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! 

Out with the Old and In with the New: Week 4

We are almost done with the demolition, and the new cabinets are in!  (Scroll to the end for cabinet photos.)

After lots of work and inconvenience, which in my kids' point of view seems like "destroying everything," we are starting to see signs of renewal.  Inside and out!

We did a stay-cation for Spring break: highlights included a museum or two, fast food, friend hangouts, trampoline time, Pride and Prejudice read aloud at bedtime, a few movies, and a lot of hands-on help.  And a temple trip to do sealings with Frank. Megan, Grandma and Grandpa Judd, and some Judd aunts and uncles.


When the week began, we still had a few areas of flooring to remove.  Amanda and Emily made short work of the vinyl tile in the entry.  These were just stickers, but they sure stuck to the job for 33 years.  There's a good lesson for you!

The linoleum in the pantry put up a fight, but all of my helpers pitched in.  

Instead of fighting over the ipad, they were fighting over whose turn it was to use the crowbar and the linoleum knife.  Grandpa Fillmore would be so pleased!  Well, not about the fighting part...

This is how our front room looked on Monday: living room catch-all, dining room empty and ready for vinyl hardwood-looking planks.  Plan A was to keep carpet in the left corner and in front of the fireplace.

Then we started to realized that with the new island, the foot traffic would go right across the carpet edge, eventually wearing it out.  So we decided to walk the plank and put the wood-look throughout the front room and hallway.

Which meant clearing out the living room.

So my sweet husband, despite his back's painful backstory, muscled all this furniture out to the patio.

 And yes, it rained later in the week.

Over the next few days, we rolled up the living room carpet to use downstairs, pried up tack strips, plied out staples, and vacuumed up a gallon of sand.  I'm trying not to think about all the sand that is still living under our other carpets.

 Meanwhile, on Monday and Tuesday the kitchen drywall areas were sanded and textured.  The E.T.- inspired plastic sheeting helped to contain the dust and texture spatters.  During this phase, the only way to walk from the basement to the bedrooms was to go out through the garage, then in through the living room patio doors.  I'm glad we had nice weather those days.
 

The drywall gurus also fixed a split in the sheet rock of our garage ceiling.  Love the stilts!


Then cabinets were installed on Wednesday and Thursday.  Here's the before photo:


Wednesday:


Thursday:  The gap on the left is for the dishwasher, and over to the right a little is the gap for the gas stove with microwave and vent on top.   Countertops are scheduled to arrive in 2 weeks.

The sink gets a tilt-out faux drawer.

This is the view toward the office area.  We'll have a formica counter/desk in this corner.

The office cabinet will hide the printer.

It's starting to come together again!  

Tune in next week to see paint and flooring!  

 Hmmm, what color should we paint the rough stone wall? Vote for your favorite!
 (top row, starting from left,) a. Intricate Ivory, b. Natural Tan,
  (bottom row) c. Milestone, or d. Mystery sample color
P.S. the other walls will be Milestone.
P.P.S.  Actually I went with none of the above...

Renovation Week 3: The Eye of the Hurricane

Okay, actually, in the eye of the hurricane, everything looks all messed up but nothing much happens.  That describes our house in the past week.  But I've got a few photos to share.

First, Happy Easter!  A big thanks to Katie who hosted a girl's party that was to-dye-for! 

And thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Judd for hosting Easter dinner!  These are the cutest deviled eggs ever!

Next, a shout out to Amanda for being the best stage crew gal you've never seen for Orem Jr.'s Lion King production last week.  She became one with the dark side, making huge boxes reappear in different locations on the set.  Here she poses with a couple of hyenas.

So this week, we were still stuck in the permit application process, because the 10 foot roof we proposed to build over the former greenhouse area would be 5 feet too close to the back fence according to city statute.  With time ticking, we finally resubmitted the permit application without the exterior stuff.  Then, this past Wednesday (after about 2 weeks of no reply to calls, voice mail, or emails) we got an email saying the roof would not be given a permit.  Then before we could ask about appeals, the gentleman took a week off for spring break.  There's always the retractable awning idea....

Here we are enjoying the patio area as the weather warmed up to mid-60s.

But the good news is that our permit application for the interior was reviewed Thursday morning and an inspector came Thursday afternoon.  So drywall could be installed Friday, taped and covered with goo on Saturday morning.  The walls look great, except for where I chiseled off the old tile backsplash.


Notice the area of flooring by the closets.  Here's before we took up the laminate..



...and after.

 To take up the laminate in the dining room, we had to make adjustments to the living room:

Here's the dining room with the laminate...

...And here's the dining room half way done.  This floor was even more fun to remove than it was to install.  We're listing the boards on KSL, and so far we've had one interested caller.  So far KSL helped us sell our wall oven and greenhouse, so you never know what people will be willing to reuse.
 


Here's the before and after shots of our dearly departed apricot tree.  The other apricot trees in the area are in full bloom, but this one hasn't shown any signs of life for over a year.

We probably should have pruned it and digged about it and dunged it like the scriptural allegory of the olive trees.  Or we could have tried our neighbor Greg Ferguson's method of blasting his dying peach tree with a hunting rifle.  But I don't think our neighbors would have appreciated that.






So Frank chopped down the apricot tree.  No more popcorn popping.

We used the wait time this week to look at flooring, sink, some lights, and tile for a backsplash (We're thinking 6" tiles installed on the diagonal).  Now if I can just pick a paint color for the walls...  We're crossing our fingers for cabinets on Wednesday...