2010 State of the House

Today marks the one-year anniversary of our house. To commemorate, I thought I'd post a tour of our house as it is today. To keep this from being the longest post ever, I've linked to previous posts about the rooms where possible.
Our major expense to the house to date has been installing new windows. Next year, we plan to replace the roof.

Exterior

For the exterior, we have removed many of the bushes that surround the house, restored the pond, and laid the patio (partially visible here). Next spring, we'd like to do some landscaping.
In the future sometime, we'd like to replace the siding and trim. When we do that, we will sand down and repaint the exterior doors.

Master Bedroom

So far, to this room we have replaced the ceiling fan, painted the walls, moved our furniture in, and hung pictures. Until a month ago, we had shutters over the windows in our bedroom, but when we placed the windows, the shutters had to go :(

We hope to paint the ceiling (we didn't realize until we moved in that someone had painted the ceiling yellow), and install crown molding sometime in the near future.

Master Bathroom

This room was the first room to get a major overhaul. Looking at this room makes me excited about my plans for the rest of the house.

The only thing left for this room is replacing the shower and redoing the door. I like the bifold door, but I realize that it does have it's drawbacks. When we take up the carpet, the bifold door will likely be too short for the lower floor. I'd love to install a pocket door, but that would involve moving an outlet.


Hallway

We have painted the hallway and hung pictures. We would like to replace the hall light and move the light so that it is mounted in the ceiling.

Guest Bedroom

We have painted the guest bedroom and filled it with the stuff that doesn't have a home anywhere else :)

Other than replacing the ceiling fan, there are no current renovations planned for this room.

Schoolroom (aka the Front Room)

Aside from painting and moving things in, we haven't done anything to the room.

BB's Bathroom

We have painted the walls and decorated. We plan on doing a major overhaul to this room like we did to the master bath, hopefully at the beginning of the new year.

BB's room
Again, all we've done here is paint and move stuff in. We are going to replace the fan in his room, and aside from the flooring and door changes, we have no further plans.

Living Room
We have painted this room and moved things in. I dislike the off-set fireplace, but as of yet, I don't have a plan for the fireplace.

Kitchen
We haven't done anything to the kitchen aside from moving our stuff in. After we replace the roof, the next project we're saving for is a new kitchen.

New cabinets, new flooring, new counter tops, new lights, new oven, new stove, new hood...

I can't wait.

We initially planned on painting the existing cabinets and countertops, and repairing the cabinets where needed. But after some research, we've come to the conclusion that a better use of our resources would be to replace. We don't plan on selling this house anytime soon, but whatever changes we make we want to make with the resell factor in mind. The time and money it would cost to fix the cabinets doesn't make it worth our while. Replacing the cabinets will also enable us to improve the layout of the kitchen.

Front Hallway

In the hallway, we replaced the globes on the existing light fixture and spray painted it to take it from shiny brass to antique brass.

We also removed and/or painted over the wallpaper. Parts of the wall are still bumpy, so we'll have to go back and fix that. Other than that, we have no further plans.

Laundry Room

In the laundry room, we patched and painted the walls. We plan on either removing the cabinet doors or painting them. When the kitchen gets new flooring, we will replace the flooring in here as well.

Overall Interior

Throughout the house, we plan on replacing the carpet with hardwood flooring. When we do this we will also replace the base molding. At some point, we would like to replace the hollow doors with 6-panel solid doors. Chances are, this will take place after the kitchen remodel (which is after the roof).

Cheap Art

After my bathroom's makeover, I needed some art for the walls. I have a horrible time finding art that I like. I scoured etsy, ebay, and my local stores. I had a mental picture of what I wanted, but I couldn't find it. When you can't find what you want, you either have to do without or make it yourself. Needless to say, I chose the later option.
I started off by doing a Google images search for common bathroom items. I limited my search to line drawings since I wanted simple pictures.
Then I went to Michael's. I picked out some 4"x6" and 5"x7" acrylic frames and cardstock. I printed out the images, framed them, and voila -


These pictures sit atop the wide ledge that runs around the wall in the bathroom. I love how simple they are. And I also love that I only spent $12.30 for 7 pictures - frames and all!

My Most Awesome Birthday Present

When we bought our house, we knew that it needed a few aesthetic repairs. Many of the items in the house are beginning to show their age. In the master bathroom, this was evident in the mirror:

the sink:
and the inefficient golden toilet (that matched the sink and also the shower stall):

Our bathroom also still had the original flooring:

(by the way, pay no attention to the date in these pictures. I have no idea how the date got set to that)
Our house was built before the whole concept of "master bath" took place. Which means that while BB's bathroom is a luxurious 7 x 8 feet, our bathroom is a mere 4 x 8 feet. That's including the shower stall, people. Obviously the architect for our house was a man. No woman would design a bathroom with this problem:

Yep. When you opened the door, you couldn't open part of the vanity doors. This didn't seem like a big deal until we had to deal with it everyday. The vanity had to go.

Even BB agreed, after reviewing the design problems.

For Christmas, my parents bought us new sinks for the bathrooms. We originally were going to put the new sink in the old vanity and live with the bathroom a bit longer. However, a series of events worked together to convince us otherwise. Such as me finding this great mirror at Goodwill for a mere $5:

Solid wood frame, mirror in perfect condition. All it needed was a coat of paint for the frame. Even better, the mirror is 24" x 36", the exact dimensions I wanted for the bathroom mirror.
From time to time, I like to go to the Habitat for Humanity resale store to see what they have. Right around Christmas time, I spotted this:

This vanity was originally from Home Depot. When this model was discontinued, the floor model was donated to Habitat. I watched it priced from $300, to $250, to $200. Since the vanity didn't come with a top, no one was interested. The vanity was in perfect shape. After the vanity had sat there for over a month, the manager of the store was eager to part with it. I was able to snag it for $100. We topped it with a Formica countertop from Lowe's in Butterum Granite for a mere $70.

Pretty nice, don't you think? The new vanity is 36" wide, while the old vanity was 48". While the old vanity did have a lot of counter space, it was too close to the toilet, as you can see:

Once the new vanity was in place, we knew we'd have to patch the wall and floor where the old vanity used to be. And the nice new sink and vanity made the old toilet look even worse. So for my birthday, I asked for a toilet. Thankfully, my family is used to requests like this. My parents and my Nana chipped in to pay for half of the new toilet, an American Standard FloWise toilet from Lowe's:

(image taken from the Lowe's website)

DH worked on the bathroom for 2 1/2 weeks, on weekends, President's Day, and evenings. Nearly everything was replaced. Ready for the big reveal?




DH installed paneling on the bottom 2/3 of the wall. The top third of the wall is painted Desert Fortress by Valspar.

DH built this great shelf for our towels. I. Love. This. Shelf.

The hooks on the shelf are from Lowe's. The shelf brackets were originally from Lowe's also, but I found them at Goodwill for $2.02 each - still in their packaging!
For our shower, we are still using the original shower stall. Since the shower stall is the same harvest gold as the old sink and toilet, we opted for a tall curtain to cover the entire wall. After looking at all of my options, I decided to use a flat twin sheet from Target.

The flooring looks like tile, but it is really vinyl. My parents had bought a vinyl remnant from Lowe's to go under their washing machine. They had some extra, and thanks to our small bathroom, the extra was the perfect size. DH placed the vinyl on top of the existing tile. To even up the flooring where the old vanity used to be, DH placed some small tiles under the vinyl.
Remember the door problem? We solved that with these bifold doors:

We bought the doors unfinished from the Habitat store for $5. DH painted them white, and added some 8.5" x 11" mirrors from the Dollar Store. He surrounded each mirror with a frame made out of molding and painted it all white. The knobs are extras from when we replaced the kitchen knobs at our old house. The doors open into the bedroom, giving us some wonderful space. And lest you think I am exceptionally creative, I got the idea for the doors here.
DH did a great job on the bathroom. The bathroom feels so much bigger, thanks to the door problem being solved and the smaller vanity and toilet.
Here's a cost breakdown:
vanity, vanity top, faucet, and sink parts - $296.57 (the sink was a Christmas present)
door, mirrors, trim, hinges - $36.34
mirror above sink, paint for frame - $8.53
toilet, parts - $81 (1/2 the toilet was paid for with birthday money)
paint, brushes - $51.13
light - $21.98
white switchplates, outlet covers, etc. - $22.54
wood boards, molding, paneling - $213.60
threshold - $15.18
calk - $15.96
hooks - $22.43
tiles under vinyl - $5.14
TOTAL: $790.40
I absolutely LOVE this bathroom. I've gone in there many times just to admire. DH did an amazing job. I can't wait until we save up enough money for our next project!