Renovations: Phase 2

Phase 2 happened last fall and a little early this spring. We stained the entire outside of the house and garage. After blasting clean the real wood siding, it still had lots of extremely dark and extremely light patches from sun and weathering over the years, so we had to go with an opaque stain - it looks like we painted, but it is actually wood stain. Went with a brown (anything else just would seem weird) and a khaki-ish trim color.

Why is mom taking down the basketball goal while dad watches? Who knows. There is now a nice basketball goal-shaped patch on the house where the texture of the wood is different since it didn't weather as much as the wood around it. Lovely.

Dad starts staining the garage. It looks a lot brighter when the stain is wet - the finished product is darker and more subdued.

Mike stains trim.
Dad stains the "uppers"
Mike and Dad tear out the old doors. (You can see our new porch light in this picture, too. It matches the one on the front porch and our new post-light by the driveway)
New front door.

Next up: Phase 3 - laundry room/bathroom.

Before and Afters!

Well, sorry it took so long, things still aren't COMPLETELY done (we have some touch-up paint to do), but it's close enough to take some "after" shots. See how many times you can spot Rigby in the pictures...

Living room:
BEFORE:

AFTER:

Front entry hall:
AFTER:
Dining Room:
BEFORE:
AFTER:

Kitchen
BEFORE:
AFTER:

Bathroom
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Craft/sewing/music room (previously the master bedroom):
AFTER:

Office (previously the "den")
AFTER:

Bedroom Hallway:
AFTER:
BONUS: Here are the kitties.
Skiba chasing Sadie
Skiba
Sadie
Rigby got jealous and wanted his picture taken too

FINALLY another update!

Well here I am, an update is way past due! We have many more things accomplished since the last post. The floors are COMPLETELY done! (Stained, stained, varnished, varnished). We have our living room furniture/rug moved in, office furniture in (and a new computer to replace my slowly failing PowerBook mac). Right now, we're painting doors and trim. After that, we just need to continue "settling" in and getting things organized/arranged in here. We're almost done, but it's going very slowly since I'm in school, Mike works, and M/D can only come once a week to help out. Here are just a few picture updates from the past month. They're still not completely current, but I'm kind of waiting until I can get good "after" pictures to post many more pictures. We're THAT close!

Putting the old kitchen fan into our bedroom. No more head bonking. Unless you stand on the bed...
New blinds for all bedrooms. This is before the windows were painted. The wood showing is now all painted white!
One of my new "friends" at the house. A small tree frog who likes to suction himself onto our kitchen window at night when there are bugs on it. He disappeared awhile ago when Mike cleaned out his home of wood scraps on the ground. :(
Now the "fun" stuff. Here is me staining the floor to the living/dining/hall. It took about 3 hours for each coat (2 coats). I left a "walking strip" so we could still live in the bedroom. The "walking strip" took another hour or so to stain once the other side was dry. Whew. What a lot of work.

This pretty much sums up staining in general.

And here is the finished floor with 2 coats of stain---but not varnish on yet!
Now for the varnishing! D did that.

Here is M painting trim

And here is proof of Kelsey's "renovation-brain." I was putting cabinet knobs onto all the kitchen/dining room cabinets. I definitely put this one on the wrong side. If anyone gets stuck INSIDE the cabinet, at least they will have a handle to aid them in escaping.
Oh, and here is another turkey picture! They're everywhere all the time.

Getting closer...I guess...

Well here I am again with another small update from the Double Diamond Ranch.

We've been "moved in" for almost 2 weeks now. The bedrooms' varnish has all cured completely, so we were able to start putting up trim and moving big furniture into those rooms.

Dad cutting trim:

We finally have our bed in the bedroom along with our closet/clothes set up and our dresser in. Here's where we were sleeping for about 3-4 nights. It was such a lovely luxury accomodation. I got to wake up to the lovely sight of a miter saw!
The bathroom has been put to good use. We still need to put the final coats of varnish onto the cabinets and paint the trim, but the bathroom is pretty much done after that.



Here are some pictures of our other lighting solutions.
Bathroom vanity light:
Dining room light (on a dimmer switch):
Hallway light (same light in front entry and bedroom hallway):

We got the kitchen painted! It just needs the trim painted and new knobs on the doors and we'll be done with the kitchen! I have most of my kitchen stuff organized now and have been cooking regularly, but I'm still missing at least 1 box of packed kitchen stuff that I can't seem to find..

Since the pictures: All the trim is now up and all the nail holes are filled. We're working on putting on primer paint on the windows so we can paint all the windows/trim/doors soon. Dad has most of the doors hung and fitted. They still need to be painted and some still need their knobs/hardware installed. Dad installed a shelf on the empty wall in the kitchen that has some lighting on it to help fill the dark void that that end of the kitchen becomes without enough light. We have satellite TV now with DVR service. The satellite looks beautiful on the very peak of the house (the only place we could get a signal).

We still need to paint the hallway, do a final sanding on the living room/dining room floors, stain and varnish those floors, paint all the trim, windows, and doors, and do little touchup work on paint in all the rooms. There's also lots of little odds and ends that need to be done, like replace all the outlets/outlet covers that haven't been replaced yet. I can't wait to get my stuff out of boxes and actually organized into a home. It's driving me crazy right now. The smell of strong oil paint in my nostrils isn't helping much either....