So much accomplished, so little finished…

Hello readers! So much has happened in the past week since I last blogged. Let’s review where we left off. Keith & I had started demo on the center part of the house. We took Easter Sunday off for much needed rest, but got busy this week and got a lot done. That being said, we had hoped to have at least one room finished. One tiny room. That’s all we wanted. But no, it just wasn’t meant to be!

But let’s start with what did get done. Demo on the center part of the house is pretty much done until we’re ready to frame up the surround to the stairwell. And before that happens we have some unexciting drywall work to be done on the ceiling (you can see a little sneak of the ceiling – all of those boards need to go and be replaced with drywall. Here’s a quick reminder of where we were last Sunday.

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And here’s where we are now! All of the brick that was part of the old fireplace hearth is gone, all of the walls are down, and we’ve even been able to move the kitchen table to the location it will be in long-term!

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And then here’s the real thing to be excited about – you can see the panoramic view regardless of where you are from the main living part of the house. I didn’t get a great picture yesterday as it had stormed first thing, so you can’t see the breathtaking sunrise. I’ll try to get a picture of that next week.

Don’t get too jealous of our living conditions now! Haha! We have the biggest mish mash of furniture to use until we can go furniture shopping to find something which works for both Keith (tall) and me (not). In the meantime we’re just dealing with what we could easily bring up from Atlanta.

Now, let’s move outside for a minute to talk about the accomplishments there. As you’ll remember last week, I shared with you that we had opened up the stairs to the front porch and replaced the posts with beefier ones and it made a HUGE difference. This week’s changes were little and simple but WOW what a difference they made! We swapped out the light fixtures and added new street numbers. The street numbers will have to be moved when the house is painted, but they look great even on the unfinished post! Here’s a quick before reminder….

And here’s the after!

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Oh – and here’s a fun little pic of the before and after on the lights!

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I hope you agree that it makes a huge difference! Now I just can’t wait to replace that front door. That’s likely a month or so out, so we’ll live with the old door for now. We also made a change to the back porch light fixture. I don’t have a picture of the before, but here’s the after. It’s one of the lights I had originally bought for the front porch but decided it didn’t really work. And we are so happy with the ones we went with. But the other light looks great on the back porch, which is a good thing since I couldn’t return it because we opened the box and threw it away!

The master bedroom closet is SOOO close to being done and probably realistically needs 15 minutes of our time to wrap it up. We decided to come back to Atlanta for a few days and after a frustrating day yesterday decided to just leave things as is and head home to civilization (and a lot of options for ordering food for pickup!) for a few days. When we left off last week, we had a working washer/dryer but no drywall behind it. That has now been drywalled and painted and the trim has been put in. Half of our new closet organizers have been put up and we just need to put up the other one and scoot the washer/dryer back into place and we’ll be done.

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Now let’s talk trim. Trim is expensive and there aren’t a lot of options that you can just buy at Home Depot or Lowes. So, we decided to mill our own trim. It’s cheaper and while it’s a little more work, it’s not that much more work. Since we’re going for a bit of a cottage vibe here, I picked craftsman-like trim which I liked. Keith then went and bought both 3/4″ and 1/2″ MDF and started cutting … and cutting … and cutting… Then it was my turn to prime … and prime … and paint! We’re still playing around with the trim and I think have decided to add one more layer to the top trim of our doors and windows.

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Here’s a look at the trim we agreed upon and are making for all of the baseboards and casings. We are making this out of 3/4″ MDF. We’re using the 1/2″ MDF for the sides of door casings and windows and 3/4″ for the tops so there’s a “shadow line”. We haven’t yet, but will likely add the second layer on the tops of the casings as shown below.

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As I said, we really wanted to wrap up a room, and the room we wanted to wrap up was the master bathroom. It was our first project when we ripped out the old vanity and replaced it with our new (used) one. We really thought we’d wrap the room up before heading back to Atlanta yesterday, but fate (and a mistake) kept that from happening. Let’s focus on the positive and what has been done, then I’ll share what’s left to be done. What has been done: trim, new vanity, drywall repair, new outlets, caulking and painting, new light fixtures (minus the globes on them as Jennifer is clumsy and broke the globes and so we’re waiting until everything else has been done before we put the globes on now). Let’s take a look at all that we have accomplished.

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One other big thing did get done in the bathroom, and that is the ceiling. Stippled ceilings are throughout the house, and unlike popcorn ceilings, you cannot scrape stipple. So, your choices are to replace the drywall or cover it. Initially we thought we would cover it like the picture below with sheets of beadboard and then trim it out. We thought it would be cheaper than shiplapping the ceilings, but after doing some research, the cost of the trim took away most of the savings.

After researching the cost of shiplap, we realized Lowes had the best price at 7.77 a 5″x12″ board, so we went with that. And the bathroom ceiling is done (except for another coat of paint)!

I forgot to take a picture of just the ceiling, but I promise it’s finished. And we even have cove molding put up around the perimeter of the room. We’ll be putting shiplap on the ceiling in the rest of the house.

So now let’s chat about what hasn’t been done. We haven’t yet put the globes on the light fixtures because we’re waiting to do that until everything else has been done so I don’t somehow break a globe again. And we still have to hang our mirrors and our towel rods. And then the biggie… we had a little screw up yesterday on one of our last things to be done and it ended with us both just saying screw it, let’s go home. They say “measure twice, cut once”. And they’re right! And Keith measured twice. But somehow between measuring and cutting, something happened and that something wasn’t good. You’re wondering to yourself, what was he cutting? Well, it was the top piece of a new shower door. The shower door has annoyed me from day 1. Not because it’s not nice, but because it opened into the back of the door in the bathroom. So I wanted sliding shower doors. They will give us another place to let a towel dry and it will be a lot easier to get in/out of the shower. I picked a simple and inexpensive option from Home Depot. We’re hopeful that Delta (the manufacturer) can quickly send us a new top and we can cut it properly and finish installing the new shower door, but until then, this is what we’re living with!

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Whoops! That’s about an inch off! So fingers are crossed that customer support at Delta is as awesome as it was at the bathroom fixture company, Jonathan, and they’ll send us a replacement piece ASAP.

Stay tuned next week for the final reveal of the closet and hopefully the final reveal of the master bath! And some more tidbits about some “plan b” designs are revealed! Stay safe, stay healthy and stay sane my friends!