What did you do today?

Because I started renovating the girls' bathroom all by myself. Frankly I anticipated this being a quick, easy project. Take some things off the wall, spackle a little bit, sand a little bit, prime, paint, hang up the new fixtures and boom a new bathroom. Of course, when you plan something to be easy it inevitably has to become difficult. So I removed the medicine cabinet which is far to big and bulky. (Note: this same cabinet is in our bathroom, the half bathroom, and the basement bathroom).

Down comes the medicine cabinet, nice and easy, woohoo! But oh crap there's a gigantic hole in the wall! Not only a hole but one with a random extra partial circle cut out too. I look in the wall completely baffled by this. Upon looking in the wall I luckily find the missing square of sheetrock, which also has another partial circle cut out of it, weird. At this point I'm thinking, oh god if Oscar comes home tonight and sees that I took the cabinet off only to find a big hole he's going to make me put that dreadful thing back up and back burner this project for awhile. None of this did I want to do. So I did what had to be done, first I IM'd my brother the new ridiculousness I've found and then I call my favorite handyman, my dad. After advisement on all the proper steps to remedy this situation I'm on my way to thinking I could possibly tackle this. Add to that a nice pep talk by my brother about how just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I can't run a saw! Good point! We just don't have a saw to run...hmmm.

I start looking for a measuring tape, but of course can not locate one of the two we own. I head to my sewing room knowing I have tapes there. With my trusty winnie the pooh tape measure I figure out the lengths of the boards I need. Head down to the garage and pick out my 2x4 to start cutting. All I could find was a small hack saw, because we own very few power tools. This did not work well and I almost threw in the towel. I was on the hunt for something better and found a bow saw. Finding the bow saw quite difficult without clamps I figure sitting on the board will work best. The 2x4 was on a 4x1 laying over the saw horses and I straddled the top. This worked rather well and I was able to cut the pieces I needed.

With all the boards in place, me patting myself on the back and I believe I told the girls they had the best mother ever, and possibly referred to myself as a rockstar, I was on to the sheet rock part.

The sheet rock went pretty smooth. I had to keep trimming up a few sides here and there to make it fit just right. But over all the main square went in well. During naptime I had also made patterns for the circle parts and cut out matching sheetrock to fill in the areas. Man I was feeling good! They both worked out great and fit extremely well. Then it was time to slather on the joint compound and get the sheetrock tape on. All of which I did pretty easily. I'll definitely be continuing this whole joint compound fill for a few days, but I'm going to be talking about this project for awhile. I have declared the bathroom a Jenn only project (except for hanging the new light fixture, Oscar can help with that).

Not only am I really proud of myself for all of this, I'm also really proud my daughters got to see and help me do it. Just another thing I want both of them to believe they can do on their own!

I must thank my dad for many years of guidance and many phone calls today for guidance and cheers from both mom and dad! Oscar did come home and offered appropriate excitement for my day's adventures.

Stairway and Hallway

The stairway certainly was one of those hit you in the face awful things that would have made us turn around and write this house off, if we'd seen it in the beginning of our search. But like I said, we learned to look beyond (thankfully!).

The stairway and the hallway were one of our first projects in the house, and boy it felt great to rip all that stuff off the walls. I must stress here how thankful I am to my daughters for being so well behaved and really listening to mommy and daddy when we needed them to stay away from where the work was and let mommy and daddy just work while they played.

As you can see there were TWO chair rails, yes that's two pieces of molding put together to make one big ol' dramatic piece, then the crooked shadow boxes which had to have medallions in the middle, LOVELY! This is where we learned they didn't glue everything, yippee, but they did caulk every thing, booo. And can we just talk about that carpet? oh god.

The hallway luckily just had shadow boxes, chair rail and ridiculous crown molding that was placed an inch below the ceiling. Not only was it ridiculous it was also making the space look so much shorter. That carpet was commercial carpet, not residential carpet, I swear everything in this house was leftover from construction jobs these guys were on, it just had to be.

Once all of the molding was removed the spackling began, oh boy this took a long time. The molding came off pretty rough in some spots and took even the sheet rock paper off, some pretty serious wall repair was in order.

I have to say Oscar and I work together great as a team. We both worked really hard on all of this and did equal things. There was certainly no divide of girl jobs and boy jobs, we did it all together. I'm really proud of us and our relationship for working together so well and rocking Team Santiago!

Oh gosh I almost forgot about the hilarious shadowbox within a box on the tall wall of the stairs, oh lord. And it was crooked. Our realtor and the home inspector both independently referred to it as an optical illusion! HA! Just what you want in your house!

The primer in the hallway and the foyer was a thrilling experience, it really meant we were moving forward and saying goodbye to that awfulness. It also really felt like this was our home, we weren't living in the house yet so it was still pretty surreal. Sense my excitement with painting the "classic taupe!" Of course we went to Miami the day after painting this and I couldn't remember the color so well and I kept remembering it with a hint of orange to it and hating it. I was relieved upon our return to see that I really like this color too.

Then it was time for new carpet. Oh gosh, knock me down with a feather it just looked beautiful. I couldn't believe it. I cried. The other carpet was just hideous and we had cut away the sides so we could paint the trim well. It was just a war zone looking mess. But this beautiful lush carpet was all mine and so beautiful...ok I'm getting a little romance novelly with feelings for the carpet...but seriously I LOVE IT! The carpet was the finale of the stairway and hallway because all the painting was finished. We still need to hang some decor but again I'm enjoying just looking at the clean, one color, lovely carpeted look of the whole thing.

Kitchen Renovations

Here starts the renovation posts. I'm slowly going to work on getting the renovation posts up room by room. This may also encourage me to start getting things hung on the walls. I'm starting with the kitchen because it's frankly our most used space and it just came out so nice.

To start the kitchen was a big selling point with the house. After a year of looking we had really gotten accustomed to seeing a house for its potential and not the flashy good or bad things that hit you in the face. We knew kitchen remodels are wicked expensive, this kitchen was nicely remodelled and we were really happy with that and it's size, it was within the range we wanted it to be but didn't have gas. Frankly finding a house with gas was really difficult in this area, oh well, I'm learning to deal with electric :(

Again with the two tone and shadow boxes, and excessive molding. This project really began at the beginning of the house with the wall removal and arch install. Oscar and my father put the Arch in, which we got online. Seriously if you ever want to put in an arch this was the best way to go, you give them your measurements and in a few days your arch pieces arrive at your door. It went really well. So after some molding removal and my parents trip to VA we were able to start on wall removal. After the arch went in the kitchen was functional enough for us to move on to other projects and move into the house.

After we finished the priority move in projects we

started to focus on the kitchen again. We were originally going to keep the thin crown molding and paint it white and up to the top white so it appeared to be a continuous crown molding. Upon more consideration we just decided to remove it, and we're glad we did. After spackling, sanding, covering everything and priming we were ready to get our color on the wall, "moon mist." We also found that remodelling while living there and with the kids was easier at night for the most part. Once the kitchen was covered in plastic we were certainly motivated to move the project along in order to have the space in working order again.Of course ducking under plastic to make sandwiches was a good time.

First we painted the ceiling because it was ridiculously disgusting. And in the wisdom of John Sperry you always paint the ceiling. Frankly this wisdom had me cursing a few times but like all of his wisdom, he's right, it's a world of difference in all the rooms! We then primed the whole room and did two coats of "moon mist." The paint color really changed the whole room and it was amazing what just that did for the light there. It was amazing how much brighter and cleaner it felt. It's really nice to know that the only grime and mess in the house was made by you and not some stranger (or 20 as we've learned from neighbors). After we finished the color we uncovered the room and got it back in working order. I worked on the trim and crown molding in white while the girls took naps. I have the curtains, as you can see the rod in the corner of the picture, I'm just encouraging someone to hang them ;) And I'm trying to figure out placement of some other decor. I'm still really in love with this room and stare at it regularly remembering what it used to look like!

Things I've learned while renovating...

* The "wonderbar" IS a wonder!
* DIF spray on gel wallpaper remover is horrible.
* DIF concentrate with water is awesome (and WAY less expensive)
* Apparently insane amounts of hair can be caught under wallpaper while applying (I have had to wash away a lot of the person's hair who put it up, and yes this grosses me out)
* A radio makes a difference
* Food fixes bad moods