Phil's Progress

My brother-in-law Phil so generously gave up a week of vacation time to come help fast-forward the renovation. He's does renovations for a living, so to have him work in our house all day every day was amazing. Adam joined him in the evenings and took 2 days off of work. With the two of them combined, we saw major progress. What you may see in the pictures below may not look like much, but it's almost what you don't see that Phil worked on even more. All the walls are sooo smooth as he mudded and sanded the walls over and over to make them perfect. The crooked window sill is now straight, the doors have trim around them which took a lot of detailed cutting, the support beams got wrapped with thin wood, and we have crown moulding, base board, primed walls and painted trim!! Plus, being a part of his family's business we were able to use his business account at Sherwin Williams and get $200.00 off of paint!

Door casing around entry way door

Door casing around french doors in sitting room

Crown moulding in master bedroom. I found a crown guy on Craigslist who sold his for $1.00 less than Home Depot per linear foot and delivered it all for ten bucks!

Crown in entry way

Crown in hallway

During one of their workdays, it rained the entire day that they hung crown moulding. It made for such a cold, wet rainy day and they were exhausted.

The kids and I brought them Bojangles Bo-berry biscuits and coffee for a little pick-me-up.

Hallway Before

*sidenote: We really liked the pine on the walls, and really debated leaving them natural or painting them. In the end we decided to keep the ceiling natural here in the hallway (luckily no termites had found there way there!) and paint the walls to avoid it looking like a sauna, which it always reminded me of that. :)

Hallway After. The ceiling is natural, but you can't tell in this pic because it's taped off.

Primed ceilings and primed beams above Adam's head.

The support beams are made of pressed wood and had a really rough and uneven edge. That's why the guys decided to wrap it with thin, but real wood so that it would make it smooth and able to be painted more evenly.

Primed ceiling in living room. We were hoping that by painting the ceiling, it would make the termite damage on the left unnoticeable. Well, you can still see it. I think our when we paint our ceiling, I might pick more of an antique white in hopes that it might disquise it a little better and won't be as "bright". I think an antique white will tie in the kitchen cabinets too a little more than a bright white would.

Thank you Phil! Come back anytime! :)

Bummer

Remember this pretty beadboard ceiling in the kitchen? I liked it so much I wanted to keep it natural, but as we kept pulling back sheetrock, we noticed termite damage in the living room.

Which looks like this.

Bummer. So, we'll sand it, paint it white and pretend we never saw how pretty it could've been. It'll open the room up that much more anyway, right?

Sneak Peek Reveal

Here's the new kitchen ceiling! Looks great huh?

Now just picture this on the walls:

I really hesitate to put this out there because on my screen it looks like a pinky tan. When in fact, it "should" be more of a buttery beige. I described what kind of color I wanted and my sister recommended "Croissant" by Sherwin Williams. Her mother-in-law loved it so much she painted her whole house in it so I figured it had to be good! She said even the paint swatch at the store doesn't do it justice. Well, we've painted in different forms of daylight around the house as a little sampler to see what it looks like and I'm quite content right now with my choice. In the dark it definitely brings it down the the neutral tan zone and in the light it brightens up to a sunny butter.

As for the LVL beams around the chimney and this one separating the kitchen from the dining room, I think I've decided on painting that the trim color now that I'll have the contrast I want with the natural beadboard.

I can't wait to see this all come together! In case you haven't figured out by now, our self-proclaimed deadline of "end of September" is not going to happen. We now proclaim it end of October. :)

Sneak Peek

Adam and Doug, our small group leader at church, tore down all the sheetrock in the living room and kitchen yesterday. I haven't been there to see it yet, but here's a little sneak peek of what it looks like. The beadboard on the left is what we've discovered when our contractor had to pull back the sheetrock to put the lvl beam. We liked it so much, we decided to do that with the rest of the rooms on this side of the house... I think we'll keep it natural too. I'll post a picture of the rest of the room once I get over there to see it with my own eyes!