House Six Update
Hello! It has been a while since I have given an update on what's happening at my house, it was August 24, 2022 to be exact - post. It is not pretty around here, there is progress though and that is a beautiful thing!
John and I are currently waiting for a revised quote from our builder for our interior renovation because we reduced the scope of our project somewhat. In the meantime, John and I have been starting to tackle a few projects ourselves. I will start in the basement and work my way upstairs and outside from there. You will see in the background of the photos the chaos that is the basement!
John and I built a wall to create a separate gym space in the basement. We installed salvaged windows to let natural light into the space and will hang a salvaged door with barn door hardware to close off the space.
Here is how it looks with the lights on....
A peak inside the door....
And the inside....
The salvaged door that will be hung as a barn door....
Here is a photo of how it looked downstairs before we started the project....
So far for the gym the sink and refrigerator have been removed, the refrigerator wall has been pushed back into the utility room to match the depth of the refrigerator section across the entire room. The utility room door has been rehung, new baseboard and door casings have been installed, and of course the wall with windows and applied moulding has been constructed to create the separate gym space. Still to come, finish the drywall, paint the entire gym, hang the barn door, put down gym flooring, hang the TV, bring back in the equipment, and start exercising in there!
Moving on in the basement, this little room was a storage room and is going to be turned into a small home office for me. Right now it is a storage room for bathroom items (aka toilet and tile) and tools.
The office is going to be wallpapered with this, the ceiling light will be replaced with this, and this shelf will stand to the left of the door.
I wanted to have a built in desk that spanned from wall to wall, however my son and John have started to use a flight simulator in the basement that needs to be fastened to a desk. John has a pilot's license and my son is interested in taking flying lessons so John is all about it! The simulator was purchased the second my son raised an interest! Nevertheless, the fastening on and off of the controls is not good for the vintage desk/farm table my son was using as his homework desk. I went to Ikea and bought an extremely inexpensive desk that is the right dimensions for the wall and to easily attach and detach the flight simulator (you can see a bit of it on the floor in the bottom left of this picture).
That leaves the old desk, which I love, without a home so for the time being at least it will become the desk in the office.
Here is the basement bathroom in its current state. We are keeping the tub and toilet (currently stored in the office) and replacing everything else. The floor will be this and the shower surround will be done in a pattern that mixes this tile and this tile.
Here is the vanity, currently being used for storage (of course!) for the new light switches, outlets, vent covers, etc. I ordered a pair of sconces from Etsy for the bathroom that are mysteriously missing so back to the drawing board for lighting. I still need to find a mirror too.
We took down the stair railing that was about to come undone on its own and are going to build something visually more appealing in this opening. We will reinstall the handrail, which we removed for ease of carting materials up and down the stairs, on the far wall as well.
The slats are very similar to what I was planning for the opening to the stairs, John is not excited about building this though, so stay tuned to see who wins on this one! (Place your bets on me lol)
Still on the list for the basement is installing new carpeting and window treatments and painting the entire space. I also need to buy a sofa, this is the one I have my eye on because it is shipped modularly and will easily make it dow the tight basement stairs, and we need to buy a new TV for the family room area - this is the one thing that John is most excited about for the basement! When painting starts in the basement, these parsons chairs will head out to be slipcovered for the dining room. (The barn door hardware is in the box on the floor).
This is the fabric they will be covered in. I took a screen shot with the magnifying glass on because the pattern is larger than it appears in this photo and is embroidered. It is really, really pretty.
The two parsons chairs in this photo will have slipcovers in the same fabric as above. The two center chairs, which came from our Farm in West Virginia, will be slipcovered with one pattern for the front seat and arms, and with another fabric for the skirting and back.
Here are those fabrics. The floral will be for the seat and the check will be for the skirt and back.
We have ordered new French doors to replace the old front door. We needed to take down the moulding/casing to measure for the new doors and will reinstall it once the new doors are in. We chose doors similar to this style. They will have six lites on each door and be pre-finished to match the color of our shutters on the exterior and eventually the interior will be painted to match the interior trim when the main renovation is complete.
There will be a matching single door in the laundry room/mudroom which will be a major improvement! Say hi to our neighbors!
I have ordered this wallpaper for my younger daughter's bedroom. I talked about it in this post long ago and it is still her favorite. It is peel and stick so will be a DIY project - yikes!
The last thing inside the house is we have begun the process to convert sliding closets doors in two of the bedrooms upstairs to now open as French doors. This is the one in my older daughter's room.
And this is the one in my son's room. Doorknobs are on order for both sets of doors. This makes a tremendous difference accessing the entire closet and there is plenty of room for the doors to open out rather than slide so it's a win-win in my book.
The next indoor projects for me and John, once the basement if complete, will be to paint (and wallpaper one of) the children's bedrooms.
As soon as the weather turns though (this picture was taken in the fall when we finished up for the season), we need to put the finishing touches on the front portico. The metal roof is up. Still to be done are the paneling on the ceiling, decorative trim on the posts, paint and new light fixtures (and of course the new doors). Hudson is wondering if we will ever be done! Me too buddy.
There you have it! I am so happy to be able to share some progress with you. Hopefully next time I write one of these I will have the scope and timing from the builder finalized for the interior projects that we are not tackling ourselves.
Thank you for checking in! You can subscribe to the blog at the bottom of this post to be notified anytime a post comes out. It would be great to have you!
Enjoy your day,
Kerry
