Garage Door Decor

While Frank was traveling I decided to keep myself busy with a little DIY project.  Since we moved in, we both disliked the "door decor" on the garage doors.  The design is nice, but really doesn't go with the rest of the house.  The design sort of reminds me of an Egyptian palace, haha. So, here's what the door looked like before...

Garage door with decor - Before

Garage door without decor - After

All 3 doors after!

Now that the garage doors look better, the roof is drawing my eye more and more.  It's in good shape luckily, but the tree debris stains this light color.  When it's time for a new roof we'll be going with something darker to hopefully end that issue. 

As for the garage door decor, there's another DIY project checked off the list! We're thinking about painting these doors to coordinate with the rest of our updates, and then eventually replace them down the road.  More to come on that soon!

Windowwwwwwws!

The windows are here! AND they're now all installed!! The crew's been installing this week, and since it took me so long to get to writing this post they're now all installed.  We're so excited!  The delivery came at the very end of May.  Frank and I were very busy the last few weekends though, with my half marathon, and traveling up to NJ.  Here's a glance at what the delivery looked like when the windows arrived...

Truck Delivery for the windows and sliding/glass doors!

Stack-o-sliders

Stack-o-windows

Once they all arrived, we had to wait for the window sills to arrive.  Frank and I went with a limestone will, to compliment a few other limestone installations we already had in the house (fireplace, mantle, etc.).  Once those arrived, it was time to install. 

Day 1: The crew installed the two master bathroom windows, and the side breakfast nook/patio door.

Window in mater bathroom from inside.

Side of the house - window in master bathroom from the outside, minus trim at this point.

Exterior view of the new patio/breakfast nook door!

Day 2: The crew moved on to installing the kid's bedroom windows, the breakfast nook back window, and the big front living room window -- that one was a beast!

Kid's bedroom - interior view of windows.

Exterior (front of house) view with two kid's bedroom windows in (far left and middle) and master bathroom window at the far right installed, minus trim.

Breakfast nook area - interior view of patio door and window.

Exterior view - living room "beast" window.

 Day 3: The crew opened up the new window between the kitchen and dining room, installed that new window and installed the dining room window and master bedroom window.

Back of house exterior - you can see where the new window opening is starting to take shape.

Here is the new window all opened up, and the dining room window in the back with the crew.

Interior view from the kitchen - breakfast nook window on the left and new window at the right of this photo.

Interior view from the dining room - new window on the left and dining room window on the right.

Interior view from the breakfast nook - all three windows (new on in the middle).

Day 4: The mancave window went in, as well as the mudroom sliding glass door, and the master bedroom sliding glass door! That's it for getting the windows in place!!

I came home to this! Standing in the breezeway, looking at new slider into mudroom.

Interior view standing in kitchen/living room - mudroom slider and breakfast nook patio door.

Exterior view - master bedroom slider.

View from the back of the house (prior to mancave window install).

So there you have it!  The windows and glass doors are in!  The interior doors arrived this week, along with a few other fixtures.  Things are really moving along here.  Next up, trimming all the windows and moving on to more of the finishing -- installing hardwoods, touch-ups and painting, etc.  Things are looking good for our July finish!

Demo complete!

We've had lots going on at the house lately.  The new crew has been working fast!  They completed the rest of the demo on the first floor in just about a week.  Here are a few photos...

Hall Bath Demo

Kids' Bedroom Demo

Standing in the Master Bath looking into the Master Bedroom - Demo

Standing in the Master Bath looking into the Master Bath - Demo

Next up, came insulating and shopping for more supplies...

Master Bedroom looking toward the back of the house.

Kids' bedroom looking toward the front of the house.

Living Room looking toward the front of the house.

Standing in the mudroom looking toward the kitchen.

 More to come soon!

Houston, we have Flooring!

Things are in full swing at the home front, and our most recent check off the list was the flooring in our downstairs bar area!  You may recall that when we moved in, the bar area looked like this...

I must say, I kinda miss that minty green brick - NOT! Although this isn't the best picture of it, you can see how the floor behind the bar looked per-renovation. Also notice that pre-reno there was carpeting on the side of the bar where the stools would go.  In our opinion that's a big no-no if you ever really want to use that bar.  Between the stools being shaky on carpet, and the possibility of red wine or drinks spilling onto cream carpet, we both agree that whoever thought that up must not have had any friends to invite over for a party!

I recently posted a bar update, and we showed you the demo work that was taking place by the bar...
  

The second picture shows you what the floor looked like behind the bar after we removed the old tile and before the new flooring went down.  So now let's get to the good part of this post - the new flooring!  Here are a few pictures of how it turned out...

View from behind the bar (same as above pre-reno pic).

The tile runs into our storage closet as well.

A view looking out from the back of the bar - of course Tyson wanted to get in on the action too!

View of the outside of the bar area - where stools will go!

Standing in living space looking towards the bar.

The whole thing!

We love how it turned out!! It looks even better than we thought it might.  The wood-look tile was the perfect choice for this space.  We're planning to also use the same tile along our backdoor in this same room.  Honestly, we're so thrilled with this tile that is might just wind up going in another room or two down the road... we'll see.

Although we don't have any pictures to share just yet, we did put in the order for our bar counter top.  Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be able to snap a few pics and post those for you to check out as well.  There's still a lot to do to this space before we can deem it "finished," but we're happy with the progress so far. 

That's it for now!

Ding Dong the Glass Wall's Dead!

The dreaded glass block wall... is finally gone!  We've been dying to rip that wall down since we moved in, and the day has finally come where we can say goodbye!  As you may remember, this is what the wall looked like when we moved in...

View from kitchen looking into our new dining room.

Standing with your back to the brick fireplace wall, looking toward the front hall on your left and kitchen on the right (Gotta love those old padded walls!).

Standing in the Dining Room, looking toward the front door.

Standing at the front door, looking toward the back of the house.

And now here's what it looks like today, sans glass wall! (San flooring in the foyer too!)

Standing in the Dining Room, looking towards the front door/Foyer and staircase.

Standing in the Foyer, looking back towards the Dining Room.

We LOVE how open it feels now, and how much more light there is with that wall down.  We plan to add a 1/2 wall (regular wall) in it's place, so that we can guard the staircase and also leave space to add furniture in the dining room if we want to in the future (i.e. a buffet).  The only thing left to demo in the Dining Room at this point is the carpeting and ultimately the window swap.  That's it for now!

Gray Walls in Their Extreme Form!

The other day I came home from work, parked in the garage, and walked into the breezeway... to this:

What a mess!  A lot of this was the exterior walls that were demoed from the main level.  This stuff was what we needed to still load up and take to the dump.  We chose to re-frame and re-insulate most of the exterior walls on the main level since we found out that they were not consistent from room to room.  The Dining room had more narrow studs than the kitchen, etc.  This caused the walls to be uneven once we had everything opened up.  Re-framing also gave us an opportunity to re-insulate.  We definitely could use the additional insulation, and ultimately it will make our house more efficient.  So we're happy about that. 

Now, getting to the title of this post... the "Extreme Gray Walls."  Here's a look at what I mean by that phrase...

Who votes to keep the cinder-block look?!?!  Haha... those photos were taken after all of the demo was cleaned up.  But here's a look at what it looked like during that process:

That fiberglass insulation sure is messy!  But we got it all cleaned up and fresh new insulation will be in before we know it. More to come soon...