Ode to Just Beachy

My favorite blogger of all time, Just Beachy is hosting a giveaway for one of her design consultations (available at CK Interiors anytime) and I am praying to win. This would be a dream come true for me, with my new lakehouse all stripped down to bare walls and wood paneling.... I need someone like her to give me ideas, esp. in the big open great room - right when you walk in the door. I love her aesthetic - classic, casual, comfortable. The best of the best! And she is so handy with her knowledge of woodworking and painting to update the feel of a room instantly.




Help me by helping her help me by clicking through:
http://chriskauffman.blogspot.com/
http://ckinteriors.blogspot.com/



I should be updating on the progress in my current dwelling - the "in-between condo", where I have painted the bathroom and updated the bedroom and kitchen with simple re-design, rather than renovation.

Laterz

Sorry

I am the worst. I went off and fixed up a whole other house and haven't been keeping up with the upkeep. So here are pics:

I bought a lakehouse. Inside, it looked like this:

But, outside?


This is what sold me:


There were a lot of things that needed to be addressed right away:

Nasty vinyl and carpet in the kitchen/dining area:


WHY?:


The kitchen sink drain sprung a major leak:


Well, the faucet was atrocious anyway:


Same with the bathroom faucet - they just stuck the handle on and called it a day (missing several pieces and held together with krazy glue of all things)


This toilet seat was a breeding ground for bacteria - it had to go:


I bought some cute knobs for cheap!:


Already looking better by adding more white to the orangey oak cabinets and replacing the brass hardware:


The vanity was missing the door pull completely, so I picked up a sleek brass one (again for cheap). So simple, yet functional:
I forgot that I also had to fix a leak beneath the sink here, which turned out to be a job for professionals. They had to cut into the wall to fit the proper pipes and vents and while they were at it I REPLACED THE VANITY TOP WITH PURE WHITE (formerly a cream color).

The suite (the more white I can add in there, the better):

Not only did I have to replace the broken kitchen faucet, I had to replace the sink itself because the DRAIN WOULD NOT COME OFF THE SINK. I even got my strong neighbor to try his hand at it and it would not budge. So the whole thing had to come out, but the good news it was replaced with this beauty:

Ever the multi-tasker, when I got to a point where I could get no further with plumbing, I tackled the many forms of wallpaper in the house:


In the pantry:

In the dining room:


Along the borders of the great room (made the room feel so short!):




And the master bedroom border of tacky roses:


Then I fixed up the master bedroom for a calming retreat (not my color choice, but it will have to do for now):


Excuse the photo quality - my camera broke at one point and all I had was my phone:

I installed a plate rack in the dining room:


I ripped up the carpet (filthy, disgusting, FLEA-RIDDEN carpet) in the dining room and went to town prepping the subfloor for paint (to seal in the stains, odors, gunk that was living in there until I can afford hardwood):


A dirty job, as evidenced by SOCKS:


The nasty (held down with PEANUT BUTTER?!?) blue vinyl in the kitchen came up and the subfloor was prepped for a nice, bright (CLEAN) white:




Camera phone view (most recent) trying to work with the navy blue countertops and still brighten up the kitchen:


The finished dining room floor, painted with chocolate brown floor paint to flow with the dark wood veneers in the rest of the great room (otherwise if I painted the dining room white, it would chop the great room in half visually):


The workshop in the basement:


My first foray into woodworking, with the help of my stepdad:

If you can believe it, this is the only thing between you and iminent death at the bottom of the basement steps (sharply steep and hard concrete at the bottom) and the previous owners had not screwed this into a stud!

Also? Gotta have birdfeeders:

Between the 3 homes, I barely have enough time and money to eat, but those birds are not gonna starve on my watch!

Little extras:

Someplace to put towels and tp: Someplace to sit:


Something to watch (Ikea TV Stand, put together by myself in a matter of minutes):

In truth, there's so much more to tell, so much more to see, but I felt bad neglecting to update and this is what you get. A tease. Hopefully I will find sometime to truly update and explain some of the step by step that went into each improvement. Also? Hopefully I will have 1 less houses and 2 really nice HOMES by the end of this year.

Get Your Goodies

I love this lady's sense of style - simple and comfortable. And so earth-friendly, what with all of the furniture make-overs!

I bought a toilet!

Yeah, that and the kitchen countertops are in my bedroom waiting to be installed by none other than - me. I have been watching and reading tutorials and both appear to be easier than I would have thought. Now, finding the time to do it? A whole nother story. Because I came down with a nasty cold or maybe the flu this weekend and was out of commission. This was supposed to be the weekend! Oh well, that's why there's no pictures.

Picture Update - Living Room

The walls are done!

 

 

Patched and painted and I do declare that you can't tell where the old paint stops and the new paint starts.

Picture Update - Bathroom

I just figured out how to "Blog This!" on Picasa2, sue me.

Yes, those are rocks in the concrete subfloor. Yes, the tiles were grouted directly to it like bricks and mortar. Yes, there were sparks flying while I chiseled away at it.



Then I decided to peel off the dumb-ass paint that was slopped on the door, but never adhered to the layer below it. Rather than strip the entire door, this one layer peels off like glue from fingertips....

Stories to Tell

I have been taking somewhat of a break from blogging. If by break, I mean I've been faux-finish painting the patches in the Co-op, calling up plumbers and generally freaking out about the family visit preceding the Holidays at the new house....

I'm sorry, but I forgot that I never got to the stories I alluded to in the last post. There are even pictures to go along with them!! (although, still camera-phone quality, and never when it really counts) Here it go:

In the Kitchen:

I had that gaping hole in the back of the galley kitchen where my fridge used to be, as well as that awful experimental removal of the vinyl tile. So I special ordered 2 perfect-sized cabinets (upper and lower) for that space and luckily was able to talk the delivery service into holding them until I was available (on the day Bathfitter came to install).

Getting those huge boxes up 2 flights of stairs was a feat. Luckily I have a strong man in my life and we have the same schedule so he was available ;)

We got those in, took a much needed break. Later that night, I batted my eyelashes and asked my man if he would help me at least get the upper cabinet up high enough so that I could attempt to screw it into the wall the next day. As much as I try to do things myself, I can't help the fact that my chicken wing arms can barely hold any weight above shoulder level.

I didn't realize how "exact" my measurement of the space was until we had trouble fitting it in between the cabinet that was already there, plus the curved plaster wall on the left- hand side....

Miraculously, we wedged it in by lifting it up higher than the cabinet to the right, then dropping it slowly into place so that the edges didn't pop out in front. Exhausted, we held it temporarily in place with the box for the lower cabinet, a tool box, and a Costco trashbag container....



It was the next day, after the Bathfitter installer left early and told me that he would not be able to finish without coming back for a full day, that I decided he owed me one. Remember these?



Well, I knew that in order to drill through the metal studs in the kitchen wall, I'd need a much heftier drill than my dinky 6.0v Ryobi.... On with the Diwalt 18.0v!!!!

I was literally shaking with excitement over the sheer power of this tool!

It was a little tough to balance the level, cabinet, etc. on my leg while standing on the counter, but somehow I managed. And somehow, I ended up with a plumb, level cabinet:



Gorgeous!! And I felt so great knowing that it was held up by the cabinet/wall on both sides and by the metal studs behind it. The little ledge on the bottom is removable, it's for a microwave, which I think is nice, since it's such a small kitchen with limited counter space. You can put the toaster underneath, or store stuff, whatever floats your boat.

I thought that would be the hard one, but boy was I ever wrong!

The next day I had to remove the base moulding in the corner in order to fit the perfectly-sized base cabinet in that space. They used some sort of fragrant wood behind the baseboards in the olden days that I'm guessing keeps bugs away (I've never really had a problem).



Next I had to carefully pull up a tile from the back in order to replace the missing one from under the cabinet. I had tested on another, hidden area before and was met with a lot of resistance (the tile broke), so I was really worried about this step. There was all kinds of advice out there on the Web: use dry ice to unlock the glue, use a blow torch or hairdryer to melt it.... All of these scared me into thinking it would be impossible to remove a whole tile and that I might need to replace the whole floor (I only had 1 last chance since there was only 1 full tile left)



After all of that planning and plotting on how to do it without damaging the tile - all it took was some patience and a gently tapped hammer on 6" taping knife. No dry ice or blow torch necessary!



It was literally that simple.

However, getting the base cabinet in wasn't as easy as I thought it would be since the wall on the left side is completely bowed out in the middle. I had to lift the cabinet straight up so that it fit on both sides, which wedged it in place mid-air. Then I proceeded to climb inside the cabinet and let gravity do its thing. My neighbor helped hold it in place, making sure that the ends didn't pop in front of the cabinet on the right. Unfortunately, we don't have photographic evidence of this part of the process. So silly, we were laughing the whole time.

But look at that end result!!



I also moved the refrigerator back to the left side so that the countertop on the right can extend out and act like a little bar area.



Doesn't that look soooo much better now that the hole has been filled? And how about the color/pattern matching? It's not exact, but pretty damn close considering I was pretty much going on a blueprint and written description, all on-line.

Picture it with a new, clean, light-colored laminate counter (stock from Home Depot). Now, wouldn't you want to buy this little gem in the city?