basement

Sorry y’all, we concocted the most daunting to-do list ever and we failed to put ‘blog’ as an entry. We’ve been wonderfully busy with the house though and blogging is back on the list, so hopefully you’ll be hearing from us more frequently.

Now that the basement is freed up (i.e. we moved upstairs), we can start turning it into the recreation room. It has some great potential and it’s nice to be starting with a somewhat finished space.

About the basement: as far as rowhouse basements go, I think we hit the jackpot here. It’s ugly, but a good sized space and most of it has reasonable height (none of it is the standard 7’). As you can see in the pictures, there is an elevated wood floor on one half that pushes the headroom to a danger zone – about 6’2”. Not ideal. This side will be a lounge / TV / fish tank area, so it shouldn’t pose too much of a problem. Dancing and grooving will be allowed despite the risk of head injury.

I’ll do a post about the fish tank when we put it up… I talk so much about those dogs that I failed to tell you all that keeping a big fish tank is by far my favorite hobby.

The wood floor is in terrible shape – TERRIBLE – we’re not refinishing it, but because of what’s under it, we can’t remove it [easily]. Some exploring exposed unevenness and surely other yet-to-be-discovered problems. The other half of the area is linoleum on concrete and this is about 6’6”. We’ve decided to just carpet the entire space to unify and warmify.

The side with the taller ceiling is where the kitchen was. You can see some kitchen leftovers in the pictures. Our plan is to reuse a few of the cabinets and put a wet bar in the same corner with a beverage center. We’re leaving the range gas hookup in case we (or a future owner) ever choose to turn the basement in to a full apartment. The pool table will also go in this space (Thanks, Rosa!).

There is some storage and utility stuff in a separated area. Our latest thought is that the washer and dryer should be moved up to the second floor and this will open up room to put a full bath to really have an actual suite. You hear that, Mothers-In-Law?

Excuse the mess:

Does this green remind anyone of Nickelodeon? It’s ridiculously bright. It looks much brighter in the pictures than in real life – that is a COMPLETE lie. This is just the beginning and I’m not at all worried that it will be terrible when we finish, but it is a bit crazy looking right now.

The built-in closet unit on the left side was “finished” wood, but it was way too dark and in poor shape.

Priming begins:

countertops; painting

Not much time to write, but here’s a quick update of some big changes. 

The countertops were installed (Dupont Zodiaq in Abyss Black) and we got the first coat of paint on the walls.  There is still much to do, but we’re getting there. 

What do you think of the paint colors?  I'm loving this green we chose for the living room.

the contractors have finished

We are thrilled with the new open space! It's still a mess and we now have tons of work to do, but getting rid of this wall really helps us move forward. Here's what we're looking at:

We can't believe how much of a difference it made! The kitchen will mostly be the area where there is currently carpet (it may spill out a bit into the living room). The walk-through will be to the right of the column and to the left will be cabinetry/appliances. We've only made preliminary layout decisions, but now that we can really see the space we're going to get serious about the plan.
In the following picture you can sort of see how the ductwork is all tucked as high as possible and grouped together:

The next steps are to:
come up with the basic design;
decide where plumbing and electrical will be going;
and start the framing and drywalling process.
We'll also be drywalling the living room ceiling and the master bedroom ceiling (both are just exposed joists right now).
There are lots of other random jobs that will continue - speaking of, we installed doorknobs on a few closet doors. I basically followed the directions and they all work perfectly. These were doors that had no previous knobs, so there was chiseling and hole-sawing involved. Be careful, because this picture is about as exciting as hunting moose:

Also, upon request - here is a picture of the doors-as-headboard. There are going to be quite a few changes... actually everything will change, except for the headboard. Remember the wallpaper we were indecisive on? It's going on the wall behind the bed. The linens will certainly be changed; new side tables; the ceiling will be a solid surface - yeah, yeah, you think we should keep the beams - they look interesting in the picture, but they're a mess in person and they have to be covered. Also, the sound travels 100% through to the upstairs bedroom and that is less than ideal.

Gratuitous dog picture - ole blue eyes:

wood door headboard; stripping paint

These doors used to separate the front two rooms. They're big, heavy and among the few things that are original to the house. While we definitely love them, we knew they couldn't stay there. They took up way too much space and offered no utility.


There was no question and no discussion necessary - we both knew they'd make a fantastic headboard, especially considering the fact that our current bedframe is low and we chose it because the master bedroom in our previous house had much lower ceilings. i.e.:

Ahhh, let's reminisce about the days when there were dust-free surfaces and the big decision to be made was whether or not that purple pillow should remain on the bed... ... ...
Oh that's right - this was our living room the other day:


Back to the doors - stripping the paint is step one. We used Klean-Strip stripper because after all, it is America's #1 Stripper Brand.

It's a gel and fairly easy to work with. The label says 15 minutes, which is a pretty convenient amount of time if you want to go crack open a bottle of wine and boil some noodles. The problem is that the label lies, which makes me wonder about their claim of superiority in the world of strippers. It actually works much faster. In 15 minutes it was dry - and everyone knows it's much better to work with wet strippers. I'd still recommend this product, as it worked quite well once we got the hang of it. We found that it's best to just keep an eye on it and start scraping a few minutes after the paint starts bubbling:

Scrape away:

It took a few rounds of stripper despite the fact that there were surprisingly few layers of paint on the doors. We wanted to keep a worn look to them, which was a good decision considering our skill level.

Break time - and we wanted to see one behind the bed.

After the paint was off, they were sanded;

and then stained with English Chestnut stain from Minwax. After the stain, we used two coats of a satin finish polyurethane, also by Minwax. In between the coats of poly we sanded them lightly giving the final finish a nice smooth feel. Ta-dah - here we are - nicks, scrathes and all. We love 'em.


We're now working on the pair of fireplaces on the first floor... the stripper is proving less effective. There are many more layers and some of the old stains seem to be made of tar as seen here:

We traded leftover muriatic acid for a loaner heat gun with our pals Jessica and Joy. So far, so good - more to follow.

***a picture of the headboard behind the bed is in this post

decision making :: floors, backsplash, wallpaper

I'd prefer to be posting things like, "hey guys, check out the new counter tops" but for now we are still waiting for these darned contractors to get moving on the quote process to get rid of this wall. There are quite a few issues, let alone the fact that it's a load-bearing wall. There is plumbing, HVAC ductwork and electrical lines that will need to be reconfigured. Each contractor that has come through ends up having to schedule a second appointment with other people to give an accurate quote. So - it's taking longer than expected.

Fortunately, while we complain about not living on the first floor, we do have a fairly comfortable, efficiency'esque 'apartment' in the basement.

As the process goes on, decisions are constantly being made - and then changed - and then changed back - and then thrown out the window completely. Here are some considerations:

Wood floors - the ones in the house are pretty amazing. The planks are all slightly different widths, the color is warm and they are some seriously solid, thick floors. Original to the house, I imagine they could have been hand-scraped, according to this article, wood floors weren't mass produced in factories until the 1900's. Although, we were told by the previous owner that at some point in the '80s they were pulled up, cleaned and relaid - this is probably why they are in as good as shape as they are - not much squeaking or moving at all. Anyhow, they're in need of a refinishing. The options are:

--- a typical sanding/refinish to expose a new, very clean surface to then finish with polyurethane of some sort (we probably won't stain them, which will leave them a very light color) or;

--- buff them with a light sanding, leaving them the current color, but giving them a very shiny, hopefully nice look with multiple coats of poly. We like this option, because it will retain the rustic look that we really like - I love the dark line in between each board and would hate to lose that to a deep sanding;

--- any thoughts? like that window in the middle of the house? That's the wall that needs to be taken out - it used to be the rear of the home, hence the window.

Backsplash - this is so far down the line that I have time to change my mind at least 37 times. We are considering a few materials. One being stainless steel tiles. We saw this in a house and it looked great. I've read a few things about people having problems with it looking dirty and/or scratching - which makes me nervous. Especially when considering the fact that it'll probably cost twice as much as other materials. We went ahead and ordered some samples from Modwalls, just to see how they look. They look pretty great - the subway tile (second below) is my top choice (it's about .75"x1.5", to put it in perspective):





Wallpaper for the bedroom - Despite the fact that we sort of hate it after removing as much as we did (and still have more to do) - we love the stuff over at Ferm Living. This is only going to be on one wall in the bedroom, behind the headboard (which I'll post about later, we're making it out of the huge doors that were on the first floor - s'gonna be nice). We don't agree on this decision at all right now.

Craig is fighting for this:


But I like this one:


I'd actually pick this one right now - but it does not seem to be within Craig's compromise-able range: