Tuesday, June 22, 2010

First Floor Remodel

I know that most of you have been waiting for this post, so here it is.

About a year ago our house plumbing line decided to get clogged and to flood the kitchen and parts of the playroom and dining room. After cleaning it up and replacing the wet carpet pad, Noel and I started planning for what we were going to do. Also the fact that my carpet went from beige to zebra kool-aide stripped carpet did help in the decision as well.

Noel and I decided that it was a good time to change the carpet. Then we decided that if we were going to change the carpet that we wanted to do some things to the first floor before the new carpet was put in. The list went like this:
1. Remove Popcorn ceiling
2. Paint walls
3. Tile the fireplace
4. Tile in front of french doors and fireplace
5. Replace the carpet on the stairs with laminate
6. Sand half-wall and triangle by stairs
7. Run wires through the ceiling for the surround sound, and the new speakers in the future.
8. Fix holes and bad patch jobs on the first floor.
9. Replace the ceiling fan in the playroom, move it to the kitchen
10. Replace ceiling fan in the TV room.
11. Paint column
12. Replace baseboards
13. Wire for future light fixture above the sink

We started with one thing, replacing the carpet and it turned into a huge task; which is not different than any other project that Noel and I have done to our home.

Scraping the ceilings was not that bad and we did that in about a week. Once the ceiling were scraped Noel and I started on our own projects. I was in charge of the painting and Noel was in charge of fixing holes, running wires, cutting cement board for the fireplace, tiling the fireplace and entry-way from the french doors, putting up molding, moving ceiling fans, running wire for future electrical needs, and doing the stairs.

I was motivated to get the painting done and I did. I even painted the electrical outlets. My arms hurt pretty bad after I painted the ceiling and all the walls, but my house was looking great.

Noel wanted to know what was under the half-wall landing. It was painted white but we thought that there was a nice wood underneath. After sanding it we found that the wood was fantastic and that we wanted to stain it to match the entertainment center. Noel also wanted to sand the wall that our projection screen beams on to a smooth surface. All the sanding caused a lot of dust to fly through my house. So every night while we were cleaning we just kept telling ourselves that when it was all done we would feel fantastic and it would look great. There was a lot of dusting and washing of all items. When we did the stairs we contained the dust for the most part but we had to disconnect the fire alarms because they were going off because of all the dust.

The demolition was the fun part. We got to destroy the fireplace Sheetrock and rip the marble off the fireplace. I had fun with the hammer, wonder bar and my hands. Then after the demolition then Noel cut the cement board for the fireplace and he started to tile. Now Noel has become a great tile man because of all the other tile jobs that we have done in our home. He impressed me greatly when he started cutting tiles at 45 degree angles for the edges of the fireplace. Also his tile work was great on the floor and the thought process that he went through to make sure that the floor was smooth and uniform. Also the "safari" helped by removing the tile spacers every morning after Noel tiled a section of the fireplace.

The hardest part for me was the holes in the ceiling. Noel thought it would be a great idea to run the wires for our surround sound through the ceiling instead of under the carpet. It sounded fine until he started to cut the holes in the ceiling. He promised me that he would fix the holes.

The stairs were a challenged. We were not going to do the stairs because we were not going to pay the installer of our carpet what they wanted to charge to do each stair and the laminate was not in our budget. When we went to pay for the carpet install there was laminate of clearance and the manager sold me each box for $15 if I took all nine boxes. SOLD. You see each box was normally $54 a box. The only thing was that there was underlayment on each piece that I had to scrape off so that we could lay it on our stairs, but the savings was worth the pain and suffering of scraping the underlayment off the laminate. Also we had to cut off the front sides of the stairs as well; so I got to use the router to get the fronts off and then Noel used a chisel to remove the remaining pieces off. Noel spent a lot of time cutting each piece to make sure that it worked and when we were finally done nailing in our final piece of the stairs and we looked up at our gorgeous stairs it was well worth the time, pain, suffering and energy we used.

The carpet is a wonderful color and we love that but we have some issues with the carpet that will be another post, and all the drama of that situation. Stay tuned.

All in all Noel and I had a great time with this project. We like to make our home better and we love to do it ourselves. I think we appreciate it more because we know how many late nights we stayed up to finish it. There are a few things that we still need to do, but we had to stop because Noel starts his travel season again and so we will pick up on weekends and do what we can. Please enjoy our slideshow. The first couple of pictures are when we first looked at the house and I was pregnant with Elijah.




2 comments:

cheryl said...

wow girl! it looks awesome.

Unknown said...

What a difference from when you all first moved in. Everything was white. I love what you have done with the downstairs. Everything looks great. You both work well together. Can't wait to see the children and you this Saturday. Love Mom