Adventures in Renovating

I feel like I kind of left everyone hanging after my house tour a couple weeks ago. I had hoped to be able to squeeze in an update sooner, but the reality is that we’ve been going full force on renovations and updates, while also trying to balance work and family stuff. It’s been a lot! But, I decided to try and eek a post in this morning and see where I get to with that :)

We closed on the house on July 21st, and then went away for the weekend. Not the “normal” way of doing things I guess, but we’ve already established that our family is far from normal. We got back from a lovely weekend away at Mount Hood where I literally did nothing more than sit on a deck overlooking forest and a stream for two days while I wrote and read. It was fabulous and much needed after a hard season of transition, and before we jumped into a really busy time.

The day after we got back Olivia and I went over to the new house and spent time looking at paint chips that I had already gathered in advance. We needed to pick out colors for the cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom.

Chris and I had already decided the whole house was going to get a good coat of Behr’s Whipped Cream, which we used in the rental we’re living in right now. If you know us from our Haiti days, you know we like a white wall ;) It might seem boring or sterile to some, but we have reasons. First, we like and need things to be bright. Chris struggled with depression in college and since then has always been aware of how light affects him. Having a bright space helps his mood, and mine. We both actually really LOVE color, but we love mixing it with a white base. In Haiti we had off-white walls and terra cotta colored tile on the floors, and it was such a great neutral for being able to add whatever art or color that we wanted. I learned that setting a good base allows me more room for creativity in other places, like using mosaic tiles on a wall. So, we’re going with that mindset in this house too. We love the Whipped Cream because it’s a really neutral, very slightly, off-white that is bright, clean, but not sterile or glaring.

Olivia and I bought most of the paint. That afternoon Chris came over to the house and started working on the yard. None of that stuff would actually get us closer to moving in, which he realized the next day, but it helped him clear the slate and feel like something had gotten done. And, it opened up the yard and made it feel cleaner. So it was really a win in that sense.

We also had Joe come by. Joe is a family friend and the handy man that takes care of all the maintenance on Chris’ family’s rental units. He’s is one of those people who knows a lot of things about a lot of things, and can probably figure out how to do whatever it is you need done. We walked through the house with him and told him the high priority items that needed to get done before we moved in, and what things we wanted to do long-term, including the rental unit in the garage. Here’s the great thing about Joe – he took all of it in, then said, “Sure, we can do all that.” And he’s right. He knows how to do all the contracting type things that need to get done, so between the three of us we’re pretty confident we can handle most of the work ourselves, which saves us a lot of money and time in the long-run. We can work on our own schedule and not have to wait for openings in a contractor’s schedule, which is a huge thing.

The next day we all went to work. I did another (of many) Home Depot run to get more supplies, including picking up our new exterior doors. The doors that were on the house were original, but they were in really bad shape and were very flimsy feeling compared to what you’d get now. We knew they needed to be changed out, and it was a great choice to do it right away. One big part of this was opening up the front door opening from a 32″ doorway to a 36″ one so we could more easily move furniture in and out. We learned that lesson the hard way when we moved into our house in Camp Marie. After almost a year of construction, moving day came, and we realized when we couldn’t get our fridge in the house that none of us had actually measured the width of the security doors we bought. The guys had to bash the doorway out, take out the door, move the fridge in, and then temporarily reinstall the door until we could find a wider door to replace it. Lesson learned!

When we were doing a walk through with a contractor during the inspection phase, we were only on the inside of the door when we were talking about what would be involved in opening it up more. After we signed the papers we were at the house, standing outside with the screen door open and I realized the screen door was wider than the front door, and that in order to install the screen door someone had already widened the opening. When Joe came over we measured it and it was already 36″, so swapping out the door would be less work than what we initially expected :) That doesn’t mean it was easy, because it’s an old house, but it was easier.

Chris and I got to work on all of the prep that needs to happen before paint. Joe has a paint sprayer, so we knew that once the prep work was done, the painting itself would move quickly, but man, I hate painting prep work! It’s literally days of filling and patching, then sanding. It’s taping things off and removing all the bits and pieces. Can we talk about ceiling hooks?!? I’m not exaggerating when I say this house had more ceiling hooks than I’ve ever seen in a house before. Don’t believe me? I saved them in a baggie so I could show you :)

As I was prepping what will be our bedroom, I went in the closet to see what needed to be done in there. I’ll be honest, this space was one that I was not happy with and feeling frustrated with as I was trying to figure out what to do with it. We’ve had walk-in closets in the past three houses we’ve lived in, and love having open shelves for our clothes rather than dressers. The closet wasn’t super small, but there was a doorway over it, which really limited access and what you could do in it. When I went inside I realized that the house had just given us another gift. That door-way/wall was just 2×4’s and a sheet of drywall. It had been added after the house had been built when someone decided they didn’t want the closet to be open to the room. I called Chris in to look at it and he asked if I wanted it taken down, then got to work with a sledge hammer :)

There’s still the side wall defining the space, but now it’s open all the way up to the ceiling and we can easily put in built-in shelves and a small hanging space, maximizing what’s there. If we need more room we can rotate seasonal things to the closet across the hall in our office. Taking the wall down made the room feel so much more open because your eye goes all the way up to the ceiling, which sits at 8’4″. We’ll probably hang a curtain over it at some point, but it’ll be floor to ceiling so it’ll visually make the room feel taller.

The day before I started painting Joe finished the front door. When he had the old door out we decided to make space to add in the same size trim that’s around the windows, which meant moving the porch light over, so he did all the work for that at the same time, and updated the wiring for the porch light. This meant cutting away at the siding and exposing the studs in the wall. This was good because we didn’t know what type of insulation was in the walls. Joe found about a foot and a half of balled up newspaper, and then spray in insulation on top of that, which matched what is up in the attic. As he took out newspapers to replace them with some pink insulation later, we were given a bit of history. I opened up one ball and it was a perfectly preserved few sheets from a 1947 paper. The adds are amazing, so I’m going to flatten some of them down and frame them to hang in the house after we move in.

He also found a handful of marbles and a small chunk of coal. Right on the other side of the wall there was a patch in the plaster. We figure that at some point in the early days of the house someone accidentally knocked a hole in the wall, and a kid dropped a handful of marbles in there and couldn’t get them back because they dropped below the newspaper. I need to find a fun jar to put them in so we can keep them on display.

After days of feeling like we were spinning our wheels with prep work, on Thursday I was able to get painting and got all of the first floor finished, except the places in the kitchen that I needed to do with a brush and roller because of cabinets. It always amazes me how much of a difference paint can make, even in places where you think that it’s not too bad. Most of the upstairs was painted with a taupish-cream color, and it wasn’t terrible, but when the white started going up we realized how dingy it looked.

During prep Chris took down the fluorescent lights that were in the living room and kitchen. I can understand the kitchen, but the living room? When I bought paint I picked up some replacements, but when I showed them to Chris I was surprised to be told they were ugly and that we should make them all match, and also swap out the light fixture in the dining room, LOL. Chris is usually the one that’s the most budget conscious, so I assumed he’d want to save as much money as possible and not change something out just because it wasn’t our favorite looks wise. I told him how surprised I was by his strong opinions about certain things that I had expected to be opposite, and he told me it was because this is our own house and we should do things right from the beginning. It’s been fun to talk about certain decisions and see how much we align, but also where we want to put our own stamp on things.

The two bedrooms already had larger “boob” lights which actually work in the house because of the age, so he wanted those for the other rooms. I know, I know. Boob lights have a bad reputation. But, I think it’s important to remember that they actually got their start in the early to mid-1900’s when things moved from chandelier and hanging lights in most rooms, to having flush mount lights, so for our house it works. I decided that I would go with something that looked more aged rather than shiny, and got an oil rubbed bronze finish on them. We have a really cool hall light fixture with oil rubbed bronze on it, so now as you look through the main floor it all flows well. Here’s a picture of the living room with paint, new door, and the new light fixture…

After the upstairs got painted we finished prepping the basement. I feel like this is where a bigger transformation happened because it was so dark down there. I don’t actually have pictures of it yet because I basically sprayed, then we cleaned up and went home for dinner, and I’ve been busy working on things upstairs for the past week. I do have a picture of what I looked like after it was done though :)

I also sprayed the back entry way. Earlier in the week Chris took out all of the weird cabinets that had been installed. The one that was up on a shelf behind the back door ended up being an old radio or TV cabinet, but there were no shelves in it. We couldn’t really figure out what it was there for until Chris took it out and found years worth of dog food dust. We put all the pieces together and realized that they had used it to store dog food up high where the dog couldn’t get it. Seeing the damage on the doors and trim through the house from the dog, it all made sense, but was a funny solution.

Mid-week, while Chris was prepping stuff downstairs, he found a small puddle on the laundry/soap room floor, but didn’t think much of it and just mopped it up. The next day, as we were closing up the house and turning off all the lights before leaving, I found a bigger puddle on the floor down there and called him down. We got out flashlights and started investigating, because all the sewer lines are on the other side of the wall. He shone his light through the hole where the washer lines hook up to the water pipes and was looking right at duct tape wrapped around the main sewer pipe, and it was wet. We’d found the leak, and the really crappy patch job that we figure lasted exactly 3 weeks – long enough for the house to go through inspection when no one was using the bathroom.

We wondered how we and the inspector had missed it, but when we looked from the side of the pipes where you come into the room, when you shine a light on that area it just looked black, like the pipes, because of the shadows. On the other side, where Alex’s room is, there was a new piece of drywall and this little metal door. When we had opened that door earlier in the week we just quickly looked at it and said, “That’s where you get easier access to the main lines,” and went on our way. When we opened the door again we realized it was exactly where the leak was and was there to give access to the patch. Chris pulled the tape off and we thought that it was just leaking from one of the joints, because it was where the PVC connected with the rubber seal that was going to the main pipe that exited the house. The next day when Joe looked at it to fix it we heard loud words come from the basement. When we asked what was going on he said, “The pipe isn’t leaking because it’s cracked or the glue is broken, it’s leaking because it was clogged and someone sawed through it, cleaned the clog, then taped it up!” So, rather than going to buy $20 worth of plumbing parts and fixing it the right way, they taped it up. Joe went and bought $20 worth of parts and fixed it the right way and we no longer having a leaking sewer pipe.

Last week we actually didn’t do any work on Tuesday or Wednesday because Chris and I both had a lot going on with work and appointments. Later in the week we got back at it, and had a really productive couple of days, as did Joe.

One of the things we needed to do downstairs was swap out some windows. All five downstairs windows/openingns are about 15×30″. Eventually we’re going to put in two egress windows in the kids rooms, per code. Alex’s room actually didn’t have a window – it only had the old metal door that covered the coal shoot. That was priority #1. When I went to buy the window Home Depot was having a sale, so we decided to buy 3 of the same windows at the same time, knowing that we’d eventually be installing them all. Joe spent a couple days putting in Alex’s window and got that done on Saturday evening. He’ll move on to the laundry room and Olivia’s room and replace those next. When it comes time to do the egress windows, the window that was put in Alex’s room will come out and be put in the laundry room to replace the other small window in there while Alex’s room gets the actual egress window.

On Thursday I worked to get a coat of Kilz on all the upstairs doors and trim as a primer. We’d had issues with some of the old wood work bleeding through in areas where the overspray was happening, so we knew that before we did any of the door and trim paint we needed to put down a stain blocker primer. On Friday Chris went to work painting the first coat of door and trim paint and I worked on painting all the window frames and sills in the living room, bathroom, and two bedrooms. We were trying to tackle the paint projects and get them all done so we could pull up carpet. The carpet made the house smell like dirty dog and sweat, so we knew the sooner we got it up the better, but we also knew there are wood floors underneath, so getting it up would mean we’d then have to be careful and protect the floors while we painted. If we got all the painting done first the old carpet could act as a drop cloth. It was a good thing we did it this way, because the day I was spraying upstairs someone, and by someone I mean me, spilled about a half gallon of white paint on the floor… I was so thankful the carpet was still down!

I got all the trim work done, and by late afternoon we were at a point where all the painting in the living room had been done, so we pulled up the carpet.

Now, I need to confess… I had pulled up a corner of the carpets in each room the first day I went to the house, to see what we were dealing with. When I pulled up the heat register in the living room and got a piece of carpet to pull back all I could hear in my brain was a big ol’ “Whomp, whomp…” There was linoleum between the carpet and the wood floors. I almost cried. I tried to pull up an edge there and it wouldn’t budge. I had visions of tar holding all of it down. I decided to try another corner because I wanted to prepare myself for the coming weeks. I yanked up the corner and found the linoleum and managed to get a corner in my pliers and pulled.

That linoleum ripped right up and I saw beautiful, bare wood underneath! I went and checked the hall and found wood under the carpet, and found the same in the office. When I checked our bedroom I found more linoleum :( This was when the closet was still in, so I couldn’t easily find a corner to pull up and had no idea if it was glued down.

I should mention (should I??) that when Chris took the big heat return out of the living room floor to pull up the carpet he saw pet hair, so he reached down and started pulling it out. Thankfully he was wearing gloves and a mask, because he pulled out a Shitzu sized ball of fur. I wish I was exaggerating but I am not. There was also an incredible amount of dirt and dust on the floor. I’m guessing some of it was just the carpet backing slowly disintegrating, but that a large part of it was from shoes being worn in the house. I’m good with never having carpet in my house again and just using area rugs after seeing that.

When we started pulling up the linoleum it came up in giant sheets, only ripping where they had stapled or nailed it down to the floor. There was a paper layer between that and the wood floors. The floors have a few spots that need a bit of TLC, but for the most part they’re in amazing condition. We even found some fun pencil markings on them.

Saturday we spent most of the day at the house. Chris spent almost two hours pulling staples and nails out of the floor while I worked on getting the second coat of door and trim paint done. In the middle of the night my brain was running because of seeing the floors and having a better idea of what we were dealing with.

I think it’s important to pause for a second here. In the past couple of weeks I’ve learned more about the history of our neighborhood, which deserves it’s own post, because it’s pretty cool. Learning about that helped me better understand the way our house was built, along with something that Chris’ Mum had shared with us a few days ago. Up until a certain time, around the 50’s I think, all the houses built in this area were required by building code to have some kind of wood sub-flooring under whatever other flooring was put down. So what was most typical is that hardwoods were put down as the sub-floor and then other things went on top. This was important, as my middle of the night brain figured out, because it meant that the wood floors we uncovered were our sub-flooring, and all of the studs that divided rooms were on top.

Our floors are fir, because it was readily available in abundance here in the Pacific Northwest. When I write my post about the history of our neighborhood I’ll share some of why this is interesting. For now though, I just want to share that I was excited about this, because fir is beautiful flooring. After it’s sanded it’s a lovely light wood color, but over time as it’s exposed to UV rays it darkens to a reddish brown. I prefer a darker floor over a light pine color, so finding this was exciting because it means we don’t need to stain the floors, just clear coat them, and then let them age over time.

Back when I went through the house tour I mentioned that we were going to be doing things in phases, right? And that phase one meant we were going to do what we needed to in order to get move in ready, then tackle other projects later on. Things like taking down walls and stuff like that…

On Saturday morning Chris and I were talking and he had realized the same thing that I had about the studs being on top of the floors. While we had planned to take down the arched doorway between the living room and dining room later, Chris pointed out that it made more sense to take it down now, and make all the mess now, rather than later. I was excited about this revelation, because he was right and I had already thought the same thing, but was trying to go slow.

And then he said it probably made sense to take down the wall behind the front door to open up the closet space there, since we were making a mess anyway. I forgot to mention that the week before Joe had closed it up on the bathroom side for us, and we had just decided to leave the rest until a later date, knowing what was back there and that we could open it whenever we were ready.

As a refresher, this is what it looked like…

It was very closed off. From the paneling wall to the doorway between the living room and kitchen was only 7 feet wide. It would be a tight squeeze to get our table and chairs in there, and actually sit in there comfortably.

Taking down old plaster walls is messy, so it absolutely made sense to do it all in one fell swoop, rather than doing it later and trying to figure out how to live with it. So now we have a much bigger opening to the kitchen/dining area and a big space for coats!

Chris and I didn’t go to the house on Sunday and instead went to church, home group, and spent time with the kids. They’ve been hanging out with Grandma a lot in the past couple weeks which we’re very thankful for. We were both exhausted from several days of a lot of work, so the day off was much needed.

When I went back yesterday Joe had done a TON more work to finish off the openings and prep them for new drywall. He had moved a couple electrical boxes over from where they’d been in the wall section of the dining room that we took out, and had cleaned up the opening for the coat closet more. Yesterday while we were there he finished up the demo and cleaning out the areas. I suspect when I get there today I’m going to see some drywall up :)

Joe and I will work on getting it all refinished this week, and painted, but it’s SO much better! It was a crazy amount of work, and felt like a big step back in some ways because we were tearing things out rather than finishing them off, but I just kept reminding Chris that we’d thank ourselves later. And we will. I think we already do.

Yesterday I worked on finishing bathroom wall touch ups and cleaned up the light that hangs over the sink. Today I think I’m going to start working on bathroom and kitchen cabinets. Chris will keep working on floors and getting all that pulled up. He got our bedroom done yesterday, so it’s the office and hallway that remain.

It’s been a ton of work, but we’re making progress! I can’t wait to share pictures after we get moved in because it’s going to be a huge transformation in a very short period of time. Stay tuned!

~Leslie