Friday, October 17, 2014

Remodel 3: 2 bedrooms and a bath

We've been remodeling our 1950s house in stages. The first remodel was The Big One - gutting the kitchen, living room, entry, laundry area, and pantry. That was when we discovered that the house needed to be gutted - the wiring was kind of frightening. The second remodel, a few years later, was of my work area/office and my husband's work area/office. All that was left to tackle was the master bedroom, guest bedroom, and master bath.

The bedrooms were supposed to be pretty straightforward -  replace the windows, add some insulation, replace wiring, get rid of the off-white shag carpet. The main thing that got changed from our original plan was that we found out that the building code had changed and that windows needed to be accessible by a fireman - so they had to extend much lower than our current windows and awning style windows were not allowed. In the end, we loved having the extra light. Here's a pre and post picture of the guest bedroom -



The wall on the left was originally block, but it had no insulation in it and it was cracked, so we framed it in. A row of blocks was removed to allow for a larger trapezoid window,

The master bedroom was a similar process. Here's another pre and post -



The floors in both bedrooms are now a Capri Cork click linoleum engineered floor.

 The bathroom needed a total revamp. Again, here are some pre and post pictures-




We replaced the 1970s vanity and medicine cabinet with Ikea fixtures. The mosaic backsplash is by modwalls.




The green glass tile is also by modwalls. We got rid of the tub and made a shower with 2 showerheads. We had done this in our old house and loved it. We also decided to jazz up the area behind our toilet - it had always seemed like the toilet was in a dark hole behind the door to the bedroom but it is no longer -


At the same time as John (the contractor) and John (the hubby) were doing the remodel, we had solar panels installed on our roof. Very exciting. Now all our home energy needs except for the furnace will be supplied by solar power.


Now life is getting back to normal after about 3 months of remodeling. People ask, "Are you DONE with remodeling now?" Well, we'll never really be DONE, we like improving our house. The next major project on the list is the patio outside the living room. And we're always into scouring thrift stores for cool old stuff for the house. We found these lights a few years ago ($1 each at a thrift store) and had been saving them to use as reading lights over the bed so John is going to work on them next!