PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: We get to live in our house!

Howdy Strangers! Long time, no type. Please forgive the lack of updates the past two weeks. Things have been a little crazy with scrambling to get final inspections passed, packing, moving, living on a mattress on the floor for a week, and staying with my parents for a few days.

We can officially say that most of the chaos is over (hopefully)!!! If you follow me on Facebook, you probably already know that we passed our FINAL building inspection last Thursday! What we didn’t know is that the City of Huntsville Engineers also had to come sign off on the property and lot as well. Their job is to make sure the property is not hazardous and building debris is cleaned up, so we scrambled Thursday night and cleaned up crap from the yard and decluttered the porch best we could. Thankfully, the engineers were found of our quick clean up and have their stamp of approval on Friday. Yay!!

I was beginning to think their was no actual CERTIFICATE with your certificate of occupancy. Major bummer, right?!?! Imagine me stomping my foot like a four year old crying,” I want a certificate, dang it!” :)

Well, our lovely piece of paper came yesterday!

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We have spent all of this week waiting for Huntsville utilities to come turn on the power. As of this afternoon we are fully powered, complete with a working HVAC unit. Seeing that turned on for the first time was pretty freaking exciting! Electricity has never looked so good!!

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Currently, our house is kind of a disaster zone, but we are so excited to be sleeping in our home tonight.

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Thanks for all of the encouragement over the past year! You guys ROCK!

Peace!

P.S. this post is coming from my iPhone. Please forgive typos and spelling errors :)

<a

Posted in HVAC, inspection, Moving | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Today: MOVING (kind of)

Quick post! Forgive spelling errors and run on sentences please :)

I’ve been saying for the past two months or so that Memorial Day weekend was the goal (goal = do it or die trying). Well, it’s happening…

Moving

Kind of. We have busted our butts the past two weeks getting stuff done. Honestly, mine and Ryan’s to do list went pretty well.

We finished up the final sanding on the floors and then cleaned. and cleaned. and CLEANED.

hardwood_sandedThen came stain! We decided to go with the first color we tested – Dark Walnut by Minwax.

hardwood_stain-sample

It’s just a nice, dark, rich brown color, and we LOVE it. Ryan really wanted a dark, almost black floor, but then I reminded him that he didn’t do the sweeping/swiffering. I do that, and we are NOT having black floors. All I would see is Bella’s hair and dirt. Um, no thank you! So we settled on a dark brown.

hardwood_stain

I will do a post in more detail about how the finishing floors process went for us. I can say that sanding is the hardest part. Second is just being patient and letting it dry. More on that later though!!

Hardwood_refinished

Dad helped create my vision for the mantle! I just gave instructions, and he did the work while Ryan and I worked on insulating the attic.

Here’s the mantle before he got started. Just a weird bump out in the dry wall.

mantle_before

By the end of last Saturday our mantle was starting to look pretty snazzy. You may have seen it on Facebook or Instagram.

Mantle_almost-done

I have had lots of people ask about leaving the colors at the top. Right now my plan is to paint it white or gray. I really just want the mantle to be the focal point, and I think all of the bright colors distract from it. Who knows what I will do. We will just have to wait and see!

We rented a insulation blower from Lowe’s last Saturday and knocked out insulating the attic. Ryan suited up for the occasion.

insulation_Ryan-geared-up

Doesn’t he look spiffy? ;)

insulation_Ryan-in-atticI stayed downstairs and speed-dumped 60 bags of insulation.

insulation_attic-blow-in

insulation_attic-me

It took a little longer than we planned largely because we ended up having to go buy more insulation. The little chart of the packages of the insulation was a little off. Or maybe we just have more insulation than we needed to pass code (not a bad thing, hello lower energy bills). Speaking of energy bills….

HVAC_thermastat

Thermostat! Boom! Our house now has two, woot woot! We have two seperate units for the house, one for upstairs and one for downstairs. Our house is right at 2,500 square feet so it is a little too big for one unit to heat and cool efficiently.

Sadly, the HVAC unit isn’t on yet. Here is what did not go well the past two weeks.

One, getting our plumber to show up and JUST FINISH IT!

Plumbing_powder-sink

Ryan and our plumber officially hate this sink by the way. I LOVE it and will probably need to tell Ryan everyday for a good three months how much I love it because installing it was a pain. I think it looks great in our powder room!

Another issue was getting the gas looked up and the gas meter installed. It took FOUR weeks to get the gas guy back out to hook up the stove and water heater. FOUR WEEKS! We also weren’t able to get the gas meter installed until yesterday. So, we were not able to pass our gas and HVAC inspection in time for the weekend.

No gas/HVAC inspection = no building inspector = no Certificate of Occupancy. 

Womp. Womp. So, we are moving 98% of our belongings into the house this weekend and camping out at the condo for a few more days while we wait to get the final inspections done. Hopefully by next Friday we will be sleeping in our house!!

Well, I am off to finish up the last of the packing and clean! Have a great weekend.

Brittney

Posted in HVAC, inspection, Mantle, Moving, Plumbing | 1 Comment

Hardwood Floor Sanding (I would like to punch whoever put vinyl on top of my hardwood)

Are you looking for a total body work out? Well, do I have the tool for you! Try using a drum sander for four to six hours in one day and three hours the following day. It will do the trick!

hardwood_drum-sander

Neck, back, shoulders, triceps, abs, and butt work out all in one. We rented the drum sander for the weekend in an attempt to sand 100+years old dirt, grime and glue off the hardwood. Ryan started the drum sander first, going slowly pushing the sander with the grain of the hardwood. It started off pretty exciting….

hardwood_sanding-begins

And slowly got less exciting as we realized this is going to take FOREVER. We started using 20 grit sandpaper (very very course) to remove grim, color, and glue off the floor. I was under the impression that two runs with the 20 grit paper would do the trick as far as removing glue. From what I read, with most flooring you can start with 36 grit if you are just trying to removing the existing finish.

Here we are before we started.

Hardwood_before

Here we are after round 1.

hardwood-sanding-round-1

As you can see, there is still A LOT of glue and gunk left over. So, we moved onto to round 2. This time trying to move the sander as slow as possible. With a drum sander, it is important to keep it moving or it can damage the floor.

hardwood_sanding-round-2

Another side note – sanding floors creates a TON of dust! The drum sander we were using had a vacuum attachment but it didn’t stand a chance against the amount of dust we were creating. For round 2, Ryan and I tag teamed with one person operating the sander and one person following around with a shop-vac. It seemed to help as well.

hardwood_sanding-dust

Well, with round 2 finished around 4 pm we were less than impressed. There was still a significant amount of glue left in places. So, I took a “google break” to look for tips. I found that some people went diagonal across the wood in rough places and then went back over it with the direction of the wood to remove any markings left by the sander. When sanding or  staining wood, you pretty much always go WITH the grain of the wood, not against it. I was a little nervous about it, but at this point I was very tired and just wanted to finish, so I gave it a try.

hardwood-floors_round-2

It seemed to help in some places, but it definitely required more muscle power.

We had some other exciting progress last week. Ryan did an awesome job cutting the butcher block and installing the sink.

kitchen_sink-installed

And we also have a working sink & toilet! YAY!

Kitchen_sink_water

I also started putting up the tile back-splash in the kitchen and around the tub surround upstairs.

Kitchen_tile Kitchen_tilebacksplash

Upstairs-bathroom_tile-arou

I decided to put tile above the tub so we wouldn’t have to worry about water causing the paint to peel. Our bathroom upstairs is really starting to look like a finished bathroom. I am so excited with how the vanity turned out!

upstairs-bath_vanity Upstairs-bathroom_vanity

I will share a more detailed post later about how we converted it from a table into a vanity. It was EASY! The hexagon floor turned out pretty well. There a few spots that are not perfect (in the corner where I started laying tile) but thankfully it is around the toilet area so I will hopefully be the only person who notices, except for the few of you reading this!

Upstairs-bathroom_tile-floo

The shower tub combo has been installed for a while, but we do now have tub and shower plumbing fixtures. I look forward to cleaning everything heavily next week!

Upstairs-bathroom_bath-tub

We also sanded and primed the stairway. No more dingy yellow and watermelon pink .

stairs_prep-for-paint Stairs_painted stairs_ceiling-painted

Our kind-of-new stairs now have new risers to match as well! Thanks, Dad!!

Stair_new-risers

Lastly, I tried out a new product last week. After installing reclaimed wood flooring in the kitchen, we had enough left over to install it in the powder room as well. Originally we thought we would tile in the powder room, but we loved the look of the reclaimed wood and it was zero extra dollars we had to spend (yay!) so we went with the hardwood.

I was a little nervous about what I needed to use on the reclaimed wood floor to seal it. I wanted to keep the exact color of the wood but protect it from day-to-day wear. My fear was that regular polyurethane would turn the floor yellow. Even the clear poly will turn yellow over time (from what I have heard). How devastating would it be to have dingy-grayish-yellow floors in 5 years?!?!?! There would be tears, folks.

After a little research, I decided to test out a water based poly made by Minwax.

Powderbath_water-based-poly

Since it water based instead of oil based, it is supposed to dry CRYSTAL clear and stay clear. It also dries a lot faster than oil based poly and barely has an odor to it. The downside is that is not as durable as an oil based, so I will probably need to reseal my floors again in a few years. With only a two hour drying time though, I am not too upset about that!

In the can, the poly looks white, almost like a very thin milk substance.

Powder_water-based-poly

Once I put a coat on and it began to dry, the white disappeared and became completely clear. Victory!!!

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Hopefully it will stay this color! *Fingers crossed* As of today, I have very pleased with the product. It was easy to apply, required a very short dry time, and dried completely clear. We will just have to see how it holds up over time!

That’s about it for this past week and weekend. We are continuing to work on sanding the floors this week and hope to be putting stain down on Sunday night. Our plumber and gas guy are supposed to finish this week as well. Key there is supposed to. Also, if you guys could pray for it NOT to rain this Saturday, that would be awesome. We REALLY need to insulate the attic this weekend and the weather has not worked in our favor the past couple Saturdays we wanted to do it. It is one of our big final Certificate of Occupancy check list items, so it has to get done. I personally don’t care if the attic is insulated by next weekend, but my building inspector does :)

Peace!

Brittney

Posted in Bathroom, Dad, hardwood floor, living room, Painting, Plumbing, Powder Room, Product, stairs | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

So long stairs!

We have T-minus 20 days and counting until we move in to our house! AHH! So we are just chugging right along with our CO to-do list. *I think I can, I think I can*

The big project for last Saturday was to demo and rebuild the stairs. Remember these beauties?

Merrimack Renovation stairs

Saturday it was so long stairs! Fair well. You are gross and yucky, and I will not miss your soggy, spongy treads!

stairs_beginning Stairs_demo

All I had to do was bring in the muscle!

stairs_muscle

Ryan and my Dad tear things down at such different speeds it is almost hilarious. Ryan is very methodical and moves forward slowly. You can tell he is thinking as he goes (engineer). Dad on the other hand, just goes. “Oh you want that torn down? Done!” Boom. Dad is done. I think Dad took down 3/4 of the stairs in the time it took Ryan to do 1/4. It’s just funny to watch the different personalities at work!

Dad and I ripped down the stair treads on the table saw while Ryan rebuilt the bottom platform. Since we kept the original stair runner, they are narrower than stairs you would find in a newer home. With that said, every stair tread had to be cut down to the correct size. As far as the platform at the bottom,  we decided to go with a platform that was similar to the one existing, hoping our building inspector won’t notice or question it as much (Sooo SHHHH!! Don’t tell Claire). Also, the stair runner actually sits on the platform, so made things extra fun for Ryan.

Stiars_platform stairs_ryan

The platform and building the first step was all Ryan’s doing. I have no idea what all he did to make that work. I just cut treads as I was told and carried oak treads back and forth. FYI – Oak treads are pretty darn, heavy y’all.

stairs_brains-of-the-operat

The project took most of the day, but by 7 pm Saturday evening, we had new stair treads!

Stairs_finished

Hurray! Safe stairs. Still steep, but no more sagging or hole in the middle. Mom did her fair share of work, too. She got the privilege of cleaning the toilets that have been hanging out in the yard. Not just one, but two toilets!

Mom_cleaning-toilets

Mom_toilets-in-the-house

One is from the original bathroom and one is actually from a friend. Yay free toilets! He thought I was kidding when I said, “Yes, I will take the toilet.” You know what the original toilet was filled with?

Take a guess.

Really. Guess.

It’s really gross.

So gross I don’t have pictures.

Keep in mind the toilet was in the yard for 9 months or more.

SLUGS! The toilet was full of slugs. BLAH!!!!!!!!

So full of slugs is a slight exaggeration, but there were some slugs on the bottom side of the toilet, along with grass and mud. GROSS!!!

With a good pair of gloves and a little elbow grease they are good as new.

Mom_clean-toilets

Some other updates – I finished grouting tile last week…

tile-in-bathroom

We also got the living room and powder room painted. I love the living room color! SW Riverway for anyone wondering. It doesn’t show well in these photos, but it is really pretty.

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Mom_painting

My Dad also wanted me to show of some of his handy work (other than demolition). Check out our home audio stuff….

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And our tech closet. I don’t really know what to call it, but it is all thanks to Dad.

Dad_closet

Ooooohhhh. Ahhhhh.

I also got started on the bathroom vanity for upstairs. More updates soon! I can tell you that I love the vanity and the plumber did NOT threaten to kill me when he saw it yesterday. Victory!!

Vanity-sneak-peekWhew. That’s where we are. What have you been up to? Anyone have free time and want to come over? I won’t stop you!

Peace. Have a good week!

Brittney

Posted in Bathroom, Demo, DIY, living room, Mom, Painting, stairs | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Our (almost) Kitchen

Guys. Can you believe it is May? Seriously? Where is the time going? Do you want to know what is even crazier? We are moving in at the END OF  MONTH. Ahhh!!!! *Insert minor freak out here*

Actually, I am not quite in panic mode yet, just a little stressed when I think about what all we have left to do. The good news is that we are on track with our to-do list! We just have to stay that way for a few more weeks :)

If you are friends with me on Facebook or Instagram you already know last week was pretty darn exciting. First off, Ryan and Dad rocked out the kitchen flooring two Saturdays ago, and it looks awesome!

Kitchen-flooring Kitchen-flooring-2 Kitchen-flooring-3 kitchen-flooring-pantry

Here is a close up/glamour shot! I love the variety of light and dark grays!

Kitchen-flooring-close-up

Since the boys installed the floor, Mom and I were charge of cleaning….

kitchen-flooring-scrubbing

THEN we had cabinets installed in the kitchen, pantry, laundry area and had the built-in for the living room dropped off. Let’s start with the kitchen.

kitchen-cabinets kitchen-cabinets-island

I LOVE THEM! I work at a custom cabinetry shop (Huntsville American Cabinets for you locals), so I am pretty picky when it comes to cabinets. I knew exactly what I wanted. AND since I work at a cabinet shop and get a pretty sweet discount, I was actually able to afford my dream cabines. Brittney for the win!!!

Our cabinets are built out of maple in a shaker style (flush construction – which I LOVE!), with a painted exterior and stained interior. The color is Sherwin Williams Pure White – same color as the ceiling. We have a few bells and whistles I will share later once we get moved in.

Let’s move on to the laundry area (which is technically in the kitchen, too).

kitchen-cabinets-laundry2 kitchen-cabinets-laundry

The living room piece is actually just primed for paint. I am still not sure what color I am going to paint it.

cabinets-living-room

Ryan and I will be adding shelving above at some point. Not this month!

And lastly the pantry. I can’t even tell you how excited I am about having a walk in pantry!!!!!

kitchen-pantry-counter-toos

Feel free to scroll back up and look at the pictures again and admire my cabinets. I still walk by and admire them myself :)

You know what comes after cabinets? Counter tops!!!!

kitchen-counter-tops kitchen-countertops

On the back wall we went with butcher block counter tops from Ikea. We actually purchased them through Ikea Run Huntsville. If you are in Huntsville, I would highly recommend Ikea run. This is our third purchase with no troubles what so ever! Ryan and I decided to go with butcher block because it was something we could install ourselves, pretty inexpensive, and would allow us to still have an under mount sink. It’s pretty with white cabinets as well.

kitchen-pantry-2

Now the island is actually laminate.

kitchen-counter-tops-island

Do you remember me mentioning the faux marble here? Well we bought it, and it is pretty darn awesome. So pretty I pet it as I walk by. Just ask Ryan.

What is NOT awesome is laying tile.

bathroom-tile

I made the mistake of laying tile for two evenings (approx. 5 hours) without knee pads because “I’m twenty-four and I don’t need NO STICKIN’ knee pads-blah-blah-blah.” That was bad. Very very bad. Knee pads are awesome, and you should wear them when you are crawling on your knees for hours.

This week we are working on painting, grouting and finishing tile in the bathroom, customizing the bathroom vanity, and some other odds and end.

Does anyone else have butcher block in their kitchen? How is maintenance for it? Tips anyone? Does anyone else have “Dream Cabinets” or is that just me? :)

Peace.

Brittney

Posted in Kitchens, Flooring, Bathroom, living room, Butcher block | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Every Light in the House is On

I started walking through our house singing “Every Light in the House is On”, and Ryan had NO IDEA what the heck I referencing. I am not an avid country music fan by any means, but even I know that song. What you should take from this little story is that 1) Ryan is not a country music fan and 2) we have power at the house! Lights are on!

Lights_exterior-lighting

I mentioned the other day that the electricians were back (you can read that here). Well, not only did they install fixtures and such, but they were able to hook us up with temporary power.

The past 6 months or so we have been working with temporary power from the utility pole. We had two very long extension cords plugged into the temporary power and ran into the house. From there we had splitters and more extension cords. It was a constant game of extension cord shuffle between tools and construction lamps. NOW we have the electrical panel hooked up to the temporary power! No more shuffle!

Electrical_panel Electrical_Brittney-with-pa

Let’s note just how large this panel is. Keep in mind this is in our dining room. Hiding that sucker will be an interesting challenge to say the least!

Want to see what our house looks like with power?! Of course you do!

Lighting_entry Electrical_southern-accents

POWER! No more construction lamps! No more extension cord shuffle! Wahoo!!!

Not every light and outlet is working right now, but it is a lot more than what we had, so we are pretty pumped about it. We will still have to get the temporary power converted to permanent power, but I think that is all done at the electricity pole. I could be wrong there, so don’t quote me on that.

I am pretty excited about some of our light fixtures! The living room chandelier for example. Love LOVE love!

Electrical_living-room

It is from Southern Accents in Cullman, Alabama. It is had a dark bronze finish to it and looks pretty cool with the Edison bulbs!

Electrical_living-room2 electrical_light-living-roo

If you are thinking about using Edison bulbs, let me warn you that they give off a very yellow tinted light. Just FYI!

I showed you this one last week, but it is a favorite, too. It is upstairs in the bathroom, and IT. IS. CUTE.

Light-fixtures_bathroom

The fixture is a cheap one from Lowe’s (the one’s you buy without the shades) and the shades are from School House Electric. I also really like the lanterns in the dining room. I am so glad I decided to go with two instead of just one!

Lighting_dining-room

It is going to look awesome above our future farmhouse table.

Now, we also have some pretty darn ugly light fixtures as well.

Electrical_ugliest

Yea. U-G-L-Y! Some of them came from thrift stores and some are the absolute cheapest light fixtures I could find. Most of the ugly light fixtures are upstairs. One ugly fixture did end up in the pantry, but hopefully it won’t be there too terribly long. Ryan and I decided we would rather spend the money on light fixtures we really liked in the rooms we are finishing first and worry about the others later. Upgrading light fixtures is an easy fix down the road and saves us a good chunk of money right now.

Moving on to another subject, we have lots of exciting things going on in the kitchen right now! Ryan and I started putting hardwood down in the kitchen Friday night….

Kitchen-flooring_my-job

Ryan and my Dad knocked it out on Saturday! They are troopers! I will have pictures of the finished floor later this week. It is still pretty dirty right now. Cleaning the floor is on my agenda for Monday night. MORE exciting news is that we are getting KITCHEN CABINETS & COUNTER TOPS this week! Wahoo! Tile for the upstairs bathroom also came in on Friday! Yay for pretty things!

Tile_upstairs-bathroom

Lots of excitement this week! Kitchen pictures coming soon :)

Have a good week!

Brittney

Posted in Bathroom, Dad, electrical, living room, Save Money | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments

A week in photos (too tired to type)

Hey folks. Operation move in Memorial Weekend is under way, and we are working on the house as much as possible in order to make that happen. That means I spend all my time doing stuff and am too tired to blog about all of the progress! So you will have to forgive me and just enjoy progress through pictures. Let’s begin!

Ryan and I spent last Saturday putting up reclaimed wood on the accent wall in the kitchen.

focal-wall_wood

focal-wall_kitchen

It required a little bit of cleaning…..

Focal-wall_dirt-rag

Then Ryan trimmed out the kitchen wall and ceiling. I say Ryan because it was all him. I had nothing to contribute other than I wanted to use the reclaimed material.

Kitchen-ceiling

kitchen-ceiling_ryan

kitchen-trim

Last week we finally had the Cook’s contractor come back and put the downstairs bedroom back together.

Downstairs-bedroom

Downstairs-bedroom_changes

Ryan and my Dad put down hardwood in the bedroom last Saturday while I painted and touched up trim. Fun Fun. My mom and grandma worked on some landscaping.

Famil_help

The most exciting news is the electricians were back this week installing light fixtures and finishing up their work.

Living-room_light-fixtures light-fixtures_kitchen Light-fixtures_bathroom Light-fixture_bathroom

Ryan and I also spent Monday night finishing up sanding, priming and painting the ceilings. I think you will approve!

Living-room_blue-ceiling

The ceiling is Sherwin William’s Copian Blue and it is BEAUTIFUL. Well worth every hour of scraping wallpaper! The bead board still had plenty of character and looks 113 years old, but now it is clean and fresh! Exactly what I hoped it would look like. Brittney for the win!

Electricians are still working at the house and we are getting ready for CABINETS next week! EEKK!!!

Peace.

Brittney

Posted in bedrooms, Ceilings, electrical, Kitchens, Mom | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Paint the Town White

Hey there! Hope you are all having a good week. I just want to say a quick thank you to everyone who had something nice to say about the article, whether that was in person or on social media! We are excited to help draw GOOD publicity to West Huntsville. We LOVE Merrimack! I have thought about making a sign for my yard that says, “Hello! Won’t you be my neighbor? I bake cookies!” Haha. Would that make you want to move in? Brownies perhaps? Perhaps I just take the porta-potty out of the front yard? :)

Anyways, we have been working on painting the town house red white this past week! Some of that being actual paint and some being a coat of primer. I spent all of last week working on priming and painting the kitchen ceiling *insert shoulder groans here* while Ryan worked on getting the living room ceiling ready for PRIMER!

I was able to prime the whole kitchen ceiling with a 3″ brush two Saturdays ago. Last week I moved on to actual paint!

White_SW-pure-white

For the ceiling and the cabinets we are going with Sherwin Williams Pure White. It is PRETTY, and very, very white, with almost a blue/gray undertone. It works really well with the flooring we will be putting down. You can see that here.

Since the ceiling is bead board, a brush works better than a roller. A paint sprayer would work well too, but the only paint sprayer we had at the time was a gravity feed and it didn’t work so well above my head. Stupid gravity! That left me with brushing the entire coat of primer and paint by hand.

white_-ceiling

After another couple of two-hour shifts (and a shoulder rub from Ryan), I had the entire ceiling painted. I cannot tell you how nice it is to have something WHITE and bright and clean in the house!

white_kitchen-ceiling

While I was climbing up and down a ladder 1,3i3,592 times, Ryan tackled the last of the wallpaper in the living room.

wallpaper_living-room

Did you catch that key word there? LAST!!! Wahoo!!

Then, he started sanding the ceilings. *Insert happy dancer*

ceiling_sanding

So this tool we borrowed from a friend is AWESOME! Thank you Stephanie and Eric for saving my shoulders a week’s worth of sanding. I think it is actually designed to be used for finishing drywall, but it worked perfect for sanding the last of the glue and gunk off of the ceiling. Ryan was able to sand the entire living room area in less than an hour and a half, AND the sander attaches to a shop vac so you don’t have tons of dust anywhere. Woot woot!!

ceiling_sanding2

The ceilings looked so CLEAN with all of the gunk gone. While the sander worked well on the ceiling, the walls are a different story. I had to sand those suckers by hand. Say hello to thing 1 and thing 2.

sanding-walls

sanding-walls2

I used a course sanding block and a fine sanding block to prep the walls for paint. My goal was not to remove the paint, but remove the rest of the glue and gunk and dirt. If you ever want an arm work out, just sand walls by hand. Works like a charm!

sanding-living-room

With the ceilings and walls gunk free, time for primer! Again, we have awesome friends with awesome tools. We borrowed a serious paint sprayer from a friend and immediately fell in love with it.

white_paiting-living-room

About an hour later, Ryan had the entire room (walls and ceilings) complete.

white_living-room

Dude. The walls are no longer seven colors!

Can I get a virtual high five please??

Peace.

Brittney

Posted in Al.com series, Ceilings, Kitchens, living room, Painting | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Our Old House Article

If you are friends with me or any of my family members on Facebook, you probably saw the announcement about our article on AL.com.

Our-Old-House-article

Surprise! Actually, it is only surprising for you guys. Ryan and I obviously knew it it was coming. It all started a few weeks ago, when this article on Merrimack & West Huntsville was published. I was very excited to see someone saying something positive about West Huntsville, so I sent an e-mail to the journalist saying thank you and that as a homeowner in the area I appreciated her article very much. I also told her that we were one of those homeowners in the process of renovating (complete with a dumpster in the yard) and that we would be happy to help with any future article about Merrimack.

Well, she accepted our offer and here we are a few weeks later! Not only did Pat Ammons do a wonderful job with the article, but the photographer Bob Gathany did an amazing job with photographs. Here’s a few of the photographs he took from our house.

Merrimack Renovation stairs Merrimack Village reno Merrimack Village Renovation

You can see his photo gallery here.  It is well worth your time to take a look!

We are very excited about this series (yep, there is more coming, not sure exactly what but I’ll let you know).  There is also a second article where we share some things we have learned during this entire process. I hope that others in Huntsville will be encouraged to consider renovating in Merrimack! We love this community and want others to join in!

Brittney

Posted in Al.com series, Renovations | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Operation: Certificate of Occupancy, Bathroom Edition

Hello there! I hope you all had a nice Easter weekend. We enjoyed getting to spend a relaxing day with family. Do you guys even remember what we look like when we are showered and clean? You probably don’t so here is a refresher for you.

Easter-Sunday-Saffells

“Hey look! No dirt!”

Ryan and I spent Saturday working in the kitchen. I spent most of my day priming the ceiling, and Ryan spent most of his day putting up cement board. Nothing that exciting, so I will just show you a sneak peek of our progress and move on to other fun things, like bathtubs and toilets! *insert sarcasm*

Kitchen-cement-board Kitchen-priming-ceiling

A few weeks ago I talked about our certificate of occupancy to do list. One of the big items is having a working bathroom. Well, our plan from the beginning was to finish the downstairs bathroom right off the bedroom. Here is our floor plan, just to freshen your memory.

Model Model

It made sense at the time that we would finish that bathroom first, since we would be living in the downstairs bedroom.  Finishing that bathroom requires tiling the floor, water proofing the shower, tiling the shower, purchasing a custom glass door that we can’t really afford right now, purchasing & installing plumbing fixtures and building a custom, wall mount vanity. Anyone tired from just reading that list?? (ME!) Finishing the bathroom is a pretty lengthy to-do list on its own, throw in everything else we have to do and it’s a full load for the next two months.

Well, last week I had a major “Duh?!” moment. Why not finish the upstairs bathroom instead? Here is our small upstairs bathroom in its current state. Here is the view from the doorway.

Upstairs-bathroom_entry

Upstairs-bath_vanity upstairs-bath_toilet

The most important things to notice is the fact it has a bathtub. Currently the tub serves as a storage area…

upstairs-bath_tub upstairs-bath_tile-tub

We also have a little nook for built-in shelves.

Upstairs-bath_shelves

It already has a bathtub installed, and we have already bought the plumbing fixtures for the tub/shower combo. Why would we tile that entire shower downstairs and buy plumbing fixtures for it when we already have a bath tub upstairs?! Are we DUMB?! Sure, we will have to walk upstairs to shower, but finishing this bathroom will require less time and less money and right now that is more important. Insert a major “DUH?!” here please.

I’m not sure why it took us so long to come to this conclusion, and I honestly can’t remember what triggered my thought process. Whatever it was, we are both excited about saving time and money to finish this bathroom. As far as I know, walking up the stairs never killed anyone. *knock on wood*

Here is what I plan on using for materials in this bathroom. My goal is that you walk into all of our bathrooms and they don’t scream, “Hey, I’m a new bathroom!!!!” While I want the bathroom to obviously feel new and clean, I do want to use materials that would have been found in an older bath room, like subway tile, hexagon tile, and vintage inspired light fixtures.

Upstairs-bathroom-materials

I am still debating about a paint color. I am leaning towards green right now. We will also be building a vanity out of our old kitchen table (sewing machine table). I am pretty excited about reusing our table in a new way! Has anyone DIYed a bathroom vanity before? Any tips or ideas? Anyone just really REALLY love laying tile? If so, you are invited over! :)

Brittney

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Posted in Bathroom, Budget, DIY, Floor plan, Kitchens | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments