They didn't build Rome in a day

I'm starting to feel the pressure now to get the house back in working order, but as I like to remind Suzanne, they didn't build Rome in a day! The Floor Guys did a great job installing the bamboo floors, although they drove me crazy with how they made themselves at home during the week that it took them to do the installation. I just had to keep telling myself that the ends would justify the means, otherwise, I probably would have strangled the flooring guys. In the end, everything turned out well and I would certainly recommend these guys for any of you looking to have some hardwoods/bamboo/cork floors installed anytime soon.

Today, I'm prepping the walls in the living room for a new coat of yellow paint! I also installed a plastic workshop sink in our kitchen that will serve as a temporary sink until the cabinets show up in a week or so. My goal for this weekend is to get the downstairs painted and ready for the cabinet install. I'll post some before and after pics once I finish up.

Back to school

Suzanne and I (and the 2 dogs) are now living in the equivalent of a college dorm room. Everything that was downstairs is now upstairs in one of the three bedrooms, including a make-shift kitchen that consists of a microwave, a toaster oven, and a crock pot. Suzanne washed our dinner dishes in the guest bathroom sink and the dogs won't even venture downstairs because of the mess! I spent the weekend tearing out the kitchen cabinets and the drywall in the half bath-minus a short break to drive Suzanne to the ER. The flooring guys showed up first thing this morning and gutted the existing carpet, linoleum, and wood flooring. They should spend the better part of this week installing the bamboo. I'll post more pics as they make progress this week.

The Pilgrimage

No, not this one...

I'm talking about this one...

That's right folks, Suzanne and I were in D.C. this weekend for a friend's wedding and somehow I convinced her to stop with me at IKEA in the Potomac Mills Mega-shopping area on our way home today. I told her that all I wanted to do was look at the cabinets that I was planning on ordering for the kitchen and I also needed to pick up 2 glass medicine cabinet shelves.

Well...2 hours later, and we were walking out of the store with a big bag of goodies, and the best part - I was able to actually order the cabinets at the store today! Yep, because IKEA offers an online kitchen design tool, I had been tinkering with the kitchen cabinet layout for about a month now and pretty much had it the way I wanted it. You can save your design to the IKEA server, which I had done, and I was able to access my design right there in the store today! All we needed to do was print out our parts list and the sales associate helped get the order placed.

So, the cabinets should be here the first week of Nov., the floors start getting installed a week from tomorrow, and if I can ever get this blasted order to actually go through the system at Sears.com (don't ask, I'll blog about it soon), then the appliances should be here about the time the cabinets arrive.

Stay tuned, there should be some pretty significant updates on the Blog over the next month or so!

Demolition Derby

Tonight, my buddy Derrick Weaver came by to help me tear out the closet wall under the stairs and rebuild the divider wall and new closet door in the hall way. Derrick and I go way back in our remodeling world, in fact, I helped him demolish his old kitchen about 6 years ago so I suppose turn about is fair play!


We began by tearing out the 3 layers of linoleum and luan sub flooring (I kid you not, there were actually 3 layers of linoleum, 2 of which were identical...go figure?!?). This resulted in a big pile of debris and a whole lot of sweat.





We broke for dinner (thanks to Suzanne, who made her famous black bean lasagna last night so that all we had to do was pop it in the oven and 45 minutes later, dinner was served!). With full bellies, we went back to work. My grand plan..or actually, Wendy Smith's "grand plan" was to move the fridge from its intrusive spot in the kitchen and tuck it away in the closet under the stairs. In doing this, we would actually gain some additional counter top and cabinet space so it sounded like a good plan to Suzanne and me.


Derrick and I started the demo of the load bearing wall by adding temporary supports to the ceiling joists. While I have never dealt with load bearing walls before, this turned out to be a fairly simple task...thanks to Derrick and his previous experiences. I was especially happy because I got to use my reciprocating saw to tear out the old studs and base plates of the existing wall...exciting, I know!


Derrick stuck around long enough to give me some pointers on how to frame up the new closet door for the chest freezer, then headed home to his family at 9:30 PM. With Derrick gone, I finished the rough-in of the new closet door, built the new divider wall that will go between the fridge closet and the freezer closet, and closed up the original door opening. All in all, it was a good night.


Next up, I need to finish scraping the popcorn off the kitchen ceiling, sand and mud the areas of the ceiling that need touching up, and then install my lighting and finally paint the ceiling. My plan is to try and knock out all of this before the bamboo floor installers show up on the 22nd of this month. It's going to be a busy couple of week nights for me for sure.

What a mess!

It's late...I'm tired...this will be short.

Yesterday, I moved the furniture from the dining room upstairs to the guest bedroom/staging area in preparation for beginning the demo. This leaves me with plenty of room in the dining room to store things from the kitchen.

Today, I finally started demo on the kitchen. I started with scraping the ceilings in the sun room and half-bath.

Then, I moved on to tearing out the wall where the frig will go.

Later this week, I'll finish scraping the remaining popcorn from the kitchen ceiling, mud the ceiling, sand it, and hopefully get it painted before the weekend. After that, I'm planning on installing the new lights!!

Good night

A little side-tracked

Well, that big weekend I promised everyone...it, um, well, you see...

Needless to say, it didn't happen as I had originally planned, but then again most things typically don't for me these days. Instead, I decided it was time to go ahead and get gutters installed on the house because I was worried that the new doors that we had installed this past Spring would start to rot like the old ones if I didn't get gutters installed soon. The purpose of the gutters being that they would divert the runoff from the roof instead of dumping it onto the ground in front of the doors, and then splashing back up onto the threshold and frame of the door and eventually causing it to rot. However, before the gutters could go up, I needed a way to handle the additional drainage from the downspouts. To make a long story short, I ended up renting one of these

yep, ain't she a beauty!? You're looking at 1015 lbs. (yes, a HALF-TON) of solid, honest-to-goodness, earth crunching, root tearing, mud slinging power! That's right, I rented a 24" trencher to dig a 110' long, 4" wide, 12" deep trench from the house, across the backyard, and down the slope towards a small stream. What would have probably taken me a good 2 days to dig by hand, ended up taking me only an hour and a half with this baby. If you have any need to dig a trench anytime in the near future, I highly recommend renting one of these!

So with the drainage and gutter work done (oh yeah, they installed them today...I would recommend these guys for anyone looking for gutters), my focus is back to the kitchen and downstairs. This weekend, I plan on removing all of the popcorn ceiling in the kitchen and sun room, tearing out the base mouldings, and hopefully reconfiguring the walk-in-closet in the kitchen so that the frig will fit in there. I'll post pictures as they become available :)

Everything including the kitchen sink...

With the master bath now complete, and a little one due in March of next year, my schedule for completing the kitchen/half bath/downstairs/stairs/upstairs landing remodel just got seriously compressed!

So, without wasting a second, I started on what I am currently referring to as "Phase 2 - Everything including the kitchen sink." That's right folks, take a good long look at her, because in a few short months, she's going to look completely different...and no, I'm not referring to my lovely, pregnant wife Suzanne, rather our ugly, outdated, and cramped kitchen! Here's a picture for you to ponder...oh, what will he do, what will he do?

O.K., o.k., I know, the suspense is killing you right?! Well, for starters, I'll be installing this (yep, all 37 boxes of it!)

throughout the downstairs, including the kitchen, sun room, half-bath, back hallway, family room, dining room, and foyer. And as if that weren't enough, I'll also install this up the stairs and in the upstairs landing. But before I can do that, I have to scrape the popcorn ceilings in the kitchen, sun room, and half-bath, and also tear out the existing kitchen cabinets. Things should start rolling later this weekend...I'll try and post an update late Sunday night!