The Good News of Home Renovations

When renovating a home, you have to be aware that there will always be unexpected twists and turns as things are uncovered and you start to bring the house up to the level it needs to be.  Most of these end up costing you money, but some end up not costing you as much as you were anticipating.

Remember the whole radon mitigation problem?  Go HERE to read more about that.  Well, this week we started in on the process to allow for better mitigation and I hired someone to start putting in french drains.  The cost was not cheap.  While I wasn't holding out much hope for there to be gravel under the foundation, I still wanted to be sure, so I had them start in an area near a spot that had to be repaired anyway in the basement.  This is what they found:

That looks like a whole lot of gravel to me!!!!  HAPPY DAY!!!  I was so thrilled.  Since we found rock in this area of the basement they went close to the radon mitigation pipe and dug there to see how far we needed to come before hitting rock.  Lucky again, it was within a foot from the pipe.

Here is the floor filled in after they dug and found gravel near the mitigation pipe.

The basement literally had no rock in the one place they stuck the radon pipe.  You know what though, I'll take it.  It saved us money overall and that is a happy place for me.

Of course the same day I found out this wonderful news, my contractor called to tell me the garage door broke - as in no going up or down (fortunately it was stuck in the down position).  

If it's not one thing, it's another.  Luckily I was already budgeting for new garage doors.  I was just hoping it would have lasted a little longer.  It's a trip my friends.  Luckily it's a trip I'm still enjoying.

Happy Tuesday!!

Real Life "Love It or List It"

I can't believe I posted only once last week.  I'm so glad you all like my choices for the kid's bathroom. The tile came in this week so once a few other projects are finished up, we will get started on the bathroom.  I will keep you posted.

Who watches "Love It or List It"?  I really like that show.  I watch it often while I'm running on the treadmill at the YMCA.  Like most home decor shows, it's a fairly predictable script.  Couple hates their house the way it is, one partner wants to update the existing house, the other wants to move all together.  They give X amount of dollars to update and X amount of dollars for a new house.  A designer takes X amount of dollars and does all she can to make their existing home what they want and a realtor takes X amount of dollars to find them an already existing dream home.  Of course the designer always seems to hit some problem which prevents the couple from getting everything on their wish list and the realtor shows them a few cruddy houses before finding the "perfect one".  In the end they have to decided if they love the renovations to their existing home or if they want to sell and buy the dream home.  

Well, we are not renovating this house to sell, but it does seem like we uncover more problems as we go along.   And with more problems, means more money.  Luckily, while this week uncovered some new problems we also discovered better outcomes then we expected on previous problems.  

To kick off the week, let's play a game, shall we?  In the picture below, tell me what just doesn't look right to you.

Did you catch it?  Does anyone else see the problem with cutting your floor joist to put your plumbing?  AAAAHHH!!  I really don't understand people sometimes.  And I really don't understand/can't believe the home inspector didn't catch this.  

The pipe through the floor joist was just half the problem.  In addition to having to do something to sure up the floor joist, the toilet that's hooked to this plumbing had had a leak and it lasted long enough to compromise the plywood subfloor causing the toilet to never be able to screw in and hold tight to the subfloor anymore.  Therefore, we would always be dealing with a leaky toilet.  Well a leaky toilet is no good, so a fix required my contractor to have to ripe out the subfloor which unfortunately had a wall over it so that had to come out too, and then rebuild everything.  Ca$$ing, Caching, Ca$$ing!!!  But we all remember the importance of "underwear" right?  It had to be fixed.  Here are the pictures of that process, as well as a peak into the walk in pantry which is part of another project I will blog about soon.

Bathroom before the demo.  You can see the pocket door to the left 

which was in the wall that had to be taken out and rebuilt.

The beginning of demoing out that wall.

Subfloor, wall, and bathroom demoed out.

A view down into the basement below the guest bathroom.

You can see where he reinforced the floor joist.

Another look at the plumbing through the floor joist.

This was the bad news of last week.  Fortunately we got some good news which saved us money.  That is for tomorrow.  Have a great Monday everyone!

It's All About The Base

Happy Thursday everyone!!!  We have plummeted back into a deep freeze after enjoying almost 60 degree weather this past weekend.  It's given me a good excuse to hunker down at home and stay warm.  Good thing too since the cold/flu bug finally bit me.  I could feel it coming on yesterday so I pushed through trying to get as much done as I could.  Who else does that?  Unfortunately we mothers don't really ever get a sick day.

Enough about me, let's move onto the house.  Today we find ourselves back in the kitchen.  I am going to have to tackle a huge project soon in there and I'm hoping to get some good feedback from everyone reading this.

If you will remember, the cabinets are a lovely oak variety and are original to the house so they have a fair amount of wear and tear on them.

Lovely Oak!!

Visible wear on the doors.

Some doors even have cracks in them.

And, they're just really dirty.

I have researched a bit on what exactly I should place on these to make sure I get the most use out of them.  I will definitely be using an oil base primer.  The kitchen is so high traffic that I don't have a choice.  In our current home which also had oak colored cabinets when we moved in, my mom helped me paint those with an oil base primer and latex paint and they have held up splendidly for 8 years.  I painted them white which I've loved and I've never had a problem with the stain color bleeding through.

In my research for this house, I've come across a product called "Brushing Putty" sold by a company called "Fine Paints of Europe".  It is a super thick primer that covers wood grain and allows for a smother finished product.  It does require sanding (frowny face), but it does seem to get some good results.  It is also not cheap.  The largest size they have which is a little less than a gallon sells for $125.  But, that is still WAY cheaper than new cabinets so I'm willing to give it a go.

What have been some of your favorite paint products to use on stained wood and painting in general?  I'd love your feedback.  I'll let you know my final decision soon and will hopefully have progress pictures to show you.

Have a great day!  And keep warm!

Underwear

“It’s way more fun to buy a 

necklace than it is to buy underwear.”

-Greg Tilton

I love to make places beautiful.  I love being in beautiful spaces and I have quite the vision for this house and what I want it to eventually be.  Unfortunately, I’m a long ways off from being able to do everything I want in terms of décor because this house needs a lot of what I’m going to call “underwear”. 

I think we all would agree that picking out a new area rug or furniture piece is much more exciting than spending the same amount of money on paying to have your chimney swept or your house mitigated for radon.  But the chimney needs to be swept and the radon needs to be mitigated because in the long run no area rug can make up for your house burning down or your family member developing lung cancer.

While I have done a lot of work trying to estimate costs to the best of my ability there are always those costs that will sneak out from behind a corner and getcha.  I had one said cost present itself today.

Radon mitigation can be fairly straight forward.  Dig a hole, put in a fan, vent to the outside, done.  But of course, our radon mitigation is not quite so straight forward.  When digging your hole in the slab, ideally you have rock under your slab.  Less then ideally, you have dirt.  I’ll let you guess what we have. 

Since we are planning on putting a bedroom in the basement, properly venting the radon is important to us and when you have dirt, it makes it more difficult to do that.  A way to help that is by installing French drains.  A French drain is basically a trench dug out all around the inside of your basement slab which then has rock poured into it, then a pipe, then more rock, and eventually concrete repoured over the top (if I understand correctly from what the guy was telling me).  It’s not cheap.  It’s expensive "underwear".  

So with each new piece of necessary "underwear" a "necklace" gets crossed off the list.  But we all know that if you’re not comfortable on the lowest layer, it won’t matter how cute your necklace is because all you’re going to be thinking about is how uncomfortable you are.  And we also all know, necklaces come and go in the fashion world, or in this case the home decor world, so I know there will always be one I will love.  I just might have to wait a little longer.  But at least I’ll be comfy while I wait.

{Digging the Hole}

{Venting to the outside}

{This is incomplete.  The guy wasn't done when I left,

 so I will add on more pictures once I get them}