Hello Again

Hello again to everyone! I been away for awhile keeping busy! We finally began remodeling our kitchen! I now how a sink, cabinets, and counter tops in my kitchen like normal houses do! We're doing all the work ourselves, so it is a little slow going. Here are a few of our "in progress" photos


We decided to go with purple, yes purple, for the walls! I love it! Our floor is called "lay down vinyl" and it's the best thing ever!! You just unroll the vinyl like a rug and cut off any excess! No glue or anything! I love it!

You can look at the "before" pics under the label "House Remodeling". We've come a long way!!

For the First Time

For the first time in my life, I took a shower in my own home last night!! I think it was the best shower of my whole life!

There are still a few things we have to do to complete the bathroom but, we are moving on to start the old bathroom/new laundry room today. We need to get the old bathtub out and remove the old subfloor. My sister and BIL have a bet with Ryan and myself that we alone cannot remove the old bathtub ourselves. The bathtub is an old cast iron, clawfoot tub, weighing approx. 300 lbs (136 kg). If Ryan and I can move it out by ourselves, they buy us dinner, if we cannot not, we have to buy them dinner. Great motivation!

Here is the before with the kitchen sink

Here is the same view, now with a shower there!!

Here's our tile

Here's our faucet

Here's the shower in action!

Remodel 3

We are moving along! I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel! On Friday, we got the bathtub in place and finished the plumbing. Saturday, I finished the drywall and painted above where we decided the shower would end. All day Sunday, Ryan started installing tile around the bathtub and we hope to have it installed the rest of the way tonight. I have some more drywall finishing to do around the side of the tub and paint before the rest of the tile goes up. We hope to be grouting Wednesday and taking showers by Friday!!!

I am not allowing anyone to see the bathroom right now, I want it to be a big shock when everyone see the end results! I had to make my sister get back in the car so she couldn't sneak a peek.

We had to go buy a new pedestal top to the sink this week. We had it sitting in the corner, ready to install, and one of our kitties decided to jump up on it. The sink went crashing to the floor and of course, shattered into a hundred pieces.

Here's what left on our list for the bathroom:

1. Finish drywall on sides of tub and paint

2. Finish installing tile and grout

3. Install sink

4. Hang medicine cabinet, and light

5. Have my BIL finish the custom cabinet

6. Install new floor

Here's a sneak preview of our tile

This is the wall above the shower

This is the wall above the shower before paint

Remodel Part 2

We are well under way in our remodeling adventure. As I type, Ryan is in the cellar running the plumbing for our new bathtub. We tore out all of the old dry wall in our soon to be bathroom, removed a build in cabinet my dad made that we used to store kitchen items in, and have run electric for the medicine cabinet lights. I have also painted half of the room and done any necessary drywall repairs. We are hoping to have the bathtub installed completely by this weekend. And, are hoping to begin tiling the shower no later than Saturday. It is a slow process! Everyday after Ryan gets home from work, we chisel away at the bathroom, keeping the end result in our minds. We did take last night off to pay some attention to the girls. It will be so nice once it's all completed!!

This is a sneak preview of the wall color in the bathroom and a custom towel cabinet my BIL Ryne made.

This is the hole in the floor for the bathtub drain
This is another look at where the kitchen sink was and where the new bathtub will be
This is what my kitchen currently looks like. You could play I spy with this picture... I spy a bathtub, a sink pedestal, a laundry hamper....
This is where the custom cabinet was. Now the cabinet my BIL made and the sink will be here.

Hopefully this weekend, I will have some more completed bathroom pics to share!

Remodel Time!! Part 1

I am sure you noticed that I haven't been around here for a while. Well, we have started our house remodel. The wall we want to take down (to make the kitchen and the family room one big room)contains the old coal stove pipe chimney. The chimney runs from the cellar to the roof. A few weeks ago, Ryan began taking down the chimney in the attic, brick by brick. We then progressed into my bedroom, brick by brick. We then had to throw each brick out the window and then load them into our truck for removal. We now have a big, gaping hole in our bedroom wall for the time being. With Jaiden's room being on the other side of the wall, we are going to make that space a closet for her room (old house, no closets).

We got our income tax back and now have the money to move forward! This past weekend, we started on the kitchen/bathroom/laundry room remodel. As I have said before, our house was build without plumbing. When the owners decided to install plumbing in the house, they sure didn't use common sense in the placing of the items. Our bathroom sits under the stairs that lead to our bedrooms. As you can imagine, there is not a lot of room there. We have never had a shower because there is no room to stand up straight when you are in certain areas. So, in order to have a shower, the bathroom has to be moved.

Next order of business is the kitchen sink. It is in its own separate room that separates the kitchen from the bathroom. My dad build some custom cabinets and besides the sink, that is all that is in the room. In thinking outside the box, I wanted my kitchen sink in the kitchen. Maybe I'll be starting a new trend(note the sarcasm here)!! This weekend, Ryan ran all of the plumbing a moved the sink into the kitchen. I tore down the walls in the old sinkroom to make way for tile for our new shower.

Once we get the bathroom moved to its new location (the old sinkroom), the old bathroom will be a laundry room. This will enable us to get the washer and dryer out of my kitchen.

As for part 2, we are waiting for our bathtub to come in, it had to be special ordered due to the smaller size. After that comes, we can really start seeing some major progress. Hope you enjoy the pictures!!

This is the chimney up in the attic

Chimney is attic gone!

Looking down into the old pipes inside the chimney

Our bedroom wall. The circle is where the old pipe came out of the wall to heat the room

Almost gone!

The huge mess we had in our bedroom




This is the sink before.

This is the kitchen before


My sink is now where the table was in the picture above. It won't look as odd once we get rid of the old counter top, fill the rest of the space with cabinets, and get a new counter top that runs the span of the cabinets.

These are all of the old sinkroom where I tore the walls out.