Now that's what you call an "Open Floor Plan!"

This past week was a great one for renovation progress at the house! One big thing that we were able to accomplish was cutting in the mudroom for our side entry.  The mudroom will be sunken below the rest of the main level by a few inches, and will be a tiled space.  We'll have some cubbies and hooks to hang coats, and places for shoes and mail too.  Since the side door is the main way that Frank and I enter, this will be where we put our things mainly as we enter and leave.  Since the mudroom is sunken, we had to do some work down in the man cave as well -- so framing started down there.  Here are a few pictures of how this all went down...

Mudroom cut-in, view from upper level - living room looking back.

 

Mudroom cut-in, view from lower level/man cave.

Sub-floor put into mudroom sunken floor.

Supports and sub-floor installed (from man cave).

Sub-floor installed, another view from top.

Mapping out where things will go with tape, haha!

That's it for now.. check back again soon!

Man Cave Progress

Not too much that you can see happened since my last post in our temporary master/second master in the future/Man Cave, but I figured I'd post a few pics anyway.  The carpet is now up, and all the tack strips are out.  Electrical work has begun, but is not yet finished.  We're also working on wiring a few walls so they're cable ready.  It's coming along though...

View standing towards front of the house, looking out towards the back.

Opposite view, standing at the back of the house looking towards the front.

Of course Tyson wanted to get in the mix too!  Apparently all this demo and renovating makes him hungry (he's licking his chops in the second picture, haha).

We'll be adding in some insulation and re-framing all of the walls next. Electrical work and wiring also continues.  So, things are moving along here too!

Walls down!!!

Earlier this week I went to my girlfriend's house for a wine & Bachelor ladies night.  We had a great time and a delicious spread of wine snacks to go with our beverages and trashy TV! I got home around 9pm or so, and was so happy to see all the work that had been accomplished while I was gone... Lots of walls came down!!!! The soffits were taken down in the kitchen, more flooring was taken out and the open floor plan is starting to really come to life! The space looks so open and bright, even at night with those walls down.  It's glorious!  We can't wait to see it come together as we start putting things back together (hopefully soon!!!).

Here are some pictures from a few different angles of the demo party that was had while I was out...

View from the side sliding glass door that we come through from the garage.

View from standing just right of the sliding door, towards the new living room looking towards the back of the house.

View standing left of the slider, at the back of the house looking towards the front door (with all the Christmas cards still hanging on it!).

Same spot, but looking along the back wall towards the new dining room space.

Standing in the new dining room, looking towards the side sliding glass door and future kitchen area.

Looking straight on at the side sliding door from the railing next to our staircase that leads downstairs.

The breezeway has really come in handy during our renovations as well! It's a great place to keep supplies clean and out of the way, but also safe from the outdoor elements.  Here's how the "shop" looked yesterday...

So that's it for now... hopefully they get a lot more done today while I'm at work and school! It's a great feeling to come home to so much progress.  The more they get done the closer we are to that finish line!

Temporary Pantry Installed!

Since we'll be using our bar area as our "kitchen" while we work on renovating the real kitchen upstairs on the main level, we decided that we'd need some extra room to store things.  So, my handy husband and I installed our temporary pantry!  Eventually we'd like to install more permanent shelving in there, change out the floor tile when we change the rest of the bar floor tile so it matches, and paint the walls a fun color.  For now, this is perfect though!  Here's a photo, minus the food and dishes...

We've since stocked it full with food and our dishes, but I forgot to grab a picture of that.  We're very happy with the extra, hidden storage though and all is working out great so far here!

More Demo Progress...

Things have been coming along with our first floor demo!  There's still lots of demo to do, but we're definitely making progress and keeping the ball rolling.

Recent projects include:

• Finished removing front hallway tile
• Removed hearth tile in the dining room
• Removed fabric and batting from walls in dining room
• Removed cabinets from the kitchen
• Removed floor tile in current kitchen pantry
• Removed door/wall trim in kitchen

Once we finished removing the kitchen cabinets, we were also able to sell them via Craigslist!  Frank and I were really happy to get those off our hands and making some extra money to put towards our renovations was a bonus as well!

Frank and I also started taping out where the new windows, doors, fixtures, etc. will be installed.  This really has helped us work through some questions we had on decisions to be made and also help us get a feel of how things will flow with the new layout.  We're both very excited to see things coming along, and cannot wait to see the finished product!!!

Here are a few recent pictures from our demo work...

Working on the hallway tile removal.

Tyson loves to watch and see what we're working on.

Removing the cabinets in the kitchen!

Fabric is down in the Dining Room!

No more padded walls!

The tile is gone in the current pantry!

Cabinets are gone, trim around doors is out.

Cabinets are out and we've started taping out the new layout...

 Overall, things are coming along but there's still quite a bit of demo to do.  I'll keep you posted!

Main Level Demo Party!

We definitely had quite a demo party on the main level this weekend!  Lots of tools, drywall, trim and tile were flying around! Frank and crew had started tearing out the smaller dividing walls before we headed up to NJ (prior to Christmas).  Here's how things looked post mini-wall demo:

This is a view from the current and future living room area at the front of our house, looking back.



Here's a look from the current kitchen, looking towards the front of the house.

Even with just these small walls down, we could already see how things might look when we open up the space... so exciting!!

This past weekend, we went wild on the space and tore down the rest of the drywall and trim in the current living room and dining room spaces.  The light flooded in once that wall was open and you can really start to see how it will look once we're done now...

Looking from the living room towards the side/back of the house.

The current dining room space, which will be part kitchen, part living room in the new layout.



Standing in the current dining room and looking towards the front of the house and living room space.

We still have to move wiring and the central vac in that wall above, so for now the studs will stay until we can take care of those things. 

Since we were feeling ambitious, we also started some demo on the kitchen.  For now, we're leaving that one wall of drywall between the kitchen and dining room.  We're trying to keep dust away from the refridgerator until we have it moved/sold.  So, we moved onto taking down cabinets, countertops and removing tile floor. 

Frank loved it!



This is the wall between the current kitchen and dining room... we ripped out the cabinets, countertop and cook top from here... the wall is next!

 The tile in the kitchen had lots of mud and adhesive underneath, but luckily it wasn't too bad to take out.  We got 1/2 of it out in about an hour. 

Chipping away!



1/2 the tile is out! 

 So that's where things stand after our weekend demo party!  Lots of progress for a few hours of work.  We'll be getting a dumpster soon so we can start to unload all of the resulting trash (hopefully today if they're open).  Next up, we'll continue in the kitchen and then start on the hardwood floor and hallway tile removal.  More photos to come as things progress!  Oh, one last thing... if you have any pent up anger or just feel like getting some extra exercise, all are welcome to come and help demo!!

The Bat Cave... I mean, Man Cave

Demo at the Prihoda residence has begun!  Right before heading up to NJ for Christmas, we started tearing down walls. Our demo started downstairs, which allowed us to do a few last things that would make the lower level fully liveable for a few months while we totally renovated the upper/main level. 

We had to tackle the back two rooms first (lower level) so that we could also accomodate the new mudroom we're adding for our side entrance (where we enter from the garage upstairs). We'll need to add in some in-floor support, so tearing down the ceiling in the lower level rooms was the best way to do that at this point.

While tearing down the back two rooms, we discussed plans of what we wanted to do with the space. When we first finish this newly expanded room, we're going to move in and make it our (2nd) temporary master bedroom.  There's also a bathroom attached, and we're planning to hopefully tackle at the same time.  This way, we'll have a nice clean suite to escape to from all the work that will be underway upstairs. 

Once the upstairs renovations are finished and we move into our real master bedroom, we're planning to make that back room downstairs a "man cave" for the man of the house -- Tyson! Haha, no I'm just kidding.  It will be Frank's man cave of course!  We have decided exactly what will go in there furniture wise just yet, but we'll defintely include a TV and possibly a pull-out couch for extra guests (in additional to a traditional guest room).

It's exciting to see progress in the renovation! Things are really coming along... here are some photos from the demo in the back two rooms (so far)...

Lots of drywall coming down in there!

Drywall aftermath.

More progress! We made it down to the cinderblock and cleaned up that big mess...

Ceiling is out now too... just about done with demo in here.

Once we take up the carpet we'll be just about finished with demo in here.  Then we'll move onto rewiring, replacing the window (to a more energy efficient one), replacing the flooring, dry locking the cinder, adding back walls, painting and decorating!  I'll keep you posted as this room evolves, but so far, so good in here!