OMG OMG when is Christmas here??!

I wish it was the day after Thanksgiving right now. Why, you may be asking? Because I have a REAL mantel to hang stockings from! Dudes. Eight or so months after installing our propane fireplace in the addition of the living room, we finally have a mantel!

Check check check it out.

Building this was a lot of work and a bit of a brain teaser, but Branden and our bff-slash-handy-helper Josh were able to form a thinktank and construct the surround and mantel. I admit I wasn't sure how it would all come together, but it looks ahhhh-mazing.

We started with a 1x6 board of solid red oak, supported and secured to the wall (don't ask me how because around this time I was most likely just dancing around the room singing Christmas carols). Then we used leftover crown molding from our kitchen renovation to trim it out. This crown is beautiful--it's the same solid maple crown that runs above our kitchen cabinets and the installers had an extra huge piece that they left us, so it was great to put it to good use.

Oh, and see those gorgeous tiles for the hearth there? We special-ordered the large marble tiles (fancy!) and then found these nice stone and glass mosiac strips to trim it out. Branden did an A+ gold star job on laying these tiles a couple of weeks ago. Such a wonderful man, he is.

After the mantel itself was secured (again, I was la-la-la'ing in the background), we started building down the sides of the surround, adding 1x3 boards and rosettes at the corners.

Then we added fluted pieces on the sides, some more trim around the top, and the plinths (new word we learned... translation: the big blocky things at the bottom).

It was definitely starting to come together, but still looked a little disjointed because of the different woods. We knew from the beginning that we were painting everything white, to match all of the trim throughout the house, so I had to have faith that it would look seamless once it was painted.

And lookee there! A few coats of primer and white paint later, and it looks like one beautiful, glorious piece.

I can practically smell the chestnuts roasting. (Okay not really since this is a gas fireplace but whatevs, you know what I mean.)

I am so freaking psyched about having a real mantel to decorate for Christmas. I've talked about my issues with not having a real mantel before, and how upsetting it is. Those years of faking it are gone! (Is it December yet??)

Part of the reason why we finally had to jump on this mantel project now is because we are also finally having carpet installed in the living room! BIG THINGS ARE HAPPENING! This means that we actually won't have the plywood we've been living with for the last 9 months in the living room addition. Pinch me!

In preparation for the installation, last night we had to empty out the entire living room (which meant shoving everything from that room into every other room in the house, but if it's temporary I can so deal with that). We also had to rip off the carpet in the living room, plus the stairs and upstairs landing, since we're recarpeting those as well.

So after some grunt work, we got the room cleared out and everything hauled off for trash pickup. (You know what's not so easy? Two people moving a piano.) It would've cost an additional $350 just to have the installers remove the existing carpet and haul it. For a few hours work, it was totally worth saving the cash on that.

Here's the upstairs landing, stripped of its decades-old green carpeting (god I won't miss that AT ALL):

 

And the staircase, with the carpet ripped up:

 

There was clearly a runner on these stairs for a very long time! I later put a few coats of white paint on the running boards that go up the wall on either side. It helped brighten up the stairwell quite a bit. I didn't get a good photo because I was delirious from exhaustion and huffing paint fumes for too long, so you'll just have to wait. Deal with it.

And finally here's the living room, all emptied out and ready for carpet:

 

Can't wait to show you what it looks like when it's installed!! Woop woop!

Where the F did the last 8 months go??

When you’re a kid, every day of the year moves like a hot and muggy summer afternoon: excruciatingly slow. I’d love to go back to my younger self and explain how eventually, as an adult, days bleed into weeks bleed into months, and all of a sudden before we’ve really noticed it the seasons have shifted again (my 12-year-old self would definitely ignore my 27-year-old self). A week doesn’t feel like a lifetime any more—it doesn’t feel like much of anything, in fact. Maybe it just feels like living. I only feel the passage of time when I stop long enough on my evening commute to see, suddenly and for the first time, that the leaves on the birch saplings in the marsh have turned bright yellow, seemingly overnight.

What I’m trying to say is, so much time has passed in the life of this small blog, and yet it feels like so little time as well.

So I’ll attempt to recap a bit, as best as I can.

Our house actually feels like a home again for the first time in more than a year. It took a long time to get here. A lot of pinching and saving and waiting waiting waiting, but we’ve pretty much done it. It’s functional—“holy crap I have a dishwasher??” is a thought that runs through my head regularly—and it’s slowly becoming beautiful, too.



The addition we've built has made the house so much more usable—the layout is perfect, with the centralized kitchen becoming the literal heart of the home. I can’t imagine life without our second bathroom now (first world problems, I know, I know), and having the washer and dryer on the first floor is amazing (I will never miss those days of lugging wet clothes from the washer in the basement to the dryer on the first floor).

I don’t always stop to really take stock of what we’ve accomplished here in less than 2 ½ years. It’s astounding, really, when you look back.

That photo above is of our mudroom, which last I showed hadn't been tiled yet. We chose a simple beige ceramic tile and it turned out to be the perfect choice.

Since this is the door that Lucy uses to go in and out of the backyard, and it's where we keep her food dish, it needed to be able to stand up to pretty much anything. It looks really nice and luckily it hides drool and kibble messes pretty well, to boot.

The paint color is called Silver Sage, and it's actually my favorite color in the house. So much light streams in through the french doors; it actually brightens up the kitchen and the living room as well.

The view below is taken from the doorway that leads to the living room, looking towards the bathroom. The kitchen is on the left, and beyond that you can see to the dining room.

 

On the wall is a framed print of an Alice in Wonderland book page. It migrated here from its old spot in the living room. Every room needs a little touch of Alice, I say.

Last I showed the new bathroom, it too hadn't had flooring put in yet and was pretty unfinished in general. Now it's probably the room that's the closest to being completely done:



Before building this, we only had one little, cramped bathroom upstairs. It's so much nicer having a spacious bathroom on the main floor, especially when guests are over!

We added in a double-wide shower that is just amazing. We sprung for the raindrop showerhead and it was worth every cent.

 

Yes, I am that psyched that I just posted a photo of the inside of my shower, but whatevs. I know everyone could just die from the excitement.

 

Next to the jumbo shower, and even more exciting, is the most amazing, beautiful, glorious, awe-inspiring, fantabulous part of the entire renovation, in my most humble opinion:

 

 

LOOK! Laundry! On the first floor! A washer and a dryer next to each other! It's a thing of beauty.

I am 1000% positive that I will never turn to Branden at any point in my life and say, "Hey, you know what I wish I could do because it was so much fun and I miss it terribly? I wish I could lug laundry down to the spidery old basement to be washed, then struggle to haul the wet load up the stairs, to a completely different floor of the house, to load into the dryer." Yup, I'm all set with that forever.

Aside from some little stuff like artwork on the walls, the bathroom is done-zo.

It's pretty great crossing one room off the list. Eventually we'd like to upgrade the vanity in here, since we didn't realize how much room we'd have to spare when the addition was being built. But that can happen down the road and it's wayyy low on the priority list. As in, might not even be on the list.

In other news, the kitchen is finished and beautiful and amazing and I often end up just standing in it looking around in disbelief. But that's a whole other post for a whole other day. And I swear that day won't be eight months from now. Pinky promise.

Interior framing is done

Since the kitchen was ripped apart, the crew has been working on finishing all of the electrical and plumbing work, and the final inspection was completed this morning.

They rebuilt the back wall of the kitchen, which now separates the kitchen and new bathroom:

The majority of our kitchen cabinets will eventually go along this wall.

The fridge will move to the left a smidge, so it won't be quite as close to the opening to the new mudroom. I love the light that filters in to the kitchen from the new patio doors. Ignore our dryer over there on the right, which is currently waiting in this doorway until it gets hooked up in the new bathroom. (Isn't that where all dryers belong, in the kitchen, inconveniently blocking pathways?? Thought so.)

The rest of the interior framing was done as well, which has been great since we've been able to actually see how the new rooms are divided.

Here is a view from the new mudroom, looking into the bathroom:

Our new, super-wide shower was installed as well. Here you can see the shower in place on the left, and the new mudroom straight ahead:

The vanity we picked out for the bathroom is in that box there.

In the living room addition, the fireplace was framed out between the windows in the back of the house:

The wall between the existing living room and new space hasn't come down yet. That should be down in the next week or so.

Now that all of the electrical and plumbing is completely finished, our contractor plans on insulating and starting to hang drywall next week. We'll also have the old window in the kitchen replaced with a brand new one. It's been getting really cold and drafty downstairs at night, so I can't wait for the addition to be insulated!

I never thought I'd see the day, but we actually have to start picking out paint colors soon. It feels like we're never going to be finished with this construction, so the thought of actually nearing some kind of end is tought to fathom. Hopefully by Christmas I'll be able to hang stockings over my new fireplace!!

Kiss the kitchen goodbye!

So I got home after work today to find that our entire kitchen has finally been demolished!

You'll remember that back when I explained our plans for renovating the kitchen (which later turned into a much larger renovation with construction of a new addition), the kitchen looked like this:

Welp, the kitchen is now stripped to bare bones and looking like this:

All of the cabinets were ripped out today, as well as the majority of the countertops. The big opening on the right is the new 3/4 bathroom in the addition. There will be a wall built there between the kitchen and bathroom, and the new kitchen cabinets will eventually continue across that wall.

The drywall was removed, revealing more of the solid wood beadboard that we encountered in the rest of the downstairs when we renovated last summer. The crew dropped the ceiling and pulled up most of the laminate floors. Underneath was a layer of white linoleum, and underneath that is hardwood flooring (which you can see in the corner above). Unfortunately the wood flooring in the downstairs doesn't look to be in good enough shape to refinish, so we'll likely still be sticking with our plan to put down tile in the kitchen, new mudroom, and new bathroom (plus also installing new hardwood floors in the living room addition, current living room, and dining room).

The wall behind the fridge (where there is currently a sheet of plywood) will be an opening into the mudroom (you can see the new patio doors in the background there). This corner used to have a window and door:

Much like the newspaper pages we found inside the walls in the rest of the downstairs when we demolished last year, the kitchen had some interesting artifacts beneath the drywall, like this old roofing material label:

Here is another view of the newly opened up kitchen:

Such a disaster!

I do feel like this is a step towards some major progress, though, so I'm excited! Hopefully we'll have the back wall in the living room taken down soon too, so we can really get an idea of how the new addition will blend with the rest of the house. In the meantime, we certainly won't be cooking any meals in here...

Siding is complete!

Things have been pretty busy the last couple of weeks, with traveling for work, a freakish blizzard in OCTOBER (which dumped about 6 inches of snow on us), and other life stuff I haven't had much time to post any updates. Plus, progress has been much slower than we hoped lately, and we've been a bit more frustrated with each day that passes. Contractors, grr!

After the framing was completed (which I showed here), the French patio doors and new windows were installed. We were very particular about the type of door that we got, and we're happy with the decision so far.

This particular model has grates inside the glass as well as blinds that are able to open and close, and be completely raised or lowered. Awesomeness. Since the neighbors' backyard abuts ours, having that privacy option in the back of the house will be huge!

After the windows were in, the siding began to go on.

The new windows were trimmed out as well, to make them more similar to the existing window frames on the rest of the house's exterior. The soffits were installed beneath the roof to ensure we don't have issues with drainage or ice dams/icicles:

I'm honestly so pleased with the way the siding came out. It lines up near perfectly with the old siding, and you can hardly tell that there is any difference.

The new siding is vinyl, while the old stuff is (aged) wood. You can only see the difference close up, and even then it's pretty minimal.

The crew did a great job of lining the boards up so it's almost seamless. I had envisioned the new space looking like a super noticeable add-on, but we think it actually looks like it could've been part of the house all along!

Beyond the windows and siding getting installed, the plumbing for the new bathroom is roughed in and ready to be finished off. We bought a bathroom vanity and faucet a couple of weeks ago, which has since been sitting in the middle of the kitchen (naturally).

On Monday our new fireplace was delivered, and is now also sitting in the middle of the kitchen (again, natch). We decided to go with propane as a heat source, since digging a line to the street for natural gas was going to cost literally thousands of dollars. With propane, we can stick the tank way out behind the detached garage (I was worried that it would have to sit in the backyard like an eyesore) and run a line to the house for a few hundred bucks instead. So, that was the winner! Running the propane line will be one of the last parts of this whole job, but I can't wait until it's all hooked up and keeping us toasty warm this winter.

This week the crew started framing out the interior walls (which I'll take pictures of when it isn't pitch black dark!) and started breaking through to the inside of the house. We're meeting with the electrician tomorrow night to map out where all of our outlets and light fixtures should be, which is exciting. Picking out spots for fixtures makes me feel like we just might be rounding the corner towards the finish line here.

The original timeline was supposed to have work wrapped up by the end of October. Here we are in November with so much left to do. It's frustrating being powerless in this situation... we can't force our contractor/the crew to go any faster, and certainly don't want to burn any bridges or cause them to do bad work by making a stink. They know we're losing patience with the pace of the project (especially as it's getting increasingly colder outside, and we've got several inches of snow in our still-yet-to-be-graded backyard) but there's not much else we can do. Fingers crossed that we're actually finished by Thanksgiving!!

Roof up, tree down

The exterior framing for our new addition is now complete!

The roof was built today, and it's getting easier to imagine what each room is actually going to look like.

Here's a view looking towards the new living room extension:

And here is a view looking the other way from the living room extension, towards the new 3/4 bathroom:



The new shower was dropped off today too:

It's a super wide shower (at 48") and needed to get into the room before the interior walls went in, as it likely wouldn't fit through the doorway afterwards.

The french patio doors and windows will be installed in the next couple of days.

The crew plans on breaking through to the inside of the house by Thursday, joining the addition to the existing interior. It'll be so exciting to have the walls down and be able to actually see the new space!

Last week the hated pine tree finally came down too! The top half was carted off, but the bottom half needs to be discarded still. The stump will be ground down and filled in.

I've already noticed more sunlight coming into the living room with the tree down. I'm so, so happy to have it gone. No more pine needles everywhere!

Framing progress!

Most of the exterior framing went up today, and it is really starting to take shape!

It's getting easier to visualize how the whole addition is going to come together, now that most of the exterior walls are up and there are spaces for windows and the french patio doors.

The fireplace, which will be flanked by two long windows, was framed out as well in the living room addition.

The window at the far end will be in the bathroom.

Taking down the siding will be the next step. Then after the addition is fully framed in and enclosed, the crew will break through to the inside and attach the new roof to the original framing.

Lucy is already dreaming about all the time she's going to spend longingly gazing out of these new windows!

Partially framed

Despite some rainy days that caused some delays, work on the addition has progressed nicely over the last week.

After the foundation was fully set, it was backfilled and work started on leveling and grading the rest of the backyard.

A ton of dirt was removed so that water will properly drain away from the house when it rains.

The rest of the yard still needs to be graded. And that pine tree is coming down on Tuesday! Once the tree's out of there, the crew will be able to grade the rest of the backyard without having to work around that.

In the meantime, it's crazy to see how far they've dropped the yard down so far. It's probably two or more feet lower right now in the back. Branden kindly posed to demonstrate the height difference between where the ground level was and where it is now:

(He looks thrilled, huh?)

After the foundation set, the crew started laying down the support beams for the plywood to rest on.

The purple bits sticking up out of the ground are boards of additional insulation.

By the end of the week, the crew had started getting some of the framing up for the walls, and had put down the plywood for the flooring.

It's definitely exciting to have something to stand on out here and to start to get an idea of what it's actually going to look like.

A lot has changed in our plan since we found out that zoning laws would require us to build out 8 feet instead of 12, as we had originally planned on. The biggest question for us was what to do with the new living room extension. We decided that, to give ourselves some more usable wall space in that portion of the addition, we would move the french patio doors to the center of the addition instead.

This illustration (drawn over the image above) might help to visualize what the addition is going to look like when it's done:

Moving the doors to the center of the addition, in the new mudroom, will enable that left-hand wall in the living room addition to be usable. We had originally wanted to put the doors there, but realized that it would mean that the new living room space would be pretty useless--every wall would have either a doorway or fireplace to work around.

We also reconfigured the bathroom so that we can fit a wide, 48" shower as well as the washer and dryer. We're psyched that we have enough space for everything and can add a three-quarter bath instead of just a half bath.

Can't wait to see the rest of the framing go up this week!