I Did That

I’m not sure I like the smaller picture setup.  I reduced the size of the pictures because in Safari (the browser I use on my Mac) the pictures bleed over the sidebar and look terrible.  Even with that issue resolved, I’m not sure I like the smaller pictures any better than the bleeding big ones.  I like being able to see more detail.  Of course, if you want so see the pictures in really big sizes, you can visit my Flickr account.

Sahara Beige Tile

Originally uploaded by jaslusher

After much procrastinating and wasting of time I’ve gotten about 2/3 of the way through tiling the laundry room. My original goal was to have been done with the laundry room, kitchen and den at this point.

Didn’t happen.

Thursday (Thanksgiving day, yes) I am going to hit it hard again and try to get through the kitchen at least. That is, if I don’t find some minor piece of nothing to occupy my time.

Leveling The Floor

Originally uploaded by jaslusher

The floors in parts of this old house have a bit of droop to them. 40 years of settling have put almost 1/2 an inch of drop from the front of the fireplace to the corner of the shelves/window. There is currently linoleum on the floor, but since I don’t know whether there is any asbestos in that vinyl, I decided to encase it in leveling compound and/or plywood depending on the area. Asbestos is only a problem in things that are disturbed, so by going over the top of it, I kill two birds with one stone, I level the floors and seal off any potential asbestos.

When I’m done, the floor in the laundry room, kitchen and den will all be ceramic tile layed on a diagonal.

Painted Walls and Cabinets, originally uploaded by jaslusher.

Here’s the paint colors for the walls and cabinets. You can see the builtins in the den getting the same priming treatment that the kitchen got.

Priming, originally uploaded by jaslusher.

Lots of work was involved in prepping the paneling and cabinets for paint. I removed the cabinet doors and hardware (numbering the doors for easy reinstallation later) and I lightly sanded the walls and the cabinets. My mother-in-law and my aunt-in-law primed everything. They had quite the time getting inside some of those cabinets.

Since this is a new blog (in a relative sense), don’t be surprised if your comments get held for moderation the first time.  Once I have approved the first comment you make, you should be good to go.  Hopefully I will have some time over the next few months to add some bells and whistles to this shinding to make it less barebones, but for now we are just going to do what works.

I didn’t get any of my goals accomplished today.  So my goals for Thursday are now exactly like the goals from Wednesday.

I spent the whole day buying things and debating with my lovely wife.  We were weighing the pros and cons of getting Corian countertops and decided eventually to not get them.  The main reason being that although we love the look and feel of them, we were still going to be installing them on 40 year old cabinets.  Though the cabinets are solid and look reasonably good now (especially after being painted), we will probably want to replace them within about 10 years and will end up destroying the countertops then.  Since Corian costs over 4 times what laminate countertops do, we feel like it’s not really worth it if we are just going to be ripping them back up in the next decade sometime.  So we chose laminate.  In fact, we chose this laminate.  We will end up saving roughly $1700 on that decision.  Which will pay for other toys, I’m sure.

As of today we have accomplished the following things in the kitchen:

1. Repainted the cabinets and walls
2. Removed the countertops

As I mentioned in the first post, we now have a 1960’s era ranch house that is sorely in need of updating.  My wife and I bought the house fully aware of it’s various needs (and our various wants).  We have tackled the updating of an older ranch house before, so this was a eyes wide open sort of purchase.

We estimated the cost of the renovations at roughly $10,000.  This includes (but is not limited to):

1. Updating the kitchen
2. Painting every room
3. Updating every bathroom

The kitchen renovations can be broken down further:

• Paint paneled walls and cabinetry
• New countertops
• New appliances
• New fixtures (lighting and plumbing)
• New hardware for cabinets
• Install ceramic tile on the floor
• New backsplash

 That seems like an awful amount of work, but it’s not really that bad.  We’ve already tackled several of them and I will tell you more about that later.

Everything needs to be revamped now and again, and this is it for this website.

My original plan for this was to talk about the projects I was doing at the old house and revisit some of the completed projects.  That didn’t work out the way I wanted, mostly because I didn’t get everything coordinated before we moved out.

The new house, however, will entail many of the same  projects and I will catalog them here.