"K" is for Kitchen

I must admit that blogging must not be my specialty as I am very forgetful to update it. I can come up with lots of excuses (which I think were pretty good ones) but nonetheless, I haven't kept up on everything that has happened in our beautiful home. 

Now on the other hand, I'd have to say that it's pretty good of me to update it while I am in Guatemala right now. Since the last time I wrote we have many our parents come and visit, we've designed about bought the kitchen cabinets and picked out paint colors for the walls! Big accomplishments.  

Our gourmet dining room doesn't get much better than this. I would go to the store almost everyday to get items for a bbq and everyone says, "oh fun! A bbq!" I just smile now. Little do they know it happens every night :)

After mucho tiempo the texture is done! This will be the site of our kitchen.

Time for primer! This will be the family room. Notice our fancy curtains.

The hallway to the laundry room/kitchen right now is straight ahead.

Since I am in Guatemala till Christmas, I don't think this blog will get updated too much until I get home again. Unless Danny takes some photos and starts blogging himself. He would able to offer some great technical additions to this blog since my knowledge of construction and building is minimal. 

Hopefully the kitchen will be mostly done by the time I get home! Buen suerte Daniel!

"J" is for Juxtaposition

Always loved that word. I think my blogging from this month versus last month are too obviously juxtaposed. I blame it on the sunny weather since summer didn't arrive till August and coicindently I've only blogged one time this month versus eight times last month! Now, this doesn't mean we haven't been working on the house...

Check it out!

The family room/kitchen are quickly coming together! We've been super focused since  I leave for Guatemala in October and we are expecting family in December for Christmas! So we are all the more motivated to get this remodel completed (or at least more liveable).

It gets a bit crazy

Our amazing friends helping us out! Love you Irena.

Hanging some drywall

It's a team effort.

Thank you friends!

Insulation complete....

Getting pretty close to finishing the drywall. Time to start thinking about paint colors already! We are thinking about doing a charcoal grey for the family room. A bit bold but I think it will be better since it can match all of our previously purchased art work, furniture, etc. 

Oh my...how did that chick blog everyday for the Julia & Julia blog? Gets a bit monotonous right....? Maybe if it rained every day of the year but I will definitely not be blogging with 80 degree whether out. We'll do our best to keep this exciting!

"I" is for Ignorance

For some reason, the word for "I" was very easy for us to think of. In fact, it was hard to choose which one...there was "ignite" for the electricity fire that started in the wall...Danny came up with "irritated" (often with my ignorance to house remodeling) and finally "idealistic" for which some of our plans for this house have often been truncated by the infamous $$$.  But we will settle with "ignorance" because it is with both of our ignorance that we have learned to be humble and patient in this process. Who knew that figuring out where to hang a light fixture, what color to paint the hall, how to design the kitchen would all be monumental tasks!?  It is so much easier when you go to a friend's house and give them your opinion because it isn't your house or your money.  Everything takes longer than you think it will!

Once the room was finished we kind of took a hiatus to enjoy "life" for a bit. We finally went out with our friends, enjoyed some warm weather and visited family in California. Then back to reality. We needed to decide and finalize some logistics on the house layout.

BEFORE: Family room

This is now going to be the second bedroom

The new kitchen will be this first part of the space and family room the back half.

Blurry but disgusting...Danny lived in this front room at the beginning!

The new plan has the 2nd bedroom where the kitchen used to be and the large space that originally was all a family room is now the kitchen + the family room (watch the video clip on "H" blog for layout). So the next part of the blog will be focusing on the kitchen/family room.

DEMO:

BEFORE: Wall removed. Current door goes into old kitchen.

BEFORE: Kitchen. Danny and Jason taking down this wall which was old fireplace.

BEFORE: Kitchen DEMO

Window on the left was removed and will now be the hallway to the back laundry room and the right corner used to be another awkward space as a pantry. It will eventually by a second bath.

This is so much harder to explain via words and pictures! Hopefully this makes sense but it probably just looks like a disaster. 

Carpet all gone...Wood pieces cleared out from loft above. Fridge is technically where the future kitchen will be. The framing of second bedroom is also done.

AFTER: New Hallway. Master bedroom is on left side. Straight ahead is laundry room and back yard exit, and to the right is going to be a second bedroom. Loft stairs will be directly where the ladder is now.

The main wall you see will be one side of the NEW kitchen!

So the worst is over in terms of garbage and demo. Now onto insulating and designing.

"H" is for "Home" or maybe "House"

Most people would hardly call this place a true home right now, given the state it's in, but we think it really made the crossover between a house and home. There is finally a bed, a working toilet and a shower! In general, people assume that a house is more of a physical structure while a home is the place where you feel belonging and/or identity. After living in tons of houses and apartments the last six years with various roommates coming and going, it is really nice to have some permanency. But after looking up the exact definitions I felt like maybe we went from a home to a house....?!  

home/hōm/ n.

1. A place where one lives; a residence.

2. The physical structure within which one lives, such as a house or apartment.

3. A dwelling place together with the family or social unit that occupies it; a household.

4.a. An environment offering security and happiness.

   b. A valued place regarded as a refuge or place of origin.

Apparently a home provides "security and happiness". This "home" might not have the best security system given the current front door locking system (and the drills, power tools, table saw-not so safe!) Check out photo below.

The front door has a 2 inch gap between the door and frame so we've had a metal plate with two screws keeping it shut. Danny bought a new one but hasn't built the new frame for it. Instead it's "bolted" and "locked" with two screws. So we open and close the door each day with a drill. Classy.

But I kid because this place offers a whole lot of happiness right now (even if it means sacrificing our social life and recreational hobbies :)

Here is home which is more like a studio (a bedroom and a bath, but a very high end bed/bath)

Very girly since Katie had tons of furniture and she's going to Guatemala in the fall so great place to store it all! Computer and desk will eventually be upstairs in the loft for a study.

High class blinds right there.

Left is a closet, middle door to bathroom, and left corner is temporary kitchen but eventually going to be another closet.

"G" is for Gloves

We have now moved on from the bathroom to the bedroom. First things first, you can't do any of this without your leather gloves. (Yes that is the only "home improvement" word that we can think of that starts with G!).  Seriously you have to have those things though, especially at the dump and if you want to have semi-decent feeling and looking hands.  

Below is currently the only bedroom in the house but we decided to go ahead with the "intense remodel" which adds a second bedroom. In the next blog, I'll show the new hallway and the new house plan. For now, here is a 3 minute video clip that gives you an idea of what's going inside. The 2nd bedroom is where the original kitchen was located. 

All the old dry wall was teared down because there was no insulation. It was only drywall on top of siding (actually it was dry wall on top of about 7 different layers of wallpaper). We have found a few old news paper articles and odds and ends from the early 1900s but nothing too exciting.

Bedroom with laminate floors that originally had carpet over it. Also had baseboard heaters.

I've posted this photo before but again this was a hallway between the bed and bath but now it will all be part of the master bedroom. Shelving on left side of photo was taken down as you see in the photo below.

The main parts of the bathroom were completed as you can see by looking into the shower.

After the layers upon layers of floral wall paper was scraped off, we were ready to install insulation. We purchased Rmax insulation which is sold at Home Depot. We were excited about this type of insulation. Danny has spoken with the weatherization program in Bellingham and this is what they recommended for the best year round insulation. For more info you can see below:

http://www.rmaxinc.com/wall-r-matte-plus3.asp

Rmax R-Matte® Plus-3, For All-Around Versatility in Insulated Wall Sheathing

R-Matte Plus-3 is a rigid foam plastic thermal insulation board composed of environmentally sound, closed cell, polyisocyanurate foam bonded to a durable white-matte (non-glare) aluminum facer and a reflective reinforced aluminum facer. This product is suitable for use in wall sheathing applications in new residential, commercial and agricultural buildings and for thermal retrofit construction to existing buildings.

Okay next...drywall and closets! (I'm combining about 6 months of work in one blog right now so I can actually move onto what's really happening here---the kitchen design and it's really fun!)

Remember the photo above with ugly pink wall paper above (check out the 2nd and 3rd photos on the post to see the difference? No check it out! These are going to be his/her closets. French doors on the left with two rods for hanging clothes and then the right side with shelving and dresser drawers.

Painting!!!!! This was such a hard decision and so much harder than I anticipated it to be. We finally went with a color called "Dried Plantain" and "Swiss Coffee" for the trim and molding. Both are made by BEHR and are low VOC paints. The color was definitely more yellow than I had originally planned but I really like it, especially on gloomy and rainy NW days. It is also a nice blend between earthy and vibrant.

Building the Trim and Molding!!!! It is finally looking like a real room! So impressed that Danny built this all by himself for the first time but caulking was a bitch! First timer mistake-make sure you prep a lot beforehand!

Floors!!! Okay so this is a sad story that I didn't break to you on the last entry on floors because I thought it would be easier to show in this blog entry. After all that hard work of scraping the laminate off the floors with all kinds of tools from a chisel, to a spatula to a heat gun, we decided to put down new wood floors. The original wood floors turned out to be poorer quality and width than we thought. Danny found a really good deal for unfinished doug fir floors so he put them down. We sanded and finished them with a great product called Floorfin.

http://www.dalyspaint.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3&products_id=12

Anyways, we recommend it. Here is how it turned out!

We still have a lot of work to do...But we love it!