Victorian House Renovation in Bloomingdale, DC
Lest anyone thinks that we haven’t been doing much work outside of documenting the contractors progress, we have. its just not very glamorous, and its slow to boot. (Well and we also had a few visitors, who blissfully distracted us from drudgery of renovation – thank you friends :)
In the last two weeks, Sergey finished up preliminary work on our little dirt patch outback – soon(ish) to become an urban garden oasis.… Read the rest
That was my reaction! Instant gratification – one day, one project, and d .o.n.e.
I need to figure out how to take better pictures of such a tiny space. But for now, here’s my best representation:
*The teal blue color is better represented in the pictures above, rather than this lamp picture. but see the wallpaper goes all the way over the ceiling.
So we are on to downstairs bathroom. In the last two days the contractors have finished drywall and primed all of the 2.5′ by 5′ space.
Ceiling:
Entrance, with a door frame:
and sink wall:
Except this part they had to do twice. And it was totally our bad. The plumbing lines in the first iteration of this wall were not centered but closer to the entrance. That’s because on the other side of that wall there is a stack and we had palnned to do a bump out for it.… Read the rest
That’s the magic number – for the single pieces of subway tile in our bathroom. I don’t think either us or our contractors anticipated quite what that entailed when we set out on this adventure of tiling the whole room floor to ceiling.
We both absolutely LOVE it. It looks great, and the guys did a great job with keeping striaght lines. Which is why it probably took so long.
And, check this out: a door!… Read the rest
We are by no means DIY all the way kind of renovators. I have no patience for that, and Sergey has absolutely no desire to go to any home renovation extremes, such as tiling a bathroom (contrary to the impression you might get from this blog).
And yet, we are still constantly doing, deciding, and figuring out the details. And that, is no piece of cake. A day might start something like this: wake up at 6 am and have a meeting of sorts to discuss what Sergey needed to tell contractors, such as where we wanted the light to be positioned in the bathroom, which piece of molding to use for the window, how deep the recessed shelves should be, which pieces of tile to use for recessed shower shelf etc, etc.… Read the rest
More tile. To be sure we made some progress on that front, but how many times can I write about the tile. Ha-ha! That was just a trick, its all about the marble.
The sink was installed on Friday, and hooked up on Saturday (!). Up close:
The only parts left to tile are visible here. We have actually ran into a bit of trouble here. Home Depot/Lowes do not sell short-side cove subway tiles.… Read the rest
Ok. I am going to complain again. Because, well, its my our blog, and i can do that if i want. so there. Sometimes renovation life can be miserable (sometimes it can be pretty awesome too, but that’s not how i feel right now) its the details, details! constant details and decisions. Details and decisions can be rather overwhelming. Here’s our to do list for the next three weeks:
Upstairs Bathroom
Early on I decided on whitewashed brick for the kitchen, because key operation word here is light. I though about keeping the original color, particularly because our brick was in a beautiful condition when we cleaned off the plaster but decided in the end that it would just be too dark. I feel that exposed brick is almost always heavy left as is.
This was my inspiration:
Source: AT; Norm Architects; Dana Barnes; CoCoCozy;
I liked how the texture and the color of the bricks still came through the white.… Read the rest
This week, every day on my way home I would think – ah, today is going to be the day that I will post about the finished tile in the upstairs bathroom. Alas. Its been five working days since the last construction update, and I have lost my patience. Here’s our progress, which to be far, also includes some electrical work.
The left wall with a tiled shower niche and a recessed opening for the medicine cabinet:
The right wall, which has actually been complete for awhile, but here it is anyway:
The back wall, where the window frame has to come out in order to be leveled – almost there:
And finally, the front wall which will feature a recessed shelf.… Read the rest
There’s been am awful lot of white around here. And it’s come to stay. There is a lot of different variation of the type of white though, so I am hoping the various textures will layer nicely.
Exhibit A – tin ceiling (yes, I am still working on it, with occasional help from others). These have been stripped, primed with a rustoleum primer for metal with a rust inhibitor and finally painted.… Read the rest
