Phase 1 After Photos

As I said in the previous post, we began talking with a contractor last Fall.  We met with him a few times, trying to decide the scope of this first phase.  He mentioned we might want to get an interior designer involved to help us make some decisions.  This was a great move for us!  It did slow the process a bit, but I do not regret it at all.

So this remodeling started the middle of May and ended the end of June.  How wonderful it was to see the progress each and every day!  

Here are some photos of the entryway.  (You may click on any of these photos on the blog to see the photo larger.)  The stair railing was completely redone.  (See photos in earlier post for before pictures)  We chose square spindles with square newel posts - having those painted white and then the hand rail and nosing (bottom piece) both stained to match the flooring.  We really like the Arts & Craft style homes and think the new stair way adds a little of that to our home.  (The closet doors in the picture on the right will also be painted white in August)

 Bottom of stairway, inside entrance                                                Top of stairway,
                                                                                              carpet is tan not mauve

Here is another angle.  The front door currently is the original.  We haven't decided for sure if we should just paint it white or replace it with a new door.  It would be nice to have a door with a window to let some light into the entryway.

We had hardwood floors installed in the entryway, bathroom, living room and dining room.  It is a varying width hand-scraped hardwood floor. Love the way it turned out!! (nice pedicure! It's only 4 weeks old. Didn't intend to have my foot in the photo, oh well.)

 Here is the new half bath off the entryway.  This is where our interior designer helped a lot!  We had chosen a light, which had 3 lights in it that would hang centered over a mirror.  Her comment to that was, "it is kind of ordinary, I think we can do better than that....how about two sconces, one on each side of a mirror."  She gave us great direction.  We chose the granite counter top first, from the "bone yard".  It is a granite remnant that was outside behind the showroom building.  If we do this again, going to the "bone yard", we will do it in Spring or Summer or Fall... not when there is a fresh snow, it is freezing, and all the remnants have to be brushed off by hand so you can actually see what they look like!  We then took a hunk of that granite to pick out the vanity cabinet color.

 Really happy with the way this bathroom turned out!  It is really pretty, wish it was our master bath!!! 

(It is really hard to take pictures of bathrooms!)

Here is the living room.  One thing that slowed the project down a bit were these doors.  When Chad was painting the woodwork, he pulled back the old carpet and discovered that the subfloor had been wet, rotting in some areas.  In order to repair the subfloor, the sliding door would need to be removed.  We weren't planning on replacing the sliding door during this phase but decided to go ahead with that since they had to remove it.  The old sliding doors were really inefficient and not the most attractive either.  (This door will be painted white in August.) 

 Chad did a lot of painting in this project, woodwork and walls.  The contractor's painters did paint the bathroom and entryway wall that extend to second level.


 Here is the wall in living room with the bookcases and fireplace.  We still need to get the shelves back in, decide what to put on them (not as many shelves, no glass doors and not as many nick-knacks!) and decide what to do with the fireplace.  Our interior designer suggested painting the stone fireplace white as well.  We don't mind the stone the way it is, but painting it white would probably look nice too.  We do not like the brass fireplace doors.  Not sure what we will do about those.  Our interior designer helped chose paint colors too.  We wanted a light grey but the samples we had chosen just weren't looking quite right.  We do love this grey!

The opening to the right in this picture is where the wall to wall, floor to ceiling mirror used to be, yuck!  Not anymore.  It is now a framed archway, open to the dining room.

Here is a view into the dining room from the living room.

And a view from the dining room into the living room.  We might be using the dining room as a play area for now.  I would like to get something to store toys in so it looks presentable.

Here are some photos from the upstairs loft area.  Chad painted the walls and woodwork up here too.  We had new carpet installed.  Our interior designer advised using the same carpet we had put in the two bedrooms upstairs.  That way the space would have a more consistent, cohesive look.  We would have liked to do something different, perhaps something a little more exciting but in the end agreed that it would look more consistent and less choppy.

This is the light in the entryway that also provides light upstairs in the loft area.  Sorry about the blurry picture, I tried multiple times to get a clear picture but they all turned out fuzzy.  This probably is not a light we would have picked out on our own.  It was one of the lights the interior designer suggested.  I do really like it though.

After the doors in this space are painted, we need to decide what furniture to have in the rooms.  Now these areas feel more like our style of home.  Can't wait for the next project!! ;)  Will it be the kitchen or our master bedroom and bath????

Phase 1 Before

We began working with a contractor last Fall, in October or November of 2012.  We were trying to decide where to begin remodeling and what would become of some of the space within the house.  We felt we had to begin with the entryway and stairs.

We decided to start here from a safety standpoint.  The spindles on the stair railing were not up to code, in fact all three boys could fit between the spindles.  Our stairs are open from the second level with a railing surrounding them.  We were constantly afraid while upstairs that Alex would get out of our site and fall through the railing down to the main level.  Plus the entrance was really dated.  (But so are some bathrooms and the kitchen and the basement...)

Here is the entrance when you open the front door.  We had already begun taking down wallpaper when I took this picture.

 Off the entrance is our bedroom.  The wallpaper in entrance wrapped around to dining room.  It wasn't horrible in terms of wallpaper ~ just not us.  It was at least a neutral color.

 Our front door.  It was painted to look like wood, not very successful.  All of the woodwork on main level is pine and a dark dated stain.  I like dark stain but this just wasn't a nice dark stain.

Looking upstairs in the entrance.  More brass, more wicker paneled ceiling fans, dated spindles spaced too far apart.   Here you can see wallpaper down but adhesive remaining.  Chair rail removed.  Chad started painting the upstairs crown modeling white to see if we would like that look.

Here is the listing photo of dining room

(carpet in dining room + 3 young boys = bad news!)

For some reason the reality listing did not capture this mirrored wall in the dining room!  Hmmm?

(Impossible to take a picture of a mirrored wall without getting yourself in the picture!)

The mirrored wall was complete with mirrored switch plates and mirrored air return vents.

Here is the living room, which is on the other side of the dining room mirrored wall, again from the listing. 

(not our furniture or decor)

and again that wall behind dining room mirrored wall was also mirrored!

But on this side it was wall to wall, floor to ceiling mirror!

Lovely! ;)

 Fireplace and book shelves with glass doors in living room (blech)

Chad took down the mirrors and discovered this plywood.  At one point there was an opening/window between these two rooms and someone put up plywood and wall to wall mirrors!

 Dining room side

Living room side without mirrors

I listed the mirrors on Freecycle and an artist/woodworker came and picked them up.

 There is a half bath off the entrance.  Here is a piece of the wallpaper before we completely removed it.

Toilet with lovely ;) wooden toilet seat with more wicker

Half bath vanity

Here is a picture of the ceiling.  Chad also scraped the texture off the ceiling that was hanging down in the living room and dining room and then painted the ceiling.  This picture shows how dirty or just not a true white color the ceilings were.  He had started cutting in with a primer, the actual top coat is even more white than this.

This is a picture from the reality listing of the upstairs loft area.  I don't have any before pictures of the loft area from while we were living here, except the large stack of drapes in previous post.

Here is a video I took just prior to us starting this phase 1 project this spring.  Sorry for how strange my voice sounds (or maybe that is really how I sound!) but I was trying to be quiet since Alex was sleeping.

The beginning of remodeling our Indiana home

We moved into this home in June of 2012.  We almost immediately started changing small things.  We did a lot of cleaning those first few days.  The house didn't feel like home to us.  We cleaned in hopes that the place might smell better.  

I began taking down drapes/curtains.  On all of the upstairs windows, there were blinds, a "shear" curtain, and then a long heavy fabric curtain.  Because of the really tall pine trees around our house and perhaps the roof lines of the house in some areas and all these curtains, the house seemed very dark!!  I took down all the curtains and the dated hardware but left the blinds for now.

Boys bedroom before                                                                 Boys bedroom after

Guest bedroom before                                                               Guest bedroom after

                                                                                                                                                           Alex's bedroom before   
                                                                                                      Alex's room after

The 4 foot pile of old curtains, drapes, and valances.

Off to Goodwill they go!

We also took down a lot wallpaper, grids from windows, mirrors, light fixtures & ceiling fans.  We quickly realized that we needed some help.  The wallpaper was coming down in large pieces but the adhesive behind the wallpaper was not coming down so nicely.  I am in no way an interior designer and Chad enjoys tinkering with things around the house,  but, well, we needed help.

This ceiling fan was in the living room.  It didn't have a light on it.  We didn't love the brass or the wicker on the paddles.  We thought Chad could just switch it out.  We even bought a ceiling fan for this space, but it still sits in our basement, in the box.  See, once Chad took this fan down from the ceiling, he discovered that it was not attached to an electrical box.  There was just a loose wire he could pull in and out of the hole in the ceiling.  This didn't seem right.

This was the wallpaper in Andrew & Carson's room.  As I looked at these pictures, I noticed the date, July 4, 2012.  That is what we did on the 4th of July last year, we removed wallpaper from their room. (lame)

It was a family task.

Here is their room after the wallpaper was removed.  There was still a lot of adhesive but Chad worked hard one weekend to scrape it off.  Their room is still not painted, it is on the to do list for August.

We decided to have Alex's room and the guest room painted and carpet replaced.  I think the reason we started with these two rooms was because they were ready to be painted, no wallpaper issues.  Chad found a deal on Angie's list for a painting job and we went for it.  We had these rooms painted in September 2012. The upstairs woodwork was painted a cream color when we purchased the home.  Both of these rooms wall colors weren't bad, sort of an off white color.  But we thought some new paint and new carpet would make the rooms look better and smell better as well.

This is a picture of our guest room with the previous owners things.

Here is the guest room prior to painting.

(and the top of my little helpers head)

The guest room after painting.  It was painted two different shades of yellow on the same strip of paint swatch.  The baseboard, doors, window frames and chair rail were all painted white.  New carpet is a light tan color, Carolina Dunes to be exact.

Here is Alex's room with previous owners items.

(not sure why the drapes aren't up in this picture from the realty listing, they were pink)

Here is Alex's room prior to painting.

 (can you see my little helper? he sort of blends in somehow)

And Alex's room after painting.  The wall color is tan.  It sometimes has some pink tones to it, which I couldn't see in the tiny paint swatch.  We should have stuck with the tans we have used before and really liked, Nomadic Desert and Mocha.  The baseboard, doors, and window frame were again painted white.  Same color carpet as other room.   Chad scraped down the hanging textured ceilings in these two rooms and painted the ceilings and nice clean white.

I would like to have some photos of Alex hung in his room, just haven't done that yet.  And see that dresser? I would like that painted white (it is off white) and have new pulls added to the drawers.  We brought the train table up to his room when we started work on the main level this spring and needed to clear out the rooms.  Not sure if it will stay in his room or not.

These rooms look a lot better.  However, I wasn't completely happy with the wall colors we chose for either room and I wasn't sure about the carpet color after seeing it installed.  It is so hard for me to know what something is going to look like completed when you can only see a small swatch of something!  Again, we need to enlist some help!