Fireplace Make over

5 years and I finally updated my fireplace! This is one that I thought long and hard about. I hated the rock from 1964, the weird piece of drywall that came out from it and how it was all off center. Here is the best picture I can find from before we did anything to the house. This is from the walk through when we bought the house.

Here is a couple of pictures to show how we tried to spruce it up because I didn't feel like demoing the rock with all the other projects we had.

I knew I wanted a reclaimed wood wall. My first thought was to take out the drywall then frame out the rock and put the wood on top. Then, I thought about how I love mixing metal and wood. I add metal where ever I can in the house. So, I thought why not cover the rock with wood on the bottom and just frame out on the side. But, my husband was really excited about the idea of the easiest project in the house yet, so he suggested just cover the rock with the metal.


I got some good pallets from a friend and got right to work staining them with my home made stain of steal wool soaked in vinegar. But first apply black tea to make the stain work.

While Dr. C was away at a guys weekend, I covered the dry wall part of the wall.

Rusting the metal was not an easy task! I found some glue to glue it up with. Got some old pallets and made a home made stain for the wood. Picked out some tile for the hearth and got to work on a super simple make over. Here is the end result that I am very happy with.

I am so happy with the way it turned out. There is a little less rust then I was hoping for, but I still love it! Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention, it was super cheap! Probably the cheapest thing makeover of the whole house.

Kristen

Can There Be Any More Dust?

Can there be any more dust? I don't think so. I wipe down a chair and come back just a bit later and it looks like I never wiped it down to begin with!

Before all those pictures, we must go backwards to yesterday. Yesterday was a day where I had nothing, no appointments, nowhere to be, all was quiet. The kids didn't even have practice! We decided to take a nice leisurely walk around the park where everyone including the dog took their time looking at all the ducks in the pond.

Today, is a totally different day! I remembered I have a burner on my barbecue so I hiked over to the boxes and climbed steep couches and chairs to dig out buried pots all in the name of breakfast. Little C has been wanting oatmeal so, he got oatmeal this morning cooked like a true camping family, outside in the wonderful fall air.

Mr. C and I take the dog on a 4 mile hike Thursday mornings before I go to bible study. When I got home from bible study, this is what I saw just inside my front door.

To the right is my living room and this is what it looks like. This is now how we are living.

Even with all this mess, there is a huge load off my shoulders this time knowing I am not the one doing the work. When we do it our selves, the job always takes longer then expected and is more work then expected. This time, someone else gets to do all the dirty work and haul away heavy bags of tile. Someone else gets to tape all this up and vacuum up after. Someone else gets to put all the tools away. It is amazing!

Except I still get to deal with what flies through the air and lands on everything.

Maybe the kids bathroom was feeling a little left out that the kitchen was getting all the attention so it decided to reveal to us a bad wax seal under the toilet. I happened to be in the garage the other day when L was going to the bathroom and when she flushed water came dripping down through one of the new holes in the garage (yes, those are still there). Mr. C investigated and figured the wax seal went bad. Turns out it was a bad wax seal. It never squished and molded to the toilet. And all this time when there was yellow around the edge of the toilet that I had to clean, I thought something happened and little C who was so good at pee-ing IN the toilet had suddenly started missing and pee-ing over the side. I am glad to know my son can still manage to pee in the toilet.

So, anyway, this is what the kids bathroom looks like. Yes, those are clean dishes that I just washed in the bathtub. I am aware they are on the floor next to the toilet. But in my defense, I did just spray the floor with a very strong chemical antibacterial that I NEVER buy. Mr. C only bought it because this was an emergency that he felt needed something a little stronger then my homemade bathroom cleaner.

Tomorrow should be the last dusty day. But we will see. I won't get my hopes up, there is always something.

Kristen

The demolition begins!

Today it all begins! The granite came out, back splash, tile and I have no usable kitchen. Here is my entry...

See the kitchen. I get to go look at new granite tomorrow. 

here is my dinning room. This area needs to be cleared out by Thursday.

What a mess! I needed to get some organizing done once the guys left today.

That's better, I have a kitchenette (without a sink) in my living room. I was able to get my hands on a nice electric skillet from a wonderful, generous friend. So, I can still make the kids eggs for breakfast and gluten free pancakes on game days.

The damaged tile started to get removed and we found that there was some previous repairs by the previous owner. Lovely, we had no idea and it just leaked again. Also, it's a big drop beside the crack.

This section that is lighter is where the new cracking was along the edge. Once the tile came out, we saw huge cracks, like this chunk is just sinking. Also, one someone walks on it or stomps, the whole thing moves. just on the other side of the crack, it's solid, no movement.

Some up close of the cracking.

Tomorrow the drywall is getting repaired and a cabinet guy is coming to talk to us about options if I want to take the time to change the color. That will be a huge deciding factor on what I do with the flooring, granite and backsplash. But first, we need to talk to the project manager about this sinking chunk in the kitchen.

Kristen

Prepping for kitchen work to be done...

In preparation for the kitchen project we are trying to save money by doing things ourselves so we can put it elsewhere in the kitchen. 

So, I packed a ton of boxes...

Took off all the cabinet doors and drawers and had the kids move them to the garage...

And took out the dishwasher...

Oh, wait, the cabinet doors are drawers are back on. Weird...

Yep, they had to be put back on. Apparently the cabinets are not coming out, the floor is not dropping in that area so to take out the tile, they will go up to the cabinets and instal new floor up to the cabinets. They don't need to bother with the tile underneath. So, we need to leave the cabinet doors in place. I still took off my hardware because I am getting new. Little changes I have been wanting to do to the kitchen, I am finally getting to do.

See ya tomorrow with more removed!

Kristen

Update on the plumbing mess

Remember this from last week?

After it got it's initial cleaning from the men, this is what it looked like. Fine drywall dust was EVERYWHERE!

We are at a stand still with the work because insurance must approve the next step. That mean's I have plumbing, so I have running water. I can clean again, do laundry in my own machine and cook meals. I can even flush the toilet when ever I want with out running outside to turn the water back on for a few seconds to fill the tank while tons of water leaks under my house.

Anyway, I spent 3 hours Monday cleaning this room and getting most of the dust out of the garage. I used the shop vac on everything, including the cabinets, then wiped the floors with water and then I used my Bona wood floor cleaner. Now it looks like this:

I love walking barefoot on a clean floor. It's a beautiful thing to have floors this clean. It will be clean for a little over a week and it's back to work with my kitchen getting torn out. Tile needs to come out, so cabinets need to come out. Granite is chipped from the work, so that is getting replaced, since the granite is getting replaced, they have to replace the backsplash. Also, since the granite is getting replace, I will take advantage of the new granite and get a sink and stove top that works for me. Yay!

I may have clean floors, but my counters are not as happy. It is ridiculous to try to wash a big pot in this little tiny garbage disposal side of the sink. Silly design. I am going to have just one big sink, none of this 2 separate sides.

It's hard to tell in this picture, but the front burners are a little toward the middle which makes it so a big pot can not fit on the back and leave the front 2 burners useable. I have a 5 burner stove, but I can only use about 3 burners at a time unless all my pots or sauce pans are tiny. I will be taking my pans shopping with me.

Work is supposed to start October 19th. So, until then, I get to cook, make lotion and deodorant in my kitchen. Maybe I will get a little project in. We will see.

If you want a great wood floor cleaner that is easy to use, this is what I use. There is also one for natural stone that I use on my travertine.


Kristen

Progress, but more holes...

Today was a day of mess and progress! Yay!!! Here is where we are at:

If you have been following for some time, you may remember the roach problem. It took 2 years to fully get rid of them, but they have been gone for over a year now. I knew when the cabinets came out that we would see some old crispy dead ones and sure enough we did!

This is probably the reason for the roaches. Behind the cabinet there was some work done and a big piece of drywall was removed and put back. it was never finished at the bottom and right behind that it just went down deep into the ground with the plumbing. That is going to be sealed up before the remade cabinets go back in! I sure am glad we got to clean under the cabinets.

Here is just an exploratory hole. Can you tell it was made with a hammer. Nice and uneven, that will be fun to patch. All that insulation all over my bathroom also.

Another exploratory hole in the kids bathroom.

Bathroom holes made bigger and a lot of dirt!

More bathroom holes!

I used to say everything in this house is brand new except for the kitchen. We even re-did all the drains that are above the slab. Now, when this is done, all the plumbing will be new and the kitchen is no longer un touched! It's like a brand new house.

Loads of drywall dust!

You can see the kitchen from the bathroom.

These files I left out show how bad the dust is. I am going to have a lot of cleaning. Maybe Mr. C will let me get a one time cleaning person when all this is done.

The good news for today is, it looks like it officially is a re-route and NOT re-pipe. That is wonderful news! 

Kristen

Leaky Plumbing

Now that I finally got back into my blog, this is what happens! See those lovely cracks in the grout lines?

About a month or 2 ago, I started noticing some cracking. Lately it has been getting pretty bad and some of the tiles are sinking. I thought our house was sinking. Well, maybe it is, I don't know. 

Anyway, last week I got our water bill that was $330 more then the usual bill. This bill was for the 2 months of the summer that we cut way back on watering. Remember our dried out grass? You can see it here if you didn't see it before. We stopped watering the front, the kids only took showers once a week (we have a pool, it's not that gross) and I was washing dishes trailer style. 

When I got that water bill, I immediately called and told them something wasn't right. They scheduled someone to come out Monday morning and as soon as he opened up our meter it was spinning like crazy. Turns out we are using about 220 gallons of water a day.

After the water guy left, I called insurance. They started sending people out right away. The plumber said we have a raging slab leak and the whole house needs to be re-piped! Long story short fast forward to Friday, we have these drying machines that are drying the house out even though water is under ground. We have our water shut off except for a quick shower in the morning and flushing the toilets once a day. 

 Mr. C has a patient that I think owns Hobi plumbing so we called him. He sent a guy over that said we can re-route everything out of the slab instead of re-plumb the entire house. Oh my gosh! What a blessing. That is such wonderful news because insurance does not pay for plumbing, only the resulting damage.

Today, I got to have my water on while the plumbers found the direction of water flow and the leaks. That meant for me, I got a nice shower, a load of laundry done, some floors cleaned and my pool filled.

Since I can't really do any projects with this mess, well, I guess I could, but that would overwhelm me. I am going to blog about my mess and how this project goes. We are trying to be "Sewgreen" with this just like everything else in our house, so our first big dilemma is Pex or copper. We decided to go with Pex (Copper is 2x's as much) and have the water routed through the upstairs lines first so our shower water doesn't flow through Pex incase of any MTBE leaching. We have a really good filtration system for our drinking water in the kitchen, so we should be good. As far as green for the environment, hopefully this Pex will never come out of our house because it is not biodegradable and it is toxic if burned. I guess that is not so green. When you are looking at thousand's of dollars difference, you do have to sometimes look at the money involved.

There you have it, our beautiful mess these days.

Stairs Before & After

When we bought this house, we noticed right away that the railing shook about an inch on either side. This was a safety project that absolutely needed to be done. I wasn't terribly upset about that though. The 80's oak isn't exactly my favorite wood.

You can also get a good view of what used to be a closet at the top of the stairs. We took that out to make our master shower bigger. You can see that post here. Our hall way was lined with doors and I didn't like that, so that was another reason to get rid of that closet. Don't worry, we have tons of closet space.

Mr. C started with taking out the railing to put wood on the stairs. That was a big job! I was able to lay wood everywhere else, but I didn't have the patience to even attempt this! (Not to mention, he didn't trust my patience with it as well.)

Home Depot has banisters, railing and the big posts in pine, oak and metal. We went with the pine because I didn't want the wood grain and I wanted the stain to really show up. After staining and sealing the wood parts, Craig got to work on the spindles. We were so happy to see this go up finally about a year after we moved in. The railing came out the week we got the keys, so the top floor was off limits to the kids.

The most difficult part of this project was getting the angle correct on the banister. The top set of stairs was not built to code and they are not quite as tall as a normal step so the angle on the banister is different then standard. I think Mr. C had to buy a new railing and post because of mess ups. He felt like Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad, No Good Day. From what I remember he woke up, tripped on a hole in his jeans, pealed his toe nail off, cut the railing too short, realized the post was cut too short and a lot in between. I wish I could remember it all because it was quite comical.

Here is the finished stairs. Wood with white risers, no more door at the top of the stairs and new railing. I am so happy with the way it turned out. I love Mr. C's suggestion of the white risers. They do get dirty, but they are not hard to clean or touch up with a little white paint.

By the way, this too is a project that is incomplete. You can barley tell, but at the bottom of the top section of stairs there are 2 spindles missing. Your guess is as good as mine for when it will get finished.

Just some more views. This picture you can see the pattern of spindles we choose.

Now we are safe on our stairs again.

Kristen