Ready to take the tour?

Well, hello! How are you? Would you like us to show you around?

Entry

Dining Room

Office/Breakfast Room

Kitchen

Powder Room

Living Room

Living Room

Living Room (view from spiral stairs)

Loft

Loft

Loft (view from living room)

Living Room

Living Room

Deck

Master Bedroom

Walk Through Closet

Master Bathroom

Family Room

Family Room

Girl's Bedroom

Boy's Bedroom

Kids' Bathroom

Kids' Bathroom

That concludes our "tour" and our blog.  Our remodel is officially complete! 

Thanks for following along on our journey.  Having this blog has been amazingly cathartic.  It helped that a "bad thing"' that happened could be thought of as a good story for the blog. 

And having all of you to cheer us along - well, that was priceless.

We can't wait to have you over!

The warmth of wood

R's last big multi-step, multi-month project:  the spiral stairs are now complete! 

All the steps:
1.  Put together stair kit (with help from lovely, or maybe sarcastic and goofy, assistant)
2.  Add all decorative balusters (the ones with the little squarish knobs in the middle)
3.  Stain all wood treads and landing
4.  Polyurethane all treads and landing
5.  Touch up wrought iron with black paint, cover silver bolts
6.  Glue/screw down treads and landing

Didn't he do an amazing job matching our hardwood floors?  We are so happy with the way this project turned out.  It's nice to have one big thing we built ourselves.

Arts and crafts center

A place for everything...

Lots of drawers and cabinets, soon to house all the arts and crafts supplies. Moms everywhere know how priceless this is!


This took R an entire weekend to build.  I am a very lucky girl!

A place to work, read, meditate

It was rainy the first day I worked in the loft, but still lovely

Organizing our library

We managed to clear out all the boxes (half of which were books) and build bookcases and a desk for our loft library and work area.  Everyone in the family is drawn to this space (especially since we added rugs, not yet shown).

A few days later - gorgeous sunset!

Safety first

It was a little nervewracking to have the kids sneaking up to the loft for a peek at the view, knowing there was no railing and therefore a 9 foot drop to the living room below. 

Now I can relax.  The railing is in, complete with a 3-foot removable section for moving furniture in or out.  Things are really coming together for us to be able to use this space soon!

Back in the garage again

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, after 14 months of construction work, debris, and workbench alteration, we are able to park in the garage once again.  "Milky Way" the minivan is back in her nest.  First world excitement, I know, but that doesn't make it any less wonderful!  It's the little things.

It's a sofa/chaise... it's a bed... it's a cool hang out spot!

Sofa...

Bed!

A little something cozy for the family room.

Loft access at last

Parts and pieces

Before pic of empty space

Everyone's in on the action

Sure, this is exactly how the pros do it

Another ladder?  Sure, why not?

Dark outside - but we must finish!

Victory climb

Hey, it's still standing the next day - not bad!

We're nothing if not ambitious... So one auspicious Sunday we undertook the building of the spiral stair kit, just R and I! And by golly, we did it!

Check out the precarious multiple ladder/stacks of books/boxes support system we constructed to hold various points of the stair until it could get connected to the top ledge. I was definitely part of this mission, but spent much of the time holding said contraption.

Finally, we can claim the loft space -- once we deal with the mass of boxes waiting for us up there.

Note the guillotine -- I mean ceiling fan -- at the top. A little 3D planning mistake. Yep, that'll have to come down.

Certificate of Final Completion

The coveted document

Oh happy day!

This calls for something special!

The fateful day arrived - our final inspection, strategically scheduled for a Friday afternoon, started off well enough. So well, in fact, that the inspector was sitting down to fill out the certificate and got halfway done before suddenly asking questions about our deck stair. "Yes, sir, we will get a handrail on that stair. No, sir, you'll hear no complaint from our neighbors. Yes, sir, go ahead and have another look at the plans..." A few tense minutes and several nervous looks between Rene and I, and miraculously the inspector finished signing the form and walked out of our lives, hopefully forever (nice guy though he is).

With all we went through with the city, we thought the day might never come. But it did! Boy, did we celebrate!

Appliances are in!

Here they are, the stainless steel lovelies in all their shiny glory...

It turns out that my mom needs our electric stovetop (hers recently broke), and a neighbor is interested in the electric oven! My friend KM had a great idea to email our neighborhood about the oven since most of the houses have the same electric wall ovens (many are the original 1961 model). It worked, we've got a lead!

Temporary loft access

It's sort of a modern industrial design look... :)

A long break

After we moved in and I started my new job at Wired, we had to take a bit of a hiatus to wait for the new gas appliances to arrive. Over several weeks, the only work that happened was to install our stair bannister and railing.

The pause in mess and decision making was restorative!

Hallelujah!!

We finally passed our plumbing inspection this morning! We were able to get the toilet moved over without replacing any floor tiles, as the base of the toilet covered up the enlarged hole.  We also replaced most of the IKEA drain system with metal pipes and a metal p-trap.  A different inspector showed up, which worried me (now what's THIS guy going to find to complain about??), but he did indeed sign off.  I have a feeling that if we'd had today's inspector the whole time (instead of the guy I've been affectionately referring to as Lumberg, for all you Office Space fans - dead personality ringer, I swear), we would have saved a couple of extra inspections and $350 in extra inspection fees.  Ah well, que sera, sera.

The contractor and I enjoyed a hi-five, and R enjoyed hearing the news as a lovely early birthday present.

Next, we need to deal with our electricity issue. I priced new gas appliances, and as they are significantly less expensive (<25%) than the $20K for the electrical upgrade, that's the route we'll have to take. Bad news is, I lose my beloved oven with its delay start, automatic timer, and warm feature, which I used twice this week! The good news is, I'm getting a fancy BlueStar oven (http://bluestarcooking.com/) and a gorgeous Thermidor cooktop. No automatic features, but otherwise a sweet upgrade!  Mama's gotta be happy in the kitchen, right?  And a few hundred dollars extra for the upgrades seems a pittance after the $20K price tag.  Luckily, the appliance store has 12 months interest-free financing.  It's the first time I'll be taking advantage of such an offer, but it will really help get us through to next month when I start getting my new paychecks.

BlueStar appliances are in demand, so we'll have to wait 6 weeks to get the oven, and then we'll schedule our electrical inspection after that.

Moving the toilet

Toto in the hallway

Demo in the family room - big bummer

Enlarging the hole to shift the toilet over

We failed our final plumbing inspection for two reasons: the inspector did not like the drain configuration for the IKEA sink/vanity in the kids' bathroom, and the powder room sink was two inches too close to the toilet. We knew that the toilet must have 15" clearance from the center line of the toilet to the walls on either side, but we didn't know this extended for 24" from the front edge of the bowl, and that the sink couldn't breach that space.

We couldn't move the sink, and there was no sink small enough to meet the requirement. Even a tiny corner sink wouldn't work.

So, today, the contractor has opened the wall in the ceiling below to access the drainpipe, has removed the toilet, and is cutting the tile and flooring to move the toilet over two measly inches. Once it's moved, we'll potentially need to replace some tiles and redo the drywall, mud, sanding, and painting in a room that was previously finished. Last night Rene and I spent a couple of hours moving everything out of that room so it doesn't all get covered in drywall dust.

I'm not a happy camper, but it's what we have to do to get sign off.