Goodbye and Hello

Goodbye nasty ceiling tiles.

Hello vaulted ceiling! (those vertical beams won't be staying...)

Adam and I have been busy (hence the lack of blogging) getting down and dirty in our soon to be dining room. We are so thankful to live with his parents right now who are able to put the kids down and be at home so we can slip away and get some stuff done on the house.

Underneath the ceiling tiles, we found old beadboard ceiling. They came down like toothpicks so there wasn't anything salvageable.

Under the beadboard, there was insulation. The first time Adam and I discovered this, we were not prepared for this and left after 30 minutes with the black lung hacking up and covered with fiberglass shards from the insulation. It was awful. As you can see, I came prepared for the next day.

We enjoy doing this kind of stuff together. Adam likes having me help him even though the other day when he whacked me on accident with a board he admitted it was the first time he's ever heard someone say "owie" on the job. Ha ha.

Often, we take the kids over with us in the evening when we want to check on how progress is coming with the jobs our contractor is taking care of. Soon, Will will be crawling all over this kitchen floor.

Our LVL beams came in to replace the walls we took out. I really want to play these beams up and Adam said they're not able to be stained. So I want to paint them brown to make them look like wooden beams and Adam is skeptical because then they'll just look like I painted them to make them look real wood. I looked up faux painting, but I'm not sure about that. It might look to faux. I'd love some suggestions or any affirmation for anything that I just mentioned. The ceilings are 10 feet high so I figured if they look that bad, they're still high up there and not close up for anyone to notice.

View of the living room, the kitchen (with the ceiling fan) and the dining room with the new vaulted ceiling!

My plan for the fireplace is to cover up as much of that brick with a mantle and clean up the rest. If anyone has any good advice of fireplace/soot cleaners, then do share of what and where to find it. As for the chimney, I'm going to clean that up with a wire brush and air compressor to get all the loose dirt off. As far as sealing is concerned, I've read everything from poly, to evaporated milk (or was it sweetened condensed?) to good ol' regular brick sealer. I don't want anything shiny, but just something to hold all the mortar in place and not end up in my pot of chili.

Ta-Da!

My two year old, Greta, is really into exclaiming, "ta-da" at random moments and most times used inappropriately. She did however understand the concept the other day when her little naked self came running out of the bathroom after going potty on the big girls toilet yelling, "TA-DA!". Adam and I had one of those ta-da moments the other day. And it had nothing to do with using a big girls potty. :)


This is the new living room with the wall to the right housing a walled up double-sided hearth. Our homework assignment from our contractor was to get in there, rip down the sheetrock and expose the fireplace and chimney so he could advise us on how best to take it out.

We got to work ripping off the sheetrock right away and as expected found the lapboard underneath. We pryed off every piece as gingerly as possible so that we might be able to reuse it for possible flooring in the hallway and dining room. You can see the fireplace hearth boarded up down at the bottom of the pic. Well, little did we expect, once we took off the boards what exactly the fireplace and chimney would look like...

TA-DA!!!

Okay, seriously, how awesome is this? We were giddy when we discovered just how cool it looked and the thought of taking it out went completely out the window. Right away we started dreaming up new kitchen designs and furniture placement in the living room. I think it can work. We just have to pray that our contractor can figure out an inexpensive way for us to reinforce it from underneath.

This is the view from the front door with the fireplace to the left. Has some wow-factor to it huh?

This is the other side of the wall pre-demo in the to-be kitchen.

I was on the other side of the wall hammering on the lapboards so Adam could pry them off easier.

This is the side from the kitchen with the hearth filled in. I love how the chimney narrows at the top because it still gives us the roomy open air feel that we were trying to achieve. High ceilings are nothing to complain about either. Kitchen design is coming along slowly but surely, but let me tell you, that is hard work! I lose sleep every night trying to come up with a perfect work triangle design and still give me all the cabinet space I need including the plate rack and pantry that I want. I've tried Google Sketch-up to try to visualize it on the computer, but it took more mental energy to figure it out and I ended up using a pencil and paper. If anyone knows of a good kitchen design resource to use, do tell!

Kitchen Demo

Adam and his dad took out all of the cabinets last weekend, the sink and the countertop. We're one step closer to a master bathroom!

It was our goal to recycle some of the cabinets into a pantry of some sort in the new kitchen, but they came out in pieces of wood instead of solid pieces. They were built board by board and they really couldn't have been salvaged.

This hole was for the exhaust fan for the stove hood. My father-in-law came home and told me they found 7 dead mice when they pulled out the hood. Barf.

The old sink that we are going to give away to some church friends who have been wanting one. We've got our eye on an apron front farmhouse sink from IKEA and were happy to find this one a new home.