McBerkoBlog

Visitors no longer have to relive college apartment life by crashing on a mattress on the floor! We had a bed frame when this mattress was in our previous house, but ditched it in the move since the plastic feet on the metal frame were broken and would have destroyed the wood floors. This new bed was delivered yesterday. Cheapo from Overstock, but was just what I was looking for - old fashioned looking metal bed. Now if only we could find a bed for our own bedroom. We might end up moving into this one for a while. Unlike ours, it has a TV, a closet, a ceiling fan, and now a bed off the floor. Exciting day ahead of us - finish sanding and priming the nursery. (Sanding, most hated part of project; priming, looks like a room again.) Possibly the same for the hall, which we finished mudding last night around 10. Thrilling life, I know!

This 5'6" x 13' area was an odd storage area off the upstairs hallway. It appears to have been an open porch/balcony at one point, with sides walled off long ago. Under these boards we found the original exterior siding along two walls, and tons of dirt, birds' nests, and general black guck in the ceiling. Eric drew the lucky straw for the ceiling demo - fun day for him with all that raining down on him for a few hours. Old door was walled off, new door added to open from (what will be) the master bathroom. Paint the trim, add shelves and rods, and we'll have ourselves a closet.

This may not be the most exciting thing to you, but there's a DOOR on our upstairs bathroom!! Yay! That's the clawfoot tub inside the door - moving it is what allowed Bill to put the door back on. The tub is just wide enough that it can't fit through the door frame, so the door has been off this room since we started work on it several months ago. Some paint on the trim around the door (inside the bath), hooking up the clawfoot tub shower conversion kit, and we'll have a full working bath on this floor!

If you've been following this blog, you've seen some before and during pics of the 2nd floor hall bath. Here are some pics a bit closer to done - floor tile is in, trim is up, sink and toilet are installed. Bill started sanding and spray painting the exterior of the old clawfoot tub yesterday, so hopefully we'll get that into the bathroom soon(ish). That will allow us to put the door back on (tub is too big to fit through the doorway), and we'll be back to a full working bathroom! PS, When I took the pics for this post, I took a close-up of the tile. Once I downloaded the pic, I realized how crazy dirty that floor is, so you'll have to zoom and/or squint instead. I'm happy we found this tile though. I thought vintage-style tile would be expensive and have to be ordered online somewhere, but this white and black pinwheel tile was pretty cheap and came from Lowes. Luck!

This was the room with two doorways and no doors. The room had (destroyed) plaster underneath drywall with caulked seams (why bother with that pesky mudding/taping/sanding process!), and trim that was partially primed (got bored while painting so just stopped?). After Dad and Eric ripped everything out, we redid the electrical and insulation, framed in a new closet, and started on drywall. Now that we have so many rooms in progress, it will take a while longer to finish everything, but hopefully it won't be too long before this looks more like a finished room. Not that it's a big rush - we have until approximately 9/10 to finish this project. :)

Been a while since the last post, busy few weeks. We finally moved, and now own only one house - hooray! Dad and Eric were in town for over a week, first helping us move, then working tirelessly every day on house projects. Three new areas are now demo'd - the baby's room, the upstairs hallway, and the upstairs storage area that will become the walk-in closet for the master bedroom. They're also partially reconstructed - re-insulated, new electrical, and partially drywalled. Thank goodness Dad and Eric were here, because it would have taken us a full month to do that much work! They toughed it out through the demo of plaster walls in the bedroom, much easier than expected except for how heavy all that plaster is. They thought pulling the billion staples from the old ceiling tiles was the worst project (agreed, that sucks), until Eric started demo on the ceiling in the closet and got covered with dirt, birds' nests (again???), pine needles, and all sorts of other nasty g...

Downstairs, the air return is moved from the middle of the entryway floor (weird!) to under the staircase. Upstairs, a weird area was patched with reclaimed heart pine.

The floors were refinished last week, and they look great! We left both the oak downstairs and the heart pine upstairs unstained. The pine especially is fabulous, better than I expected! Some before and after shots in this and the next few posts.

I swear this color is a pale aqua that is coming across very poorly in this light. Everything else in the room will be white and chrome (with black accents in the white tile). We only need to install tile, trim, sink, toilet, tub (after cleaning/reglazing), mirror, shelves, and this will be a working bathroom. Oh yeah, and a door. Talk to me again in a month. :)