You'd like to read Part 1 click here.
I left off with having an appt with Lowe's to finish up the cabinetry order. I did that on Sunday, April 21st. I also ordered the countertop, however, that couldn't actually be scheduled until after all the cabinetry was installed. The time frame for the cabinets getting here was 7 weeks...so right around the timeframe I had thought. In the meantime we still had loads to do!
Michael still had to finish mudding all the ceilings. Have I mentioned the drywall is the worst...like the absolute worst part of construction...EVER! I despise dust with my whole being!
Once the mudding and sanding was finished then it was time for primer.
Once primer was done we could see areas that needed a bit more mud so more mudding and you guessed it more sanding.
After that it was time for texturing.
With texturing came all the prepwork such as putting plastic over everything.
I had already picked out our countertops...Himalayan Moon...it's quartz. I wasn't sure what we should do for a backsplash though. That's when searching on Pinterest I came across this picture. The countertop is the same as ours and I just love the way they work together. I found out this tile is from Home Depot so I added it to my project list to purchase later.
When the texturing and priming were finished we were actually able to get my upper kitchen cabinets out of the dining room. I had been dealing with half my kitchen in the dining room for months. Cooking has never been so easy...who knew having everything in one room would feel like such a treat!
Still not everything was fixed yet, but that's okay we dealt with it!
Next big decision was flooring. At first we wanted vinyl flooring since it's 100% waterproof, but we just couldn't find anything we really liked. Then Michael realized how much thinner vinyl flooring is from laminate. He also realized if we went with vinyl flooring we were going to have to touch up all around the baseboards because they would be mounted lower since the floor would be thinner than our old flooring. So we ventured out and looked at laminate and realized how far laminate has really come. Our old flooring was some of the first generation laminate and it wasn't very nice. They've learned a bunch over the years. So after going to Lowe's, Home Depot and Floor and Decor multiply times each we finally settled on this beauty!
At first we had been trying to get a more red color since we love red woods, but that's just not the trend right now. The only ones out there are super duper shiny and they look gross. This was the best option by far. I love the color variations from darker to lighter wood. Also it has a bit of texture so it feels like real floor. It was honestly one of the cheapest options too. I was so happy we actually found something we liked I just refused to read reviews on it. I was so done searching it was time to make a decision and just act. If anyone is interested in the exact flooring it's Floor & Decor HydroShield Reclaimed Hickory.
On Friday, May 10th, Michael started laying the flooring down and oh my goodness gracious it's gorgeous!
We decided to go with the middle of the road underlayment since we couldn't really tell a difference from the mid to the top of line. Since Michael went around and put screws into the floor joists every 6 inches the flooring is so quiet...it's a dream!
When Michael and I attended CBSR they were undergoing a huge remodel and one of the things they asked the congregation to do was write Scripture on the subflooring so we would literally be walking on the promise of God. I always thought that was such a great idea so now we had the opportunity to do that here at home. I looked up a bunch of Scriptures and then the kids and I went though and purposefully put the Scriptures in certain parts of our house. I really want to print all these out and do some sort of wall art so we remember exact which Scripture is in which room.
We went through a lot of Sharpies writing the Scripture on the floor since the subflooring isn't exactly smooth!
Michael worked so hard even taking a couple days off work so he could get the floors all finished up.
While he was working, furniture was constantly having to be moved around so he could work in a new spot. It was a bit nuts, but we just lived right through it.
This was the part Michael was worried about the most. See that yellow wall on the left. That was the part where the flooring needed to come together perfectly and thank goodness it did just that!
The office is all finished!
Oh my goodness my living room looks like a living room.
Since all the cabinets had finally been moved out of the dining room it felt so huge!!! Also the kids decided they didn't want to do school anymore at their desks so Michael wasn't going to remount them and that would helped the room feel bigger as well. At first I was a little bummed the kids didn't want to use them, but they got used to doing school around the house and that's okay. They are super flexible and that's one of the greatest things about homeschool...getting to be flexible.
I'm drooling over these floors!
One of our many many times we went to Lowe's in May I finally found an area rug I liked. And it was less than a $100! Score!!! It was so nice to be able to walk around our house barefoot and not get slivers and to actually have something soft under our feet. It's funny how you normally take all this stuff for granted, but even the kids were so happy we had a rug!
After months of there being no door on the old pantry Michael rehung the door! He also cut out the spot for the new light switch that will be for the stairs that will one day lead down to our finished basement.
It was around this time that we started trying to figure out what exactly we were going to do with the fireplace. That's when I found this inspo picture on Pinterest. Even though our fireplace isn't exactly like it I knew that Michael could tweak it so it would work.
So on Sunday, May 26th he got to work. I don't know if I shared this in the prior post but at this point Michael was going to church every other Sunday so he could be more productive on the weekends. On the weeks he did go to church he would take off Friday so he would still have 2 whole days to work on the house. It worked out well and most of the time those Sunday's he went to church he would just come home and rest and not work at all.
He started by building all the framework. We decided to case in the elevated hearth. I've never like it before and really it's just wasted space. If you ask Owen we should have put drawers in so he could store gaming supplies in there, but we didn't think about that at the time.
Next up came shiplap and the mantle.
I do love the brick I just didn't want to see quite so much of it so this was the perfect solution.
On Monday, May 27th, Michael removed the hideous wood burning insert. I have never liked that thing. It was HEAVY....I'm talking heavy....Michael actually ended up breaking his dolly getting it out of the house!
Now that that was out of the house he was able to move onto encasing the hearth.
He used these thin sheets of wood so they wouldn't be so bulky.
Then he made a matching overhang kind of like the mantle above. He kept trying to explain was he was doing, but I just didn't get it. I told him to just do what he wanted because I'm sure it would turn out nice and it did turn out very nice!
After some patching nail holes and caulking it was time for paint and stain.
Doesn't it look beautiful! This was the nice of Jack and Zeke's party. Michael wasn't supposed to work that day, but he had an epiphany about how to get power into the center of the fireplace so we could plug in an electric insert so he just went for it and figured it out. Bada boom....done! He's amazing!
I had order the insert off Amazon on May 27th and by June 3rd Michael was installing it. I love it! It has so many options...no flame, low flame, high flame, heat or no heat, it even has multiple types of fire place crackling sounds and such. It really does a good job of heating the room. I can't wait to sit in this room this winter, reading a book with the fireplace on.
The 2 cabinets that we ordered....the under sink cabinet and the 4 drawer cabinet, plus all the new door fronts and kick plates all arrive on Monday, June 10th. We had 72 hours from the time of delivery to report any damage so we had to open all the boxes and check things out. The 4 drawer cabinet was damaged a bit, but it didn't effect the function of the drawers and the side that was dented was the side that goes up against the stove so it didn't matter. We did have a duplicate order. The lady that was placing the order though we needed to order 4 of the corner cabinet doors in the picture above. She though we would have to mount them together, but in fact they did come mounted together and we rec'd 4 of them so we had 2 too many.
Thankfully I was able to return them I believe they charged me a 20% restocking charge, but still I was getting hundreds of dollars back so I didn't care.
Here's the new 4 drawer cabinet and all the new door / drawer fronts! The best part about the new doors is they all came with the slow close hinges. It took me a bit to get used to that. I would close the door, but then not hear it close and I kept turning around to make sure the door was actually closed. I've since gotten used to it. The other thing we had to do was get use to not cutting that corner in the kitchen...my hip got bruised a couple times!
Something we also ordered were sheets of wood that were stained to match the new doors. We were going to use those on the end cabinets since the wood wasn't an exact match to our existing cabinets. However, you can't really tell at all! So we took those wood sheets back and got even more money back.
New door new color. Side panel old color....can't even tell!
Same here....it's crazy how well it matched!
All finished and looking so pretty! The only unfortunate part about making the lower section of the hearth bigger is I don't think our old recliners will fit there. The kids saucer chairs do so that's fun, but I would have liked the recliners to fit. I still haven't had Michael actually bring one in...it might fit, but it might stick out farther than before and that's okay so we'll see later. It's just not something that I'm worried about right now.
Something else Michael finished was the shiplap wall in our entryway.
He also cut, installed and painted the new cap for the stairway. And yes...we do not have any railings for our stairway and we like it that way. We do know if we were ever to sell it we would be required to put one in and we would, but good thing we have no plans to sell.
My living room looks so lived in and not filled with construction equipment!
We decided against getting a rug for the office. The rug would just get wear and tear from the office chairs anyway and now it's easier to move the chairs around and also to sweep and mop.
We also decided to not tile the bathroom like it was before. I liked the tile, but it's so nice to have one cohesive flooring all throughout the main floor. Even though the laminate isn't 100% waterproof it is waterproof for up to 24 hours and honestly if you have any amount of water on your flooring after that, it's going to need to be repaired anyway.
Since the downstairs was basically finished except for the countertops and backsplash, Michael moved upstairs to continue working on the kids bathroom makeover.
We decided to just use the same flooring for up here as well.
After months of not having my chandelier up, Michael was able to rehang that!
Then it was time to finally unbox all my china that the remediation company had boxed up for me and organize it in my china hutch. The first box I opened was packed so well and it wasn't even anything that was too breakable. One of the items was my plastic silver ice bucket. I was completely floored how well they packed it.
Then I opened the next box and after I took off the initial wad of paper that had been stuffed in there this is what I found.
Literally my Old Country Rose China was sitting on top of other pieces without any paper in-between. I was so upset! I immediately took this picture and sent it to Michael saying we'd be contacting the remediation company if I found any of my pieces broken.
They used a ton of paper to wrap most of my stuff. This giant pile was only about 4 boxes worth of stuff. You could totally tell there had been two wrappers working on the project. One person actually cared about my stuff and the other did not.
Ella was my sweet helper, she was taking the papers that were crumpled and flattening them out. Some friends from church were going to be moving in August so we knew they'd need packing supplies so we made sure they were all nice so they could reuse them.
Here was another box! It was so crazy it was only my Old Country Rose china that wasn't wrapped up nicely. Thankfully and miraculously none of it was broken!
That's a lot of wrapping!
Here's my china hutch with all my china set up safely inside. I was also able to put up the kids' cabins that had been up in their room. It still amazes me that they weren't damaged when it was literally raining from our ceiling.
Jack's cabin has always been off to the side over here by the fireplace so it went right back in its spot. Again how it wasn't damaged I don't know. I had something sitting on the left side of the hearth and it was covered in water, but the cabins weren't touched!
Two saucer chairs on either side of the fireplace look nice...even though they aren't the same color.
Michael got the pegs on the shiplap wall so we moved the coat tree out of the entryway.
Ella helped me decorate the dining room. She wanted a more minimal look than we had before so that's what we went for. I really do love the simplicity of it!
Since the kids won't be having their desks on the wall that opened this space up for more decorations. I'm the one that came up with this layout...all my favorite things...sunflowers, Americana and family.
On the other wall where Jack & Zeke's desk used to be I decided to hang up the kids' gallery pictures.
In the bathroom I used to have these cute pictures that I printed out myself that said, Wash, Dry, Fold, Repeat, but Michael accidentally broke one of the frames....it was a Dollar Tree frame. I decided it was time for change anyway and I ordered these prints off Amazon. I also got these frames at the Dollar Tree. I think they are adorable play on word statement for the laundry room.
Our deck didn't have any damage to it, but it was where Michael was doing a bunch of cutting so with that came a bunch of sawdust. It was so nice to get this freshened up.
The last little thing Michael needed to do in the kitchen was install the kickplate and the crown molding. Once that was done it was just waiting for the countertop company to come out and take measurements and then order the countertop. This was the only part of the whole restoration that we actually hired out.
The flooring is all done in the kid's bathroom and it got a new coat of paint. We just went ahead and painted it the same color we painted the bathroom downstairs. I actually completely forgot to mention the painting of course after Michael was finished with texturing he had to go through and repaint each and every room. It's absolutely mind-boggling to think of all the work he did in such a short time.
And here's where our bathroom stands at this point in time. We wanted to completely finish the main floor before we moved onto this big project. We also knew that Michael would need to rest this summer and not worry about working. He'll be able to tackle this in the fall / winter of this year.
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