Projects – 2008 in Review

I was sitting around trying to think about what we did all year.  It seems like 2008 was a slow year for us as far as the DIY scene was concerned.  In the early part of the year, around March, we spent a lot of time getting construction bids and filling out mountains of paperwork for our construction loan, only for the subprime mortgage crisis to hit and, in the end, we ended up scratching the whole deal.  I had to go back through my pictures to see what exactly we DID accomplish this year.  I was glad to find proof that our year was not wasted.  Here is a pictorial review of our year:

January:

Finished the rent house (Hallelujah!) and took our three year old employee to Chuck-E-Cheese.  Hey, we had to pay her somehow for all that painting she did!

February:

We celebrated our five year anniversary

March:

My birthday!  Ahem….anyway.  In 8 hours, I cleaned, primed and put two coats of paint on the living room walls.  It wouldn’t have taken me 8 hours normally except that I: 1) painted alone; 2) pushed a very heavy 10 foot ladder around the room 8 times while I painted the middle and top of the room …twice! I have 13 feet ceilings.  [is it 13 foot, or 13 feet?]

April:

In April, I redid an ugly 80’s dresser for Vivian’s room and, for storage, we revamped an old shelf my brother made many years ago by adding crown moulding to it and painting it.

May:

We took down the ugly drop ceiling in the attic.   We also painted the Master Bedroom.

June:

I sanded, repainted and recovered an old chair I bought for $5.00 at a junk store.  I also managed to tick off the entire Ratcliff family and get called a potstirrer.   Hahaha….that’s definitely a new one for me!

July:

I started this blog. Yay!  I pulled a metal tray on wheels out of the garbage and remade it into a plant stand for my porch.  Click here for the details and pictures.  Even my husband could not believe I wanted something this ugly.  But it turned out well.

My new plant stand

August:

We went to the Philippines.  What a life changing experience!  Click here to see more photos of the trip.  In case you cannot figure out who I am, I am the very white girl in the middle!

handumanan

September:

Vivian’s Birthday.   Hurricane Gustav hit Cenla.  That was very interesting.  It took us about a month to recover and get all of the debris cleared and everything back to normal.  I can’t complain though, we did not endure anything like New Orleans did.  Click the link above to see pictures of that fun.

October:

Was definitely not a project month.  I was caught up watching the media and reading the news regarding  local and national politics.  I did get a call from the Louisiana Historic Preservation Office in Baton Rouge telling me that they want to put my street on the National Register.  Which reminds me…..I need to give her a call.  That nomination is supposed to be sent to Washington in April.  I am definitely going to help make sure that happens!

Precious!

November:

I repainted and reappointed the guest room and stripped a fireplace mantel.

December:

We worked on the attic/loft area so we can add another bathroom upstairs.  Steven put up two porch lights in the back.  Steven stripped a door and a transom down to the bare wood.  We also stripped some paint in the hall that was caked on to the wainscoting.  Click here for December’s project pictures.

I guess all in all it was not a bad year.  We did not get as much as we wanted accomplished.  We didn’t nearly come close to the amount of work we did in 2007.  Oh well, put it on the list!  It will get done eventually!

Andrea

What’s Under There?

Since Viv and I got bored with pulling up plywood in the attic, we decided to play “What’s Under There?”  We could not see what was under the flooring between the roof rafters, so I pulled out my camera, stuck it in the hole and took a picture.  We would then pull the camera up, see if there was anything in the hole and then move on to the next hole.  I remember doing this as a kid on nature walks.  I would stick my camera in a place I did not want to go, make sure the flash was on and take a picture to see if there was anything lurking in there.  It is a wonder I did not have a run in with a snake or other animal.  This was basically the same principal and just as much fun!  Here are our pictures from our game “What’s Under There?”

Yes, I did find two very old glass bottles.  Other than that, I can safely say that there is no hidden treasure in our attic!  I am not sure how old they are and if they date back to the building of our house (what other reason would you have bottles in the attic), but here they are all spiffed up.  They will go on the “Things we found in and around the house” shelf.

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Andrea

Working on the Attic/Loft

Since we have five more days left of our vacation, Steven decided to continue working on the attic area.  He started pulling up plywood so he could get it ready to blow in some insulation.  We always thought that the plywood was sitting on rafters or beams, but when he started pulling up plywood, this is what he found:

I was excited about it because it is grooved and fits together pretty well.  I started envisioning refinishing it for the loft area we are planning.  Steven was not too happy about it because it meant he would have to take it up (or at least some of it) to be able to blow in the insulation.  In fact, this discovery threw a huge kink in his plan and he was not happy about it at all.  He is green (anyone who who has taken the Colors Communication Assessment knows what I am talking about) and he does not like his carefully calculated plans to get kinked up.  We will probably take most of the plywood up to make sure all of the electrical is ran properly and up to code.  When this house was built, it did not have electricity.  We found gas lines, so the first owner must have had gas lamps.  You can see where the knob and pole wiring was retrofit in the ceiling.  It appears that our wiring has been updated and the knob and pole wiring is no longer used, but we just want to make 100% sure before moving on.  It would be awful if we had to go back and pull up flooring again in the future due to electrical issues.

The really funny part about pulling up the plywood was to find this:

What were they thinking?  It appears that an attic fan was removed from this area and also that electrical wiring was retrofit.  Instead of sistering some beams (or some other proper and efficient method of leveling the floor), they decided to stack together pieces and parts of wood in order to make the floor semi level and then to nail a piece of plywood on top of it.  Sigh……

For some of the other “nice” jobs done to the attic, click here    Not only will you be able to see the lovely sheetrock job, but also a drop in ceiling which the PO must have installed blindfolded.  I laugh when I write anything about a PO…it makes me wonder if in 20 years or so, someone else will be writing a blog about me and all the horrible house blunders I made.  🙂  Anyway, we completely removed the drop in ceiling.  It is not a great improvement, but an improvement nonetheless.  This kind of thing makes me excited!  It means progress.  Steven is more of the demo man and I am the cleaner upper, detailer/finisher.  I usually let him do the demo and rough in work and I come back in, fill in holes, sand, scrape, paint, etc.

Here is the color scheme I would like to use for this space once we get it all done…you know, about five years from now!  I want this space to be sophisticated.  These are all Valspar Signature colors by Martha Stewart.  I picked them up at Lowes today.

I am thinking the lime green for the walls, maybe the dark slate blue for an accent wall.  Dark brown furniture. The throw pillows and accessories would be the middle three colors: red, light blue and gray.

Here are a few pictures my daughter took.  Here is the remodel of the upstairs through the eyes of a four year old:

Happy Monday everyone!

Andrea

More Ideas for the Craft Room

I found some more spaces and ideas that I like.  Here are a few more pictures to add.  I am using this post as my inspiration board.  Tell me what you think:

I love these colors!  I am looking for the right shade of lime green for the paint color.  I think the use of red here is very daring!

I like the use vintage objects in this one.  However, this one makes me feel cluttered.  I would like to have clean lines and simple storage.

 I love this open shelving unit.  You can find many options at IKEA.  I would love to make the trip to the IKEA in Texas (that’s where the closest store is to me) with a long list of items needed for the house.  IKEA is awesome!

Here are some more seating options I am contemplating.  My husband is not really sold on this style.  He is envisioning late night XBOX parties and movie nights, so he wants a nice big comfortable couch.  We are going to have to marry comfort and style.

I would like to have 3-4 of these to pull up to a work table.  I envision hosting scrapbooking parties!

Loft Living – Alexandria, Louisiana

On Sunday, December 7, 2008, Jim and Frances Hurst opened their loft home to host a Historical Association of Central Louisiana social.  Over one hundred guests stopped by to view the Hursts beautiful home and to ponder the idea of “loft living” in Central Louisiana.  The Hurst’s loft home is well appointed and tastefully decorated by Mrs. Hurst.  When I first walked through the door, this past summer for an HACL meeting, I was pleasantly surprised at what I saw and immediately felt like I was on an HGTV Television show set.  Jim and Frances planned and executed every minute detail in their loft such as the kitchen drawer pulls (hand made out of concrete by Jim) and the wall of square cubbies that displays the pottery Frances makes.   I enjoyed the Christmas trees in the center of the loft.  Frances Hurst said that it took her three days to put up the three trees.  So, if anyone is interested in creating a loft space in the downtown area of Alexandria, Louisiana, one has no further to look than right here at the Hurst loft to gain inspiration.

I was told that the building at the corner of 16th and Murray Street was an old hardware store and was empty when the Hursts bought the property to rehabilitate into a loft.  I do not have the historical details regarding the building.  I believe that the Hursts are having a hard time researching the origin of the building, as well as the history.  If anyone has any information, it would be most useful to the Hursts.  You can contact me through this post.  Here are a few pictures from the social.

HACL Christmas Party

Merry Christmas!

YOU ARE INVITED!!!

The Historical Association of Central Louisiana will be hosting its Annual Christmas Party at the loft residence of James and Frances Hurst.  This property is located at the corner of 16th and Washington Streets in downtown Alexandria.  The event will be held on Sunday, December 7, 2008 from 2-4 p.m.

Please RSVP: (318) 448-3952

The Old Fashioned Way

Drop in ceiling (were they serious?)Upstairs 1100 sq feet open space

Well, the towel has been thrown in and we have decided to go allllll the way to the drawing board and start over.  We started out only needing around $50-80k in repairs, but by the time the bank was done adding their projects that “would make the house appraise for more” and making us hire a general contractor, our bottom line total of borrowing $178k was just waaaaaaaaaay more than what we wanted to spend.  So, we are pulling it all back and deciding to go with Plan A, which was, do the work ourself!

We will have to get creative on finding someone to help with the roof work (we have a LARGE roof), but the other things are just maintenance issues that we can take care of ourself.  I almost feel relieved to be going back to Plan A.  I trust in myself more than I do the general contractor and the bank.  We also were not thrilled to add all of the things the bank wanted to add, just to make our house supposedly worth more.  As you can tell from our previous blog, you can see how well their theory held.

So, we are dusting off the power tools and mourning the six months lost on filling out paperwork and getting the house appraised.  We could have already gutted and redone the kitchen or bathroom by now!!!  Or at least sanded and repainted a porch ballister or two 🙂  It was nice for a while to think that we could have all of the work done at once instead of laboring over it for the next ten years, but in all honesty, I think we will be more satisfied and proud to come home and see the transformation and know that we had a hand in it.  So, three cheers for doing the old fashioned [hard] way! 

Drop in ceiling (were they serious?)

Upstairs 1100 sq feet open space

Upstairs

First, we are going to gut the horrendous sheetrock and drop in ceiling job that some misguided PO attempted and try to frame up an extra bedroom, bathroom and recreation room.  Even though I hate that  our first project is to finish space that we don’t need yet.  I mean, we have 4 bedrooms downstairs already!!  But, in order to gut the bathroom downstairs, we have to create a bathroom upstairs.  In our 4000 sq ft house, we only have one bathroom.  YES, I said ONE bathroom!  So, new bathroom upstairs first, along with the extras, then we can gut the ugly bathroom downstairs.  As a woman, I would like to scrape and paint the exterior of the house first, that would be a super improvement to the face of the house, but, in the Louisiana sun, instant gratification falls second on the list to keeping cool and avoiding heat stroke!  So, the upstairs it is. 

Andrea