My Ongoing Remodel Thread or possibly "My Descent into a Hellish Nightmare"

KITCHEN UPDATE!

We've been going all out trying to get this kitchen done. One of the last pieces of the puzzle was installed today. My wife picked out the granite about 2 weeks ago. They installed them today and it looks amazing. We still have to install the new light fixtures, knobs and handles, the beadboard backsplash (which will be the same color as the island), the microwave, and some kickplates. Here it is in it's current state:







This is basically it for the interior of the house. I still gotta put up baseboards in the man room, and paint the exterior. Baseboards will go up next week sometime and the exterior will be painted in the fall.

 

lookin great!

 

wow - great job on the kitchen! very classy looks w/ the white, and good pick on the stone (looks very sturdy, 1-1/2"?) ...i also like the beadboard as well

 

Thanks! All I can take credit for is assembly and install, wife picked out the colors.

Also, our fireplace is done. I will add a before picture to show just how much it has changed from when we bought the house. It used to be absolutely hideous, now it's a focal point. My wife's grandfather built the mantel, it is a work of art.

Before:



After:

 

that is a beautiful mantel piece! all together a very professional-looking transformation!

 

love the stacked stone . finish on the moulding and trim looks very tidy as well . hope my remod comes out half that clean

 

that fireplace looks awesome!

 

Update:

Different faucet and all handles and kickplates have been installed. Gotta get a bracket to install the microwave over the range and still have to cut the beadboard to put behind the countertop, and she's still looking for the right light fixture.

Here's a before shot of the kitchen too.



After:





Here's a before and after look down the main hallway.

 

Damn man! Very nice!

 

Here is a picture of the completed kitchen with new light fixture, beadboard backsplash, and microwave installed over the oven.







And here is a wider angle shot showing our master bathroom, this has been posted before but I stitched a couple photos together to show the room in one photo.



The sink.



It turned out to be a very functional kitchen. We were worried about traffic flow between the island and stove/counter area but there is plenty of room.

Thanks to everybody who has encouraged us through this remodel!

 

Looks excellent man! Nice work! Very fresh and clean!

I'm toying with the idea of selling off the cherry colored cabinets in my kitchen and going with white or off white cabinets like you guys did. I'm tired of the stained look. Not to mention, since I added the "hardwood" laminate floors, there's too much brown going on.

My only suggestion is to reinforce that piece of beadboard on the side of the cabinet down by the toe-kick or even cut it clean to contour with the toe kick. I feel like that's a broken piece of wood waiting to happen.

 

I think I have said it before but I'll say it again; I am impressed with your attention to detail. I am going to cut it off, I don't know why I haven't done it yet.

As for the color of your cabinets, I think you're right, hardwoods plus stained cabinets can make a room feel dark. I think right now I would prefer an off white cabinet with glazing of the details (I'm sure you know what I'm talking about) but in 10 years I bet that will go out of style while our white cabinets will still look stylish, or at least more stylish than what is the "in-look" right now.

 

Haha, you read my mind! That's exactly what I want to do. The beach house we stayed in last week had off-white creamy colored cabinets with the darker accent glazing in the grooves. It looked awesome.

 

BEAUTIFUL job!!!!! House looks great

 

I was lurking on this site looking at something for my dad's toyota when i stumbled on this so i had to create an account! I dont know if you remember me of not but this is Jacob. I just wanted to tell you that I am super pumped for you and Callie and the work that you have done on the house is awesome! I am so happy to see yall are doing well. Take care man.

 

How about an update on this thing?

One of the last things on our list was getting the house painted. Well, it finally happened about a week ago. I think it turned out pretty nice, I've always been hesitant about painting brick, but my wife picked out some great colors.

BEFORE:



AFTER:




Last thing we are doing is building a big deck in the back. I didn't paint the house, but I am getting to do the deck in a month. I'll post progress shots when I can.

 

Finally built the deck!

I waited until the temperatures got a little cooler, and once I decided to start my wife immediately scheduled a party for Friday, October 18 to be held on her new deck. At the time that was 3 weeks away, and I thought I had plenty of time. Well, I was installing my last course of deck boards at 10:30 that Thursday night. I'm still not done, as I am going to build a 4x6 landing on the side going out into the yard, and then stain and seal early next summer, but we definitely have a very functional deck that should last longer than we own the house.

Laid it out with string and batten boards. It is 20x24, and the reasoning for that size was it just kinda felt right after the preliminary staking out. Also, I could use 12' decking boards and only have to make one cut every other course. That ended up not being the case, but I only wasted about 3 feet of decking due to cutting off a half inch or so off each board, so that helped my budget out by minimizing waste. Also, once we finished, the size of it seemed to fit perfectly with the house.

Digging my six 12"x24" footings.







Here is one of the footings poured with a 1/2" j bolt precisely placed using a plumb bob. Also, I just filled the holes up with concrete and then cut about 2" of tube to place at the top so that I could level it precisely. I think it worked okay, but I still had to level the post brackets with some big galvanized washers.



Put a few masonry screws in to hold my ledger board while I drilled 34 holes for my 1/2" x 10" carriage bolts.



Here's the view from the crawlspace as I installed my carriage bolts




Ledger board with bolts installed. I would have liked to have gone lower on the ledger board with the bolts, but I had to hit the rim joist of the house, so I had no wiggle room.



This is where I ran in to a little snag. I had planned to use 2x12s as my beams and outer joists, but I ended up with only 13" between the top of the concrete footing and the bottom of the door thresholds, so there was not enough room for the post bracket, 2x12, and 1" thick (5/4 board) decking. I ended up using 2x10s instead, which gave me about an inch of clearance.

Because I was using smaller beams, I was not able to span as much distance as I had originally thought, and had to dig 4 more footings. I made these 12"x18" and sunk the 6x6 posts 12" into each hole and filled with concrete. I know putting the posts directly into the concrete is not ideal, but I probably would have been okay without them, and these extra footings are just an added precaution. I think they'll do fine.

Anyway, here is the doubled outside beam assembled and being set on to the notched 6x6 posts.







Here is a shot of the middle and outside beams.



In addition to notching the posts, we also used 3/8" carriage bolts to secure the beams to the posts.



Here are some shots of the outside joists being placed along with some of the inner joists.





This looks a little iffy, but the joist is sitting directly on the post, and has 4 screws holding in into the doubled beam coming in from the left. I had these little brackets left over from another job and thought it wouldn't hurt to use them here.



More structure shots.







I started cutting and hanging the joists, took two short afternoons.











The decking itself took a lot longer than I thought it would. There are about 2200 2.5" screws just in the deck boards.











I got an itch to post this today, but I forgot to take a finished photo. So this picture off a friend's instagram of the party will have to suffice for now.



It is plenty big for our purposes. We didn't have to have a rail since we are less than 30 inches from the ground at the highest point, and a railing system would have made the deck feel very confined, so we left it off. In a few years I would like to cover the deck, but that is a long way off.

Hope you like it!

 

Nice job! That deck looks great and I bet it is solid. I'm impressed with your entire house.

 

Here's a couple much clearer shots of the finished deck.