Victorian House Renovation in Bloomingdale, DC
We have visible progress! More of it! Yay. We already mentioned that heated floors were on the agenda, but here they are all set into the upstairs bathroom floor (also notice the sink hook up, there and waiting):
And our bathroom floor all covered up and ready for more thin set and tiles – a highly exciting prospect that gets us one step closer to functional bath, since as of right now we are still shower-less and sink-less.… Read the rest
the question mark is for the fact that I didn’t see much when I came home. Here’s what the kitchen opening looks like as of today:
not hugely different from yesterday:
whoever gets the most differences – wins!
anyway, we have got nothing to hurry for I suppose. One day here / one day there, at this point we will get there when we get there.
in the meantime, I might as well post about choosing colors shades of white for the kitchen.… Read the rest
With our expanding plans, we are spending saving more money..on the demolition! Yep, it was time for the upstairs bathroom to come out. Our friend Kirill, who has been a superstar helper and hanger outer, came to lend a hand.
On Friday I cleaned out our bathroom, which actually give our tight space constraints already was a task in and of itself. Here are some before shots:
On Saturday, I took the first swing at the pinkbeige tile.… Read the rest
Wheeeee – it has started. We handed over a whole lotta monies, keys, took a deep breath and prepared to trust the professionals. The builder agreed to take pictures of Day 1 for us – so here it is in all its glory, i.e. new floor joists and leveled sub-floor:
To start off the day – nice and airy. It appears that our joists were not even in as good of a shape as we imagined, so all had to go (we did save them because the wood would definitely work as island butcher block)
here are all the new joists:
nice and level – apparently this is the hardest part of installing a new floor in an old house.… Read the rest
All of the hardwood boards have been removed, nails hammered out (or in) and we are left with the bare bones carcass of a kitchen/ powder room.
On friday night we started out with this:
And after three hours of prying and hammering out nails we were done! All of the wood boards are clean and ready to be re-used and re-purposed. I am not quite sure yet whether to toss all of these nails or keep them for the memory of good times.… Read the rest
We are getting a bit tight on timing, with structural builder coming in next Monday and actual kitchen work schedule to start June 1 (make it June 4, Monday actually). Plus we have been doing a bit of traveling on weekends for weddings and family/friends events, which makes weeknights the only possible time that we can squeeze in some more demo and prep work.
Obviously that wasn’t going to get our bricks walls clean and ready to go for June 4.… Read the rest
Not really demolition so much as cleaning up, prying off plywood, and cleaning the exposed brick. Our Saturday started really early – with a uhaul reservation for 7 am. DC dump allows uhaul size of up to 19 feet, so that’s what we got cause we were quite certain that we would need as much space as we could get to haul all 100 trash bags of kitchen cabinets, drywall, plaster, tile and whatever else miscellaneous crap that was taken out of our old kitchen.… Read the rest
It has happened. The point of no return has been passed. No turning back. Thanks to seven of our friends who turned out on Saturday for 5 hours of smashing fun :)
I literary do not remember ever being so physically tired in my life as after Day 1 of demo. I could barely lift my hands – I don’t even know how the dudes fared since they were actually lifting and heaving heavy stuff.… Read the rest
When we took out the carpet downstairs, we were pretty happy to find hardwood floors underneath. They seemed to be in pretty good condition, but they needed a very good cleaning and perhaps refinishing.This is the floor in our foyer:
Given that refinishing would run us into thousands (for the whole house) and should probably be one of the last projects anyway I decided to give the foyer floor a try myself.… Read the rest
full railing – dining room side
2/3 railing missing – foyer side
with 2 new/old railings on foyer side
per previous post on pocket door railings. as you can see, someone simply ripped up 2/3 of the pocket door railing on the foyer side. apparently the railing that we got from the brass knob backdoor warehouse is extremely rare as cast iron breaks easily and plus no one really ever thinks of taking an old door rail to a salvage shop.… Read the rest