The Kitchen: Phase 2

Demolition Time!

Recap on before we got started.

As always before you attempt a remodel of anything, HAVE A BUDGET! Our budget was $1200. It took us 6 months to save up, and definitely worth the wait. Better to wait, and have a plan, than go in debt from bad choices and rash actions. As always, our next step, after deciding a budget, make a list. A list of everything you need, plus a little wiggle room is always a good idea. (We needed it)

                                         Here is our make-shift kitchen for the 3 weeks of remodel. Isn't it cute?! I added the little bunny to make it more homey. :)

Here he is! Hammer and crowbar in hand! I'm pretty sure he had way too much fun with the demolition part. He wouldn't let me do any of it. Except the clean up part. You know, he makes the mess, I clean it up. That's just the way it goes.

And as with any remodel you will come upon some issues, especially in an older home. We did notice when we moved in that the sink cabinet was um... gross. It was due to water damage. This is why you need a little wiggle room in the budget. After taking out the cabinets, we started to take off the drywall. That is where we found the plumbing issue. The original 1950's steel vent pipe was rusted out, and was letting sewer gas into the house. Luckily, the plumbing was covered under home warranty. We just had to pay the warranty fee for a guy to come repair it. See here our pretty new PVC pipe. 

We also added some concrete board to help level out the floor and keep moisture from effecting the new cabinets, and we added a little bit of insulation, so that our pipes don't freeze. Remember how the dishwasher plugged into an outlet above the counter? Yeah, we put in a new outlet under the counter, where we plugged in the dishwasher and a garbage disposal. ($80) We also needed to add a switch for the disposal. Being a old house, the wires were kind of weird, and we did end up hiring an electrician to help us out. :/ Did not intend on doing that, but it needed to be done. ($100)

                                                                                  Here is the baby cat, he likes to help out sometimes, or at least make sure we know what we are doing. 

Before we started, we had so many different ideas on what to do with the cabinets. Did we want to paint all of them the same color? Two-tone, top one color, bottom another? Stain them all to match? We decided to stain them all the same color. Dark brown (Gallon of stain $30ish -Lowes)  We didn't have a sander, but we budgeted to buy one. We got a Ryobi triangular sander. ($35) So, I got to sand down all the top cabinets. Through the millions of coats of paint to get to bare wood. (probably at least 4 coats of previous paint=PAIN!) We tested out the stain on the top cabinets. As you can see it's not brown. The stain looked so blotchy and bad. We, then, decided to go with the two-tone look. We got a gallon of this beautiful dark gray color. A gallon was way too much paint but, I like the color so much I can use it elsewhere. 

We put up new mold resist drywall. (Same as the bathroom-free) You might be able to tell that a couple of the tiles fell off/broke when we took the counters off. (under the window) We didn't budget for new back splash, because we didn't think we would need it. You will see in another picture what we did with the back splash.

Here is a closer look at the cabinets. They had this weird sticky liner in them that was that yucky green color that you see at the left. Bleh! I had to sand down the insides to get it all out.                                                                                                                                                                     We then painted them white to brighten them up a bit. Much better. 

I also liked the idea of having a display cabinet. I painted all the walls and bottoms white. And paint the back a lovely blue color. I got magazines, either HGTV or Better Homes and Gardens, that came with a 'get a free sample color.' So, I got like 6 free samples. :) This blue matches the blue in the window curtain too!

Next up shopping for cabinets! This was the fun part. I like the shopping parts. :)  We already knew what we wanted, as we had been 'window shopping' for months. We went with the unfinished oak cabinets, so we could stain them ourselves. This was much cheaper than getting the already finished models. (They ranged from $100-$200 a piece) They have this nice free service where you can give them your dimensions and they will show you which sizes are needed. We even got a discount on one of the cabinets, because the back of it was chipped. BONUS! Who is gonna see the back of your cabinet? No one. Then we had the fun task of fitting them all in our minivan. Tetris anyone? We are Tetris experts!

We got them home, and I got the awesome job of staining. That is some stinky business. Make sure you have some ventilation. It reminds me of this time my friend, Candace and I, painted my living room without opening the windows. :) Oops.. we got a little loopy.

                                         Anyways... After the staining and the polyurethane-ing we got them inside and Aaron started on getting them level. I had to put a pretty hand towel on the oven to help it not look so chaotic. You might also notice the little yellow wire hanging out above the stove. Don't worry, it is not live. We were going to hard wire the vent hood into the outlet.

  Here we are starting to put the counter top on! Yay! The end in sight! I am also a fan of the Lazy Susan, even though it was the most expensive cabinet. Before we had a very odd cabinet that you literally had to take everything out of it to reach in and around to get items in the back. Not fun! This is way more practical.

And here we are with all of the cabinets in, and the counters on! What a long and strange trip it's been. Notice the dishwasher. It's not in the middle of the floor anymore! The space where the dishwasher used to be had no flooring. :( This was about the end of our budget. We had already thought about redoing the flooring. But, we did not budget that for this remodel. So, we bandaged it. We got linoleum that matched size and shape. It was just a different color. It looks kinda dumb. But again, work in progress. 

Here is the baby again. Checking out the work. I think he approves.

And then the water! The running water! Out of our brand new faucet ($80), into our brand new sink ($60). This was my favorite sound after those long three weeks. Glorious! 

And for some reason I don't have a full picture of the finished kitchen, but I do have this. All the parts in one. The counter top, the cabinets, the uppers, and the back splash. The back splash is fasade thermoplastic. It is a plastic sheet that you can cut to size. All you have to do is get some heavy duty double stick tape and stick it up there. It is just a bandage, but looks really awesome. I believe our future plans will contain a new back splash.

Sneak peak! The baby checking out our new flooring!

The Kitchen: Phase 1

This was the kitchen when we moved in. Blank canvas was nice. Let's look a little closer here. 

See this fabulous dishwasher? Yeah... This was quite obviously not original to the kitchen. As you can see, it is only covered by the counter top. What you may not notice is that it is sitting on a nice piece of plywood. And that cord you see, it plugged into an outlet above the counter top. Meaning, if you wanted to plug in your blender and your toaster, you would have to unplug the dishwasher.

                                            So we bandaged it with some plywood. (until we could do a remodel) We painted it white to blend in. And also made a little bar too. (see that cord going above the counter? yep...)                                                       

Next we have the stove. It was pretty much alright, except for the missing vent hood that left 3 giant holes in the wall.

This is our dining area. What you can see- lovely peel and stick linoleum. It looked fine for the most part, but there were places where it doesn't look fine. What you can't see- the ceiling fan had no blade. (we had 4 ceiling fan fixtures when we moved in, and only one of them had blades on it.. explain that one for me?)

So as you can see, the kitchen was usable. It had running water and a stove. Aaron's parents happened to be getting a new refrigerator about the time we needed one. (FREE! Best in laws ever!) Yes, the room was an eye sore, but we could live with it. It was just a little dumb looking.

This is how we prettied it up while we saved money for the overhaul. 

 These are our friends, Ellie and Ivy, they helped us with the painting. Good happy friends.

I liked the idea of having a display type cabinet. So we took the doors (which didn't close correctly) off and painted the inside white.

 I also loved this blue color. I got a "get a free sample color" coupon in one of my magazines. It matches the blue on the little curtain in the window.

This is me in my jammies. I honestly don't remember what I was doing. Probably preparing to smash the cabinets by jumping on them.

These are our friends enjoying themselves in our kitchen at our annual white elephant party. Literally the week after we moved in. They didn't mind our crazy kitchen. We are a work in progress.



The Kitchen overhaul coming next week!

 

Intro into the Bathroom

We don't make a ton of money. But, with the help of Mr. Dave Ramsey we do pretty well with our income. We have envelopes for everything that we want to do: vacations, home improvement, future babies, etc. Taking his class right after we got married was such a good idea. It has really helped us handle the money that we have now, and helps us prepare for the future. (no I am not getting paid to say nice things about Dave Ramsey, we are just very satisfied graduates of his class)

In October 2013 we bought our very first home, a HUD house for $65,000. We had heard bad stories about government owned homes but, we took a chance and put in an offer. And, well, hey I guess it worked out for us. We definitely couldn't move in right away due to the condition of the house. Luckily, our apartment was literally across the street. We could just walk over after work and work some more. With the apartment's rules of two month notice move out date, and the time line of the work we had to do on the house, we did have one month of paying a rent payment and a mortgage payment. Again, with the guidance of Dave Ramsey we had enough in savings to do the work needed and pay two payments and still have food on the table, or the floor in our case. Picnic style.

We made a list of the major projects to do before we moved in. That included: refinishing all of the hardwood floors, putting up a wall in the bathroom, and getting most of the painting done. With those we came upon little surprises as well, bad plumbing, electrical, and rotting kitchen cabinets, to name a few. Always have a back up plan, including a home inspection, when dealing with HUD homes. There is almost always something lurking behind the walls.

Our first project was putting up the bathroom wall. The previous owner had thought it would be a good idea to take out the only two storage closets to make a bigger bathroom. Good idea, except for the part where we now have no storage. The picture above is my wonderful husband Aaron, and our good friend Cliff, putting up the drywall. The renovation of the bathroom also included moving an outlet from below the cabinet to above the cabinet, adding another outlet, and adjusted the plumbing pipes. Thanks Cliff for all of your help! It turned out much better than if we did it ourselves!

 This is me not helping with that stuff, because I feel I would just be in the way.(Aaron's parents had some water resistant drywall in their garage. Free is always good!)

So, basically the previous owners started a remodel and just didn't finish it. Here is the tile work that Aaron finished up. Luckily they still had the same tile at Lowes!($50 at most for the tiles, adhesive, and grout)

Notice the sweet wall shelves in the shower! I like these far better than the racks you hang on the shower head.

This is our first fabulous thrift store find! ($50) We didn't want to\have the $200+ to spend on a fake wood vanity. This dresser stands a little taller than a normal vanity, but the height feels comfortable. (It did come with all drawers, I just forgot to take a picture before I started working on it) The pink bottle of stuff on top is a paint and stain stripper called Citristrip. ($12)

Once we cut out the back, for the plumbing, and attached it to the studs, Aaron tiled the top of it to match the rest of the bathroom tile.

 This is the finished vanity.  Aaron made the top two drawers into doors, and the bottom drawers are still drawers. (Hinges $1ish each. Hardware original to dresser)(Can of White paint- Free- ask on facebook you might be surprised what people have lying around)

 This is the sink we picked up from a ReStore. ($20) I think the faucet came from the sink that was in the bathroom already. (Free) This was the first time we had running water in our bathroom. It was a momentous occasion!

 Here is Aaron playing in the bathtub. He was really sealing the tub, I think. :)

And here is another lovely thrift store find- Wall cabinet ($10) We were looking at these at Lowe's and Home Depot and a brand new one is about $70! Wow! There was nothing wrong with this one. The hardware is little blue flowers- easily changeable. Thrift stores people! Just keep your eyes open, and visit them frequently!

I have mentioned our lack of storage, and I didnt really want a bunch of stuff all over the counter. I picked up this beauty at a thrift store as well. ($5) Just add a can of white spray paint and there ya go!

And of course, our selfies in our giant mirror! ($18- ReStore)

 This is our (mostly) finished bathroom. Then I got real tired of the white. Way too white! We got this green paint for free, so it made it okay to re-paint.

 According to a study the average bathroom remodel can cost $10,000!! That's crazy! I don't know about you, but I know we could never afford that. We spent approximately $200 total for this entire bathroom! All you need to do is find a couple of friends who know what they are doing and do most of the work yourself. It will definitely save you so much money! 

Thanks for reading my very first post ever! (you can probably tell that I am new at this) Up next, the kitchen!

-Beth

*UPDATE       
I have found the "before" pictures of the bathroom!

 There was a hole in the wall by the tub. We put some of that free mold resistant drywall there, and Aaron finished the tile.

This was where they took out the two closets (one coat closet-right, and one linen closet-left) to move the toilet and have a bigger bathroom. Kind of luckily, the drywall was already up.

This is the ceiling. I guess maybe they re-drywalled it?

 

 The unfinished tile toilet wall. Aaron finished this, and added the little black tile to match the shower.(also no toilet seat, which is okay, cause who wants to sit on a used toilet seat?) (with the exception of public places, of course) (but in your own home, gross)

This was where the toilet used to be. We had to cut it back so it wouldn't be just hanging out there. (if that's what you were thinking)

 And here is the open bathroom wall with the kind of yucky super cheap vanity. You can see where we added an outlet and changed the light fixture. Lovely wall progression, with mold resistant drywall, of course.