Kitchen and Bath

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? 

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 Bright Side...

Dear lord. We turned on the water in the other side of the house and water flowed from every fixture and about six pipes. And we closed the valves and the water kept flowing.

...On the bright side, now we're not even slightly tempted to work with the existing plumbing. 

Victorian Christmas

There's a lot happening in Bellefonte right now. Every day new christmas lights go up. And planning for the Victorian Christmas event seems to proceeding.

Happy Turkey Day!

Happy Turkey Day, Everyone!

We are lucky to have my parents visiting, and this is both a blessing and a challenge. I am thrilled to report that no one is sleeping on a futon or camping out. But also, we have a lot going on and are trying to combine work on the house and sightseeing and neiother siughtseeing nor work on the house is quite as good as it probably could be as we shift between them. More as we have it -- our final task will be to decorate the house for Bellefonte's upcoming Victorian Christmas celebration.

The Weekend Update

Since we now own the house, we've been scrambling like crazy to get some things done.

Specifically, this weekend, we:

1. Bought new appliances to replace the disgusting and non-functional ones in the "good" kitchen of 231.
2. Cut away at plaster and pulled wires to make fixtures, including fans, possible in the public rooms of 233 -- this was a major undertaking, and Chris looked like a coal miner with his head lamp and face full of plaster dust. Time was of the essence, because the plasterers and sheetrockers were set to move in Monday morning and anything not done couldn't be done after they came. Late into the evening, Chris was up on a ladder working away.
3. We did take a short trip to Home Depot, though, to buy $200 of wire to make all the electrical upgrades and replacements possible. And there the gods smiled upon us. We really, really need light fixtures and at Home Depot I found a discontinued and very large chandelier for $89. It goes in as soon as we have ceilings. As does this one.
4. Scraped the heck out of some wallpaper. And learned some very interesting information, such as that the original wallpaper was on the ceiling as well as walls. Yegods.

Homeowners Again!

Yay, we're homeowners again!

Not much to add, except to note that now that we actually own the house, we will be working on it. I feel the need to mention a little of our renovation/restoration philosophy. That is, if it can be removed, we get the best we can right now. Which is to say not necessarily the optimal thing, historically-speaking. We live in this place and we'll be renting it -- it's not a house museum -- and while I'd love to get the perfect vintage thingamabob we have so many thingamabobs to get that in some cases we're simply finding something that looks more or less appropriate to fill in for now.

More as we know it --