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! :)

We've Got Hang-Ups

Doors that is....They're all hung up! This was the "before" picture.

And this is the "after"! I love the stark contrast against the white. Some of you have mentioned the lovely putting green on the front porch and that is a hole in one straight to the dumpster. The white curved railings we hope to sandblast the paint off of that and repaint them black probably. I'm taking suggestions of what to paint the shutters and the cement color of the floor now (the part that is currently red). I'm thinking a grayish blue for the floor and maybe a navy for the shutters? I also like a yellow too for shutters so like I said, I'm totally open to any ideas you have!

The door at night in the dark. We decided to ditch the storm door for 2 reasons. 1. The porch is deep enough we don't feel like we need it. 2. The new door looks cooler when it's not hiding behind glass.

Close up

The hardware is an antique pewter we ordered online. We didn't want to do black and we didn't want shiny silver either so we felt this was a good compromise and are VERY happy with it.

We decided to do regular tempered glass for around $60.00 as opposed to $300.00 worth of custom glass with iron work. That's something I want to learn down the road and I think once I could figure out how to do the iron work I might be able to create the lattice look that I want right on top of our current panes. I plan to hang up cute little farm-y curtains though so people can't see right inside.

It even looks good with watermelons casually leaning up against it.

Our next hang-up is this lovely window covered by the sheer curtain. This window seperated the sitting room to the sunroom. The only way to access the sunroom was to go out the front door and through the entrance on the front porch.

Well, that window has since been replaced by this lovely set of french doors!

We found this set of doors on Craigslist and couldn't be happier with them. Apparently Will feels the same. :) They're a little bit taller and a little bit more narrow than the norm and fit perfectly in the room.

With the fireplace on the left and the french doors on the right, I have a feeling this will be one of my favorite rooms in the house. Both doors open and I can just imagine the lovely breeze coming through the open sunroom windows as I lie on my chaise reading my books (aka-blogs) :). Actually, I don't have a chaise but I did find some SA-weet velvety seafoamy pair of side chairs the other day at Habitat. I hope they can go in this room.

And since we're on the topic of decorating, the color on the top is the one we chose to paint with. It's called Hazel by Sherwin Williams. I'm not normally a fancy paint brand kind of girl, but the Labor Day special was 25% off so we splurged on this color and our main color for the downstairs. As for the wood on the walls around the house, this wall had some termite damage as you can see by the discoloration. Being an exterior wall (or at least used to be before they added the sunroom) we were not too surprised. We've had the house inspected and although we don't have a current problem with termites, we can pay a little bit for a treatment and prevent them in the future. All to say is, we love the look of exposed wood on the walls, but this one might get covered back up with sheetrock.

Door

Stained and ready and needing windows. We wanted stained glass that was clear, watery glass with a lattice iron work, but it would cost around $300.00 and more than we could afford or would want to spend. I'm on the hunt to find something cheaper in price, but comparable to what we want. And we're thinking a dark silver/iron color for the hardware. Something else I need to look for....

Iron Man

Who needs lacquer and varnish remover? On Saturday, Adam got the grand idea of taking our door with the stubborn varnish to his work and sandblasting it off. With approval from his boss,
he got right to work at their sand-blasting station where they typically sand steel, not oak. Pshhh, beat that mineral oil.

It proabably took less than an hour and removed every last bit of lacquer and then some. The door has deeper grooves in the grain, but we just call that character. Plus, the stain and lacquer that we put on it will help fill in those grooves.



Look familiar?

Yeah, that's what I thought too. :)

We weren't sure exactly of the finish we wanted on the door whether to just stain it or distress it first. So, I practiced by banging up an old oak stair tread we had lying around.

I made my torture device out of nuts and plumbing parts and a great little l-shape bracket that did a lot of the damage. The result on the oak tread was so cool that we decided to do it on the door!

Here's a little sneak peek of the door and the stain that we used. Adam is not a shortcut kind of guy so he's not particularly keen on stain mixed with polyurethane, but this is the only kind we could find at Lowe's with the color we wanted. We'll add a seperate coat poly when we're finished...

When God closes a door, He gives you Craigslist.

We've been in need of a new door for the new house since the old one is broken. It's there, but it has been kicked in and is structurally un-sound. Everything is on a tight budget for this project(s) so where do you think I looked first for a new front door? You got it. Craigslist.

We picked this beaut up last week in South Charlotte from a guy who bought it from his doormaker friend, but decided he couldn't use it. It is a solid oak door with beautiful detail molding and is worth over $1,000! We got it for $150.00! Praise God! Now, all we have to do is sand it, stain it dark and get the hardware and we'll be in business. Finished product to come once we can figure out how to remove the stubborn lacquer...

And I'm so excited about my other craigslist purchase! I picked this baby up for $20.00 last night! I can just see Greta giggling in it with all of her princess books and "tolors" in the shelf below.

Which makes me one step closer to this....:)