Remodeling

You buy a house because you like it and then immediately start changing it.  That's been the story of all of our houses and this one is no exception.  We bought it because Mac loved the location and I loved the hardwood floors and stainless steel appliances. 

The first thing we did after buying it was I had Mac paint the dining room, I didn't like the color in there, I'm still not happy with the way it looks and he's painted it 3 times for me, so the next time I'll have to paint it. I've decided that I don't want color on the bottom, I want iton the top.

 

After that we painted the 4th bedroom that we use as a computer room, it's a soft brown, Mac doesn't like it, but I do, I just want to get some crown molding put up.  

There is a bathroom right next to this room, I think these two rooms were supposed to be the maid's quarters (I wish).  Anyway, we painted it an even softer brown, sort of sand like, we're both pleased with it.     

Then the first major project was to  put granite counter tops (50 sq.ft. of granite at about $50 a sq.ft.) in the kitchen and tile on the parts we didn't put granite on.  Home Depot installed the granite and Mac did the tiling.  I like granite, but not too much.  

Our next project was tearing out the carpet in our master bathroom and having tile put down on the floor, we had a friend do the tiling.  Then we ripped out the carpet in our bedroom, painted the walls  and put wooden floors down.  The floors we put down had to be glued down or nailed down and we chose to to glue.  That was more fun than we had ever anticipated.  Not!  We glued boards, the hammer we were working with, odd bits of papers, anything that came in the room.  It's a big room, more than 500 sq.ft. and it took us several days to get it all done.    

Next we painted an accent wall in the living room.  I only had to put about 15 different color samples up there before I picked one, but it's a deep, rich color and looks good.

After that we began looking at the kitchen/familyroom  that is really one big room.  The ceiling in the kitchen is  9 feet high, but the familyroom walls go up nearly 20 feet.  So I picked a color, Mac refuses to pick colors, he says whatever color I pick is fine with him.  So over a couple of days we got that painted and it looks great, I think it's a color we'll be able to live with for a long time.  Though when we first opened the can Mac said it looked like baby poo and put some on the wall of a closet to show me what a strange color it was.  I assured him it would dry differently.

It was a year or so before we did any more work and we decided to do more work in our master bathroom.  We, I mean Mac and Ms Kitty, tore out the stock sinks and vanities, in their place we put 2 vanities that look like  pieces of furniture and have granite tops, replaced the light fixtures and Mac retiled the shower and around the tub.  All we need to do is finish grouting and painting.

  Probably by then I'll be sick of it and we'll have to start over.

We've also painted the small half bath off the kitchen.  So except for finishing the master bath and me painting the dining room we're near to finishing the lower level of the house.  I'd also like to add mantels to the 2 fireplaces and hopefully we'll do that before Christmas.

That brings us to the upstairs part of the house, and we've done nothing up there.  But that's about to change.  We have another familyroom upstairs, 342 sq.ft. to be exact and we've ordered laminate flooring for it in a Brazilian Hickory, rather dark and very rich.  So today we started packing the room up, there are about 9,000,000 books in there and all the stuff that Mac has in the Pub end of it.  Once that's all out we can start painting and ripping out carpet, I can't wait.