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2010 year in review
It seems like this week is all about year in review posts, so we’re jumping on the bandwagon too. This was a big year for us – we took on our largest project to date and lived to tell the tale. Here’s how it all went down…
In January we started collecting samples and finalizing the design for the kitchen/dining/living room. We also made a crazy Excel spreadsheet to help establish a budget. I’m pretty sure we don’t want to go back and compare it to how much was actually spent. Yes, it ALWAYS costs more and takes more time than you initially think. Still, we saved tons of money by doing the work ourselves and carefully choosing products and materials.
2009 was the year of the exterior, but by the time we were done painting we didn’t have the energy to finish the mudroom. So we gave ourselves an ultimatum to finish the space before we started demo in the house. Such a small space, but surprisingly a lot of work!
During March, we made final preparations for demo day and begrudgingly finished the mudroom (though we’re really happy with how it turned out, even if it’s still not 100% done).
In April, we DEMOED! We invited a bunch of our friends over to help and were blown away by their enthusiasm and destruction skills.
One of my favorite memories was watching the guys stomp out the ceiling from up in the attic. Lath and plaster dust for all! Sawing out the kitchen ceiling was not as poetic, especially when one chunk swung into the bedroom wall on its way down.
At the end of the day we had transformed our tired old house into…well, a barn.
We spent the latter part of April and most of May in framing mode, which included sanding and refinishing our 100 year-old joists and installing the painted MDO above to serve as a subfloor for the new loft. (FYI – the loft was not part of the original plan, but after demo we decided to just “throw it in”. This probably explains why it’s still not finished.)
Of course we couldn’t do something easy like flat ceilings…
In June, we focused on installing skylights, tension rods and rigid insulation in the vaulted ceiling.
Our friend Dustin spent several Saturdays helping us out and we were sad when he (and my sister) moved to Texas. So much for the “Everyone move to Seattle!” campaign.
July brought electrical rough-in, which is probably the most boring thing to blog about.
See what I mean? At the beginning of August it didn’t look too different. But this month was different, we were on charrette to meet our (revised) September deadline (charretting is architecture-speak for work like crazy and get little sleep until it’s done).
With the electrical work finally done, it was time to wrap our house in furry blue insulation.
We also installed the plywood vaulted ceiling and then the drywallers came to work their magic. Besides the Silestone countertops (which we couldn’t install ourselves), this was the one thing we hired out and it was worth every penny. (On a side note, the room seems especially narrow in the picture below. Weird.)
The first two weeks in September were spent priming, painting and installing the cabinet boxes, counters, lighting and appliances. We had planned a big party at the house for my 30th birthday and even though it wasn’t done, it was close (if you kinda squinted).
We kept working on the kitchen, but the big project for October was the cork flooring.
In November we focused on finishing the kitchen – custom shelving, plywood wraps, and a quick break for Thanksgiving (though thankfully, not at our house!).
It should be noted that Bailey was, for the most part, a real trooper and put up with all the craziness of this year. In the end, we learned that he didn’t really care what we were doing as long as he had a place to sleep and got fed twice a day (whether it was via two plastic bowls on the floor or a custom dog bowl holder).
And in December we finished the kitchen!
We also finished up the stair cabinet and decorated our house for Christmas. (Our new couch and coffee table were also delivered!)
As this year comes to an end, we’re finding more time to relax but also chipping away at the things that are unfinished. We’re hoping to wrap up the loft, loft ladder and barn doors in the next month or so.
So what will 2011 bring? We don’t have any more walls to knock down so we’ll be focusing on smaller projects. And really, we’re excited about that. We also have tentative plans to do some landscaping this summer. 2011 will also be about refilling our remodel penny bank so we’ll have to wait a bit to tackle the basement or the eyesore of a garage in our backyard.
Finally, a big thanks to everyone who reads this blog. Your comments and encouragement go a long way in motivating us to keep pushing forward. Seriously, how did people remodel their homes before the internet? Were there local support groups? Y’know…places where you could throw around words like Expedit and Akurum and people would know exactly what you were talking about? Regardless, we’re glad you all are out there and that we have this great forum for exchanging information and sharing ideas. Here’s to 2011 and all the projects it will bring!
floor plans
Construction on the main floor is more or less done, which means…time to update the floor plan! We made a few changes post-demo, mainly with the addition of the loft, the stair cabinet and tweaking the furniture layout. But just for fun, here’s a reminder of what it looked like circa 2008. [Click to enlarge.]
And here’s what it looks like now (the living room is still empty, but not for long). In an earlier plan we had a bench seat (with storage below) along the south side of the dining area. We ended up nixing the idea so we could have the flexibility to rotate the table either way depending on our mood or the amount of people over. (For Thanksgiving and other bigger events, we have a card table “extender” that can go on one end. With a tablecloth over the top, you can’t tell it’s two pieces.) We also opted to put the media cabinet along the west wall of the living area, instead of a low piece that separates the living and dining area. The second bedroom/flex room is still a question mark. It seems silly to put an actual bed in there so we’re thinking of just leaving our current couch in the space and if we have 2+ guests we can bust out the plush Aerobed. It’s not fancy, but our remodel funds are super depleted so that space is going to stay flexible for a while. Eventually, we’d like to add another wardrobe and maybe one of those fancy couch-bed things. Ok, a futon. But not the kind you had in college. Anyhow, I love that we were able to add a bedroom and make it a million times more functional without adding any square footage (the main floor is about 800 SF including the mudroom). We went through tons of floor plan iterations (maybe we’ll show those someday – it might make for a good laugh), and ultimately landed on what you see above. Not only did we have to come up with something that worked, but also something that could be phased over time while we lived in the house. Sure, there are inherent challenges with reworking a small, 100 year-old house, but we’re pretty excited about living in this one.
the month of august
August is usually the best time of year to be in Seattle. The days are long, sunny and perfect for going on a hike or just lounging about. But for us, August has been a time to start new projects or push through projects that have been going on for FAR TOO LONG.
Case in point:
August 2006
I think this was taken the day we got the keys. With clipboard in hand, there was a lot to do. Fortunately, we had a month overlap with our rental house lease so it bought us a few weeks to clean things out and get a couple of rooms painted (rooms that we have now completely demolished).
I took down the floral wallpaper in the bathroom and Kyle used the crushed green velvet couch (that came with the house!) to remove layers of wallpaper from the living room ceiling.
August 2007
A year after we moved in, we took on our first major project – completely replacing the roof. Looking back, I cannot believe we did this.
My appearance in the photo on the left was generated by the contents of the photo on the right. So much debris!
But by the end of August, we were done.
August 2008
About a week before Kyle’s 30th birthday – we gutted our bedroom and bathroom. The date isn’t so significant except that we had planned a big b-day celebration….at our house. The house with only one bathroom. The house with the bed in the living room.
Goodbye faux marble plastic tiles! (The video is even funnier, but that’s for another time.)
Our makeshift bathroom on the left…our old closet soon-to-be-new-bathroom on the right. Yikes.
August 2009
With record temperatures last year, we didn’t mind working outside. We were still immersed in our exterior project, and Kyle was making his way around the house with the PaintShaver.
August 2010
And here we are in 2010, with our ambitious kitchen/dining/living/2nd bedroom/loft project! I hear there are lots of fun things to do in Seattle in August. Ugh.
For August 2011, I’m hoping for more lazy days – with weekends spent actually enjoying this city rather than hitting up the hardware store. There are still a few major projects left to do (finishing out the basement, revamping the yard, and dealing with our garage eyesore), but we’re in no rush.
Well, I say that now. Plenty of time to change our minds.
more bright ideas
In January, we did a post about lighting choices for our soon-to-be-demoed spaces. Since then, we’ve purchased the island light and the reach lights for over the kitchen counter. We’re still planning on this drum pendant for the dining table, and some simple can lights for the ceiling adjacent to the bedroom and bathroom.
For the living room lighting, we wanted something that would integrate with the exposed structure but not be too visually heavy. We looked at Bruck and Techlighting, which both offer modern, low-voltage linear systems. Ultimately, we ended up picking a Kable Lite system from Techlighting. The installation will be similar to this, but the joist spacing and cable spacing will be tighter and the cables will run within the joist bay.
We’ll have two runs that span from wall to wall and each run will have 4 lights. We’re deciding between these two options. We like the simplicity of the one on the right, but we might need the extra vertical drop in the one on the left since the cables will be slightly recessed above the bottom of the joists.
We’ll also be buying a fan to go in the new stairwell. We’ll do a similar configuration to our bedroom fan (the Cirrus style by Modern Fan Co.) but with a down rod and no light (so similar to the image below but with maple blades).
For the loft, we decided that we would install a switched outlet (with the switch at the top of the ladder) with the thought that we would have some type of small wall sconce or desk lamp instead of a ceiling fixture. We’ll also just pre-wire for some type of ceiling fixture in the 2nd bedroom, but aren’t going to buy that just yet. The only thing left on the lighting list is under cabinet lighting in the kitchen. Since we only have one wall of upper cabinets, we really don’t have much under cabinet space, about 30″ on each side of the vent hood. Most under cabinet lighting we’ve seen is bulky, clunky and just generally blah. To keep with the overall aesthetic, we really didn’t want to build a valence to hide said clunky lighting either. We looked for more minimal options, especially LEDs, but most were cost-prohibitive. On the verge of having to make an under cabinet compromise(!), our contact at Lighting Supply told us about LED tape lights.
Pretty sexy, huh? These “tape lights” are made by ET2 Lighting and consist of a row of LED lights on a circuit board type strip that is lightweight and adheres to the underside of the cabinet with simple 3M tape. The product line has a few different options that range in brightness and available lengths and most can be joined together to create longer runs. The power end of the strip is connected to a driver/transformer that is then wired back to the panel. In our case, the driver will go in the cabinet above the vent hood since it’s centrally located and will also be housing the duct for the vent. Even though we’d install the lights towards the back wall where they’d be less visible, ET2 also sells aluminum channel that can be installed on the outboard face to serve as a valence (the strips also come with protective plastic cover). We’re still working on final pricing for the whole system, but the general numbers are really not too bad and comparable if not less expensive than more traditional under cabinet options. Plus, the lifespan for LED lights far exceed that of fluorescent, halogen or especially incandescent and since these won’t be on all the time we’re expecting to go years without needing to replace them. Woo!
I just realized that the irony in this post is that we’re also proposing a major reduction in artificial lighting due to our new windows and skylights. But nevermind, there’s always winter…when darkness can come as early as 4:30. (I tend to repress that memory as we’re on the downward slope towards summer.)
things we like
We still have a way to go before we can start talking furniture and accessories, but it’s certainly a fun diversion!
I recently put together this collection of ideas for our future dining and living area. Unfortunately, the only thing we currently own is the IKEA table! We plan on buying several items this year, but others may be on the wish list for a while and a few things are simply ideas. We know we won’t be able to afford everything at once, which works out well since we also want the space to evolve over time. Right now, we’re planning on a combination of more affordable finds from IKEA, West Elm and Etsy, coupled with custom DIY pieces and long-lasting classics from the Eames collection, Artemide and Heath Ceramics. As part of our overall goal to live more sustainably, we’ll try to buy non-toxic, easy to clean and durable products that won’t end up on Craigslist or at the Goodwill anytime soon. For colors, we’ll be starting with white walls and our dark brown cork flooring. By choosing the big-ticket items in more neutral colors, we can constantly reinvent the feel of the space by changing up the accessories and artwork. [As you can see, we’re into mustard yellows, dark browns and cool blues at the moment.] A steel ledge that will run nearly the entire length of the south wall will provide display space for rotating artwork and a low-slung shelving unit will house books and a media hub. One of the challenges with creating a “great room” space is finding that balance between über minimal and distracting clutter. We think this palette will mesh well with the kitchen and provide interest without overwhelming the space.
But for now, the aesthetic of bare studs and plywood will have to do.
