Day 40- 81 Square Feet

So do you remember the Attic Dormer/Birds Nest/Scary Room? Well it was the front A-frame to the house, an unfinished attic space that was kinda creepy and it was behind the little door you see below.

My brilliant idea was to turn it into a toy room for the kids, gut the space, add a window in place of the vent, insulate and drywall. So here it is gutted:
then we added side walls and insulation: Removed the vent, installed a window and drywall and mud:

And here it is primed and ready for some toy niches and a built-in desk space.

This space and the upstairs in general are definitely the biggest transformations to the house. So far I think it is pretty exciting! I added only 81 square feet to my floorplate and I think increased my value by at least $3-5000. Now I call that some bang for you buck! What do you think?

Day 39- Where Knights will Sleep

Well Lucas might have got the small end of the deal in regards to size of his bedroom but I made up for it with a very cool bed fit for a Knight (sorry you will have to wait in suspense!)

So...old room with wood paneling and carpet:

And new room with drywall and wood floors underneath! Sweet!

The room didn't have a closet before but we moved the entrance from a hall closet to a spot behind his door (if you remember this brilliant idea) No accent walls for Lucas since his dresser is green and his new bed is...

oh snap I almost gave it away! hehehe.

Day 38- The Princess' Tower (i.e. Lilly's Room)

The tower use to be dark and gloomy...definitely not fit for a princess.

The difference between the paneling and drywall is honestly insane. The space is so much brighter and feels even bigger.
I actually did pretty good here with the same picture positioning- check out the progress:
Existing:

1/2 demoed":

And drywall:

And the paint request from the princess was originally pink...then she changed it to "Rainbow Colors". Being her assistant I did talk her into staying with the pink and adding the rainbow colors into her bedding. She thought that was a perfect idea!

Day 38- MORE Drywall and a Door!

So do you remember the amazing wood paneling and great cabinet that we sledge-hammered out? And don't forget the ugly tile floor and barn fan? Needless to say I do not miss any of it.

Here it is with some fresh drywall and believe it or not the floor is actually wood underneath all of that drywall dust and mud you see below.
And here is what the 4th bedroom use to look like before I shrunk it and put in a back hallway, turned this closet into a laundry niche and added a back door...
So the wall to the left is my new office which gets a pocket door and this new fabulous door leads out to my new fabulous back yard!

but be careful because it is about a 42" drop once you step outside...I guess I might want to get some stairs built.

Day 36 & 37- Exterior Facelift

The exterior has definitely gone through some changes. The original plan was to keep the aluminum siding, patch and paint it until I could afford to do something different later. So the exterior would have a new roof, new attic window and be painted...that was the original plan.

Here is the original house...

Here it is with a new roof and carport removed...
Here it is once we realized that we couldn't perfectly match the existing aluminum siding and that I was spending 1/2 the money trying to patch and fix it as I would be just putting all new siding up. Soooo...off came all of the aluminum and the picture below is actually showing all of the original wood siding that was underneath the aluminum siding. It also shows my new attic octagon window and if you can see where the black is on the left that is actually showing the original window placement to the kitchen. If I would have had the money to change my kitchen cabinets I would have tried to put a window back in this location. What I found very interesting is that the house (underneath the wood siding) is covered is 1"x6"s vs. plywood that they use now days. You can see this around the new attic window.

I am thinking my neighbors probably started to wonder what the heck I was doing when they saw the house looking like the above. But once all the wood came off it looked better in Tyvec wrap than it did in aluminum siding if you ask me.

Here is a picture of the old carport and side door in case you forgot what it used to look like...

And here is a picture of the carport gone, side door closed up and new back door opening. Much better right??

New siding is almost done...you will have to stay tuned to see!

Day 34-35- MORE drywall

Progress!! This picture below is looking from my new office into the expanded kitchen.

now with drywall and a built-in little shelf niche!

So what use to be a bedroom closet is now a lundry niche and back door mudroom/hallway.

Here is the future door that is about to be cut in.

And below is the bathroom before (poorly updated)

And here it is gutted with new greenboard (mold resistant drywall).

And the old shower...

And new deep bathtub... Almost ready for paint!

Day 32 & 33- Drywall !!!!!!!

It arrived. They had to Boom it up through my 2nd story window b/c of the 90degree angled stairs. I asked if they would come back and move my furniture in for me the same way...they just kinda laughed so I am thinking that was a no? ;)

Here is a pic of the window they removed as well as my side door that was taken out...starting to look pretty ghetto if you ask me.

So while bringing you up to speed I also wanted to remind you of the "before" pics. Drywall and finishing took about a week and a half total from start to finish. So I will spend the week walking you through each of the different spaces.

First was the kitchen, as you see below with the original side door and wall immediately to the right. There was no place for a fridge...guess they had ice boxes in 1938?

Here is the new space. I only moved the wall over about 24" and put in a header but with the door gone it makes my kitchen feel soooo much bigger! I also decided that maybe I wanted a fridge in my kitchen? So I moved the stove over to my new wall and put the fridge where their stove use to be. And for those who are wondering, yes the cabinets are staying. I am going to paint them and add on. They are very simple and I think once I change the hardware they will look pretty sweet.

Day 30 & 31 It's been a month!

Wow- I really need to catch up with my blogs so I might keep the next ones short and sweet. :) So the rest of the weekend we finished insulating the attic and upstairs bathroom. It was very itchy (fyi: if you are clastrophobic I would suggest getting someone else to do it).

*Mental note to store in the back of your head in case you ever are adding more insultation to your attic or wherever: Wear long sleeves and gloves to avoid getting insulation in your skin, if you do get insulation all over your skin try not to scratch. Once you are done take a cold shower in order to keep your pores closed and not let the insulation into your skin. Once you feel like you got all the insulation off you can then take a hot shower.*

We also scraped some floors that weekend. Cheryl scraped the nasty glue off the wood floor in the dining room and Tiffany and I tackled the kitchen.

The stick-down/glue down tiles in the kitchen SUCKED. You had to scrape each one off with a crow bar and hammer and/or floor scraper and they came up in tiny pieces. When you got more than a 3"x3" piece there was cause for celebration!

Woot Woot!

Day 29- And SCREAMS went out

So on a Friday afternoon I am awaiting my little sisters arrival to come and help me with the house for the weekend. My contractors had just left and my other little sis had just run to grab something from the other house. I am trying to clean things up a bit and am upstairs using the shopvac. All of the sudden a bird flys from one attic opening to the other right above my head. Needless to say I screamed. I call my contractor to freak out and ask him what to do and if he can come back asap. THEN....my hero arrives. It is Tiffany and she is wondering why I am screaming. I start to explain what just happened when all the sudden the bird flys out again and over to a corner and into a piece of insulation. It was near an open window in Lucas' room (which is how I am assuming he got in in the first place) so Tiff decides we should try and scare it out. I agree with her...and then hand her a 2x2 while I stand frozen and gutsy girl goes over and starts hitting on the stud next to the bird. Nothing happens. We decide that maybe if we start using the shop-vac again that it will scare him out. So I turn it on and start vaccuming...then all the sudden we see insulation fall from the attic above and we look at eachother with that evil eye and whisper "there he is" and then all the sudden I look up and he is sitting 12" from my head on a ceiling joist and all I could do was start SCREAMING!!!!

The bird then flys into Lilly's room and is sitting up on top of a piece of insulation up in the corner right next to the window. At that time Cheryl comes back and wonders what is going on, we tell her the story and show her the bird and she comes upstairs to join our venture. So we come up with a plan! We will open the window in that room, close the door, turn on the vaccum and hit the wall with a stick and he will just fly out...right??

Sooooo...Tiffany BRAVELY goes and opens the window that is next to the bird so that hopefully he can fly out. We all go in Lilly's room and close the door hoping to contain him in the room (although one wall is only studs so there is about a 5' opening for him to fly back to Lucas' room). So since I did not think to grab my camera at the time; here is a description of what is happening:

-I am in the corner of the room (farthest from the bird) trying to duck behind Cheryl although she is so skinny that it is kind of difficult to use her for any kind of protection.

-Tiffany has her beating stick (a 2x2) and is approaching the bird to plan on hitting the studs trying to scare it out.

-The Bird (which is black and ugly) has its yellow eyes wide open, its beak chattering and is probably way more scared than I am...maybe.

Tiffany gets in place and starts hitting the wall...scared bird does not move. I turn on the shop-vac and start yelling at the bird to get out of my house. He flys across the room and almost out of the 5' opening but instead perches on top of a shelf. (I hold Cheryl in front of me...what? you haven't seen the movie THE BIRDS?). The bird finally realizes that maybe he should try to get out of this house where girls are screaming and trying to hit him with a 2x2 and suck him up with a vaccum so he heads for the window...but BOOM! He hits the top of it instead. Ouch! He regains his composure (while still in the air) and FINALLY flys out the bottom!!! Tiffany rushes over and closes the window, I run to close the other bedroom window and we all breathe a sigh of relief.

So needless to say I have to give a shout out to my heros that day. For some reason I could not be as brave as my sister Tiffany. Maybe its because she deals with 8-12 children everyday under the age of 5 that nothing can really scare her anymore? I'm not sure...but I am really glad that she showed up when she did.

The only brave thing I did was after the bird was gone. I wanted to make sure that he had come in through the open window and not the attic space above through a vent or something (since my house has been known to be a bird haven). Sooooo I get a ladder and VERY SLOWLY stick my head up through a 2'x2' opening that has about a 6" layer of blown insulation above it. Kind of assuming that at any time another bird will swoop towards me and start pecking my eyes out........but nope. We are good. No holes in the gable vents that I can see and we decide that maybe that was enough action for the night and that we should go eat some dinner.

Although it would have been awesome to catch on tape and post to you-tube...all I got was a pic of my sister the next day being awesome like she always is. I thank God for the heroes in my life. There are many right now and I couldn't do this without them! XOXOXO!

Day 28- Kinda like a Horror Movie

On this day I tackled the basement....which has been said to be like one of those horror movie basements when you really aren't sure if you want to go down or not- especially at night when there are no lights that currently work. There have been some "ghostly" moments. A few weeks before this I was having strange water issues...one faucet would randomly start leaking and then you would turn that off and another one would start leaking. There use to be a shower down here just randomly on the wall...like one might decide to strip and shower while standing in the wide open basement...it was weird and scary. All the old galvanized pipes were just nasty looking. I wasn't sure I would want to wash my hands let alone shower in any water that ran through them. So they were all gutted and replaced (which helped the look a bit too). I do still have foundation issues when it rains...but then again I don't have gutters yet so I am hoping once the rain is not pouring next to my foundation that that will go away. The entire foundation and chimney were tuckpointed throughout (for those who are not sure what that means: motar was replaced/repaired in as needed). So anyway, I spent the afternoon just cleaning up the mess from contractors, the mess of old cabling, phone and weird misc stuff hanging from the ceiling and some old plumbing. Here are some before and after pictures: Before:

and after.Before...and after.

Not sure if the pictures do the justice but it was kinda extreme when it actually wasn't so scary anymore. Although I do still need to get that old OIL tank out...volunteers anyone?