Great Room beginning or beginning of a great room!

The house started out with 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. In the past year we have added a bathroom and an office. Recently we destroyed a bedroom and opened it up to the dining room and living room (names used loosely since they are all just storage rooms so far).

We didn't think that this project would be able to happen yet financially, but my dad has a contractor friend who worked with us for a few days and we got a 25 foot/ 900 lb beam put up so that we could take walls down! Yay!

In the next few weeks we will be getting drywall installed. We have been looking at the innards of this house for 1 1/2 years! Please, close it up!

Last view of the "List Wall"

Inside the Office looking into the Living Room

We found some old barge pieces were used in our house. Waste not, want not!

25 foot, 900 lb beam!

The length of the room before the beam

Bobby making the final adjustments. We had to let the house settle with it's new beam for a little while before removing the old beam and studs.

Painting

Living in the country area, you start to get use to bugs being around everywhere. They pop up when least expected!

While painting the bathroom tub area, I was being very careful to cut in with straight lines around the subway tile. Dad and I spent HOURS tiling and I didn't want to mess anything up. I looked back and there were paint marks on the tile! Ahh! I was being so careful! 

And then I noticed a little spider with painted blue legs crawling around the corner. Heehee, apparently the spider had hidden down in the crack of the tile and decided to come out and inspect my work, leaving a trail behind him. 

The Throne Room

The first room to be really focused on was the Master Bathroom. Hmmm, yeah sounds selfish. So what that the boys are sleeping on a mattress on the floor in the 'family room'. We have our own bathroom that we don't have to share with the kids! Ha!

The bathroom started out as the previous owners sewing room.

Yep, it's up past the window!

As a term of our contract, we told them that they could take what they needed when they moved and all the extra stuff we would dispose of. Either by donating it or throwing it away. So this sewing room ended up being FULL of fabric! Like, full up the walls full. Being so overwhelmed with moving and coming to this house that was more packed then I expected, I didn't end up keeping an of the fabric myself. I know, weird. But you have to draw the line somewhere. And since all our belongings were stuffed into one room while we worked on the rest of the house, I couldn't justify keeping loads of fabric that would sit there for years until I decided what to do with it.

So we cleared out the room and bumped out the wall to make the room a bit bigger!

The plan was to at least put a double sink in. I was tired of waiting for Rob to finish brushing his teeth so I could spit my toothpaste out. It starts to really burn!

We used fiverr.com to pay someone $5 to design our space with all our desires.We combined a few fiverr ideas and some pinterest ideas and came up with our own design.

Here's the problem with 3 people (Me, Rob and my Dad) designing one space. Everyone wants something different. So we ended up with a lot in the small bathroom-
Double sink, corner whirlpool bath, walk-in shower that can fit two ;o), and a short wall by the toilet. No problem!

The first major project we worked on after the pipes were ran was to build a deck for the tub to sit on. We built it and "dry fitted" the tub...it didn't fit. So we tore it down and built another one...and a third and final one!

The picture on the right shows the carnage from the second redo

We finally got it in and hooked up the motor and tested it out. We didn't have the drain hooked up yet so we  had to hang a hose out of the second story window and siphoned the water out. But it works!

My dad has always wanted to try a waterproof tile system that he's been seeing in home shows that he goes to. So we started on the Schluter system! It consisted of thin-setting an orange fabric on the wall and sealing EVERY SINGLE SEAM with more expensive orange fabric. But it's waterproof...if we did everything right...

And so we begin the tiling process. We went with subway tile throughout the bathroom and a really complicated design on the tub deck!

We added the brushed nickle fixtures and took a bath that night! We have never owned a tub that I could lie down in and have everything covered with water. My dreams have come true!

So there's this house...

We were living in Idaho ready to move to Maryland where my family lives. How do you buy a house on one side of the United States while living on the other side?

We looked online for houses and sent my parents out to check them out. We were looking for a fixer upper since my dad is handy and retired and we wanted some specific things in a house. Okay, and we wanted to save some money...not sure if that part is panning out the way we thought it would!

After months of looking and basically finding really gross houses, my dad found this house on Craigslist of all places and it seemed to have everything we wanted.



7 acres of land, a forest with a stream, enough square footage for us and storage (which our last house was lacking). It also had some fun extras like a horse pasture with horse tenants (which would stay and pay us rent), a big barn that we could turn into a wood shop and a 'secret' room that the boys want to call Narnia. Perfect!

Was it worth flying out to see it before we commit to buying? Nah, I trust my parents!

Yes, we are crazy. But the price was good, we were moving out in a few months and we wanted a permanent place to stay. We didn't want to bounce from my parent's house to rental house to our house.

This house has presented some interesting and 'adventurous' opportunities! We have torn out all the carpet, most of the walls (crumbling lath and plaster), cleared out all of the previous owners stuff (part of the contract) and have now, finally, started to put things back together!

The house started with a recently updated kitchen and guest bathroom. We have just finished a master bathroom and Rob's office (since he works from home) and are working on finishing the mudroom/pantry. It's a slow process but we are learning a lot. Mostly, that renovating a house while you still have 3 young children at home is VERY hard! But we have a lot of help from friends and family. My dad is our contractor. We pay him with Diet Coke and Cookies. The arrangement is working great so far ;o)

As slow as it can go, I hope to be able to update new progress each week. At least that will be a goal to work towards!

Look for the next post to be about our new, GORGEOUS bathroom...