Week 9 - Renovation Essentially complete!

On our return from England, we found everything ready for progress on the outside of the house.

The roof had been stripped back to the "truss tails" and a huge 40 foot I-beam had been brought in and fastened to supports.

Then rafters were connected to the truss tails and covered with plywood.

The switch for fan and lights is ready.

Shingles were delivered.

While the roofers were working outside, I was planning how to finish the windowsills inside.  This required several trips to Grandpa's workshop and several tries.

Finally it all fit together--a layer of PVC over the old sills, with vinyl molding below.  

Now the paintings are back on the walls!  The inside is pretty much done!

So fun to wash dishes in the new sink and sweep the new floor!

Here is the outside with soffit partly done.

Meanwhile, Emily was in the 5th grade patriotic production, "Hope of America."

Emily is in the front row of yellow shirts, about 1/3 of the way over from the left.

More "Where's Waldo"-- Lisa played in a Band and Orchestra concert at Mountain View.  See if you can find her in a red blazer not looking at the camera.

The Best is Yet to Come: Renovation Month #2

This post starts a month ago, when we were a month into the renovation.  By April 13, we had cabinets, paint, lights, and flooring.  I was anticipating a trip to England on April 28th and hoping my family would have a kitchen while I was gone.

Week 6: Things started happening quickly.  On April 16, the laminate desktop was installed in our office area.  We chose a color which would be similar to the granite but darker.  We love the color--stray sharpie and pencil sharpener dust will blend right in.

A few days later, the microwave was in and working.  It has a fan which vents to the porch. It took a while to get used to the microwave being in the kitchen again.  We kept walking out to the pantry where our old microwave has been for a month.

Our heating guru says we really need this return air vent in the middle of the great room floor.  I eventually painted the grate a darker color so it is more camoflaged.  Now we ignore it except when we say,  "The old wall used to go right through here!"

My niece Annmarie came to stay with us while she did her CNA, and she didn't let lack of an oven keep her from making cookies!

The next day the oven arrived.  But it didn't get installed immediately, so Annmarie's cookies ended up being baked at our next-door neighbor's house.

That same day I started setting the tile border over the laminate desktop.  I was really slow at first!

I put off renting the tile saw until the granite arrived, so this corner was a little rough.  The handheld tool for scoring and snapping tiles kept chipping corners or going askew, so a lot of superglue and sanding went into this corner.

Week 7:  The walls were still in the same ragged condition as the day I pried off the old tile backsplash.

I worried about making the new tile look flat and even with that crazy surface, so I spread on some spackling putty, slapped on some paint to prime it, then sanded the paint just a bit.  Now I just needed those granite countertops to come in, and I could do the backsplash before going to England!

The counters were supposed to come Monday, but instead arrived Tuesday.   The timing wasn't great, but the counters themselves were very beautiful and were a huge step toward a finished look.

Now it was time for the backsplash, but this happened to be the same day I had a final for a BYU class.  Flashback to the midterm which fell on the same day as my first mammogram....  Which proves education does not get more convenient as you get older!  That perfect opportunity to invest in education will never come again, so might as well plunge in and tackle it a little at a time!

So on the way home from my final, I rented a tile wet saw from Home Depot.  It was about 4 hours from closing time, so they said I could return it at 9 am for the same 4 hour price.  I thought I'd be fine with 4 hours, but at 8:00 pm I was still prepping and dithering between a diagonal or square orientation.


Then my amazing friend Emily happened by and offered to help, so I decided to go for diagonal.  Emily cut dozens of tiles into triangles and got the momentum going by slapping the mortar on tiles ("backbuttering") while I made the wall mortar all groovy.  Here's how it looked by 10:30pm.

I was having so much fun that I just couldn't stop,


Then the saw started getting flaky (probably because of all the water splashing everywhere.)  So here's how it looked when I went to work at 7:45 the next morning.

So after work I marshalled the troops for a final push:  Emily came back and cut out intricate shapes for the outlets, Amy started grouting the tile by the desk, and my tall nephew Connor squeezed behind the stove and backbuttered like a pro.

The saw was getting tricky again, and we nursed it through the final few cuts with prayers and a hair dryer.  

With no time for second chances, we threw on the last few edge pieces, Emily washed off the saw, and I raced the saw back just before the deadline.

The windowsill would need some serious TLC, but that would have to wait.

The next day, I slapped grout in the gaps, and it looked pretty good!  Especially from a distance.  

Happy 25th Anniversary!  My sweet and patient husband gave me a new kitchen, plus time to learn a  messy and time-consuming new skill, plus a trip to England with my two oldest daughters to see Grandma and Grandpa.  Said daughters were frantically helping me caulk the seams of aforementioned kitchen just minutes before we revved up the car to drive to the airport.  Good times.

This house is completely red in the fall.  The Ramsey Ward seminary teacher lives here.

Thatched roof somewhere in Cambridgeshire.

St. George's Chapel in Windsor, where the prince's wedding would be held the following month.

London Temple

Globe Theater replica--the only building in London city allowed to have a thatched roof.

Walls and Floors: Reno Week 5

Another week has brought more changes to our front room.  We are still cooking out of our pantry, so Mom Judd did us a huge favor and invited us all over for Sunday dinner last week.  We met Megan's friend Patrick, who used to be her home teacher (until home teaching was abolished).  He was very entertaining.  So nice to be in a kitchen!  Even doing dishes in a real sink was a novelty.

The big news this week is that we finally got an appointment with the city planner, who looked at our photos and listened to our explanation about wanting to cover the patio .  After consulting with the lawyers, he approved our plan to build a roof 10 feet out from the house, whereas the earlier decision would have only allowed 5 feet.  So we are back on track for the backyard.

This week was painting week!  The chickens in the pantry were evicted, and the pantry shelves were cleared with everyone's help.

 Painting day brought a new level of inconvenience, so we are glad it only lasted a day and a half.  These pantry shelves had been holding all the essentials from the former kitchen cabinets, but now we were limited to the three shelves and cupboards-- everything else went downstairs.  Gonna feel like a lot of room when we can expand again!

At one point several doorways were sealed off and the fridges were wrapped in plastic.

We are a little clueless in the paint department, so we outsourced.  A crew came in and whisked through the job.  First, white flat paint for the ceilings and white semigloss for trim and closets.

Then, it was time for the moment of truth.  We had sampled a few wall colors but hadn't settled on anything--we were looking for a light tan, but the samples all looked too green or too blue or too gray (see below).  Thanks for those who voted last week, but we went with e) none of the above.  We realized we wanted lighter and brighter, like the top left choice (Intricate Ivory) but not so rosy.

 While looking through my conference notebook, I saw a tiny color swatch I had picked out months ago of a nice pale tan called "Meetinghouse White."  (Yay for conference notes!  Yay for Meetinghouses!)  At the very last minute, I switched to this lighter color for all the walls, and we have been very pleased with the brightness.  It is close the the previous wall color but a little cooler, and the white trim gives it more contrast.

The doors and closets got a makeover.

The rough block wall used to be almost salmon.

 Still waiting for backsplash makeover!

 Then the disc lights were installed Wednesday, as well as drop lights over the island.  We put in a simple chandelier to match.  We really like the daylight LED bulbs and the bright, cool tones.

We had a forecast for rain and snow, so we carted the sofa, shelf, and dining room table to the garage.  Good thing, because the wind that accompanied the rain would have blown off the tarps.

The electrician who installed the lights saw Frank's Kawasaki Vulcan for sale and offered to swap it for the work he had done on the house.  Frank had posted the motorcycle on KSL and had some inquiries, but no offers.  After deliberating over the electrician's offer (it was quite a bit lower than he hoped), Frank decided to make the swap.

 The flooring was installed on Thursday with some touch up on Friday.  This is called Adura Max Sausalito Sunrise, and it looks like seasoned wood but is actually vinyl planks that snap together.

The installers "scribed" the planks to fit right up against the zig zags of the fireplace and wall.

It's starting to feel like a home again!

Welcoming entrance...

 There is a wonky return air vent in the middle of the new floor, one of the last vestiges of the old wall.  Switches, outlets, central vac, and phone from the old wall were moved elsewhere, but this vent, we are told, just needed to be in the middle of the room.

We are getting used to dusty footprints on the dark-ish floor.  And it is not 100% scratch resistant, we found.  But the floor looks distressed, so the scratches hide pretty well.

 Emily was happy that she can slip around in her socks on the new floor.

I am happy that our furniture was safely in the garage (not the back porch) when we woke up to 4 inches of snow this morning.

Frank is happy that the kids all pitched in to haul furniture inside.  Yay for family members with muscles!

We actually ate dinner at our dining room table today and read scriptures in our living room!  And our fridge is no longer in the dining room--although that was actually very convenient.

Funny story during scriptures: we were reading in Alma 62 about how the tribulations of war caused some hearts to be hardened and others to be softened and humbled.  Frank asked why that was important.  Lisa said, "Sometimes you just have to humiliate yourself!"

Tune in next week for more metamorphosis!