Exterior Update

Here are a few pictures I have taken over the last week.

Doors

The doors between the butler’s pantry and the pantry/future laundry room are going to be converging pocket doors which will be visible from the kitchen. I really wanted doors with a little something special in that area. I also wanted to make sure that the selected doors included glass to let the light into the butler’s pantry from the window in the pantry/future laundry room. We found the old doors shown below and decided they were perfect for the spot. The wood on the bottom of the doors was rotten and they were not set up as pocket doors. The company who is building our exterior doors picked them up and said they could remove the glass and build two new converging pocket doors for them. We are excited to see the final product.

Here is a look at our front door that will be delivered and installed tomorrow. We are going to stain it a dark brown. It should look quite nice when it is all finished.

First Floor Framing Update

Here is a quick framing picture update. It is changing so much each day that I can’t keep up with it. This was yesterday and today it looks totally different because they have added all the exterior sheathing and the 2nd floor decking which really helps define each space.

Front Elevation

Entry Way 

Looking into Dining Room from Entry

Looking into Living Room from Dining Room

Looking into Kitchen from Living Room

Master Bedroom

Master Bath (from Master Bedroom)

Master Closet

Back Porch

Cabinet Designs

Until now, I never thought that much about cabinets. Don’t get me wrong, I would see cabinets I liked but I never took the time to figure out what exactly it was about a certain cabinet that I really liked...until now.  Now I notice cabinets everywhere and find myself looking at every little detail, or lack of detail as it may be. When we first started with the house design, Josh and I began pulling pages out of magazines and books, marking internet pages and surveying every house we entered. We both liked really simple shaker style cabinets with exposed hinges but to us the function of each cabinet was just as important as the outward design. In order to satisfy my need to see the cabinets and to make sure that every little detail was correct and functional, I drew each cabinet in the house to scale in plan in section view. Those crazy engineering tendencies I guess.  It took a while but it forced us to think about the function and appearance of the cabinets in each room. We spent a lot of time measuring existing cabinets, and marking out spaces with furniture to get a feel for an area. We added every note we could think of to insure the cabinet maker understood the design and layout. I will admit that now that I am writing this it seems a little crazy but honestly this whole project is a little crazy so this is just par for the course.

No. 1 Reason NOT to Wear Capri Pants to a Job Site

Fall

This is a picture of our neighbor’s tree last week. It was so beautiful I had to share.

Demolition Derby

We began two weeks ago. Some guys we use to work with at the beach came up for the majority of the week to help us out. They were great! The drawings have us removing most of the walls in the house. Because the existing hardwood floors are in such incredible shape, we want to reuse them and needed to be careful not to damage them during demo. Our plan is to weave (http://www.hgtv.com/home-improvement/hardwood-floor-patch/index.html ) in new wood flooring where walls were removed and add additional wood flooring to match in the additional areas. We will sand all the floors down and stain them with a very dark stain to get a nice even feel. The roof will come off next week when they begin framing.  

The inside of the house certainly looks different with all the walls down. Here are a few pictures of the process.

Before they started tearing out the walls, I grabbed a few items out of the house that I am certain you will see again somewhere in the finished house…refinished of course.  

The Plan

I accidentally deleted this post so here it goes again…

Before we even had a signed contract, we began working with Chris Reebals of Christopher and Associates ( http://www.candassociates.com/index.php?page=home ) to come up with a plan for our renovation. Being in construction, Josh and I have come to appreciate the value in a good set of construction documents and were happy to find Chris to help us get our thoughts on paper.

The original floor plan is shown below. As you can see, the rooms are very small and the house is very chopped up and maze like.

Josh and I had our “wish list” of sorts that we wanted to make sure we incorporated into our renovation. Our list included:

·         A fireplace (now that we live up north J)

·         An open kitchen/living area

·         A master bathroom and closet

·         A dining room that will fit a table for 10 (Josh and I both have large families)

After our first meeting with Chris, we were convinced for “resale” and to fix the front elevation that we should add a second story. Here is the final elevation drawn by Chris. I still can’t believe that the existing house can look like this but Josh and Chris assure me that it can.

Below is AutoCAD Drawing (click to enlarge) of the new floor plan for the first floor. As you can see, we are relocating the stairs to open up the living area and kitchen area. We are also doing a small bump out in the living room to make that room a little larger and a little bump out in our closet. We are leaving the one guest bedroom and bathroom as they are and just replacing the tile, bathroom fixtures, doors, crown and base in those two rooms. We are also adding the porch off the back. The porch was one of those "if we don't do it now..." items. Although the butler’s pantry layout has changed since this drawing was created, it will still remain in the same location. The laundry room shown will be used by us as a pantry but will have a hookup for a washer and dryer in case we get sick of going into the basement to do laundry.

For the second floor, we are adding two bedrooms and two bathrooms. There is also a place for a future forth bedroom or bonus room ("resale") that we most likely will not finish out during this project. The second floor will also include a computer desk area in the common area at the top of the stairs since we didn’t have room for this on the first floor.

The final two drawings shown are the front and rear elevations drawn in AutoCAD. We are making a few small changes to these but overall they will be very similar to what is shown. Josh and I are both very excited about the plan for our new house and ready to get started…and finished!

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie...

Everyone we talk to tells us the same thing “it will be more work, take longer and cost more than you ever imagined”. I am now convinced they are right. Honestly, I knew they were right from the beginning but I thought it would be better for my mental health to pretend like they weren’t.

 The first day we looked at the house we discussed renovating the kitchen and bathrooms and doing two small bump outs off the back of the house. The larger bump out was to expand the living room/kitchen and the other to add a master bathroom and closet.  We also talked about increasing the ceiling height from 8 feet to 9 or 10 feet in the living room/kitchen area.  Needless to say, it went from there and we ended up with a plan that is much greater than either of us originally imagined but one we both love.

The first issue was that the house needed a new roof. We came to the conclusion that if we were going to have to replace the roof then we should just go ahead and raise the ceiling height from 8 feet to 10 feet. Then it was the flexibility that would come with adding a second story to the house. From then on, each time Josh and I talked about the house one of us would inevitably say "well if we are going to do ____ then we should just go ahead and do _____while we are at it” or “we will never come back and do this later so we should just do it now” or my personal favorite “it will be good for resale”. Has anyone ever read the children’s book “IF YOU GIVE A MOUSE A COOKIE” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_You_Give_a_Mouse_a_Cookie? Apparently if you give Josh and Kate a house they will probably ask for _______.

The Project

When we began looking for a house, Josh and I seemed to agree on one thing. We wanted a PROJECT. Not a little project but a "whole house needs to be gutted" type of project. We knew from our last house that we are project people and that we would not be happy with renovations done by another owner. Why waste the money for an already renovated home, when we would want to tear it out in a year?  So after about two weeks of searching, we decided that we had found the house. It had everything we wanted: 

• Large Lot - Our Santa Rosa Beach lot was the size of a postage stamp
• Trees - Our SRB lot also lacked trees
• Good School System
• Quiet Street
• A Project: The house had not been updated since it was built in 1958

After a few times back and forth with the owners, the house was under contract. We closed on the house in September and I snapped these pictures to document the before.

View From The Street

 Glamorous Entry

Current Family Room

(The Previous Owner LOVED Pink)

Dining Room

Kitchen

Original Pink Oven

We have all the Paperwork and it is in Perfect Condition

This will soon be on Ebay!

 Breakfast Area in Kitchen

Back Family Room

Hallway

Guest Bedroom No 1

Guest Bathroom



Guest Bedroom No 2

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom

Stairs to Basement

Basement

Basement

Backyard