Getting rid of the cabinets. They ripped out pretty easily because guess what? Genius Occupant was a horrible plumber (sadly, his day job literally WAS as a plumber) and the sink and dishwasher attachments leaked like crazy. All the leaks destroyed a decent patch of sub-floor and wicked up the wall to ruin that as well. It's a bad day when you can set down your hammer and smoosh out chunks of drywall with just your gloved hand.
We originally cut the drywall to halfway up the wall (shown on the left), where it wasn't a wet mess, but Joe wanted to add in blocking for upper cabinets and a vent hood above the stove, so we frankly gave up with any drywall salvage job in this room and just put up all new walls. Below you can see the new sub-floor, a light tan to the original sub-floor's dusty brown.
Ahhh, much better! With a proper wall in place we could put in just enough flooring (seen below) to get those new IKEA kitchen cabinets set. We would have waited until we were a bit closer to put those puppies in permanently, but we needed a template for the new countertops we ordered, which have a 3-week lead time, so in the cabinets went.
Then we covered the floor back up so we don't ruin it by walking on it in muddy work shoes. Thanks to that new blocking, the new range hood is safe, secure, and beautiful (though it had not been attached to the vent duct yet. All in good time)
The appliances arrived! It's been hectic trying to schedule things in order (Scheduling is an entire semester class in the CM program for this very reason); we ordered these seriously the week we bought the house 'cause they were on a smokin' sale, and we were a bit off on our guess of when we'd be ready for delivery. But there they are, whenever we're ready!
There's that 3-window wall the GO "renovated" that I wrote about before. It was a gaping hole for a few hours when Joe ripped it all out, but he quickly (and correctly) framed in this beauty:
Headers! King studs! A sill! Who knew lumber and plywood could look so good?!
And then he hung new drywall, patched the seams, textured, and primed the whole thing to make it look... like nothing stupid had been done! It really is incredible how much work it has taken to make things look NORMAL. Normal is going to look really dang good in a few days, as the replacement windows we ordered were just delivered today (Dec 18th)
Joe framed in the new bedroom, and it's great! This is a view toward the closet. We were nervous about permits and inspection because there is literally ONE inspector in the area. Lots of site-built home inspectors, but this is a modular home, or Factory Assembled Structure, and they follow a different set of rules With only ONE F.A.S. inspector on hand we heard it can be a slow process, but in order to list the house as a 3 Bedroom we needed to have it be a permitted room. So wait we must. Happily, the inspector is very nice and worked to fit us in his schedule and Joe did an excellent job of framing and drywall, so we got it all passed off in one day! The room needs outlets and an overhead light, so the electrician is coming tomorrow!! Once the electrical is inspected, we are free and clear of needing other people in order to complete this house! (that alone deserves 1000 exclamation points)
This is the outside of the bedroom, with (most of) its freshly hung drywall. Don't mind the bottom gap, it's being done as I blog. Looking into the patched and painted hallway, it's not such a scary dungeon of doom! You can walk down the hall feeling reasonably confident you won't be killed.
The next bedroom down the hall, the dinosaur room, has been patched, textured, primed, and is ready for paint. Yahoo! Again, who knew Normal was so exciting?!
The kids bathroom is now down one giant red octopus. The shower and sink were hauled to the dump, and Joe framed in the extra door that led to the laundry room and hung drywall over it. You can just barely see the patched-in wall in the right of the photo. We'll be finishing the room in a ship lap look on the walls, with a tub and white tile on the walls. Can't you just see it now? (If you can't, check back next month. I'll show you pictures)
I put Caroline to work taking photos of all the updates. I got some *wink wink* excellent photos of a broom handle, a random outlet, and here we see the edge of the bathroom mirror with sweet Caroline doing her job. I love her willingness to help!
You can also kind of see the patched-in door on the right of this picture. The other important thing you can't actually see is the furnace!! We have heat! It's new and functional and it runs like a Trane (because it is a Trane), and it's conveniently hidden by this paneling.
Basically the masted bedroom and bath have nothing to report, and apparently we didn't take any pictures of them (good, bad, or otherwise), so let's head on out to the exterior. We got a new roof!
You can't pull a permit to do a roof unless you have your General Contractor's license, so so we went the legit rout and had a legit roofer do it, that way there aren't any permitting issues when we go to list and sell the house. It hurt right in the bank account, but it's a big ticket item when selling so we figured better safe than sorry.
We did NOT feel sorry doing the detached garage roof ourselves, though - it saved us a few thousand dollars, it wasn't hard, and by golly anyone who looks for a permit on a roof will see that there is a permit on the roof (just not this roof in particular)
The weather held out here for an unprecedented TWO WEEKS without rain, which is how we got the house roof AND still had 2 days to do the garage ourselves. We were sincerely blessed, heaven has been looking out for us in SO MANY ways on this house.
Heaven thought it would be a pretty funny side note to freeze the paint on the garage entry door, though - it made lovely frost patterns that are permanent and don't go away with a second coat of paint. I'll get out and sand that one of the days I am bored (a.k.a. we will be selling this house with a frosty door)
Putting it back together means we have gotten LOTS of experience just from this one property - wiring, plumbing, drywall installation, drywall patching, texturing, painting, framing, sub-floors, new flooring, tile install, insulation, permits, roofing, furnace and duct work, windows, decking, landscaping, and generally how to be a DIY Bad Ass.
