03/19/10

…and the bathroom is done!

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

There is a half-bathroom downstairs off the den in our house. When we moved in, it looked like this:

The picture doesn’t really show the whole extent. That teal color was so BRIGHT. It was way too bold and dark for that room. It took 3 coats of white to cover it up, plus one coat of color! Also, when they painted it teal, they kinda went crazy. They painted over all the hardware (the outlet cover, the towel rod, pipes running to the toilet) and they got it on everything (the faucet, the sink, the medicine cabinet, the floor). (To see what I mean, check out the baseboard in the picture above!)

So, after working hard, we finally finished repainting it and getting it set up to use again! Here are the pictures:

Some of the things we did:
* Paint the walls a light shade of purple (leftover paint from Savannah’s room)
* Paint the ceiling and all the trim white
* Replace the toilet in order to comply with our county’s low-flow laws
* Replace the faucet as the old one was cheap and cracking, and had teal paint all over it
* Put up a new toilet paper holder and towel rod, to match the brushed nickel faucet
* Clean and scrape teal paint off the sink

So the bathroom is finished for now! There are a few things left that need to be done, when we get the money.
* Get a small shelf to hide the cleaning supplies and extra toilet paper.
* Replace the medicine cabinet/mirror. It is ugly and has teal all over it, but it’s still functional so I couldn’t justify getting a new one.
* Get a new light for over the mirror. One that is brushed nickel will match the rest of the hardware the best.
* Put up a curtain – I actually have an old shower curtain which would match this perfectly, but I’ll need to figure out if it’s possible to turn it into a curtain for the window.
* Someday we hope to get all new windows for this house. When we do that, we’ll go with frosted glass.

My sister and I have been working hard all week on this and the den. The den looks fabulous! It’s not completely done, though. We still need to put another coat of white on the baseboards and the trim along the top of the wall. We also need to clean up the room (paint cans, drop cloths, etc.). I am excited to see it come together, though! When we get our tax return, we’ll be able to put the carpet in, and then that room will be done, too! Pictures of the den to come later.

03/15/10

one down, two to go! (or maybe three…)

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

My wonderful sister Amy is visiting this week. It’s spring break for her, and so she decided a trip to Atlanta to see her favorite niece sounded like fun. I, of course, welcome her visit and her company. (Free babysitter!) Also, my sister is very handy and loves to be helpful, and asked to be put to work. So I made a list.

Number one on that list was to get the den painted. Second is getting the half-bath downstairs finished.

Here is what we’re tackling with the den (picture taken before we moved in):

And the half-bath that’s off the den:

Today, we started on the painting. I handled the part by the steps that had to be done with the brush, while Amy figured out the paint sprayer that my parents gave us. Paul tackled the bathroom. (And Savannah took a nap!) Amy got the paint sprayer working, but it was super loud. So, she painted with the roller until Savannah woke up from her nap. Then Amy and Paul put in some ear plugs, and I took Savannah and went to Home Depot to kill time until they were done. It took them about an hour and a half to do the entire den. The paint sprayer had mixed results – it was much faster than just using the roller, but the result was an uneven coat of paint.

On my part, it was really fun to wander around Home Depot for an hour and a half! Especially because I actually could buy some stuff. :-) I got a new faucet for the half-bath, plus a toilet paper holder and a towel rod. I also picked up white outlet and lightswitch covers for the den – the current ones are brown to match the dark paneling, but we’re painting the walls a light color. I also priced new overhead lights for the den, and curtains/blinds for the windows. I’m really excited about the possibilities! It reminded me how much fun a fixer-upper can be.

Tomorrow will be coat #2 of the den. I really hope we only need one more coat of the Kilz paint to cover the dark before we put a third coat of the light yellow that’s in the rest of the house. (Reference the title of this post.) I am so excited about how this is going to look when we’re done!! I will definitely upload pictures. :-)

03/9/10

clean-up

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

It’s finally warming up here in Atlanta, it seems! I am so glad! I hope the warm weather is here to stay. I have been itching to get outdoors!

On Saturday, we helped some friends move. Paul switched his work schedule so he’d get Saturday off (and work Sunday instead). I was glad that we were able to both be there, because we were the only ones who showed up to help! One by one, all the other people had things come up and weren’t able to make it. Our friends were totally cool about it though – I would have been freaking out! Paul and Doug loaded the truck with all the furniture, and I put Savannah on my back and helped Christine load the smaller boxes.

We stopped for pizza after loading, and then our friends decided to call some movers to help unload, especially because they were moving to an apartment on the second floor. So, we got there and watched the movers easily unload the truck in half the time! Paul said he was glad that he didn’t have to unload too because his muscles had about reached their end.

When we got home on Saturday, we found a citation on our door for the trash in our carport and yard. When the previous owners moved out, they left a ton of junk that we didn’t know what to do with, so we piled it up where we could. Then we added our own trash. After 6 months, it had gotten looking bad so I don’t blame them for citing us. They gave us until the 9th (today) to clean it all up.

Since Paul had to work on Sunday, we didn’t get a chance to work on it until yesterday. We bought a thing called a Bagster, which is a big bag like a dumpster (but a bit smaller), and you fill it up with junk/debris, and then call a company and they come take it away. It seemed to be the best way to get rid of the junk financially. Yesterday, we filled that thing and didn’t even get everything in it! Here are some of the things we put it in:

Shortly after we bought the house, the wind pulled the storm door in our back door off its hinges and smashed it to the ground. A million pieces of glass went everywhere. I had to pick up all that glass!
Our county has a low-flow water law, so we had to replace one of the toilets when we bought the house. The other toilet has been sitting in our backyard since then. I thought about try to give it away on Craigslist, but I’m glad I didn’t try because when we moved it yesterday we discovered that the back had cracked and broken.
The previous owners thought it best to cement over the flower bed in the front of the house. And not even nice cement like a sidewalk… but cement mixed with rocks spread unevenly around and looking horrible! Weeds had sprung up regardless. My dad helped pull all the cement up and we threw all those pieces in the Bagster. I hope to mulch it and make it look nice again! (Maybe one day I’ll attempt flowers, but I don’t want to get too carried away!)
Miscellaneous trash and debris we found in the backyard, most of it garden related. There were tons of empty plastic bags of potting soil, plastic cups from seeds, and broken plastic plant pots strewn around. Also random things like one piece of a rusty bedframe, cable, a few pieces of chain link, etc.

We worked for 4 hours yesterday. At one point, a friend watched Savannah so we both could focus on the yard. After filling the bagster, I raked the entire backyard. It needed it! It looks 1000 times better. As we were working in the yard, we kept coming up with ideas of things we wanted to do. It’s going to be a lot of work to get it just looking nice (and I’m not talking landscaping!). There are tons of branches and of course all the leaves and pine straw, not to mention pinecones and whatever the pinecone equivalent that comes from a magnolia tree. Oh and the more time I spend in the yard the more I really want to move the shed out of the backyard. :-) It really takes so much room! But I can’t for the life of me figure out how we’d get it out of there without a LOT of work.

We cleared all the stuff that the citation asked us to, and we called and scheduled a pickup of the Bagster. We didn’t get all the junk cleared out, though. Our sunporch is still full of stuff that we need to get rid of – namely, carpet. We aren’t quite sure what to do about that at this point. One option is to try and fit it all on my sister’s truck when she’s visiting next week, and take it to the local dump. I’d really like to get it out of here! Now that the weather is nicer, it would be great to use the sunporch.

I was going to take some pictures but my camera is out of battery. Oh well! I will try to take them tomorrow before the wind blows the leaves back over the ground and it doesn’t look awesome anymore. :-)

02/5/10

when it rains, it floods

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

We have the pleasure of having a yard that’s lower than our neighbor’s. So, when it rains, all the water goes pouring into our backyard. We need to make some sort of irrigation system that will divert the water to the stream that is back behind the property, because the water is making the ground soft and the foundation weak. But in the meantime, this is what we see every time it rains:

It has been raining hard all night and all morning. This picture was taken a few days ago, but that’s pretty much what it looks like now. I am not sure how to go about solving this problem – you would you contact with a problem like this? Landscaper?

By the way, I was thinking about how a year ago we were praying for rain because Atlanta was in a drought. There were watering bans and restrictions, and we weren’t sure if there was going to be enough water for the city! God has a sense of humor because he answered our prayers – and sent us all the rain we’ve been missing over the past few years at once. :-) I sure am getting tired of rain. Especially when it’s cold, but not cold enough for snow. :-(

02/2/10

our house to-do list

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

I am putting this up here not because I think y’all will find it interesting, but because I want to be able to look back at this in the future. It will be interesting to see what gets done, and what drops off the list.

People who have talked to me recently will probably have noticed that I’m a bit disenchanted with the whole fixer-upper idea. I’ve decided, buying a house that needs work is great if you have money (or have an income where you can easily save for big expenses). We probably could have done this if we had bought this house a year or two ago; as it is, we’re now 3 people on one income and so it is a lot harder. On the upside, our mortgage is lower than any rent we’ve paid. Our thought had been that we could save the extra money that we would have been putting toward rent, but there is just *so* much. There are things we’re discovering now that we didn’t know before – like the rust in the water. Just in general, older homes have hidden surprises. I like the potential of our house, though, and we do plan on staying here a while. I often daydream of what I would do if money wasn’t a hindrance. And I do like the area and neighborhood a lot. Aside from my neighbor’s dogs, I really have no complaints about that!

Below is the rough list we have so far, somewhat in order of importance. We’re hoping to knock off the first couple from the list with the $8,000 from the gov’t.

Foundation (One corner of the main level of our house needs to be jacked up, due to soft ground beneath it. One contractor quoted $5,000, but we still need to get a few more quotes.)
Insulation in crawlspace (There currently is no insulation under the main level in the house.)
Finish the den (This needs a lot of work, and the biggest expense will be the new carpet since the paint has all been purchased. We need to clean all the walls and floor with anti-mold cleaner, then paint the walls and ceiling, then carpet the floor.)
Irrigate our backyard (So it stops flooding whenever it rains, which is what is causing the ground to sink and bit and why we need to get the foundation fixed! We have to get our land surveyed before we do this though, so we know exactly what land is ours.)
New side door (For safety and energy reasons; I won’t explain in case there are any would-be thieves lurking around my blog. :-))
Get HVAC fixed (An air conditioner was added to the existing heater, and apparently they hooked it up inefficiently, so we need to do this for energy savings and also to preserve the life of our A/C. I’m also hoping it will help make the temperature in the house better regulated.)
Fix the rust in the water (Currently we don’t drink the tap water in our house… it’s like I’m back in Peru! Not sure what the problem is exactly, or how much it will be to fix.)
Double pane windows & sliding glass door (The windows are incredibly energy inefficient; they are the original single pane and several have cracked/broken glass. All are very noisy – sometimes I think they are open because I can hear the cars outside so well. New windows will hopefully help with sound and energy!)
Electrical grounding in the den & upstairs (Currently the only area of the house with 3-prong plugs is the main level; grounding the electricity in the den would allow us to put the tv and/or computer down there.)
Kitchen redesign (I am not sure exactly how the kitchen could be improved, but I know I’d like to get cabinets that all match and fit my dishes better, a new countertop, and a built-in dishwasher. I would also like to increase the counterspace and storage space somehow – perhaps add a pantry? – but the location of the HVAC vent makes the only free space in the kitchen unusable.)
Bathroom redesign (I’d like to put in a new fiberglass tub/shower unit over the existing, recessed lighting above the tub, and redo all the walls – taking down the awful mirrors! The fixtures could use a little updating, and the bathroom really needs some towel rods and perhaps some storage shelves or two.)
Landscaping (There is very little grass in our yard and a lot of weeds. I’d also like to put some bushes along the sidewalk to discourage people from throwing trash in our yard, and to give some sort of privacy to our backyard. The joy of a corner lot!)
New hot water heater (Ours is 15 years old so we’ll probably need a new one before too long.)
New roof (It’s fine for now, but we’ll need a new one sooner than later.)

11/12/09

Savannah’s bedroom

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

We picked the smallest of the three bedrooms to be Savannah’s room. Right now, all we do is change diapers and keep her clothes there. When she’s sleeping through the night, I’ll probably have her sleep there too. My parents have a crib for her at their house in Orlando; as soon as we figure out how to get it up here we’ll put that in the room too. I would love to get a rocking chair or glider, but it works as it is right now.

This is the only “before” picture I have of Savannah’s room. It basically shows you the old paint color. Painting the room is pretty much the only thing we did.

What her bedroom looks like now:

I picked out a pale purple color. I love the result! You can’t really see the color all the well in the picture, because I took it as the light outside was fading.

We got the dresser at a local secondhand store and I’m really happy with it. It holds her blankets, clothes, shoes, socks, bibs, etc. You can see all her cloth diapers on top of the dresser – aren’t they so pretty? :-) To the left is her hamper, and to the right is where we put the dirty diapers. Oh, and we needed a surface to put the lamp so we stuck it on one of our stools. We don’t have a breakfast bar anymore, so we really don’t need stools. However, they work great as small tables for lamps!

I hung all her clothes that weren’t onesies. Aren’t they cute?

On the other side of the room from the dresser is a pack & play and a camping chair. They are leftover from when we were working on the house. This room was the first one that we finished, so I used to sit here and nurse her, and put her to sleep in the pack & play. I don’t really spend any time here anymore, but perhaps when I get a rocking chair or glider I’ll find myself in here more!

Beth gave me an awesome baby gift:

Didn’t she do such a great job? I love it! I can’t wait to hang it. The paneling is SO hard to nail into. (All the bedrooms have paneling – the guest room was the only one that wasn’t already painted when we moved in.) So, once I decide where to put it, I better be VERY sure. :-) I haven’t gotten around to hanging pictures yet. Someday, someday…

Those are all the pictures I’ve taken so far. Our bedroom needs a bit more organizing, and I’ll hopefully get to that sometime soon. Then there’s the bathroom, the dining room, and the den… The den will probably not be done until next spring or summer, so you’ll have to be patient for that. It doesn’t look any different than when we moved in except that it doesn’t have carpet and it’s filled with boxes. :-)

11/9/09

get ready to be amazed!

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

Since we had guests this weekend (my in-laws came to visit – Grandma and Grandpa!), I took advantage of the guest room being clean to take a picture! While the kitchen may have had the most work done to it, the guest room probably looks the most different.

First, the stairs to go to the top level of our split-level home (before, after):

The before picture for the guest room:

And now, how the guest room looks today… Are you ready? Here it is!

What a difference a bit of paint made!!

The dark paneling made the room feel even smaller, so I picked a nice very light blueish color to cover the walls. It’s the same color that we painted our bedroom as well. We also pulled up the carpet, and of course the hardwood underneath was refinished at the same time as the rest of the house. It looks like a different room now!

We had the headboard already (it was mine from before we got married), so we bought a new mattress in anticipation of many wonderful guests.

In addition to a guest room, this will also be a craft/sewing room. You can see my sewing machine set up next to the bed. In the closet is a dresser filled with all my craft supplies. I am looking forward to having a bit more space to spread out than in my last apartment!

We still haven’t unpacked everything that will reside this room. Namely, the books that will go in that bookcase are still in boxes. Also, one of the closets is full of pictures that will be hung on the walls as soon as I get organized and figure out where exactly I want them. Once that closet is empty, we’ll fill it with miscellaneous boxes that need a home.

So now that you see what a nice guest room we have, you have no excuse not to come and visit us!

I have pictures of Savannah’s room which I’ll put in another post. Our room desperately needs to be cleaned and it still needs to be unpacked/organized so once that is done I will take a picture and post it. Our bathroom did not change much, but I’ll try to get a picture later. That’s it for the upstairs. Stay tuned. :-)

11/6/09

our living room

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

With the anticipation of guests, I finally got the living room cleaned up! So before it got messy again, I decided to take some pictures. First, the before pictures:

Please note the floors and how disgusting they were! We could see that they were just dirty, so we had them professionally cleaned. They are in really good shape for a 50 year old house, and they’ve never been sanded before! Here’s a picture of the floor in the living room now:

Now for the picture of the living room furnished!

Besides the floors, this room didn’t need a whole lot of work. We removed the borderprint (which didn’t match the wall color at all!) and painted all the walls a light yellow, and actually still need to put on a final coat. When we painted the walls before we moved in, it was during all that rain and flooding Atlanta was getting. The house was SO humid we couldn’t get the paint to dry and it wasn’t even sticking to the wall! So we had to wait until the rain stopped, and then we moved and now there’s furniture. Actually in person you can see what a bad paint job it really is! I’ll get around to it someday – and hopefully sooner than later, because I’m waiting on that to put up all the pictures!

The other two things we did to this room were take down the curtains in front of the bay window and replace the front door. The bay window has blinds, so curtains were a little unnecessary, and I think taking them down just opens up the room that much more. The original front door was a hollow wooden door without even a deadbolt so we replaced it with a steel door and new locks & a deadbolt. We also replaced the storm door. We thought the original storm door was really ugly, it didn’t close right, and it didn’t have a screen. Since the bay window doesn’t open, I wanted something to allow for cross-breezes in our house without letting the cats out. Hence, a new storm door with a screen.

Because the living room is the most used room in our house, we decided to go ahead and get a rug. I was checking Craigslist for a good rug when I found this new blue one at Home Depot for only $20! It’s not “perfect” but since I don’t have a good conception of the style I want for this room, I am totally cool with functional and not clashing.

Ideally, in the future, my goal is to put the TV and the computer downstairs in the family room/den. I’d like to get a piano to put up here, and make this a nice visiting room. Neither of us really care for the current setup, but there really is no other way to arrange it with the furniture we own. So, at a future time, we’ll figure it out. In the meantime, it’s functional and that’s the most important, right?

11/4/09

welcome to our sauna!

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

I’ve had a productive day so far. I finally tackled the linen closet. Because we moved from a fairly big bathroom to a pretty small one, I had a lot more stuff than room. So, I spent an hour organizing the shelves, trying to get everything to fit, and then putting the rest of the stuff in our bedroom to be dealt with at another time.

Spending all that time upstairs has gotten me frustrated about the temperature of our house!

I’ll start at the beginning. You see, when we had the house inspected before we bought it, we found out there were powder-post beetles in the crawl space. The cost to get them exterminated was covered when we closed, but first we had to remove all the insulation from the crawlspace. Because of Paul having to be at CNN so much, he didn’t get a chance to do that until last week. They came and sprayed the crawlspace on Monday, and we now have to wait a few weeks before we can put the insulation back up.

In the meantime… MAN I am noticing a difference in the temperature of our house without the insulation! The main level of our house is really cold. We turned on the heater to see if that helped, and it has.

HOWEVER…. now the upstairs is a sauna! It is *SO* hot up there. It’s like 80 degrees, and the heat is blasting. We have all the register vents closed, but it doesn’t seem to help. So we have to turn the heat completely off at night, which isn’t a problem, but it gets quite chilly in the wee hours of the morning. :-) (This morning, Savannah’s feet were like ice. Since Paul had already left for work, I brought her in the bed and under the covers with me and rubbed her feet until they felt warm. Poor baby.)

So, does anyone have any ideas of how we can regulate the temperature? It is really quite unbearable upstairs. Is this just normal with two-story houses, or is there something wrong with our heater? Perhaps putting the insulation back will just do the trick.

Anyways, after spending an hour and a half upstairs sorting the closet, I am back downstairs and feeling much cooler. In fact, it’s rather pleasant. When I get too cold, I’ll go back upstairs. ;-)

10/21/09

our kitchen: before and after

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

I finally took pictures of the kitchen! Here are the before pictures, what it looked like when we closed on the house:

After spending a lot of time scraping wallpaper (two layers!) and painting, here is what it looks like today:

Our intention is to redo the kitchen when we get the money – new cabinets, new appliances, etc. Something that will make better use of the space without pricing ourselves out of our neighborhood. In the meantime, we wanted to make the kitchen a little pleasanter and less smelling like curry. What we did:

– Ripped down all the paneling and wallpaper which took FOREVER. They have special wallpaper removal stuff but we found that hot water worked better. There were two layers of wallpaper! We didn’t bother with the paper over the cabinets; we’ll get that whenever we redo the kitchen.
– Painted all the walls a sage green color.
– Replaced the curtains with new ones. The curtains that were there were stiff, stained, and greasy. They were probably pretty at one point, but not anymore. New curtains mad such a difference!
– The house didn’t come with a fridge so we hopped over to the Sears scratch & dent store in Tucker to buy a new one. I spent a long time debating about what color fridge to get, and I finally decided on white. (I wanted black, but I was afraid it would be too dark for the room.)
– Because of the height of the fridge, we had to take down the shelves and cabinet that were on that wall. We were going to reuse the shelves, but they fell apart in the process of taking them down. We moved the cabinet over near the sink. It looks a little funny, but it’s usable and that’s the important part.
– Added knobs to all the cabinets. Even after a heavy-duty cleaning, they were still sticky and made me want to wash my hands after touching them. So, we added knobs which not only make them look nicer but enable me to open them without getting my hands sticky. :-) I was going to replace all the drawer knobs too, but I decided against it because of our intentions to redo the kitchen.

So the kitchen is really functional now, and I think will be fine for the next few years. When we redo it, we’ll go ahead and get a new oven/stove and exhaust fan to match the fridge. We’ll also get a built-in dishwasher and extend the counter from the sink all the way to the wall. I’d also like to replace all the cabinets – my biggest complaint with these is that the shelves are rather low and so a lot of space is wasted due to not being able to stack things (like, for example, cups).

I put all the dishes out in the dining room so that we could use the cabinets for our small appliances. I think I’m happy with how it turned out, and until we have the money to redo it, I’m going to be brainstorming ideas for how to make better use of the space.

From Hovel to Home

Our journey fixing up our 56 year old house

Category Archives: fixer-upper

…and the bathroom is done!

one down, two to go! (or maybe three…)

clean-up

when it rains, it floods

our house to-do list

Savannah’s bedroom

get ready to be amazed!

our living room

welcome to our sauna!

our kitchen: before and after