the few really muggy hot days we've had is that our house smells. We've worked hard to find the source, but my best guess is 30 year old carpets that sat with dust have embedded their musty scent all over. I always figured some paint and many vacuums later we'd be all set. Nope.

So, our plan is to focus next on floors. My husbands #1- the kitchen. Our beautiful plywood floors are wearing out their welcome. Especially since we have messy boys and no real way to clean them. 

Which brings me to the original topic - the house said no, it wants bathroom floors.

An unfortunate pee incident next to the tub led me to discover a whole lot of mold. Guess we'll be searching for a money tree and tiling the bathroom as our next project.

May update

Here we are 7 months down. 7 months pregnant. But, progress my friend progress..

The list:

Garage:
 
Clean up - yes, they left everything including the trash
Garage door openers x2
Fix storm door Removed storm door

Shelving
Peg board for tools

It's a disaster still, we are in the middle of building a swing set - 'nough said.

Downstairs Living Room/Kids Room:



Paint- partially done
New flooring
Lights (?)
New windows (?)

Downstairs Bath:

Paint
New Flooring
New vanity counter
Vanity hardware
New towel bars
New toilet paper roll
New Faucet
Mirror over vanity
New vanity light




Laundry:

  


New top for folding table
Clean out closet
New Washer/Dryer
Hanging drying rack (?)
Paint
Floors

Downstairs Bedroom/ Office:

Floors
Paint
Curtain and shade       






Stairway:
Paint
Tile in front of doorway
New carpet on stairs
New door/windows
Fan instead of super 80's chandelier

Upstairs Living Room:
Paint- accent wall done
Floors
Glass for fireplace
New cable outlet
Built-ins next to fireplace
Mantle



Dining Room/Kitchen:

Take out wall separating the two
Flooring
Paint
Trim paint
Lights

Chandelier 
Sliding glass door where glass doors are



Take out Dutch Door extend wall
New Cabinets
New appliances   
  Backsplash for stove







Hallway:


New lights
Paint
Flooring
New doorbell
Built shelves in closet for linens
Paint downstairs hallway

Upstairs Bathroom:

Take off shower door
Shower curtain bar and curtain
Flooring
Paint
Paint ceiling
New vanity light
New Faucet
Towel bars
Toilet paper bar
Hook on door for towels
More shelving in closet
New vanity countertop (?)
New mirror - Painted mirror white

New window 
New (non gold) Shower hardware

Boys Room 1:

Paint - accent wall
Electrical for light
Fan
Shave door
New shade
New windows x2   
New heater


Boys Room 2:

Paint
Trim paint
Electrical for light
Fan
Shave door
New shades
New windows x4   
New heater 


Master Bedroom:
 
 
Paint
Trim paint
Ceiling paint
Electrical for light
Fan
New windows x2
New heater


Master Bathroom: Can I just say GUT? This is the worst room in the house

Paint
Trim paint
Ceiling paint
New window    
Extra shelving x100000000000000
New counter for vanity
New vanity light
New shower
Floors  
New faucet 
Shower door
New Shower head - AMAZING DIFFERENCE 

My goal is to ignore the Master Bathroom and eventually gut the bathroom and two hallway closets and somehow incorporate them into one. Or, build a Master suite addition and not worry about anything but updating hardware and paint in the Master Bath.



Painting this room yellow changed my whole outlook on it, I actually love my bathroom now. Amazing what a little paint and a few shelves can do. I barely care about the gold doors anymore.

Outside:

Putting in a swing set!

Fixed the mailbox


    

Overwhelming task

This is a short one, but sometimes renovating your house while working and raising two kids - and being 6 + months pregnant is really, really overwhelming.

The dreaded bathroom

My master bathroom disaster....

I told my husband and myself this room is awful and should be the LAST thing we spend money on. My hope was eventually to rip it out and start from scratch. Well, after 6 months of storing our spare towels on the floor and anything else on the window sill, I changed my tune.

We aren't putting much into it, but enough to make it easier to use. As we put 1 thing in, something started to bloom. I don't HATE it as much anymore...

Here's a mental refresher from this side:

Not much done here, just shelves and some paint, but white trim versus natural oak and some new shelving and a brushed nickel toilet paper roll versus the oak and gold one. Still a lot of work to do - paint the rest of the bathroom trim and walls, paint the vanities and mirror brown, floors, etc etc. Either way, I already like looking in there better.

Buying a showcase kitchen

In an attempt to save money and get more then we could afford, buying a showcase kitchen sounded AWESOME. When I happened upon a closing kitchen design studio and saw the sign "KITCHENS FOR SALE", I instantly thought - this could be a good idea. My parents put in a discounted floor kitchen into their lake house and it is gorgeous - granted the space and kitchen are small - its still great.


So when we took the plunge and bought 2 kitchens in order to make 1 big kitchen, I was confident and feeling like a million bucks. We have a good kitchen, granite, knobs, and its ready to go. What made me feel even better is that the kitchen layout of the main kitchen we bought was exactly like the kitchen in our blue prints.

But, here is my warning. Building new is a whole different ballgame then putting one of these floor kitchens in an already existing kitchen. Luckily for us, by taking out the wall and removing the door, we were able to get a pretty open concept space to work with. That said, our kitchen didn't have a dishwasher built in (because it was for show only). So right away, we knew we needed to account for that. Second, our room had a double hung window over the sink..... Our kitchen layout, did not. Our floor model kitchen came with an amazing stove hood, that really fits a 36 inch oven. The price of a 36 inch oven was enough to make me decide 3 inch spacers on each side were fine.

Now, when we put it all together, we ended up rearranging the cabinets and only had to put in 3 spacers - not bad. We were able to use all the cabinets and for the most part, I would say it looks designed for our space. My only exception is two doors that I think would look better swinging in the other direction.

The real problem was the granite. We had $2000 worth of granite and because of the slight tweaks, it too needed some slight tweaks. Here's my warning or something to think about. I recently called a granite person to come assess our situation. I had gone to Home Depot where the granite was purchased and they basically told me that any changes and alterations meant they would not guarantee the granite. So, I went to someone my Dad works with. He was very honest and said, almost every time tweaking doesn't work and after labor, its cheaper and/or more worth it to start from scratch.

I can see it, we have a super common granite, not expensive (Giallo Florito) easy to find.

But, the variation in granite is great. I really didn't quite get the difference until ours was pieced together. Plus, in order to tweak, you need to cut here, piece together there. All in all, we were fortunate to use all of ours!! Yay!! What this meant, is that there are 3 seams, which we were okay with. At each of the seams you can see the difference in the granite, one side is darker and it isn't the smoothest of transitions. But, once again, we didn't care. We were able to use our two big main pieces, seam in a 3 inch piece over the filler next to the stove, and use our last piece at the end.

Seam 1:



Seam 2:
 

 Seam 3:



For me, this is worth it. I know we could have used the granite for something else, bathroom sinks, or an outdoor grill area, but honestly, we couldn't then afford an extra $3K+ to get new granite for the kitchen. So we'd have great bathroom vanity tops and a cheap kitchen counter.

 

Finished piece using all old granite

In the end, the granite is going to cost us $1400, that is with all the labor to cut, and piece together the old as well as bring in a new slab for the island (which is over 6 feet with a 10 inch overhang on two sides) and a new piece for the cabinets to the right of the stove. But, we will have used all our $2000 worth of granite which makes the price of the kitchen we bought worth it. If we bought the eggshell kitchen for $5K with no counters, it is still a good deal, but definitely not as much.

So, if you want to replace your kitchen for the cheap, definitely look into it, but be aware that its not a one size fits all situation. If you can't use the countertops or all the cabinets, is it still a good deal? Would you get more bang for your buck designing a kitchen made for your existing space?

As it is, we aren't able to use the crown molding that came with our kitchen. But crown is a topic for another post... I'm just satisfied today to have half my granite installed!

Painting trim

Oh my Lord, I did not realize the gravity of this project. It's funny, its not something you really think twice about and yet, since we've moved into this house, it has definitely been one of those things that stick out to me.

Our house has 0 trim painted. The whole entire house has natural colored oak trim. Which was lovely to match the natural colored oak furniture that was in every room. At first, the nature lover in me decided it wasn't that bad. Now, 6 months later I could really care to see another oak colored surface. We moved out the majority of the oak furniture, but the trim and windows and vanities...

It started to become very obvious I wasn't into the trim when I began painting the house. The bright colors weren't popping like I would like next to the light brown oak. I thought for a while I just picked back colors. But, the reality is a pale blue contrasting with a light oak is much different then next to white.

So, I became determined to at least eliminate some of the natural trim in the house. That's when I learned painting trim SUCKS!!

Like this gem of a spot, how the hell do you paint the side of this? Literally a 1 inch (at most) gap from trim to corner of the wall. 

I also learned why they say to paint the trim 1st before the walls. Ace hardware painters tape took the drywall right off. This is everywhere, the window, the door. I was able to paint over it in blue, but upon close inspection you can see it.

After a lot of hell sanding I finally got all the trim and baseboard done. I still need the courage to do the doors. I figure I'll wait until summer, take them off and sand, prime, and paint in the garage.





Do you see the difference the white makes though? Now of course, I want to do my bedroom, and the downstairs bathroom.. oh and every other room in the house. But, since this amount of trim took 2 weeks of begging for time off of the kids to do and it only resulted in this much getting done, haha. The rest of the house will be done in, oh, 5 years :)

Buying (selling) a home in winter

I was recently talking to a friend about her experience with a realtor. The realtor told her to take their house off the market for winter, put it back on in spring. My friend was not pleased, because it wasn't as if they were putting their house on the market just in case, they wanted to sell!

I don't think its any secret that the real estate market takes a dip in the cold New England winters. It's hard to gauge a yard and everything that goes into a house when there is 3 feet of snow outside. Most times you can't even see the driveway and are forced to rely on the nice pictures they took in warmer months. But, we all know pictures can lie. When looking we fell in love with a few houses that were new, modern, awesome... and in reality were nothing of the sorts - they just had well taken pictures.

Since real estate dips in winter, it may be a good time for buyers to get a good deal, since there is probably a shortage of showings and if the seller in anxious, they may be more willing to negotiate then in the warm months when there may be a lot more action. I don't know if this is true, but my intellect tells me its a possibility.

In that same conversation, the idea of open houses came up. I have personally witnessed that open houses can be a bust and a waste of time. But, I am now a believer. Honestly, we would have never ended up in this house was it not for an open house. We had zero intention of buying and just to be nosy wanted to see what the inside of this house was like and we were bored. So we came to an open house here..... Now we live here. We were the only one to come through multiple weekends of open houses, but the point.... we bought it!

Anyway, I digress... busying a home in the winter, or end of fall going into the winter is frankly a pain in the ass. If you are like us, you are forgoing extending your move in to do work on the house so that you can get in and be IN your new home. What this forces you to do, as you figure out where everything will go, is to load your garage. Then winter hits.... and keeps hitting. The garage... it stays full and unorganized.

We've been lucky enough to move things around so I can park in the garage during snow storms, but it takes moving a bit of stuff each time. For us also, we had no where else to put our wood for the wood stove, or enough good weather (and time with two kids) to chop wood.

The other issue, many indoor projects are best done with the windows open. Painting, wall deconstruction, even just freshening up a house that hasn't been lived in for a while (or that smells like someone else). My husband and I laugh about how much we just want a day to clean out the garage.