The digs

Monday, March 28, 2011

Bedroom completion, and bathroom beginnings

Well, hello, my faithful blogfriends! Here are some photos of my beautiful freshly-painted, recently-carpeted, and newly-window-shaded bedrooms to reward you for clicking over to my page:

bedroomofficeblue room blue roomblue roomblue roommaster bedroommaster bedroommaster bedroom

This past weekend was spent working on the bathroom (click here to see “before” photos).

First we ripped up the linoleum floor.

subfloor

Then we ripped out the ugly vanity.

vanity

empty space

I had to scrub all the mold off the wall that had grown behind the old vanity.

Then, when we took off the trim along the floor, we realized the sheetrock was moldy and disintegrating, so we had to cut out 16” of sheetrock from the floor up.

IMG_0482

sheetrock

Oh yeah, and we pulled out the toilet:

mold

Ummmm, yeah.

I also painted the bathroom doors. They were heinous. This is the before:

pink door

bathroom door

I painted them all white, but don’t have any after pictures. I’m a bad blogger.

This is what happens to bad vanities, by the way, so all you vanities best be behavin’:

bad vanity

My dad and stepmom did some yard work:

fire

And here is the bathroom, swept and eagerly awaiting tiles to call its own:

bathroom

bathroom

I also put a second coat of paint on the kitchen walls, and that was pretty much it for the weekend. Le sigh.

Stuff I’ve bought this week:

-a level, kneepads, 5 gallon Lowe’s bucket, cement board, chalk reel marker, speedlite, steel square, chisel set: $83.93

-cement board tape, dovetail saw: $24.94

-dehumidifier $152.98 (had a Bed Bath and Beyond coupon…returned the first dehumidifier we got, but, they gave me store credit so I can’t deduct it from my expenses since it’s not real money back)

-we returned $70 of ThinSet mortar, so durovent, versabond, stainblock, 2- 25 lb bags of grout, mixer, sponge, tile spacers, board knife, and grout saw cost me $36.56

-a sheet of green board, a leaf rake, and a box of drywall screws ($30 of stuff, but won’t add it since we used Lowe’s store credit from returning the dehumidifier)

Soooo, add that to the $50 for carpet tacks and I have myself a merry little $7279.05 to cry myself to sleep over. Oh, homeownership.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Carpet installation

The carpets went into the bedrooms today, which means the office and the two bedrooms are officially complete and ready to move into! Hooray!!!

Here are the photos. Carpets courtesy of Carpets Plus and buttcrack courtesy of Steve the carpet installing guy:

carpet, floor

Before

carpet pad

Carpet pad

carpet rolled out

All rolled out

carpet, installation, buttcrack, plumber, pad

carpet installation

carpet finished

aaand the finished floors! Ready to move into (and ready for my cat to destroy)!

carpet finished

carpet finished

carpet finished

Hooray! This must be some kind of milestone as far as home renovating goes. We finally have 3 livable rooms. We may replace the windows down the line, and will be adding curtains and/or blinds soon, but for the most part...DONE. I’m going to start moving a few things in this week!


Oh, also, I have to add another $50 my last total, because we had to buy carpet tack strips...

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Bathroom vanities are a source of stress

Saturday was painfully unproductive. Sad smile

We purchased a beautiful bathroom set on craigslist. It included the cabinet, a corian countertop, a sink, faucet, 2 towel racks and a toilet paper holder, and a mirror medicine cabinet with four sconces. The people told us the measurements, and we didn’t think to doublecheck them, since it looked right. Then we got it all the way home, after helping the people detach it from their plumbing and electricity, and it didn’t fit in our bathroom! Waaahhhhh! Luckily, the people were super cool about it and came back and got it today and gave us our money back—wow! There are nice people in the world.

This is what the vanity looked like…I was sad to see it go because it was sooo nice:

vanity

After the whole bathroom vanity debacle, I had to go pick up some couches down the Cape. By the time I was done with that, it was early evening. I put the first coat of paint on the kitchen and called it a night.

kitchen

kitchen

kitchen

The color is Sherwin Williams’ Sprout. It’s hard to see in the picture, but it’s a pale green color. I love it.

So that was all I accomplished 0n Saturday, aside from wasting a half tank of gas running around all day…ugggggh.

Today we spent a long time shopping at Home Depot.

I got:

-a ceiling fan to replace the one I broke

-underlay for pergo flooring

-pergo flooring for living room and hallway

-handrails for the stairway

-DWV pipe

-tile for the kitchen

-Thinset (for tiling, but we’re returning it and doing it a different way)

-mortar

-fittings

-PVC bushings

-Rock on 800 (don’t remember what that is)

-Trowel for tiling

All of this cost me $605.36.

After I was done spending a boatload of money, we went back to the house and did some things.

My dad did some yardwork, aka playing with his chainsaw:

IMG_0444IMG_0446IMG_0447IMG_0448IMG_0450yardIMG_0454overgrown

The yard is seriously overgrown, and needs major landscaping before it’ll stop looking like Pinkeye Village.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon digging a trench to put a drainpipe in for the sump pump:

pipe

After that, Adam took a ride with me to Plymouth to pick up another vanity I’d found on craigslist. We ended up getting it for $50, which was $200 cheaper than the first one that was too big. Plus the people threw in a medicine cabinet with mirrors and lights, two faucets, and two barstools! Not a bad deal for $50, and the people were really cool—they knew some of my coworkers—it’s a small Plymouth after all! Here is the cell phone picture of the new cabinet and sink:

vanity top, bathroom, cabinet

Also, the carpet was delivered on Friday, and that is going to be $400 including the installation. It is getting installed tomorrow. Thank you, Carpets Plus!

So, all of this, plus roughly the $30 I spent on gas with all the running around I did, plus the $1200 I had to pay the contractor that my dad hired, I have now sunk $6930.64 into fixing up this house on top of what I paid for it. Fun times.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Yet more painting, and starting on the bathroom

So much has gotten done this week!

Let’s hit the ground running with some photos:

The interior window/breakfast bar is done being sheetrocked:

window

window

Looks sweet, amirite?

captivating cream

The master bedroom is done being painted. The color is a peach-y color; it’s Sherwin Williams Captivating Cream. It’s very warm and inviting without being loud.

masterbedroom

captivatingcream

The “office” room is also complete. We were a bit worried about the color at first. Either it was mixed incorrectly, or I underestimated the color on the chip. When it went on the wall, it looked like day-glo green—VERY neon. But now that the paint has dried, I kind of like it. It’s called Sherwin Williams Springtime, and it definitely evokes feelings of springtime (aided by the fact that frozen New England has been thawing out as of late!).

office

I spent today painting the closets of the bedrooms:

IMG_0423

IMG_0424

And, the “coat closet”:

IMG_0425

(Coat closet is in quotes because we’re not quite sure what to do with this little nook in the hallway)

I spent the rest of the afternoon priming the ceiling and walls of the bathroom.

Here are the “before” photos:

bathroom

bathroombefore

bathroom

mauve bathroom

burgundy bathroom

gross knob

maroon tile

wine colored walls

And here it is primed:

IMG_0421

IMG_0422

The wine/burgundy/mauve/maroon/whatever color simply had to go. It was much too dark and gloomy for a such a small room without much natural light. I’m looking forward to seeing the bathroom completed. If all goes as planned, I will get some actual paint on the walls in there tomorrow.

In other news, we have another bar in the basement! So, you know, if we get tired of one bar, we can go to the other? Yeeeeah. Here it is:

bar

saloon

wine holders

saloon back

Expenses:

-$10.89 for EZ Sand = $4645.28 spent thus far

Without consulting me or getting a quote, my dad also hired a contractor to mud and tape our ceilings. Everything looks good, but the bill was $1200. aka more than I make in a month. So I’m not going to include that in the expenses yet because I don’t know how I’m going to pay the guy!!! Ahhh!

No work accomplished today (Sunday) because I have been feeling under the weather all day, which is EXTREMELY frustrating. I can’t stand wasting an entire weekend day. I would have liked to ride my horse on this beautiful day too, but what can you do…