My House Monday – An Long-Awaited Update

Long awaited by me at any rate . . . not sure how eagerly my readership is to discover what we’ve been doing on the house but oh well.  🙂

When last we met [click], we had finished the flooring and then school was starting soon and . . . well, you can imagine how much we’ve gotten done since school — that giagantic time sync — started.  Well, actually, maybe you can’t because you don’t know to factor in the persuasive insistance of on Mr. Miller that progress be made.  Oh, and his mother is also amazing and comes to help us a lot.  I have given up a few precious Saturdays to get work done many times since school started.  So, here is my update . . .

Before:

This is my “old” dining room looking it’s best.  First of all, notice the nasty carpet.  Ugh!  I’d never put white carpet in a house.  We intended to get rid of it within a year of moving into our house.  That was 2001.  Sooooo, you can imagine how glad we were to get rid of it.  The new flooring is a godsend.  Also notice the white drapes that don’t quite reach the floor.  Lovely — highwater drapes.  They are all the rage.  They were necessary because our old slider took up most of that wall and was aluminum framed with single-paned glass.  In the winter, that room was unbearable even with the drapes (of course if they’d reached the ground it might have been better!).  The worst thing about the room though was the traffic pattern.  The table was designed to be smackdab in the middle of the room and that meant that all the traffic had to go around it.  It was the hub of the house — traffic came in from the entryway and living areas of the house, the kitchen, the backyard, and the garage access all went through that room with a table right in the middle of it all.  Useless design.  My architect husband had to fix that poor planning.

During:

During shots can be chaotic and overwhelming.  Note that the new floor is in and the new slider is in.  We got a smaller slider and re-oriented it so that it opened on the opposite side.  We also moved the light switch so that it is by the slider in the right place.  The walls are painted the same lovely yellow as the kitchen walls so it feels continuous.   Let’s look at some details.

New slider — smaller and double-paned glass.  Light switch recently moved.  Stool there to facilitate painting of walls.

Oh, we went ahead and took out a ugly, dangerous electric wall heater in the dining room.  We patched the wall and put in an electric socket.  Much more useful.

Most of our house has very rough-hewn trim at the windows and doors.  But, Greg felt that a more elegant look was called for in the dining room.  Hey, he’s the architect.  He also wanted to make sure that our {ahem} inexpensive vinyl sliding door looked less like an inexpensive vinyl sliding door.  Nice trimwork painted the same white really dresses it up.

Looks nice, doesn’t it?  The switchplate cover is one I did at our last Crafty Chix day in September.  I’m not happy with it but I can live with it.  🙂

This wall will eventually house a sideboard and a flat-screen tv.  Those are high-priced items that will have to wait awhile.  So, it’s hard to see how this will look eventually but it’s still looking better and better.

This armoir is an “antique”.  It used to house the kids’ tv and videos.  Now it’s my
“office/studio.”  It’s going to house my art stuff and my computer.  I’m turning my office (aka the dungeon) back into a full-time laundry room and pantry.  It’s going to take some getting used to but I think it will work out well in the long run.  Doesn’t it look gorgeous on the new floor with the yellow paint?

Nearly done:

So, it’s nearly finished.  Through the slider, you can see the white door to the laundry room.  It’s getting a fresh coat of paint.  The table is uncovered and in place.  We moved the chandelier to it’s new spot.  So much work still to do but my goodness this much feels very, very good.  As I type this, I am sitting in that black chair there on my laptop enjoying that cup of mocha on the table.  What a change from just a few months (and a lot of hard work) ago.

Well, I’d better get dressed . . . my mother is due here mid-morning so she can learn to be a teacher!  🙂

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Making progress

Back in the depths of time, our house stood empty for a number of years and there was a lot of water damage done at the time.  Hey, we live in a temperate rain forest and lack of maintenance takes a toll quickly.  The hardwood floors that are under our carpet are in bad shape and in part of the dining room, no longer exist.  Fortunately, we’d already figured that out and planned to replace them with bamboo flooring.  Greg pulled back the carpet to see what he could see on Saturday.  While we were getting ready for a party.

Isn’t he lucky that I’m a good sport?

Anyway, it’s ugly but not surprising.  We’ll pull the rest of the carpet out soon.  We worked out a schedule — with rough dates and stuff.  First thing is to pack up the kitchen.  I can’t believe we’re there already.  Guess I’m getting some paper products at the grocery store tomorrow.  Then we’ll take out the countertops.  Then we paint the interiors of the cabinets.  Then we sand the doors and exteriors.  And, then we paint.  and paint.  and paint.

All in our copious free time.

Hopefully we’ll be done before the kids go away to college.

My Stainless Steel Appliances

I mentioned before that we have replaced most of the appliances in the kitchen.  The latest is this lovely GE Spacemaker microwave “over-the-range” hood. We’ve wanted one forever. It’s lovely, isn’t it?

The first appliance we replaced was my range — the old electric one resulted in many burned meals. We got a used one from a friend who was remodeling. It works great. We converted it to propane and have been thrilled with it. (I’ll take a picture and share it!)

Next, we got a new dishwasher. The old one was a joke and after the 3rd major repair, Greg was done fixing it. I love the new one.

And, someday, we’ll be getting one of these . . . but not anytime soon!