I've been up to more than a few things since the last update. First off, I finished all work at the house on Poplar St. The driveway is complete and it here's how it looks.
Bricks starting to go in... music by Armin van Buuren at the jobsite.
Halfway done.
And, complete. It really wasn't so bad - this took just a few hours to do.
There was also a problem with the door to the main bedroom. Somehow the back side was broken nearly completely off, and unfortunately I couldn't find a replacement at Habitat so I had to fix this one. It was pretty easy... cut a piece of wood to match what was missing (which wasn't even real wood!!!) and glue in place.
Before.
After. This is of course, before I painted it white and rehung the door.
There was also a problem with the heater over there and I called a HVAC place to change out the disconnect box. While over there I went up into the attic and looked around. Up there was an old wooden vegetable(?) crate and a small radio from the 1940s, along with an original light fixture for the bedroom. I'm going to grab the radio later today. It's missing the electronics but could maybe be repurposed for something else.
And... back to the house this site was SUPPOSED to be about. I'm hard at work on winter tasks and making pretty good progress on them. The middle garage door is finished now.
It went from green, to this...
And finally this. Pay no attention to the writing on the driveway... I also pressure washed the sidewalk and deck, and decided to write a few things on the driveway while I was out there.
Still remaining on my list of winter stuff to do is,
- Stain the deck
- Refinish the last garage door
- Power wash the house, caulk and repaint all trim.
- Remove grass and black fabric from the landscaping, lay new fabric and put down river rock
- Repair our horrible front yard gate... easily the biggest eyesore in the neighborhood
Three of these tasks will take only a day or two, but the garage door and painting will take longer. Once THAT is complete, I get to start on the big project for the year. The kitchen/living room/whatever else comes along.
From a construction perspective, the best order to work in is to remove the flooring and subfloor from the living room, add a beam underneath for support and replace the poorly-designed, structural deck post underneath the house with a new pier, and then take care of all vapor barrier issues in that region of the house. Next up are new joists and then I can lay down the subfloor.
After that I'll move on to the kitchen, removing everything from in there and doing the same structural and vapor barrier work as the living room. Then the wall between the family room and kitchen will disappear, I can take care of electrical/plumbing/gas, put the walls back together and essentially build the kitchen back. Returning the living room to normal will come last.
In the past I've done a bad job of posting "before" pictures, so here are a few now.
This peninsula will go away. The stone flooring will likely carry forward from the kitchen to the front door (on the right)
We're considering leaving the wall oven in place and moving the refrigerator to the right of it. The cooktop will go where the refrigerator is, and the spot where the sink and dishwasher are will become a peninsula. I'm tempted to add a narrow, 4 drawer cabinet to the left of the dishwasher.
This is the view towards the kitchen from the living room. This wall will go. I'm ok with there being a header about the height where the one for the door/window is now since eventually the ceiling in this room will be higher anyway. The window used to look out to the back yard from the sink but now just goes from room to room.
Another shot of the wall that will be removed. There's a header in there somewhere for another window that was covered up when the addition was made.
We have a pretty good idea what kind of cabinets we like and are starting to work with countertops. We went to AGM in North Charleston to look around and didn't find a lot that both of us were crazy about until at the end, we saw this.
It has HUGE areas that just glow. We've never seen anything with color quite like it. Once we have an idea how much we'll need, we're paying for it upfront to make sure that we'll have it available. The slab behind this one has too much green to it; we like the front one much more.
