Kitchen/Laundry Room Almost Finished

Besides some trim paint and a pantry addition (hopefully a nice built in pantry), I am almost finished with our Kitchen/Laundry project we started back in November 2010.  As you noted from previous posts, it all started with me convincing Steven to lay a new floor.  After we pulled the flooring up and found the old floor plan of the kitchen…the ideas started from there…mostly mine as Steven was still content to just lay the floor.

Below, I will post a few realtor walk through pics, and then the progression of the kitchen over the past year.  However, if you would like to see all of the posts and photos of the Kitchen from the realtor walkthrough to recent posts, click here.

Without further ado, here is what we have been working on!

 

Framing up the laundry roomOh by the way, Steven, can you add a refrigerator alcove? Lol...

Sheetrocking laundry This is where the butler pantry was. We moved it back, now we want to make a built in pantry in this area.

Framing up the laundry room

Sheetrocking laundry

This is where the butler pantry was. We moved it back, now we want to make a built in pantry in this area.

TA DA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Overall, I am very pleased.  You can tell that I need to paint the baseboards, they are only primed.  I need to paint the broom closet door and attach it (it is to the right of the refrigerator), I need to paint the laundry room sliding door and add the hardware, and we need to put down threshholds.  Last, but not least, we need to build some kind of pantry behind the door.  Whew….I am tired of this remodel!  It took long enough!  If we ever get through this adoption process, I might spring for a new dishwasher….its a good thing Steven works for GE!  But, first things first…..

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Andrea

Getting Saturday’s Projects Lined Up

Unfortunately, it is work on one of our rent houses and not our own house 😦  The Alexandria Housing inspector tested the exterior paint on one of our bungalows and it tested positive for lead paint.  Bleh…..  I scraped and painted one window on the house before finally calling it quits.  I intended to go back and scrape and repaint them all.  However, after that one experience, I moved scraping and painting windows up to the number 1 spot on the list of Ten Things I Found I Absolutely Hate To Do.  It is now unavoidable.  So, I am going to scrape windows again (double bleh!!) and, if the weather permits, paint them black.  The house is white, trimmed in black, with a red door.  It is very cute.  Painting the window trim black will sharpen up the house and give it a little more curb appeal.

I am also thinking about painting the overhang black too.  Is that too much?  White perhaps?  It is good condition and my renter likes it.  Thankfully I do not have them on EVERY window!  I find that overkill!  It seems these overhang things became popular around the 50’s or so.  I saw something ridiculous last week, it was a house with the overhang shading HALF of the window, and on the outside of the overhang were shutters! HA!  I am going to go back and get a picture.  It will definitely go in the What Were They Thinking archive.

Happy Friday everyone!

Andrea

***UPDATE***  I scraped two windows before wimping out and hiring a guy.  Hey, his bid was $10 a window for scraping all the paint off and making it smooth enough to prime and paint.  Can’t beat that.  He finished yesterday, so this Saturday I will be priming and painting the windows.

I am going to paint the overhang white and paint the two black stripes back on.  You can see a little remnant of the black stripe on each side of the awning.

Hopefully (or, it is to be hoped) that I will have this project completed this weekend and will post pictures for your viewing pleasure then.

How to Banish Pink House Trim?

Ok.  The big question!  Which paint color do we go with? Or at least that’s a big question in our house.  When I pull out the paint chips and start talking paint colors, my husband runs.  It’s not that hard is it?  I know what I don’t like!  I have a folder of paint chips in color families that I like.  Since winter finishes early for us here in the South, I am already forward thinking about Spring and what projects we are going to work on when the weather gets warm…say like March.

We removed the ugly rail on the top of the house.  It was a very poor tack on job.  It does even look anywhere close to the original balaustrade.  It is too high and very boxy.  It supposed to follow the curve of the turret.  The balaustrade we will put up will be a replica of the original.  Steven is going to replace fascia boards and we are going to work on the flat roof, but I want to finally banish the UGLY pink trim on the house immediately!  I know that this is a Queen Anne and that it could be worse with 10 different trim colors, but I am not a pink gal.  So, I apologize in advance to anyone who likes the pink trim.  The question is, what color do I paint it?  We decided to leave the house white for another five years or so, since the house was recently painted and the paint is in good condition.  What trim color goes with white?  I don’t want to be called the Smurf House or Sunny Side.  I was thinking about a grey, or maybe a grey blue?  I suggested black and I thought my husband was going to fall out.  In the only photo we have of the house c. 1908 (right after the house was built) it appears that the trim was either painted white, or that it did not show up in the photo.  Also, the top of the porch rails was painted black.

Suggestions anyone?  I just need something I can live with for about five years or so before we paint the entire house again.  When we do repaint, I am thinking about a butter yellow.  I want all the door trim and misc. trim in white and the porch and shutters a windowbox/sage green.  Imagine…red flower pots and pillows for accents of color.  Until then, I just need to find something I can live with.  BESIDES pink that is!  I want the color to be subtle, but I want people to be able to look at the house and notice the trim.

If you come up with JUST the paint color you think I need to use, please leave a comment.

Thanks!

Andrea

Spare Room – In Progress

Well, I spent 5 1/2 hours painting by myself this past Saturday.  In a normal room, I could have prepped, painted the entire room plus the trim and cooked dinner in 5 1/2 hours!  The bad part is, I still have to trim around the windows, the ceiling AND paint the trim.  Since the walls are so big, I have to paint them in three sections: bottom, middle and then the top.  I HATE climbing ladders.  Not so much because I am scared of heights, but because I can’t ever remember that I am on a ten foot ladder and it is not three steps to the bottom…it is more like eight.  I get busy painting and forget that I am several feet from the floor.  The last time I painted the hall, it was really bad.  I took about two steps down and put both feet out to touch the floor…the only problem was, I had about six more steps to go before my feet were anywhere close to the floor.  I fell hard, on my behonkus, and hit my head.  I blacked out for a second and then started laughing.  My husband and brother saw it happen and if they ever thought I was crazy in the past, my newest escapade had confirmed it!  Thus the reason I am not allowed to stay home alone with a ladder.

I am going tomorrow to buy paint for the trim.  I kept going back and forth between ivory and dove white.  I think I have made up my mind to go with dove white.  I am going to strip the fireplace mantel back to its original wood and also strip the doors.  I would strip the baseboards too, but, unfortunately somewhere down along the line someone tried to pry the baseboards off in two places, cracked the wood pretty bad and then slapped some type of compound (not wood putty) on them to cover it up.  It is really bad!  So, I can’t strip them down since the wood is so splintered in two large spots.  I am sanding them down and wood puttying them. 

I guess what they were trying to do was take off the baseboards so they could sheetrock the walls.  To sheetrock behind the baseboards would be nearly impossible, but it could be done.  You would have to take the doorjambs off first and all of the trim around the door and windows, then take off the baseboards.  I guess they decided that was too much work because they sheetrocked all the way down close the baseboard and left a 1/4 of an inch to a 1/2 inch gap.  Lovely….the good news is, I have caulked the gap in other rooms and painted it the trim color and it looks just fine, you can’t really tell where the sheetrock ends and the baseboard starts.  The bad news is, every room in my house looks like this!  The gap is about 1 to 1 1/2 inches in one room  It is going take some serious work to hide that!  I will probably have to pull the sheetrock off the wall and start over in that room.  Now, why do people do things like that to an old house?  More importantly, if you are going to do dumb stuff like that…DON’T.  Hire a professional, or at least do yourself and the next homeowner a favor, order a subscription of This Old House.

I am disappointed that the paint color looks so “blue”.  It was supposed to look more like a turquoise, blue green color.  When I paint the trim Dove White, it should make the color look a little greener.  I can’t wait to get the trim done so I can move the furniture in and do the fun part — decorating!  The wood floor is in great condition and I think it will look really nice once I get it all together.  Hopefully, that will be this coming weekend.  We were supposed to get our furniture yesterday, but the man was not ready for us to come pick it up.  He rescheduled us to pick it up this coming Sunday.   So…when I am completely done with the room, I will post an after pic.

I hope everyone enjoys their holidays and cooks good food for Thanksgiving! 

Andrea