We finished putting down the stepping stones last weekend. I think once we get some grass growing again in the area they'll look really sharp. Actually they don't look too bad now.
We started the process last Fall and had only 15 stones to finish the project. Since it was nice last Saturday we decided to go ahead and knock the project out. Oh how we forgot about all the digging, heavy lifting and making sure the stones are steady on their bed of paver gravel.
This is a shot of our new flower bed (the part under the window has always been mulched to cut down on the weeds) but the part next to the porch is new. The large green pot has mesculn seeds in it. They should start sprouting by next weekend. As you may be able to tell, I'm setting up for a bacon smoking session.
This next shot is just the walk leading to the pool. The six stones that make up the landing at the pool gate were especially tough getting in--there wasn't much room for moving around and those are on a slight incline.
The porch is officially complete and the building permit has finally been taken down from the kitchen window (a protected location where everyone could see it--not a particularly attractive feature).
The inspector was here on the 15th:
There are very strict guidelines in what needs to occupy the lower portion of the porch so small children don't tumble off the porch or get their heads stuck or whatever. When we built the porch at the other house we didn't have to abide by those rules except on the steps. We put up very attractive lattice. I think it was up for two days.
This is actually what the porch looks like:
We still need to caulk and put a final coat of paint on and stain the wood but all those things can wait until after the heat and humidity leave us. Of course, there will be lattice under the porch but as you may be able to tell we store the canoe under there right now and so need to start the next project: a shed. Because a garage just ain't big enough...actually, that's where the better-half has all his wood-working tools.
We also have plans for the grass area between the porch and the house--hostas, herb garden, a brick landing at the bottom of the stairs and a stepping stone path to connect the pool, porch, back steps, garage door and driveway. All those hardscape supplies are on pallets in the driveway. We'll tackle that project soon.
About a month ago, we removed the old ceiling fan in our bedroom. Technically, there was nothing wrong with it except for a serious case of the non-descript.
See (kind of ugly):
The better-half did his magical electrical mojo and made 2 more holes in the ceiling so we could move the ceiling fan closer to our bed and put up lights. It is pretty hard to find ceiling lights that don't suck. I'm not sure why but the ceiling lights at the Home Depot in my town look like something your grandmother's grandmother would have put in when electricity finally came to town. If you don't want track or pendant lights or ugly lights, don't bother going there.
Of course, we had to be different and we wanted a Hunter ceiling fan with no light kit, in a nickel finish. Those are damn hard to find. We ended up ordering one from an internet company. We also ordered the fan for our screened porch--which, by the way, is nearly and finally done. The internet company was a bit sluggish--something about the Hunter fan not being easy to get--and finally the fans came in today. Before I got home, the better-half installed the one in our bedroom.
Here are the pictures of the bathroom renovation over at my sister's.
The room is very small. If you stand in the center of the room, you can touch most of the walls and you don't need freakishly long arms to do it. Now the room seems more spacious.
The paint on the top half of the wall is called Restful and the lower half of the wall is Bright White. My sister's friend painted the room and did a great job.
My sister had a good idea to get some storage space without using any more space in the room. She thought there must be some way to put a cabinet into the crawl space that runs along the back of her house between the master bedroom and the upstairs bath.
The better-half built a cabinet:
My brother-in-law thought of the idea to use towel hooks instead of towel rods to free up space:
When we took the old sink and cabinet to the landfill, the cabinet popped like a balloon as it hit the ground. This new sink won't be going to the dump anytime soon:
The beadboard you can see in all the pictures is also new. Nearly everything in the room is new except the tub/shower.
My sister and I went to the Home Depot on Christmas Eve and bought some supplies. The glass shelf box was devoid of brackets (thanks Home Depot). We took that back the other day and got a complete shelf/bracket box and now the shelf provides storage space without looking too heavy:
The toilet is one of those ADA models because my sister occasionally has back problems and it is easier to sit higher. The cool part of this toilet is how fast and efficiently it moves the contents out of the bowl. That toilet doesn't mess around.
We had to pull out the drywall on one wall because it wasn't the right size to match all the other walls and it didn't actually go all the way to the floor in one spot (the original, crazy jack-legged things done in this bathroom boggles the mind). My sister's family had been looking at 2X4 studs for 9 years. When we ripped out the half-done drywall, we had to replace the door so all the trim would match up. My sister and I couldn't find a threshold that would work so we spray painted the old one to make it match the nickel finish selected for the other hardware bits in the room. Here's a shot of the new floor:
The new faucet arrived and has been installed. It actually works! The only things left to do in the bathroom are a bit of paint touch-up and the installation of molding around the base of the cabinet.
Action shot:
Profile shot:
Yesterday we installed the bathroom cabinet and the new counter top.
I painted the old cabinet a dark chocolate color and we installed new hardware. We also installed new drawer glide brackets because the old ones were shot. No one will notice that fix but at least we're confident the drawers won't fall in.
The mirror that was in the room was the kind that was glued directly to the wall. When we ripped that out we had to replace the piece of sheet rock because of the severity of the glue damage. It turned out pretty well. It's obvious that a professional didn't do it, but it's better than many home improvement projects I've seen. It's also better than most of the fixes this house received in between when the original owners moved out and we moved in.
The counter top, back and side splash pieces went in relatively easily. We were nervous about breaking the pieces but with a little teamwork the process was actually pretty easy.
You can tell from this picture what didn't fit. We're working on that issue (and by we, I mean the better-half is ordering another part).
In addition to the work done in the bathroom we had new flooring installed. We originally thought we could do that work ourselves, but when we chose the flooring (duraceramic) we were told the grout was tricky. When we found out the install price, we signed them up. It would have taken us a lot longer to get anything close to these results. We did spend most of a day stripping out the old flooring and then nailing or pulling out a gazillion staples.
Here's the floor in the back hallway as it runs into the bathroom. The kitchen is to the right, the laundry closet (with new doors that need to be painted) to the left. The garage is off to the left. Behind me is the door to the outside and a back stairwell.
It looks pretty close to ceramic but it is vinyl.
The remaining items are to paint the walls and the laundry room doors, rip the nasty carpet off the stairwell and then upgrade the stair treads, install new lights and replace the outside door and the door to the garage. We hope that most of those items will be done by the end of the year.
2006 has been the year of home improvements. I'd like 2007 to be the year to enjoy all the hard work.
When we bought our house we really wanted to do something special with our downstairs bathroom. It's the bathroom that everyone uses and so we wanted something better than the standard cabinet and cheap-o faucet that the builder installed.
Years ago we met an artisan who made sinks and we kept her card for years thinking we'd buy one of her sinks and put it on an old cabinet. Now that everyone seems to have that idea, we've decided to not do it. Instead we've decided that we'll paint the cabinet and install a new counter top and sink.
We also got rid of the ugliest towel rack ever:
I painted this about a year ago just to make it not so ugly. This is the back of the towel rack so you can see the original color:
Last night we ripped out the old countertop/sink--it was all one unit. And, then we carefully pulled out the cabinet. It's weird doing demo and not being able to destroy anything. We did everything very carefully so as to minimize damage to the cabinet and to the walls. Lucky for us the backsplash of the new counter is going to cover where the old backsplash was.
Before:
After:
We weren't going to do the floor since it extends throughout the back hallway into our laundry closet, but last night after a beer we decided now is the easiest time to redo the floor in the bathroom and leave the hallway/laundry closet for later. How hard can it be to tile a 5X7 bathroom floor? I'll keep you posted.