it's beginning to look a lot like

a freaking hurricane hit my house.

We have officially reached the point in this process where things look a whole lot worse before they get better. The good news is we finished moving the plumbing to the island in the kitchen!! 

Sean has been hard at work trying to fix the atrocious electrical situation we inherited. It's bad. Really bad. 

So many wires everywhere! We are adding a lot of lighting to the house because there basically isn't any currently. It has been a real pain but hopefully worth it. I never knew how hard it would be to determine where to place lights but it's not easy! These are the times I wish my budget was twice as big so I could hire all the designers.

This week we should be able to get the drywall work done. The drywall in this house is really a wreck:

 ::shudder::

There is water damage, missing drywall, tape peeling up, and that funky texture. I am very excited that we are to the point in this project to fix the walls!! Hopefully by next week I will have some much prettier pictures to share!

help me pick some lights

This is the vanity I bought for the kids bathroom:

Isn't it cute? It was delivered yesterday and the actual color is a little bit more sea-foamy green. So now I need to pick some lighting for the bathroom. Help me decide! Here are some options I like:

option A

Option B

Option C

My first choice would be to actually have a can light above the vanity and then add two sconces on the wall flanking a mirror, but that would involve extra time and work sooo I'm settling for an overhead fixture. Which one do you like the best?

This is where it goes...

new windows!!!

When we first took possession of the house one of the first things we noticed was how unbelievably HOT it was inside. All those windows giving us that beautiful view of the lake were not doing us any favors. I even had the AC guys come out because I was sure the AC was not working properly. They say the AC works perfectly (I still have my serious doubts), but the single pane windows were really the culprit.

This is probably hands down the most expensive surprise to our budget. This is me when I got my first quote for $16,000:

Eventually I sucked it up and ordered the damn things. I found a company that manufactures the windows locally saved me $4k. Score.

And now feast your eyes on my new super expensive and hopefully totally worth it windows!!!

Before:

After:

Now to pick a paint color for the house to make this look a little better. And maybe some siding? So many choices! 

Kid's bathroom progress

We have hired Carlos and his dad to help us get all the work done. In a perfect world we would have all the time to DIY but with how busy Sean is with work and life we will only be taking on certain portions of the remodel ourselves. Carlos is awesome. He always says yes to me which is pretty much the best thing ever.

Carlos working on the tile

We picked out all the tile for the bathrooms after hours of negotiation and compromising between Sean and I. At the end of the day we ended up with this beautiful marble tile for the back of the tub surround. I adore it. So pretty. The walls of this tub surround, however, were not so pretty. They were super unlevel and took a long time for Carlos to fill them in and make them somewhat square. I think this is a problem we will continue to see in this house.

The bathroom is still far from finished but here is a sneak peak:

This picture is kind of blurry but all of the tiling is done!! We did go with a marble tile on the floor also. Hopefully that doesn't end up being a mistake with these crazy kids of mine!

Things are moving along

at glacial speed.

It is fitting that I post this on Halloween because the house is looking a little spooky right now!

All the demo is finished. It took a wee bit longer than anticipated because that stone fireplace...was solid brick. And I mean SOLID brick from the floor to the roof. For every layer of brick that was removed there was another layer behind it. 

Enough brick to fill over half of this 20 something foot trailer. This doesn't include the stone that was on the outside of the fireplace. My worker took those off my hands. They weren't just veneers either. 

before

after

So now I have this lovely hole to deal with. We already got the roof patched but after a surprise rainstorm last week we found we have some roof problems. It's a flat roof and the water isn't draining properly. We had water leaking where that AC vent is to the left of the fireplace hole. 

FUN TIMES!

When we tore down the drop ceiling in the kitchen we had a few issues to deal with. Two AC ducts were running through there along with a pipe.

After some fancy McGuivering we moved everything back behind the walls and now the kitchen is almost ready to be drywalled. 

it looks pretty scary at the moment

That funky crack in the floor

has been repaired and we are slowly leveling the floor with concrete

It is actually more filled in at this point and looks nice and smooth but I don't have a picture.

I'm just happy to be done with the demo portion of this project and on to the more exciting stuff!

Before

Welcome to our crazy adventure in remodeling a 1970's lake house. We knew upon buying this home that it would be a total fixer upper. While the house has a beautiful view of the lake in the backyard with basically wall-to-wall windows along the entire backside of the house, it also came with a lot of issues.



The good:

dining room

master bedroom

The bad:

Almost everything inside the home is stuck in 1976 when it was made. Don't let the pictures fool you. If you are thinking that it doesn't look that bad... it does. Trust.

-the front of the house is aesthetically unappealing 

the front of the house is mostly garage. check out that awesome flat roof 

-the kitchen is small and has a drop ceiling to 7' 

-a huge stone fireplace wall breaks up the living space making it less usable and blocking the lake view 

my kids begged to keep this thing. they like to climb it like a rock wall

-a huge ugly wet bar is taking up a lot of square footage

my kids also wanted to keep this thing so they could play "McDonalds" and jump off it like monkeys

-both bathrooms are super dated and overall unappealing 

Kid's bathroom... those "wood" floors you see are sticky tiles

master bathroom - so spacious

in case you are wondering - yes that door does hit the toilet when it opens

-the deck is basically falling apart,the dock is too small, and the railing is unsafe

but at least there IS a dock!!

-there is a sort of large crack in the concrete in the front room where the carpet is rolled up

  

 -but the front door is kind of pretty! not exactly what I would have chosen, but it will do