Catching Up

Insert some stuff here about how I'm the worst at maintaining a blog. Moving on!

Our biggest house project yet is underway. We're completely remodeling the kitchen and bathroom, plus rewiring and repiping the whole house. Oh yeah, and it has to be done by the time our first baby arrives in mid-June. Nothing like a deadline!

We've been planning and drawing and hiring subs and spending all of our money for months now, but I'll give you the quick update.

First, the big stuff. Here's the intersection of the kitchen, dining room, and living room:

We decided we wanted to disappear both walls and just have an L-shaped bar where the baker's rack and hutch are above. Since the fridge is on that wall now, we're switching the current fridge and range locations. We did some fancy math and calculated what size new header we need for the wall. It's a bearing wall, but it's not carrying all that much load. We decided to use some big old LVLs. 

Okay, now more cosmetic stuff. Our kitchen looked like this:

Tile countertops are the worst. Very old plywood cabinets are also the worse. The floor was seriously, hyperbole aside, the actual worst. We wanted more cabinet space and more counter space, plus more usable versions of both. 

The plan is for basically new everything. After much anguish, we decided to go with a local cabinet maker (one of Devon's hockey teammates). I'm glad we did, because he had some great ideas and from what I've seen so far, the cabinets look awesome. They'll be white shaker style. We picked out an Ikea farmhouse sink, because it's cheap and because it goes all the way to the back splash thus simplifying the concrete countertops we're going to pour. The flooring will be cork and should be nice and warm and cozy to stand on. We also picked out crown molding, exactly how the drawers and doors work, a garbage disposal, a dishwasher, a range, a light, and about a thousand other things. Such decision fatigue! 

Okay, next the bathroom plan. Loyal readers may recall that we removed this horrific item a few years back:

We were still happy with the new vanity, medicine cabinet, light, and toilet we installed. Scope creep is REAL though, and when we started thinking about how to fix the tile issues in the shower that resulted from the window replacement, we ended up deciding that actually the floor tile was pretty bad too and to scrap the whole thing. We'll reinstall the toilet and the light, but we're mostly losing the vanity and medicine cabinet. Per code, we need 30" clear centered on the toilet. The vanity we put in was really really close to the toilet, so we can't put it back. We got a new cabinet and a new smaller vessel sink, then we'll cut down the wood counter top to reuse. The medicine cabinet we had was massive, and because of a vent stack in the wall, we can't reinstall it centered on the new vanity. It's way too deep to surface mount, so we'll get a new one. 

As a reminder, here are a couple of photos from the end of bathroom renovation the first:

Okay, enough about the plans - let's see some action. 

Here's the kitchen after we finished packing and removing the stuff we wanted to keep:

The big pile of wood is from the door between the living room and the dining room. We disassembled it so that we could move the fridge to the dining room for the time being. 

And here's that living/dining/kitchen corner:

Aaand the bathroom:

Millions of thanks to K and J who helped us move heavy things to prep for the demo! 

Shit got real last Monday, when some demo guys came in and ruined everything in less than a day:

We spent that evening wondering just what in the hell we were thinking. I cried. It was rough. 

For the most part, what we uncovered was what we expected to find without any horrible disasters. No rot, no mold, no termite damage. Yay! Though we did find this crime against carpentry:

If you aren't sure what a door header is supposed to look like, I'll wait while you google it. This is not it. 

After the demo deed was done, the electrician came and started the whole-house rewire. I'll have to grab some photos of the new panel and such when I go to the house next. He was there the rest of last week and we just stopped by to answer questions and feed the poor long suffering rabbits. Yesterday the plumber came, and true to the company name, did a one-day repipe. They were there late, but it all seems to be done! Now all of the old and problematic galvanized supply piping has been replaced with lovely shiny copper. We also have a super cool new utility sink. I'll take a picture next time I'm there! 

Yesterday my dad arrived and reconstruction started. I'm currently so tired I can barely function, so I'll catch up on the rest of the saga another day. I know you're excited.