Friday

Here are a few more updates with some more details. This is how it looked on Friday:

This is the the view standing in the new laundry room and looking into the new mudroom. They closed off the old window, put the new door in which is 3/4 windows so lots of light!

This is the sewer pipe in the basement which may seem unimportant to some but the previous pipe was most likely from when plumbing was first invented and had a hole plugged with a clothespin! It was on its last leg and the plumber replaced all the plumbing in the whole house in one single day.

Here you can see the new sewage pipe connecting to a piece of the old. Quite a difference.

This is the view from the laundry room and into the new bathroom. Next to that new window will be a pocket door closing off the bathroom and to the right of the laundry plumbing will be a 30" closet/cabinet.

This is the new bathroom and the new plumbing in the corner. Amazed and thrilled at how quickly it's all coming together.

Framing!

First update in photos of many.

It's Begun!

It's been over a month since we closed on the new house and since then, T has been very busy every single evening ripping up flooring, taking down wallpaper (with huge help from Jim & Deana!), demolishing plaster, repairing cracks, etc... After all that, today was the big day and the contractors started working. I can't wait to get over there and see what they got done today. They said they should be ready for inspections by Monday so it's really happening! Hard to believe. I'm the spending committee and so far I've bought a vanity, a kitchen, all the appliances, a shower, faucets, and more. Today I ordered the flooring for the mudroom/laundry room as well as for the bathroom and we're excited about what we went with.

For the mudroom/laundry room we decided on honed travertine tile. It's gorgeous! Then for the bathroom we looked at many many options but decided on the classic 1" hex carrara marble tile. Also gorgeous. And last night I started packing up our house so it's starting to feel official. Hard to believe that in 3ish weeks, we will no longer live here. Such good memories here but we're excited for the next phase!

Best $7 I ever spent

I should have known when I bought these Ethan Allen chairs that everything would be very well-made (read: complicated to disassemble). The seat is bolted down to the frame with a screw with a square head. So off to Sears we went to find a Robertson screw driver to take off the seat. While we were there, after we took a few "rides" on the ride-on mowers, of course, I also spotted a tack remover for $7. Seemed better than my butter knife that I had been using to remove the 7,000 staples. Needless to say, it's going much quicker now.

Presenting: 13 Kenmuir

Here are the photos of our house pre-renovation. To quote Alitris, "It's like a time capsule." Indeed, it is. Original woodwork (which I am hesitant to paint but I just can't find a single room that I like with dark woodwork so most likely it will be painted white), original floors which will be sanded down and stained dark brown, original electrical which will be torn out and updated, etc... Without further adieu, here she is:

front

living room

reading nook

kitchen

Let the reupholstery fun begin

Since T is over at the new house every evening ripping up 50+ year old linoleum, demo-ing kitchen walls, etc... I decided I'd start on my contribution to the new house: style. And the first thing needing some style are the Ethan Allen chairs we scored from Craigslist a bit ago. So armed with blogs, YouTube clips, and a singer upholstery book, I began the job. So far, so good.

The only problem so far is this crazy fabric is so rough, it literally sands my skin off. No wonder it has held up so well! Can't wait to see the final product

Ethan Allen Chairs Part II

We are almost ready to close on a house aka our large reno project. It's a late 19th- or early 20th-century (we've seen a few different dates for when it was built) colonial/victorian-style house and as Lis put it, "It's like a time capsule." If anyone is in need of a 1940s-styled New Jersey house, we got you covered. It's got it all: original woodwork, a butler's pantry, and even a furnace that has a door that you could put coal in (luckily it's been converted over to gas). Needless to say, it needs a LOT of work. So while our attorney, millions of inspectors, mortgage peeps, realtors, etc... are doing their stuff (which takes at least 2 months here), we're busy trying to design a new kitchen, new floors, color scheme, decide which walls to knock down, etc...

For the living room, the inspiration is this color scheme:



source

And for the kitchen, we're going for this type of look:


source

So I'm leaning towards reupholstering these vintage Ethan Allen lounge chairs in the Waverly dark charcoal print above and doing some chartreuse accents in the pillows and maybe in the rug. Fun/stressful times ahead!