Home Remodeling

Last year, Ben and I remodeled our bathroom. We did such a good job and it looks so cute, we thought this year we would tackle the kitchen and hallway. Here is a pic of our new bathroom. This is the picture I took of the kitchen when I was still trying to decide which house I wanted to buy. You can't see the entire thing but it gives you an idea. You can only see a tiny piece of the nasty blue carpet, and luckily for you, you can't see the hideous wood paneling that covers the other 2 walls. This is going to be a big project so we are doing it in pieces for two reasons: we don't have the money to do it all at once, though it would be nice; and second, we would go insane.

We took off the wood paneling and weird cabinet above the fridge and this is what was behind it. Gross. Doesn't the new window look nice, though?

We had to move the fridge and everything else into the center of the room so we could hang the new dry wall. Under the wood paneling is the same chipped and cracking plaster that we saw in the bathroom last year. Easier to just cover it with new drywall.

Here is the corner opposite of the 'before' pic. This is the corner we are working on first. The other stuff will be finished later. We put in new drywall and we're going to paint it the same color as the bathroom walls. Ben likes the grey. This corner will have a new pantry and bar top with stools because we don't have room for an actual kitchen table.

This is a shot of the hallway with its glorious wood paneling. This is where we've been stowing the drywall that needs to be hung. Look at the lovely blue carpet. That needs to come out, quick.

Yikes! Look at what is under the ugly blue carpet. Red, flowered laminate stuff. That's not the only layer that we took up. There was so much crap underneath.

Under the carpet, the pad, and the red laminate was the old sub-floor. We took that out too because it was really squeaky. Under the sub floor was a black water proofing paper.

All of this was nailed down and we had to pull all the nails out individually by hand.

Now, back to the kitchen. This pic shows one half still with its old carpet and the other half ripped down to the barest wood sitting on the floor joists. I guess we are calling this the sub- sub-floor. The spots on the picture is from the flash lighting up the dust in the air. Gross.

Here is Ben hard at work ripping out the other side of the old floor. Don't think he did all the work. I just paused for a second to take pictures, then it was back to work.

Ben is sitting where the oven, corner cabinets and useless old dishwasher used to sit. We won't be able to replace the stove for a while- they're expensive. We did, however, buy a new dishwasher. I'll post a pic later.

This is how the kitchen looks with the sub-sub-floor exposed. After we screwed it down better to quiet the squeaks it's actually much better than the carpet was. No, we aren't leaving it like this.

This is the new sub-floor. We've ordered the new hard-wood floors... walnut, hand-scraped bamboo. Once they arrive and we get it installed I'll post more pics. This is a serious work-in-progress.

We got the floors in the kitchen and hallway ripped out just in time for our city's 'spring clean up'. We put all the carpet, cabinets, carpet pad, old sub-floor, wood paneling, old dishwasher, some random stranger's mattress that someone tossed onto our pile... anway, we put it all on the curb and they came and took it all away. It was so nice. Such a big help.

Keep checking back... more remodeling pics to come. We're so excited about fixing up our little home!