Lane's Bedroom Transformation

It is very hard to determine which room has changed the most during the last two months. I still am blown away at the fact our new house was purchased less than 2 months ago! So much has changed inside and outside. None of that would be possible without a lot of help. Mark, his parents and my mom have spent a lot of combined hours working on various projects. I have not spent a lot of time helping because we have tried to keep the kids' routine as normal as possible with supper and bedtime. My hours are going to be full of packing, unpacking and outside work in the coming days, weeks and months.

I know it has felt like not much gets accomplished during a few hours each night after work but all we have to do is take a look around at the results so far! It looks great. Far from finished but at least we're almost to the point where it can be habitable.

Lane's bedroom is the focal point today. This was the room that almost had me running scared the day we looked at the house that first day!

There was a LARGE amount of water damage in this room, the kitchen ceiling and the hallway. I would've bet my life that we would have to tear the walls & ceiling down to start over. After a scrub down, latex primer was put on. It didn't stick. Actually it almost bubbled like blisters.

The room at the point was called the 'pink room of hell'. All the latex primer had to be scraped off and a lot of research went into what the problem was. Once again all signs were pointing to slapping up some dry wall. Come to find out all it needed was oil primer!

The oil primer worked great. Really, really thick so it only took 2 coats to cover the water stains. The bad part was that the smell was horrible! I mean about choked us all out of the room on multiple occasions.

I would have never guessed that the room would have turned out like this with just primer!

This color was supposed to be grey but definitely turned out blue. This picture makes it look like a light blue which is not the case! It's actually a darker blue with a grey tint. Oh well, it works. Lane doesn't care what it looks like at this point.

Remember this corner??

It looks normal! Who would have thought. Pictures really don't do this room justice. Really, the pictures don't do before pictures of the house in general any justice. Not many people saw the house in it's before state in entirety. Those who have I hope will be blown away by the final result.

Last picture is my project. I went back and forth about giving Lane a chalkboard wall. Images kept going through my head with Lane playing on it during the middle of the night. In the end I decided to go for it. Some people thought I should do a separate piece of smooth wood but I really do like this! The walls have a good amount of texture so hopefully it works. I might have to run out there during lunch this week to do the 'conditioning' before we move in. Chalk needs to be spread over the entire surface and let sit for awhile. Then wipe clean!

We're moving this weekend but as I stated before, projects are far from finished. Hopefully the electrical will be all finished. Otherwise we might have to strategically use electricity for awhile. There's still painting to do in the hallways, a front porch that needs major attention and multiple little items inside. It is going to be so nice to have us all under one roof again!

Kitchen Progress

As I posted before, the kitchen has transformed a lot and it's not done yet. Thne problem with buying an old farmhouse is that you can only do so much without tearing out walls (if that's even possible). We are not able to expand our kitchen any direction without some MAJOR exterior work so we needed to make do with what we had. Another problem is old farmhouses have small kitchens. I'm not sure if that was because it wasn't the hub of a house like it is now or what. Kitchens in new houses are enormous!

As much as I would love a big, open kitchen...that's not going to happen. Instead we are modernizing while trying to keep as much of the original material as possible. My guess is that this kitchen was custom done back in the 60s? And I mean custom. The cupboards fit perfectly wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling. They even matched the old appliances.

The oven/broiler/rotisserie thingy was shorter than normal counters so the original counter top was shorter on that side of the kitchen. Notice how the cupboards fit perfect around it on all sides!

The sink & dishwasher were also one large unit.

These photos are from the day after we got possession. On to what you really want to see...



Everything started by taking out the appliances. I wasn't there but was told that the oven was incredibly heavy. It took 4 people to move outside from what I understand. Dave has been playing carpenter to raise the cupboard to be normal height.

If you look at the previous picture of this side, you see there used to be a window here. At one point in time this used to be an exterior wall and the previous owner enclosed the front porch to use for storage and laundry. No need to look out a window at the washer and dryer!

I posted previously that there were 4 layers of flooring in the kitchen. Here it is down to the original hardwood. You can also see the pretty paneling has been taken off. Underneath was the original plaster walls and the bottom half is plaster that was made to look like subway tile.

The original hardwood floor was going to be pretty difficult to bring back to its original glory. There was a lot of gunk as well as a couple spots where there was just padding...maybe where there were cupboards originally? We decided to go with bamboo flooring. 

There's primer on the walls!

Best for last. Here is my pretty sink! This is my splurge for the house. I was determined to have a farmhouse sink because it's a farmhouse. Duh. After looking around the home improvement sites I fell in love with the hammered copper. Normally out of our price range but we found a great sale! It's going to be so pretty. I've tried to make the sink the primary focus of the kitchen.

Sorry about the blurriness but my phone takes horrible pictures. The plan is to put shelves of some sort above the sink to house my copper teapots.

My not so regular update

My initial goal was to keep everyone in the loop with regular updates. We've had the house for approximately a month now and holy cow, it feels like it's been months! We're not even 'moved in' yet in the typical sense of the word but someone is working or sleeping there most of the time.

**Update..I've only had this written for over a week waiting to upload pictures. I'm horrible at this.

Here's a quick run down of some items so far:

Kitchen/Entry
This is by far getting the most work done out of any other room. Our thinking was that we'll spend the most time, energy, money or any combo there-of getting this room ready because with a 1 & 3 year old at home, this needs to be safe and function easily as soon as we move in. Plus we don't plan on redoing anything in the kitchen for quite a long time. This room has DRAMATICALLY transformed the past week and I can't wait to show you everything. Here's a quick teaser of what it will look like.

New appliances, backsplash & granite countertops

Living/Dining Room

We were very lucky to have only one small wall with wallpaper. Cracks have been filled and wallpaper taken off.

No wallpaper

The wood floors have caused some issues and delays. My dad started to sand the floors with a commercial sander but it kept gumming up. After doing more investigating, we realized that there were multiple layers of wax! I don't think they ever stripped the floors....just kept waxing year after year. The floor is down to the natural wood and all it needs now is the polyurethane finish. Mark and I love the natural look without added coloring.


The sander kept getting plugged so the floors had to be stripped by hand

Pre-stripped/sanded. Look at that shiney wax.

Look at that prettiness after stripping! We're going for the natural finish with no extra coloring.

Kids' Rooms
Evelyn's room is done and just needs a thorough cleaning. Lane's room on the other hand has been a real mess. There were a lot of water damage stains that I would have put money on wouldn't be able to be fixed. I really thought that we'd have to tear the plaster walls down and replace with drywall. Luckily it's almost finished but will need   it's own post to explain everything.

Evelyns color came out much brighter than planned.

The main thing we need now is to get electrical finished so the new central air unit can function! The past few days have been real burners with everyone doing major manual labor and no air conditioning. We really couldn't have used it anyways with all the fumes from stripping and sanding floors.

Our front door that needs installed so we can move in and a lot of paint! Our other door is too narrow to fit furniture.

I'll update you on all the other stuff that has happened as well in the coming days. The kitchen and Lane's bedroom have had the BIGGEST transformations the last week so expect a post dedicated to those rooms very soon.