Again

It's scary. Really scary, I tell ya. No, this is not a picture from this past May when a tree fell on our car and then another fell on our house. This is what we woke up to last Tuesday morning. And it's our neighbor's tree. This time it came 3 feet from our car. Wouldn't have really mattered though because we still haven't gotten it fixed from the last time. Anyways, it is crazy. 3 big trees in 4 months. Everyone was completely ok and it only did damage to the driveway. But, it was a gorgeous tree. And it blocked a lot of sun from our bedroom window on Saturday mornings. Oh, well...

Not that this is a big deal at all, but the next day one of our small, dead trees fell. Just for giggles.

la toilette, il bagno, el bano

This past weekend, I got some grief from four different people about lame my blog is now. Not that it has ever been even decent or anything. But atleast it used to have posts. I think I don't want to post stuff until we completely finish a room, so that's stopped me from posting since we still don't have everything complete. I don't think I'll ever post if I wait until its all done though. So, here you go. Master Bathroom.

Again, starting with the before pictures. Pluses: big master bathroom for an old house, master bathroom connected to master bedroom, lots of windows, hardwood floors. Negatives: no tub, nicotine, nastiness.

We ripped out the shower.

Started priming every surface with KILZ.

Decided to move the toilet (and get a clean new one thanks to Pyles Plumbing) so that we could have room for a big tub. Put in new ceilings and the durock.

Note our "curtain" so that we could use the bathroom here instead of going to the school up the street.

Started tiling. Actually, our contractor, Jesse, did this. We were too busy still trying to figure out how to tile the guest bathroom.

New vanity and granite countertop installed. Note the flowers in a beer bottle on the side of the tub that Babette brought to us.

Ready for beadboard.

Last shot before the final pics.

Here is the finished product. This is a shot walking into the bathroom from our bedroom.

We really wanted to do a glass shower door, but then got some quotes that were something like 10,000 dollars. Not really, but it was something ridiculous. So we opted for the clear glass route via a clear $4 shower curtain liner for now.

Lovin' the double shower heads.

The cubby-holes are one of my favorite parts. I decided to stagger them to bring some funkiness to the solid white.

More rooms to come. Promise.

Bed and Breakfast

This is what we have to offer you at the Royal B&B. It's not much, but hopefully it's cozier than the pull-out couch at our loft was. The renovations in the guest room aren't all that impressive. It didn't take that much. But, it's done... so I thought I would show it.

This is what we started with. Gross carpet and smoke smell. Notice the ancient floor register.

So, we ripped the carpet out and primed with Kilz.


Painted the window trim, removed the old light fixture, put up new sheetrock ceiling, and removed the old register.

Patched the cracks in the walls, removed the old doorknobs

Then we painted the ceilings and walls, refinished floors, installed new registers, installed new fan and doorknobs. And here you have it...

Kitchen Debut

So far, our kitchen is our only completed room. We are thrilled with it. The floors are now pretty level. It now has a very open feel. It has clean cabinets with doors. And it doesn't smell like cigarettes or dachshunds (enter shout-out to Katdog here). Despite being a pretty small kitchen, it has plenty of countertop and cabinet space. It just makes you wanna cook in it. We used to say that cooking was our #1 hobby together, so the kitchen was important for us. Lately, that hobby has lost rank to tiling and painting. But, last Friday night we cooked up an amazing steak and wine feast in honor of our very first owned kitchen. And then we sat back and were proud and thankful.

Again, the first two pictures are from when the previous owners lived there. The cabinets were nasty inside, the floor was cracked, and it just felt gross.

Straight ahead is the wall we knocked down. It made the kitchen feel very small.



After knocking it down, we felt much better about our purchase. We just realized that every time we have guests over for dinner, we all end up hanging out in the kitchen or some sitting at the bar. So a small kitchen that's closed off to the den and dining area wasn't optimal for us. We really wanted to create an open atmosphere.

We completely gutted the kitchen. Pulled up the tile. Tore down the cabinets. Stripped the wall paper. Hosed it down.

The sheetrock guys built it back up into a bar.

We covered every surface about 6 times with paint then the cabinet guys came. My mom and dad designed the cabinet layout, and it is great.

Then came the undercabinet lighting and granite. Carson was a big proponent of the under-cabinet lighting because of knife safety:) When he was a Cutco salesman, he learned the importance of good lighting. In his very first demo with a customer, he sliced his finger.

The floor was tiled in this pattern to give an illusion that the kitchen is wider than it really is.

Ok... here it is. The finished product. This is the view from the "cove". The pantry door is on the left. Guest bathroom is on the right.

One Load at a Time

I've kinda always liked doing the laundry. Well, I just really like pulling the warm clothes out of the dryer. Carson actually likes to fold the clothes, so that's probably why I enjoy it. Well, now I really like it because our front-loaders are so stinking big and clean and white and entertaining. I've watched them like a T.V. many times the past few weeks, mesmorized by the show of soap and water streaming in and suds forming.

When we bought the house, the laundry room was in the master closet (see previous post) and there was an unused half bath at the end of the main hall. So, we decided to transform it.

Had to patch the toilet hole up and re-tile a little bit. Painted the walls and celings white and then bleached the tile and grout. Ain't no thang though.

Done deal...

Closets continued

These are just some more boring shots of the closet. But, here ya go...

This is the closet in the Master Bathroom. Again, these first two shots are before they moved out.

They used it as Laundry Room. We turned one of our half-baths into a Laundry room so we could make this a full closet in here.

Took out all of the shelves and primed it.


Then we closed off and sheetrocked over the water connections in the wall.


We had some floor guys come and repair the wood that had rotted from the leak in the washer.

We are big fans of The Container Store.

And here's the finished product!