At this very moment, we are awaiting the arrival of the wrecking crew to get started on the bathroom tear down and renovation, so we can rent unit one and move into unit two. I am full of trepidation.
So...what we're doing. We originally had a tiny, tiny "bedroom" (not legal -- it's roughly 9.5' X 12') adjacent to aclosetlike hovel of a bathroom (12' x 5', with the bath tub, sink, and toilet in line -- the sink is garbage and tiny, and the tub has a weird offset. but we might be able to reuse the plain jane toilet) with a dropped ceiling. We're now turning these two into a) a second-floor laundry which opens off the hallway by means of bifold doors and b) an L-shaped bathroom in which the original bathroom now only contains a vanity and toilet and the prior bedroom includes only the tub/shower combo and a closet.
Complicating matters are issues like having to work around a dropped ceiling and sheetrock sheathing. Oh, and the fate of the kitchen hangs in the balance, as well. Well, sorta. If we do well, budgetwise, then I can really do a lot to the second-unit kitchen. If not, I'll be repainting and replacing the floor and sticking appliances in it and moving on.
So, um, wish us luck! And does anyone have suggestions for places to buy fixtures?
Friday, January 15, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Happy New Year!
Happy New year, everyone. Thanks to my awesome family, we are watching football and hockey while simultaneously working on a million home improvement projects. We just finished, substantially, plunking down the new kitchen floor on the rental side -- it's made of this stuff, which was really not too bad to install, even over non-square floors. I repainted the rental side bathroom, we demoed the permanent side bathroom, and we're working on painting the middle rental-side bedroom after a monster wallaper-stripping project. Whee.
On the flooring stuff, a surprise to us was that the stuff I installed actually ended up being MUCH cheaper than just replacing the cheap crap that was there previously and damaged. We went into El Home Depot with the goal of pricing flooring, both for the living room and kitchen. We originally planned to basically replace cheap crap with equivalent cheap crap. But the cheap crap we had was going to be VERY expensive to replace once we got past installation and related supplies (installation being a necessity for garbage you can't really install yourself unless you're very, very patient). So I think the estimate for replacing cheap, glue-backed vinyl in sheets with the same stuff was about $580. Replacing with cut-your-own heavy vinyl tile was only $350. So the flooring guy at Home Depot saved us some buckage and we ended up with a much nicer end result.
I still haven't decided what to do with the entryway/living room, though.
Today we'll finish the painting, I'll replace the 80s faux oak cabinet in the rental side bathroom with a sleek new mirror, we'll think about adding lighting on that side, hope to make a dent in painting the middle bedroom on that side (it's now primed), and we'll possible install shutters and replace kitchen trim and install shutters in the bathroom in place of the hideous 90s forest-green mini-blinds.
On the flooring stuff, a surprise to us was that the stuff I installed actually ended up being MUCH cheaper than just replacing the cheap crap that was there previously and damaged. We went into El Home Depot with the goal of pricing flooring, both for the living room and kitchen. We originally planned to basically replace cheap crap with equivalent cheap crap. But the cheap crap we had was going to be VERY expensive to replace once we got past installation and related supplies (installation being a necessity for garbage you can't really install yourself unless you're very, very patient). So I think the estimate for replacing cheap, glue-backed vinyl in sheets with the same stuff was about $580. Replacing with cut-your-own heavy vinyl tile was only $350. So the flooring guy at Home Depot saved us some buckage and we ended up with a much nicer end result.
I still haven't decided what to do with the entryway/living room, though.
Today we'll finish the painting, I'll replace the 80s faux oak cabinet in the rental side bathroom with a sleek new mirror, we'll think about adding lighting on that side, hope to make a dent in painting the middle bedroom on that side (it's now primed), and we'll possible install shutters and replace kitchen trim and install shutters in the bathroom in place of the hideous 90s forest-green mini-blinds.
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