Connor's playroom

This was by far the biggest project of the weekend! Danny spent many hours working until the wee hours to get this ready so Connor can have an awesome playroom. We met with our plaster guy on Christmas Eve (Monday) and he asked if Danny would have the wall down and ready for him by Saturday. Danny said sure, no problem. Keep in mind we didn't actually own the house to start work until Thursday morning. So that was only two days to complete this project, which I was a bit skeptical of, but he got it done.

If you will recall, the third floor has (had?) two bedrooms which we don't need at this time, so we decided to tear down the wall between two of them to make a playroom for Connor. The basement in this house isn't finished, and we knew we definitely wanted a dedicated playspace for our kids (finally a place for his 2082321 toys where I won't be stepping on Legos and trains everywhere I go).

Anyway, while I was downstairs stripping wall paper, he was doing this:

In this picture and above you can sort of see that there were two separate doors (naturally, since it was two rooms)

And here he and his dad knocked out those doors to make an open walkway into the playroom

Here is the other view of the doorway 

All patched up and ready to be painted 

We will add some trim around the doorway to give it a nice finished look. 

Danny worked so hard to get this project finished in less than two days. And thank goodness we have an architect in the family who not only assured us that taking out this wall wouldn't cause the ceiling to come crashing down on us, but also got up in the pitch black attic above this and helped Danny put in some reinforcements to ensure the ceiling doesn't sag.

It was a crazy 4 days and we couldn't have done any of what we did without both our dads helping with the manual labor and our aunts, sisters and moms watching little man so we could actually get something done. Connor loves to "help", but he slows us down. He's so darn cute though. He absolutely loves his new playroom and all he wants to do in the house is go "up". Can't wait until it's ready for him!

Helping mommy remove wallpaper

Today we got started with ripping out the carpet. There is a lot of of it! Fortunately for us there is beautiful hardwood (we believe original) underneath the carpet. We had previously pulled up a couple of corners and thought the wood would be in decent shape and today we discovered we were correct! Danny did all the carpet removal and haul away, along with my dad and then Danny, his sister, myself and my dad worked on pulling up all the staples from the carpet padding (there were A LOT). We will be having our floor guy come out this week to remove the tack strips and then he will be back in a few weeks to work on the floors. We will need to discuss with him whether the floors require a full refinish or just a buff and recoat once he sees their full condition, but based on our original conversation he thought they were in great shape and didn't need to be fully refinished which is great!

Before

Den/4th bedroom before

No more shelves

Den After

After

Before

After

Before

After

Connor's Room - before

Connor's room - after

Work Weekend #1

Whew, we are exhausted. It has been a busy few days since we closed (just four days ago). I am going to break each level of the house out into a separate post so it's not too long, but for reference here is what we have done so far. Stripped all the wallpaper from the kitchen, removed the kitchen desk and cabinet (just the one, not all of them), removed kitchen chair rail, pulled up about half the carpet, knocked down the wall between the third floor bedrooms and had a plaster repair guy into repair the walls (among other areas which needed some attention). Not to mention we went to Cincinnati yesterday to celebrate Christmas with Danny's grandmother!

Here are the pictures of the kitchen:

Just a before picture to refresh your memory. I didn't get a good picture from the other side, but there is a soffit above the cabinets that is covered in the floral wallpaper as well. 

And the other very

In progress. Chair rail gone

More progress

Bye bye desk

No more wallpaper 

Desk, paper and cabinet gone. My plan here is to put a bench by the window and get a rectangular kitchen table with 4 more chairs (see below for the chairs) around it to create a cozy breakfast nook.  

Wallpaper totally gone

No more wallpaper

Removing the wallpaper was a tremendous pain, but I'm proud to say that I did it 100% by myself! Danny assisted with the desk and cabinet removal though. I have never removed wallpaper before and from the way people talk about it, I expected myself to be in for a 30 hour project. I was glad I had low expectations because I was pleasantly surprised. It still took quite a bit of time, but it wasn't as bad as I expected. My dad gave me a scorer which allowed me to make tiny holes in the paper and I simply sprayed the paper with a mixture of water and vinegar and went to town. Getting the majority of the large pieces off was ok, but it was the little paper pieces that stayed behind that almost pushed me to my breaking point. But now that it's done, I'm quite proud of all my hard work. We had our plaster guy repair a few places in the walls where some water damage had caused the plaster to come off and I think it will look great when it's painted.

Speaking of paint, what color would you paint the walls? We are not planning to put the chair rail back up. The cabinets will not be changing, but we likely will change the backsplash out at some point. And here are the four kitchen chairs we just bought. I absolutely love the upholstery! I haven't the slightest idea what color to put on the walls so any and all suggestions would be welcome!

This is not the exact table, but I want something like it (this one is just a bit too big I think).  I am thinking that we will have a bench under the window on the long-side, with two chairs on the other long side and one chair at each end. 

This Old House

Well, it's obviously been a long time since I've posted on here. Life has been busy. Connor is 20-months (almost 21!). He is a walking, talking bundle of energy and so much fun! I will update some more about Connor in another post, but this post is about our new house!

We put an offer on a house back in October and we just closed on it yesterday. It was very satisfying after years and years of putting pretty much every penny I earned into savings, though a little less satisfying to see all that money leave our account :-) It is a great house with great bones that just needs some elbow grease. It was built in 1927 and has so much charm and character! It's 5 bedrooms (with another small room on the 2nd floor that's considered a den, but could easily be a bedroom), 2.5 baths with a great backyard for Connor and Oxford. Before you comment on the bedroom count and how many kids we are going to have, you will see that we are turning two of the bedrooms into a third floor playroom, so it will ultimately be a 4 bedroom house. We will be in the same town where Danny and I grew up, but a slightly different neighborhood which will be a nice change, so it won't feel like we are exactly reliving our youth.

Anyway, on with the exciting stuff...pictures! The big picture is that we are painting all the woodwork white and painting every other wall. So even if I don't say it in the picture, assume it's happening.

The house side, taken yesterday! To the right is a covered porch, with an open part further back. 

This is the front walkway up to the house. I love the curved front door. 

Front hallway. The floors are marble, not vinyl. They just need a good cleaning and will look great. We are going to paint the wood, skirt boards and wall here. 

 Painting old woodwork white seems to be quite controversial we've noticed, but it is a look we far and away prefer. Also, there is some damage to the wood in a number of places that would require us to refinish the woodwork, so we figure if we're paying for it might as well get what we want.

This is the other side of the front hallway. There is a coat closet and a built in storage bench, plus the neat little built in shelf right there. Again, we will be painting the wood white.

Front hallway again. Straight ahead in the dining room and to the right in the living room. 

This is the living room standing in the doorway. It's such a great room. I love the windows and the french doors.  

This is straight ahead from the doorway. The  bay window is such an awesome feature here.

We also love the built in shelves. Our plan for this room is to build a window seat at the bay window, paint and fix up the mantle. The hardwood is original (we believe) and it's in great shape, so we will just have it recoated. 

This is the dining room. Again the floors are in great shape, so we just need them buffed and recoated. We will paint the wood white, and pick a new wall color. We will also look for a cool new chandelier.  

Here  is the kitchen. A bit dated, but in great shape. We will remove the wallpaper and paint and fix the spots on the floor where the stain/finish has come up, but otherwise don't plan to do much here for the time being. The appliances will ultimately need to be replaced, but are hoping to get a little help from our home warranty for that. 

Small mudroom off the kitchen. To the right is the attached garage and straight ahead is a door to the driveway. 

Not much point to this picture other than to show the location of the bathroom/basement. It's right off the kitchen to the left. 

Downstairs bathroom. This needs a smaller sink because it's a tiny little powder room.  

These are the stairs going upstairs. We plan to replace this carpet with a runner and paint the stair backs white. 

Just another kitchen view. We are removing that desk and putting our kitchen table over there. 

Landing to the second floor. 

Second floor hallway. First right will be a kids' room, second right our room, straight ahead Connor's room. To the left the bathroom and next to the stairs the "den". We plan to remove this carpet and refinish the floors underneath.

This will be our master bedroom. Forgot to take a picture, but the closet is great, which in these older homes is hard to come by! 

Second floor bathroom. The tile work in here is beautiful.  

This room is the den. We don't know why they call it a den and not a bedroom, but they do. It's pretty small, but will work great for a nursery some day.  

This is outside the den.  

Here is the third floor landing. We will replace this carpet.  

These are two bedrooms on the third floor. We plan to knock out the wall between them to make a playroom. This is the room on the right (so left wall is going) 

And here's the other room (so the wall on the right is going) 

Third floor bedroom. Again, the tile work is beautiful. We will likely paint the vanity, but who knows maybe we will keep the yellow. Grey and yellow is really in right now ;-)

A future child's room  

Connor's room