We had a solid week of real tedium, between the wallpaper removal and kitchen cabinets. After spending almost all day Sunday peeling this bathroom, we finally finished up on Tuesday evening. It was a huge relief. No more wallpaper in the entire house!
We had another big tedious thing on the horizon, though: Benjamin insisted on taking all the doors off the kitchen cabinets to paint them properly, which of course means also taking all the handles and hinges off and then reassembling everything. These took four coats of paint, plus some touch-ups. We brought over a bunch of paperback books to prop them up off the floor - our official moving in of the first belongings. The books are now boxed up in the sun room closet.
After this half-hearted taping off of the kitchen cabinets, we quit using tape and started freehanding everything. I think it saves time overall.
Here you can see the additional layer of old linoleum that was under the kitchen and laundry room.
This bathroom was a mess. We knew there was a leak under the toilet because the floor moved. The sellers gave us some cash to compensate for getting it fixed, but of course the contractor said "I don't know what we'll find once we take that floor up." It turns out that the subfloors in the bathrooms were only 1/2" plywood, which he seemed to find puzzling and said was likely the cause of the problems - it wasn't sturdy enough, so the floor flexed and eventually caused the toilet to crack then there was a tiny hairline leak for years and years. Anyway, they took this whole thing up and re-laid a subfloor of normal thickness and are going to clean up all that gross mold. Plus, we got a new toilet. I wanted a new toilet anyway because this one was small and somehow depressing.
They took out the cabinets in the laundry room in order to lay the tile, which I did not realize was going to happen. The half-cabinet on the left had clearly at some point been home to some mice, however, and I had been debating making Ben rip it out anyway rather than dealing mentally with the idea of storing items in a previously mouse-infested cabinet. So we seized this opportunity and I told the contractor not to put any of the cabinets back. This will make the space better suited for two cat litter boxes, too.
The flooring guy found this somewhere underneath layers of old linoleum.
The gross bathroom was slowly starting to improve!
On Saturday, we reassembled the kitchen. It took seven hours for Ben to put on new hinges and handles and replace all the cabinets. This was the first one!
He did not love this task.
While he was reassembling, I spent the entire day painting the kitchen trim. It's amazing how long these small details take compared with rolling a big room. But man, it is worth it. I can't stop staring at the kitchen.
Having generally normal paint colors makes weird details like this corner cabinet space seem quirky and fun rather than unsettling.
This was the vent on the kitchen floor. I remember glancing at it nervously during the open house, with a little fleeting thought of "what am I even doing right now." Needless to say, it is not getting reinstalled.
On Sunday Ben replaced the absolutely ancient and disgusting vent hood with a new one. We're getting a new cooktop as well, but the oven is staying. When everything was green and pink it looked bad, but in the context of a normal-looking kitchen it became clear that the oven is actually almost brand-new.
I feel like Harriet might not been much of a cooking-focused person.
After this I cleaned up the kitchen and got all the paint cans and related detritus off the countertops. Now it almost seems like a normal room!
Don't worry, though, we still have plenty to tackle: Ben went to work on the bathrooms. The hallway bathroom was a deep, bright blue, somehow much more offensive than you'd think. It was also weirdly shiny - check out the ceiling light reflecting off the back wall.
Meanwhile, I spent the entire day on Sunday painting woodwork. There are way, way too many windows and doors in this house.
All the trim is a shiny ivory. For some reason it takes three coats, minimum, to cover up with white. We are going to get some primer to see if that helps cut the overall work, because we still have many doors to go.
Ben painted the outer part of the previously-wallpapered bathroom as well.
The blue one immediately felt like an entirely different space. So relaxing.
I mainly just kept staring at the kitchen. We're replacing the laminate countertops as well but right now they don't even seem that bad.
On Sunday night I got a text from my Estonian floor man "I like to start tomorrow." AWESOME. I went over Tuesday morning to look at it. They had done about half the house. It was pretty freaking great already.
THE RAILINGS WERE GONE. Amazing.
Tuesday night I went back again to see the progress. The tile had arrived. I'd met the guy on Tuesday morning and he said he was going to start tiling on Wednesday. They're having to do some trading off because once the hardwood guys start sanding & finishing, nobody can be in the house until that's done. The tile guy will come back at the end to finish up.
Everything was alllllmost done.
This is the guest bedroom. It was brown before.
The bathrooms and laundry room were all prepped and ready for tile.
Ben's studio, which was lemony green.
And the previously blue bathroom.
This is our bedroom. It looks like a NORMAL PLACE!! And the floors aren't even finished.
Sweet, sweet kitchen. Somehow all the rooms seem absolutely enormous now that they have floors.
Apropros of nothing, here's the back patio as seen from the sun room.
We talked about having stairs built the whole way across these transitions to the sunken front room, but decided ultimately to just leave what was there and figure it out later (mainly because building stairs all the way across in two places was going to cost $3200). It actually looks less weird than I thought it would. We may do built-in bookcases or something similar someday... but for now, the openness makes the room seem huge.
The blue bathroom has a floor! We went with marble in both bathrooms.
There's still a lot of work to be done here - the front door is still shiny ivory, the fireplace needs finishing, the light fixtures are awful - but this is starting to feel like a place we can actually live.
Here is Ben contemplating the last bits of carpet in the house. They made custom stair treads that were lying in the living room, but I guess they didn't have a chance to install them yet.
Memorial Day weekend is falling right in the middle of the floor work, so things will get pushed out a bit longer, but we're hoping all the flooring will be done by June 1. We still have another weekend left of painting - the laundry room, many doors, the trim in the front rooms & bathrooms. And we've also started buying things like switchplates and light fixtures that need to be installed. But it really feels like it's all starting to come together.
