Master Suite Progress as of April

We're so excited that the master suite renovations are in full gear now! We planned to build a new walk in closet, and expand the bathroom into where the old closets used to be so the floor plan in the entire master suite had some shifting to do.  If you remember, here's what the master suite looked like when we moved in...

Standing at Master Bedroom door looking in.

Standing by sliding glass door, looking toward back left corner of master bedroom.

Standing by window looking toward sliding door and master bathroom before.

Standing on other side of window in master bedroom looking toward bedroom door.

Master bathroom vanity before.

Master Bathroom tub/shower before.

Master Bathroom closet before.

Master Bedroom walk-in closet before.

 Things have really changed in these since then.  Here are some progress pictures...

Standing in new master bedroom looking toward front of house through new closet and into bathroom.

Standing  at new master bathroom doorway looking into new bathroom.

Standing in new master bath looking toward back of house through walk-in closet and into master bedroom.

Drywall started going up - this is the side of the new closet.

Framing out new fireplace!

Inside of walk-in closet

Looking into the new master bathroom.

 Next up, drywall and Spackle!  Things are really coming together now...

With drywall - standing at bedroom entry looking toward back of house.

Standing in bedroom - looking toward exit door and you can get a sneak peak of the shoe closet!

The new fireplace is coming together!

Where the fan is will be a closet with my vanity, right between the sliding door and master closet.

One side of the walk-in closet.

Other side of the walk-in closet.

Looking into the bathroom. The shower is the door frame with the wood visible.

This is where the soaking tub will be.

Toilet closet.

Space for our double vanity and linen closet on the right.

So that's where things are right now.  The tub and vanity have come in and the tile should be here soon.  Looking forward to seeing more progress very soon!

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...

Our Pantry Grew Some Walls!

In our last post about the main level kitchen/open floor plan it looked like this:

You can barely see that the pantry bottom frame was laid.  Since then, our pantry has started to grow some walls, haha!  Things are definitely coming to life with this space, and it's exciting to be able to walk around it and get a feel for how it will truly be once it's finished. 

Here are a few pictures of the initial exterior pantry walls going up...

View from standing in side mudroom looking straight on towards pantry.

View from standing in living room, towards the front of the house looking back.

Now, the pantry looks more like this:

We've added the stud walls inside the pantry that will support the backs of out cabinetry, as well as house plugs, water lines, etc. that will be needed for the appliances.  We've also finished up the electrical work that will be in, on, and around the pantry (for the most part).  We'll need to update switches and do finishing touches like that when we get more into the "putting things back together" final stages. Another thing we finished up was ripping up the old hardwood and other flooring and prepping the sub floor for new flooring.

So for now, that's where things stand in the kitchen/pantry!