{ Trim Decision }

Hi there! We welcomed in 2014 celebrating with some of our greatest friends and we are so excited for what will be happening this year! Top on our list of exciting things to come will be moving into our home!! It's still a few months away we are thinking but slowly and surely we are working to get to that point. Mark literally lives and breaths home renovation. I am grateful for that man. 

Remember my big question of whether to paint the trim in the house or to leave it? You can see that blog post here. WELL...the damage has been done. I started priming the trim   so I can paint it. I knew that if I didn't do it, I would regret not doing it. It's only the beginning and I've already spent about 5 hours on priming (not including the prep time) and have only done a small portion of the trim in the house. It will be a long process but in the end I will be so happy that I made the decision to paint. 

master bedroom closet

hallway

It's only primed but it seems like a big difference to me already. I don't have the best photos to show you yet because I only thought about taking them as I was walking out the door and it was already dark out so after I get it all primed and painted I will show all the rooms. 

With my decision to paint the trim, I also decided to NOT paint the doors. I believe it was a Facebook comment from someone to paint the trim and leave the doors wood stained. At first I thought that was weird but then I started looking on pinterest and I actually really like that look. Something like this and this is what I am going for. I will have to re-stain our doors since I'm not a fan of the honey colored doors but that will happen later down the road. 

 My goal for next week is to get the rest of the trim primed and maybe start painting it too. This is NOT a project that I can do while the kids are there so it's a little tricky to get a lot of time to do it but that is the goal and I am going to try hard to accomplish it. 

The kitchen ceiling is being worked on right now. It's a little complicated (seems thats how all things go in this house) due to the uneven level of the ceiling. Turns out that each side of the beam (that is now gone) were different heights. This wasn't something that Mark could eye ball since its only a slight difference but a slight difference is a big deal when you are putting up drywall and trying to make it level. Believe me, a lot of brain power and time went into figuring out how to get that ceiling all one level! I will hopefully have a kitchen update for you really soon. 

So what do you think about the painted trim/stained doors idea? Like it? Any suggestions? 

{ Good-bye Stinky Vinyl }

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! 

We enjoyed lots of family time which is rare these days. We got to spend time with Mark's family and my family and even had a little of our own family time too on Christmas morning. 

Here's a quick shot of us all in the morning in our pj's.

We've been jumping all over the house this week, from one project to another...sometimes in the bathroom, sometimes upstairs, and currently we are working in the kitchen. 

Recently Mark removed the bulk head that was above the old cabinets, he took down the beam that stretched across the kitchen and put it up into the rafters so that the kitchen ceiling will be all the same height.  He also installed a new window in the kitchen and ripped up the old vinyl flooring too. 

Here's a reminder shot of the kitchen before the beam and bulk head were removed

The beam was placed there because that was where the original house ended, so when the tiny kitchen edition was put on way back when they had to put in the beam for support. I didn't even know it was possible to raise up a beam but Mark is a genius and did it in a couple hours. 

He had to put up a temporary wall to hold the weight while he removed the beam and reworked it back up into the rafters. 

He tore apart the ceiling to open it up for the beam to be put into place. 

Next up was the window installation.

See the old stove vent in the photo below.

That came out and the window went in it's place. 

We put a window here because this will be directly above the kitchen sink. As you can see below now there are two windows close together but the old window is coming out and there will eventually be a door in it's place when we do the breeze-way and garage addition next year sometime. 

The temporary wall was removed and we decided it was time for that gross vinyl flooring to come out. 

Need a quick reminder of that beautiful flooring?!

Trevor was daddy's big helper for this particular project.

The wood flooring was under the vinyl just up to where the edition was so we are hoping to be able to salvage as much as that as we possibly can. It's in pretty rough shape as you can see in this close up shot but we'll see if we can do it.

Mark worked on ripping the floor up, I brought everything to the dumpster and Trevor pulled up most of the nails with the pry bar all by himself. He is such a good helper!

 

This is how it looks now, all cleaned up!

We have a little work to do before it's ready for new flooring. I have to mention too, although I don't have any photos of them, but Mark's dad has been working very hard on getting all the electrical done in this room (and everywhere else). Including all new outlets and new can lights in the ceiling. 

It is looking great and it feels so much better in there already with that old flooring out. 

I still haven't decided what to do yet in there...not sure if we want to go with a vinyl flooring or try to find a similar hardwood to match the original hardwood as best as we can. 

What do you guys think? Is is easy to match up old wood with new wood? 

{ Moving Right Along | Bathroom progress }

Bathroom is looking more and more like, well, a bathroom!! 

Let me remind you what it first looked like when we bought the house. 

To be honest, it was probably the nicest room in the house. It was remodeled in 2011 so everything was pretty new. 

However, we had a few problems with it. 

1. No bathtub. With small children and only one bathroom we really wanted a bathtub

2. As stated above, it is the ONLY bathroom in the whole house and it is TINY. We needed to expand as much as we could. 

3. That previous sink was smaller than my face. How can I wash my face let alone get ready every single day  with out a counter top.

I know these things are trivial and really not necessary needs when it comes to survival but as long as we were changing things around we figured we would try to make it the best we possibly could. 

Last time I told you we were ready to change out the window...so without further ado, here is the progression breakdown from old window to new window.

old window

 

window removed and support going in for new window

 

new window is in!

Can you see the red floor in the above photo?

That's paper that Mark put down to protect our new flooring!

Yup, it's tile. Looks like wood, fooled you! Isn't it pretty?! We are drooling over here because we love it that much. We also were 100% on the same page when picking it out which is RARE people. We usually debate over every.single.decision. So when we found this tile and both of us went hey this is cool, we were practically running to the check out before one of us could change our minds Ha!

All the drywall is hung and the tub has been placed. We are moving right along!! 

We decided to add shelves that we will tile into the shower space. 

 This is where the vanity will be.

These last two shots are with the tub officially installed as you can see the floor cover has been removed to put it into place. 

The next step is to get the tile up around the shower and finish the drywall so that the toilet and vanity can be installed. I cannot tell you how wonderful it will be when we have a working toilet here again. It is really hard for me to be there with the kids because they have to pee every 10 minutes it seems! We are loving the changes. It definitely feels much bigger already and the floor...ohh we love the floor!

Stay tuned...we will have a finished project around here...one of these days!