Houston...we have a problem.

Holy cow, I just looked at my last post here at it is from Nov. 6. That's almost 2 weeks ago and I feel like it has been more like 2 months ago! Let's see, where did I leave off? Oh yes, I was hoping to have the cabinets installed and possibly even the appliances at this point; however, as things inevitably go with home renovations, they haven't quite gone as planned. 4 weeks ago, Suzanne sprained her ankle while out running the Woodcroft trails. On the same day, Holden was diagnosed with elevated blood calcium levels, which would eventually lead to him having to undergo surgery at the NC State vet school in order to remove one of his four parathyroid glands.

And then last Wednesday evening, I walked through the door after losing a really crappy game of indoor soccer, only to find a ginormous puddle of water on the brand new bamboo kitchen floor. Turns out one of my new supply valves for the kitchen sink decided to spring a pin-hole size leak, which are the worst because you typically don't notice them until it is way too late. Judging by the amount of water on, under, and in the bamboo floor, not to mention in the crawl space beneath the house, this thing had probably been leaking for a good 2 or 3 hours straight. Long story short - I got the leak fixed, the floors dried out, and everything back together by about 11 pm that night. Lawerence Green is coming by on Wednesday to check out the damage and help me come up with a game plan for fixing the buckling, stained floor in the kitchen.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that last weekend, prior to the water leak, as I was assembling the kitchen cabinets from IKEA late on Saturday night, I had one of those "ah ha" moments. My original plan for the kitchen involved moving the half-wall out about a foot to accommodate a wall oven. Well, after constructing a mock cabinet out of cardboard to see just exactly what this wall oven cabinet would do to the feel of the kitchen, Suzanne and I decided to scrap the wall oven design. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, it was, except that I forgot to change that one little dimension for the length of wall back to its original measurement since I wouldn't be moving the wall now. So, as I was putting the cabinets together at about 10 pm, I suddenly felt a wave of panic come over me as I realized that I had forgotten to re-size my kitchen design and that the cabinets that I was now assembling were actually going to be exactly one foot to long!! I ended up taking Monday off of work to drive up to IKEA, just south of DC, to return the cabinets that I had and buy new cabinets that would fit. After 7 hours of driving and 2 hours of shopping, I was back in Durham with the right cabinets and ready to start putting the kitchen back together.

Last weekend I hung sheetrock in the half bath and fridge alcove, re-plumbed the ice maker line, bathroom supply valves, and kitchen supply valves. This weekend, I hung the wall cabinets. Installed the doors and handles, started on the finish moulding, and picked up the appliances at Sears. It took 3 guys (me, Aaron, and one of my neighbor's friends) to get the beast of a stove into the house. I also am the proud new papa of a matching dishwasher and microwave hood. Once Lawrence comes by on Wednesday, I should know if the floors are going to need to be replaced or not and depending on that, can start installing the base cabinets and appliances. If the floors need to be replaced, then the cabinets and appliances will have to wait a week or two before being installed. Trust me, I've got plenty of other things I can work on while waiting for the floors!

Up next...find out about the floors, install the remaining cabinets and appliances, install the recessed lighting in the kitchen, finish sheetrocking the fridge alcove and coat closet under the stairs, and then start painting!

1 down...563 to go!

So last week I finished up the living room, check that off the ever growing list. I feel like I've made a small dent in a gigantic project, but I'll keep carving away the stone until it is done.

It ended up taking 2 coats of yellow paint to cover up the dark blue in the living room, but in the end Suzanne and I are both pretty pleased with the new color in the room. I need to install the blinds and curtains, but otherwise, the room is pretty much finished.

This week, things are moving quickly. The cabinets from IKEA showed up last Thursday and are currently residing in our dining room (they come in flat boxes and need to be assembled).

The appliances are scheduled to be here on Friday of this week, which basically leaves the bottleneck on me. This weekend, I plan on knocking out some of the jobs that are holding me back. I will begin by rerouting the water supply line for the ice maker (woo hoo...I get to use a blow torch!). Then, I'll sheetrock the bathroom, fridge alcove, and small portions of the kitchen and closet. Once the drywall is back up, I can hopefully start hanging cabinets!

Stay tuned for another update on Sunday night or Monday night...it's going to be a long weekend here in the Younger house.

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