Bathroom work!

Not a lot has gone on in the bathroom since the carpet came up. Pretty much we took out the toilet and sink.


And I put a coat of that Tough-as-tile tub refinishing epoxy paint on the bathtub to make it white :)


I was going to also use this on the blue tile to make the bathroom completely black and white. That would have been nice, but it would have made a huge blob of white since I would have had to do it over the grout and the the grout between the black would have looked like crap. Since the tiles were in really good condition, especially after cleaning it with TSP, I have decided to keep them. So now the bathroom is going to be black, blue and white. Not exactly optimal, but that way I don't waste money on things that aren't going to look that great in the end... If I still want to change it in the future, I can just retile the bathroom.

Kitchen work

So, last we left the kitchen, it had the cabinet doors off and the carpet up. Things have been moving along pretty well.

I primed the tile with Gripper primer by Glidden after cleaning it with TSP, and Momma and I primed the cabinets (the doors still need primed), Momma painted the walls in Day Spa by behr.



Then I painted the tile with High gloss white paint. It made the blue of the walls stand out more. It is looking cleaner in this room every day. Hopefully I'll have the cabinets painted and the floors down this weekend!

Refinished the floors

Been doing a lot of work at the house lately. Here are some updates.

We refinished the floors! It was harder than we thought, took 3 days and was around $300. It turned out really nice though.

Momma dancing with the sander. It was not a cooperative partner and gave her blisters on her thumbs from having to manhandle it. The little sandy disks that you velcro to the bottom of this thing cost a ton! About $9/set. It takes about 4 sets a room. Instead of throwing them away, I sat there with a screwdriver and picked off the shellac warts that were gumming up the disks and we reused them. My fingers were raw for a few days...


All the nicely sanded floors. We should have sanded them more because those few spots where there was still shellac on the floor kind of show up as oranger spots. They aren't bad, but it would have been nicer to not have them. Oh well, I know for next time!




I decided to just go with Polyurethane and no stain. I used Minwax high build semi-gloss. Here's the first coat!



A day after we put on the first coat, we went along with the palm sander and 220 grit sandpaper to even it out. Unfortunately some spots weren't dry enough and they kind of gummed up. I used some mineral spirits to thin it a bit and left it dry for another day. The next day I went ahead and sanded them down by hand and put on the second coat. And Momma painted the border too :)

Pictures finally!

Lets start with the living room since that was where we started.
Painted the ceiling.

Painted the walls


Ripped up the carpet (this was before I cleaned up the mess)


Kitchen
Put a lot of crap in it

Took off the cabinet doors and ripped off the carpet


My bedroom
Momma painted the ceiling while Pappy visited

Painted the walls. This color looked better at my parent's house... It'll probably look better once I get my paintings on the walls and paint the trim.

Ripped out the carpet. My hardwood floors look really good, but I need to sand and put on some coats of poly.


Other bedroom
Painted the same color as the living room and hallway, and ripped out the carpet.

Whew what a day

I once again forgot to bring my camera home. I'll remember tomorrow.

Today we got a ton done.

The bedrooms, hallway, and living room were painted with their second coat (Thanks mom!). I need to trim the bedrooms in white and the hallway and living room in that other green.

We ripped up the carpet in the living room, the second bedroom, bathroom, hallway, and kitchen. The floor underneath is a really nice color, but needs to be refinished =/ It has these strange little dots on it. I'm not sure what it was from, but it looks like all the rooms need it.

The bathroom had mold, which was not a surprise. It wasn't too terrible, and there was linoleum underneath, so I don't have to replace any flooring, just put the new floating floor on top.

The carpet in the kitchen was amazingly hard to rip up. It was glued to the floor. Without Phil, it would still be there.

I ordered my countertop and bought the kitchen floor today. It is going to be Wilsonart laminate Lodestone which matches the Allure Yukon tank flooring I picked out really well :) (moreso than the images below, the darker floor tiles match the countertop almost exactly)

Countertop:


Kitchen flooring:


Now that the carpet is mostly up, I feel like I can get some serious work done. I can't wait to start on the kitchen. That is going to be one of the big changes.

Closing!

Closing went amazingly fast. Everyone was amazingly organized and we were in and out in 10 minutes.

So! I have a house! I spent most of the rest of the day at Home Depot picking up things. Later in the day, the fam came over. We got a lot of preliminary stuff done and made a game plan.

So far I bought:
* new switches and outlets and outlet covers for the upper floor
* 2 gallons of ceiling paint
* sample of paint (shimmer, april mist, and isle of capri)
* 1 box of Allure flooring for the bathroom
* New thermostat (the old one is too hard to adjust)
* set of screwdrivers
* That bathtub refinishing paint

Today we:
* took all of the curtains down (I am not a curtain kind of person)
* took all of the covers off of the outlets and switches
* tested the paint (looked good :D)

Friday we plan on:
* Spackling holes from curtain anchors and the various nails and screws in the walls
* painting!
* Should probably try to do that bathtub refinishing as soon as I can

House before

In the appraisal were pictures of all of the rooms! I can finally show people what I have to work with and hopefully get some help picking paint colors!


I like the front of the house. It's cute. Some things I would like to change are adding hanging baskets to the porch, tearing off the AstroTurf from the front porch, and sandblasting the green paint off of the stairs. I also don't really like shrubs. They might go.



The back of the house is lacking something. It seems really plain. Once again, the AstroTurf needs to go. Maybe a fence around the patio would help? I plan on having a garden to the right of the patio since there isn't a door on that part of the fence. I need to fix the roofing there when I have the chance. It was one of the few things wrong with the house when the inspector was going through.



Oh the living room. That carpet is the first thing to go. From the inside of the closets, it is safe to assume there is a dark hardwood floor under there. I am going to put my futon in there (Norka rosewood with dark teal cover), and eventually have a matching coffee table and TV. Hopefully the room will look a little bigger when I am finished with it. I really wonder how much light that room gets. The curtains were always closed when I saw the house.


I'm not out to slam anyone's sense of style, but sorry Betty, your kitchen is hideous. I plan on painting the cabinets white, and getting new handles for them. Definitely getting a new counter top and sink too. The floor in here is carpeted, and it is a mystery as to what is actually underneath it. I found some nice cheap easy to install flooring that I'll be using in here and the bathroom though. Her fridge is kind of large. I am going to have to see how I can fenangle things so that it isn't so awkward. I have no idea what I am going to do with the tiled walls though. I have thought of paint or that white epoxy paint stuff to refinish them. My kitchen table is nowhere near as bulky as hers, so this might end up being an okay room once I get my things here.


This is another room that is going to give me trouble. I hate it. Ideal bathrooms should either be huge and laid with stone with lots of steel and glass, or if they are small, then they should look white and clean. This bathroom is not either of those things. I will probably just buy a new sink and toilet and try that white epoxy paint on the tub. I am not sure what I am going to do with the walls though... I already have the floor picked out.


My bedroom. Not much to say about it really. I am thinking of painting it the same way my old room was painted. I'll probably just do that. I liked that.


The other bedroom. I am going to rent this out to a friend. I have no real future plans for it other than a guest room. I don't know who was taking these pictures or why they decided to only get the corner of the room but whatever. There is a large dresser and a closet out of frame.


The basement is a U-shaped room, which makes it kind of terrible for any kind of hanging out or whatever. That is why it will be where the animals live. Since I am going to be breeding bettas for Wet Pets, I am going to just keep them all in the Kennedy Wing. (At the end of one of the legs of the U, there was a needlepoint picture of Kennedy) I don't like the AstroTurf here, but it is probably better than concrete and I don't really feel like changing that yet.


And that concludes the tour through Betty's house. Hopefully when it becomes my house it will look a lot different! :)

Appraisal

I received my appraisal in the mail today. I was appraised at $87,500. I was kind of hoping for more, but I was pretty much expecting somewhere in the ballpark of what I offered ($85,000). Asking price on the house was $94,000. I am really glad I went with the $85k as my first offer and not the $87k that was what we were talking about beforehand. I was also going to ask for seller assist which would have brought my mortgage total to around $90k. My real estate agent, Gayle, was worried that the house would not appraise for $90,000 and it seems as though she was right.

I am buying a house!

I am currently waiting for closing on my first house. This blog is pretty much a way for me to share with everyone the changes I make to it as I go. I'm also going to try to make sure to keep a list of all of the paint colors, and remodeling products I use along the way. That is more for myself though. Closing is on April 28th in the morning. It can't come any faster!

It is a little red brick ranch house with an integral garage. There are 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, a somewhat finished basement with a basement toilet and laundry room. It has a nice little .13 acre lot with a fenced in back yard. It is a nice little house (936 sq. ft) that was built in 1954. The decor inside is really dated, and I am going to probably spend a good amount fixing it up inside. That will give me plenty of things to update with.