Evil Monkey's Home Renovation

I thought I would document my home restore in it's own thread. We bought it in July of 2012. The house is 2650 sq ft, 3 bedroom. Just about every room had wallpaper. Here are some original shots of the house that we pulled from the real estate listing:

Front:


Back:


Covered Patio:


Dining Room


Kitchen (wallpaper on the ceiling!):



Family room:


Main bathroom:


Guest Bedroom:


Laundry Rooom:

Downstairs master bedroom:



Downstairs master bathroom:


Living Room:


Upstairs master bedroom:


Upstairs master closet/bathroom:

 

The first room we updated was the dining room:







We took down all the wallpaper and painted it gray. We bought some faux stacked stone panels and put them up on one wall. I also, cut the closet doors in half and made it into a bar area. I got an inexpensive countertop from Home Depot and cut it to fit for the bar top.

 

Next was the main bathroom. The shower was a new install and was in excellent shape (corian). For, fixtures, all we did was replace the toilet with a low flow model (the original was ancient and took about 5-7 gallons to flush). The new one was a 1.28 gallon Kohler. We took down all the wall paper and painted it. Then we put some left-over faux rock panels on the wall to to the shower. My wife painted the cabinet and the inside of the door black. I also put down some inexpensive vinyl tile that looks like wood (Allure Flooring from Home Depot).

Before:


After:

 

Next was the kitchen. We really liked the look of concrete countertops. So, my wife and I took a 3 day Buddy Rhodes concrete class up in San Francisco. It cost us about $2000 for the class, hotel stay, flights and car rental. It was money well spent. For our first countertop, we decided to practice on the laundry room as it had a good sized counter in there (2x7).


I took out the old countertop and placed some backer board on the countertop. Then added the edge molding.




For the edge of the countertops, I bought some edge forms from Z-Countertop Solutions. It was about $200 for eight 8-foot half-bullnose edging and six 8-foot backs (for the wall side of the countertop). They have many different patterns to choose from. This was enough to do the laundry room and the kitchen.

We used four cans of Buddy Rhodes coal colored dye to darken the concrete ($28/each). It also took 4 80-lbs bags of concrete. We used the Quikrete Countertop mix. They cost about $15/bag at Lowes. I also added glass fiber and fiberglass scrim to the bottom half of the concrete to strengthen it.

With the left over concrete, I made a small two-piece backsplash. I used melamine to make the form:


Here's the after shot:

 

subbed looks awesome!

 

Good work! Keep going...

 

With our confidence up, we decided to tackle the kitchen.



Here's a closeup of the original cabinet doors.


The first step was getting all the wallpaper off the ceiling and the walls. Then, I took down the cabinets above the bar area. It was pretty closed off and we thought this would open things up a bit. The bottom shelf of the old cabinets was taken up by some inset florescent lighting so we didn't lose much cabinet space.

We tore off the tile from the countertop and the backsplash area. I also raised the vent hood a bit. The previous owners were all short and my wife was constantly banging her head on the vent hood. I was able to raise it about 3" without having to redo much of the vent piping (I just took out a 3" extension piece).

We replaced the old Thermador electric cooktop with a new GE Induction cooktop (36") and replaced the sink with a deeper one.

Here's everything all destroyed:








Next, we wanted to replace the doors and drawers. I decided to make them myself. I bought a bunch of maple and 1/4" maple plywood. I went with a shaker style. I made 18 doors and 13 drawers. I had to make the drawer boxes as well because they were destroyed when trying to take the face off. The only thing I reused was the bottoms.

Here's a drawer pre-stain:


Next I put the backer board on the countertops and added the edge forms around the edge, around the sink hole and around the cooktop hole.


The wood on the walls is a temporary guide for my custom screed tool.




I also built a new cabinet to extend the other out a bit, and have a place to hide the microwave:


Then we poured concrete, added a backsplash, painted, replaced the vinyl flooring with some large 12x24" tile and added some lighting. I reused the light that was in the original dining room to replace the florescent light that was in the middle of the kitchen. I also built a small island cart. I found the plans for the cart online (byegone workshop www.bygone.com). I put a sliding top on it for a work surface.











I took some of the wood from the walls (3/4" tongue and grove siding) and made some faux beams:


Our cost for the reno materials was as follows:
Concrete countertops (55 sq ft): $530
Doors and drawers (wood): $800
Tile & Schluter Ditra: $900
Cooktop: $2000
Paint & stains & poly: $150
Tile backsplash: $500
Lighting $600
Drawer/door hardware (slides/pulls/hinges) $400
Island wheels & plans: $90
Island wood: $200

Total around $6200

 

Thanks. I was looking through your thread and decided to do one myself.

 

Those concrete counters really are the bomb. I agree that I love the look of those more than any granite or marble.

 

Since we were doing the kitchen floors, my wife decided she wanted to extend the floors out to the family room. We took down the shelving in the family room (I reused some of the wood for the kitchen island top). I also took down the peach light and put up a chandelier that my wife bought from a garage sale for $25.



Ditra everywhere!







Tile and grout are finished:




The wife thought it was too dark in there so we painted the walls a light green. We also took down the old-lady valences and replaced the wood blinds with Roman Shades and a standard pull-down shade for the long narrow window (they didn't make roman shades long enough).




Total for this room was as follows:

Blinds: $1400
Tile and Ditra: $2560
Paint: $100
chandelier: $25
LED chandelier light bulbs: $100

 

Damn , you're going to town

 

Next up was the Master and the stairwell leading up to it. This was primarily a "remove wallpaper and repaint" job.

The hideous wallpaper was the same up the stairwell. So I had to remove all that, texture it, and then paint.


This is from the stairwell. Even the switch plates and breaker panel were wallpapered.


This is looking down the stairwell. The wall paper went to the ceiling. We also removed this light and replaced it with a tin star light (below) that we bought from a shop in Old Town in San Diego.


Walls are textured and painted and the light has been replaced.


Here's the tin light lit up.


Wallpaper removed:




The wall is textured and painted.


Here we did a 2-tone stripe pattern with a metallic gold paint. There are three pictures up there now so the wall doesn't look so bare.


The bathroom/closet will be updated at a later date.

The wife wants to move things around drastically. It's kind of an odd layout. The shower/toilet is in the little room at the end (about 3' x 11'). The walk-in closet has a lot of wasted space. It measures about 9'x15'. There's another closet to the right of the picture taker that's pretty much unused, and the sink. She wants to move the shower and toilet into that space and move the closet where the toilet and shower currently are. She also wants to put in a nice tub. This will probably be our last update as it's the least noticed by visitors.

 

It was a busy weekend.

 

Haha

 

Next up was a redwood deck. My son had gotten married by a justice of the peace before being shipped off to Afghanistan. So when he got back, my wife decided she wanted to have a wedding celebration at our house. My job was to build the deck.

My wife hated the Elephant Palm tree on the left edge of the picture. So we decided to tear it out and put the deck there.


My son came over with his chainsaw and proceeded to take it down. When he cut into it, it was like cutting milk, since the trunk is it's water storage. Eventually we got it out. It only went down into the dirt about 3". There was no real root system.

So I built a frame for the floor of the deck over the area the tree used to be:








The board on the end was cut to fit. Eventually we plan to cover the entire putting green area with a low deck.

 

Now, I'm working on the living room.


It has a small room attached that they used as an office space. It runs the length of the living room but is only about 5 feet wide. I think this was originally a deck that they enclosed.


Here you can see what looks like was once a sliding door.


We'll remove this valance along with all the wallpaper and the wainscotting.




And so it begins...






All the wainscotting is off and drywall is up.






Here, I'm building a feature wall for our ventless bio-ethanol fireplace.


This is kind of the look I'm going for. Our alcoves will be wider and we'll have a fireplace instead of the tv. We won't have the cabinets underneath. We're going to run hardwood floors from the living room, the entry way, through the dining room and the hallway.:


Eventually, I'm going to reuse the wainscotting wood and build some shutters for the window.

 

Very cool, that is a great house. Whoever put all that wallpaper up should be shot, hung, taken down then hung again.

 

We bought it from the original owner. They put it up when they built the house in 1976. The only positive is most of it was high quality stuff so, except for the living room, it came off fairly easily.

 

You ain't joking around, love the bathroom.