Better late than never!

Hi everyone! Sorry it’s been so long since I posted. We’ve had a lot going on these past few weeks as many of you know. But a lot has happened and I can’t wait to share the changes with you.

So let’s start with the master shower. It’s finally complete with functioning shower doors and we couldn’t be happier. It’s easier to get in and out of and looks a little fresher. Just as a reminder, I’ve included a before and after!

The “before” shower door opened into the bathroom door

We’ve also managed to get everything wrapped up in the guest room, affectionately known as the “Dot Suite” for my mom who has been quarantining with us! I only have one thing left to do and that is to paint the trim we put up on the ceiling. I’ll share those pictures with you next week. In the meantime, I know many of you think Keith does all the work around here, but I do a fair amount as well! I’ve included a couple of gratuitous pictures of me ripping out old trim after work (there was no overhead light at the time, hence the lamp). As you enjoy seeing the “new” room, please note that if you’re looking at my desk (the Dot Suite is also my home office when we are in the mountains), it is a work in process. With no progress made recently!!! The room is rather bland right now, but I hope to get some additional bedding and art work if I can ever find time to do some more shopping.

Now, let’s move over to the front hall for a few minutes. We haven’t decided for sure yet if we will put up board and batten trim or not, but we have made some progress. Keith put shiplap ceiling up while I was still in Atlanta a few days ago, and today he added two can lights. And hopefully by my next blog, you’ll get to see our new front door installed. We are super excited about that, and just to whet your appetite, I’ve included a sneak peek of what it looks like!

We also wrapped up a little project on the hall closet. Because we demoed the middle of the house and will be demoing the kitchen soon, we needed the hall closet to be more functional. As you can see by the “before picture” below, it was a bit of a mishmash of hooks and such and wasn’t very functional. Adding to the complexity of it, it’s also got our furnace as well as the only interior entrance to the attic (which you have to get a ladder to get into). So, we couldn’t put up a rod or anything like that.

It was a simple but effective change to rip out the weird shelf thing and add a bunch of hooks to it. I think it looks fabulous for very little work or money! And now we can easily hang our coats up. Which will be key for the winters up there. It’s WINDY!

Now, let’s talk interior doors. First, let me just complain about how expensive they are! In order to save money (remember, I’m thrifty), we decided to go with slab doors instead of prehung. It’s easy, I said to Keith as I researched it. Well, it’s not quite as easy or as quick as we thought, but hopefully we have the system down now. We managed to get one up and it’s not painted yet. I’m going to use my fancy sprayer to spray all the doors once we hang them all. Let’s talk about the steps it took for this bad boy to be hung. First, we had to line the new door up with the old one to make sure they’re the same size. Then we had to trim it up to match. And to add to the fun, we found that the doors had to be beveled by 3 degrees to make sure that the door would close properly. Not so easy. We were clearly flying by the seat of our pants with this part of it!

Keith used his fancy Kreg straight edge which rides on a sled (essentially a track saw) to trim up the bottom of the door. The length is what we did with the table saw.

So after we trimmed it up, then came the fun of hanging them. We needed to match the old mortises for the new door hinges. We have a jig for that but it didn’t cooperate so well with the door trim. After a lot of consternation, we figured it out and we have our master bedroom door hung. Again, it’s not painted yet but we love how it looks! Hopefully the next 8 doors will go a little quicker than the first!

We are almost done with the final ceiling trim in both bedrooms and I will show you the final pics of that next week. This week should be a big week as our handyman will be back to put hardwoods in where we removed the old hearth and closets. He’ll have to do a little more when we demo the kitchen, but Ikea is still not open so I’m not sure when that will be.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a few pictures of how lovely spring time is up in the mountains. We have what Mom thinks are wild blackberries growing along our little road.