Design Blocks

It has been a long day but we stopped by the house after work to check on today’s progress. They started reinstalling interior doors and added new doors to the new laundry closet in the hallway. It now officially looks like a hall and we can get a feel for the new layout. I feels very efficient and roomy and short which is a big change from our current house which has quite a long hallway.  

 The new header is also installed in the wall that we opened up between the kitchen and the dining room. Excited for all the light that is happening in here.  

 They are going to have to beef up the walls beneath the header so we don’t have a weird little jog on both sides of the wall. The exterior is also fully primed and no longer three different colors. 😃  

 Our next big decision is whether to add a bit to the budget and go for full inset cabinets for the kitchen. The quote is about $3,500 more than store bought so it is tempting. Just need to run numbers and see if the timeline works out. Fingers crossed. 

My little girl Jilly is so excited to see the progress on the house. Some days we can’t take her because there is to much mess and debris laying around. She is always asking me to go clean up all the nails so she can come in. 😃 Tomorrow we get to show the progress to some of the grandparents and she is very happy. I hope they like it as it will be their first time seeing the house.    I have to say we are pretty happy about it too.  

The house is naked but there is progress. They started priming the exterior but rainy weather is putting it on hold. No worries though not too much longer and it will be pretty. 

One of the first things I noticed in the house are all of the vintage wallpapers still hanging on the walls. It’s hard to see it all go as walls are being reworked but I am happy to have these pictures to look back on it. 

 These dandy figures were actually underneath another paper in the master bathroom. I’m so glad my husband made it by the house in time and noticed it before it was completely gone.  

 This wallpaper was located in the kitchen and even had a matching fabric curtain for the kitchen door.   

This paper was in the master bathroom on top of the figures from the first photo.   

This metallic bamboo wallpaper was awesome.     

This trellis paper is in the guest bathroom. It is fun because if you are standing close to it you can see the flowers still have glitter on them!   

The dining room is a metallic silver with a mural. The sheen does not really come across in the pictures.    

Does anybody else have any awesomely vintage paper in their homes? Post pictures in the comments of you do. 

My husband just texted me this picture of today’s demo progress. I had to ask him to tell me where he was so I could orient myself. He is standing in my master bedroom looking clear to the other side of the house. There used to be closets there yesterday.  

The past few months have been a whirlwind to be honest. To make a long story short I finally found a wonderful fixer upper in the neighborhood we have been searching in for a year. We put an offer on the house in December before it was ever listed on the market and it was accepted after negotiations. It took quite a while to get to closing as we had to do typical inspections but also get estimates on all of the up front renovation costs that had to be done before we moved in. Needless to say we just now closed on March 27th! 

The buying process might have taken a while but our contractor is wasting no time! His crew started the roof on Friday and finished it by Saturday. Today we walked into the house and they had already started demolition of the interior in the areas we are updating/changing and he plans to start framing by the middle of this week. It was quite shocking as we have passed the stage of turning back. 😃 

Later this week I will post lots of pictures of the house before we bought and the updates and changes we are making to the floor plan. For now I leave you with pictures of my tore up house! I have butterflies in my stomach looking at them. 

The exterior with the new black roof. Now the million dollar question to paint the brick or not? It is red/gray in color and we are leaning towards painting it as we are installing beautiful black Hurd casement windows later this summer. 

 This was a retro pink kitchen. I hated to remove it because I am nostalgic but we are making major changes to improve the layout. However we are saving some of the cabinets that were salvageable and my sister is using them in her upcoming renovation. Did I mention they are moving down the street if all goes through? I am one excited lady!    

The black expoxy on the walls is where the pink and gray laminate backsplash was mounted.  

This wall will soon have a smaller window to allow for a run of cabinets and the kitchen sink centered on the window. Can’t wait to repurpose some of the light fixtures. They are retro and fun.  

 A peek at my soon to be gorgeous living room ceiling. The opening on the left is the original hall entrance and it will be sealed up to allow for a TV wall. The opening on the right is brand new and did not exist this morning. It was used to be some built-in shelves and on the other side of it was a hall closet we removed to make the new entrance into the hallway. 

The hallway and master bedroom closets and bathroom are where most of the changes are taking place. We removed a small closet and a larger closet in the hall to reconfigure some of the bedroom closets and build a laundry closet so it doesn’t have to be in the garage. 

Currently there are two ways to enter the master bedroom. From the hallway and from the sunroom. The doorway on the right was the original entrance but we are sealing it up and shifting it down. You can see the new opening on the left. We are also sealing up the hallway entrance. By doing this it allows us to take two seperate closets and merge them into a walk-in closet and create a better furniture arrangement. It also allows us to enlarge the master bathroom a bit.    

The door way is the master bedroom entrance from the hall. It is going to be sealed up.   

We originally intended to keep the master bathroom as is for a few years but inspections found the sub-floor was rotten and a joist needed to be fixed. That meant bye bye aqua and black bathroom. It does hurt a little to see it gone as I liked it.   Enough for tonight! Hope you are excited to see the floor plans and before photos! 

It has been forever since I have posted to this account but I have decided to blow off the dust and begin writing again. I want to share design ideas and research with students and design enthusiasts as well as keep updates on my own personal home renovation. 

I hope you will al enjoy viewing them!