Spontaneous & Fast Project

Last Thursday evening Philip headed off to a Jets game and I was feeling mega burnt out from the work week and ready for an evening of relaxing. I didn't feel like making dinner, let alone doing anything productive.

Philip left, I made myself a snack, and I sat down to watch some Netflix. A little bit into TV I went to catch up on blog reading and came across this Apartment Therapy article about simple DIY projects to do this weekend. I looked at all the articles, and after reading this one, I decided to do a quick change in our kitchen that I thought might tide me over until the big reno happens.

Our kitchen cooking area can be pretty tight, and I get lonely cooking in there alone! Sometimes Philip sits at the kitchen table and chats with me while I cook, but then I have to open the cupboard doors in order to see him at all. I have to admit I'm not that trendy when it comes to the open shelf trend, I find things get dusty and I just don't have enough pretty things that I feel like displaying in my kitchen, but I did think this might make the some-day-to-be-changed kitchen layout feel a little more welcoming and fit our lifestyle better. I decided to get out the screwdriver and take off the doors on the kitchen side of the peninsula.

It took 4 screwdriver bits, about an hour, and the removal of 18 screws, in addition to the wiping of ancient 1960s sawdust, but it was worth it!

The removal of the doors, along with the wonderful yellow tulips I got last week from a friend, are turning our kitchen into a smilier place by the day :).

One of the best things about this I realized after the light of day happened the next morning is that it lets the light from the kitchen area window flood the whole space. It really helps things to feel brighter!

Happy Monday!

Many Steps Closer to Bathroom Launch Success

Since we haven't blogged in so long, this post has been ongoing for a month or two, it has made it hard to post because every time I have time to work on it there's more to add! We don't have a lot of pictures, blogging hasn't been top of mind and so when we were doing boring things like putting up insulation, the camera wasn't always at hand. Today I'm posting this thing, even though it isn't perfect. Our main computer is having issues, so I'm also doing this post on my super old laptop which has a faulty space bar and no photo editing software. These pictures are grainy at best. Let's call them "artsy." It's time to get you caught up on how our bathroom went from this...

To how it looks today...

We left off having our roof inspected and we've been given the go-ahead that our roof should be water-free in the future. That left us to continue making progress in the bathroom, and hopefully one day it will be usable.

Bathrooms have been a major part of life lately, with our renovation in the evenings and at work I was designing 7 bathrooms for one home. Definitely having lots of bathroomspiration, and the occasional bathroom related nightmare. I can't even imagine having a finished bathroom, but we're getting close!

Philip reinsulated our exterior wall, and it proved to be one of our best DIY projects to date, in my opinion. Everything went smoothly, it wasn't too difficult to figure out, and it made a big difference! We started out by removing the old insulation, they had actually spray foamed from the outside from what we could tell, but we didn't really know that going in so it was still good to get it freshened up. Also because the spray foam didn't extend all the way to the edges and had a lot of places for cold air to leak in. Next up we measured the width between studs and cut the insulation to size. After that it's just a matter of sliding the insulation easily into place. 

Philip also put up the vapor barrier, we weren't really sure how to do any of this but we spent the morning watching You Tube videos of people putting up insulation and vapor barriers, and then we just worked away! You Tube and Google are definitely great resources when you want to try and tackle something yourself, there are a lot of great tutorials out there that can help you get an idea of what you're doing.

Next up, the plumber came in and worked at installing our bathtub, as well as reconfiguring plumbing and improving some of the plumbing that was there before since it's all exposed anyway and we may as well do it right. We have a new stack, and a brand new bathtub. 

Our electrician came one evening and roughed in all of the wiring for 3 brand new GFCI's - in the old bathroom there was one plug, which only worked for 60s razors. He also hung our vent fan, which we ducted ourselves. We still have to drill the hole to vent it outside, but the ducting is all ready to go.

We purchased a light fixture last week online, crossing our fingers that it doesn't get back-ordered like crazy and that it looks okay in real life. It's a sleek fixture, that we hope will look great in the end. It's hard to choose these things when the room just looks like a gutted box! 

Finding flooring that met our criteria was a challenge. We didn't want tile because it's cold on the feet, hard to install yourself without some know-how, and would make a big ridge from our wood floor = stubbed toe central. We ended up with a vinyl tile from A&R Carpet Barn, they're big and rectangular and the installation sounded very user friendly. Basically each tile can be glued in place, and cut to fit with a utility knife. The tiles are a grey/white with a linear pattern. 

We've had to reframe the linen closet wall 2 times now, but hopefully we did it for the last time now. The main reason was to make the vent fan fit inside the wall, and we're actually kind of loving the wider 2 x 8 wall next to the shower giving it a more built in look. 

Once everything was framed, and electrical and plumbing were completed, we were ready for drywall. We called our friends to book it, right under the wire too as a couple days later one of them had a baby! Philip took the day off that they were coming so we could finish up with sound insulating and ducting, but a twist came when we realized the night before that the tub surround needed to go up before the drywall! 

After calling a number of friends/family who seemed handy to us, my aunt & uncle came over in the morning to give us a hand. It was terrifying drilling the holes through acrylic side walls, but it all went okay! Basically it was just a matter of putting silicone in a groove, putting each wall into the silicone, and drilling screws all along the top for extra support. 

As we were finishing up sound insulation our friends showed up and drywalled everything in an hour and a half. It looks awesome to have a bathroom with walls again!! First time since January!

Mudders & Tapers are almost done, one more coat to go, we delayed them a bit by going on vacation (we just got back from Minneapolis on Wednesday night). 

Next Steps:
- Choose paint color
- Prime
- Paint
- Install Flooring
- Casings & Trim
- Think of a Linen Closet Solution
- ....start our kitchen?

Lighting Up Our Life

Yesterday we did a completely unnecessary but never the less exciting improvement to our home. Sometimes it's nice to do a quick switch up while a bigger and at-a-stand-still project is going on (cough bathroom cough).

A while back, our friends Chris and Nicole bought a two pack of some standard light fixtures, they installed one and then had planned to donate the other one since they didn't have a place for it. We are apparently a charitable cause, because we received this free light fixture donation. Free. Most beautiful word in home improvement.

Installing light fixtures is so far one of the main used-to-frustrate-us-but-now-is-a-breeze projects. Sometimes when we're working on something and we both feel crazy and we're looking on Google for how to do it and we think we're so stupid, I remind us that the next time we do the project we'll already know and so every project is a learning opportunity. That has been the case with light fixtures, Philip's dad used to always get a phone call when we needed one hung, and now Philip does it quickly and efficiently. So proud!

Unfortunately we don't have a lot of photos of this switch, because Philip did it while I was making dinner and so I wasn't around to take photographic evidence. We did get a few photos for you though so you'll get the idea.

He was so speedy that I didn't even get a before picture.
But here are his not-attached-to-his-body arms, reaching up to take out the light bulb. 

Here's the original shade. If it suits your fancy, come pick it up at our garage sale this summer! 

At some point we'll do a real tutorial of how to do this light fixture switcharoo, but this one just isn't it. Handyman Philip was much too quick, I was just cooking up some chicken in the kitchen and kept running over to take pictures whenever it wasn't urgently needing attention.

Here is how it looks now!

Up close and personal. It's just a plain light fixture, similar to what we have
in our office except a little smaller. 

Just so you get where this light is located, to the right there is the front closet, straight ahead is the 3rd unused bedroom. 

This is the view from our bedroom, down the hall to the bathroom. 

We weren't totally sure where we wanted to put the light fixture when we first were gifted it, but it made sense for the hall because of the size and I like that it's semi-flush because otherwise there would definitely be some hitting of heads on the groggy walk to our bathroom...once it's done. Now we just need to get rid of the extra smoke alarm, paint, trim, popcorn ceiling, agh.

Anyone else mastering the light fixture upgrade? Got a free home improvement gift?