House Updates

In other news, our house is temporarily free of workers, which is a good and bad thing. Our contracted jobs on the bathroom are finished, and we are left with the final painting and finishing touches.

We had the contractor reuse the window and door casings from the old spaces, so that they would match everything else in the house. Some trim came from the linen closet, and was never painted, which is why the window trim now looks goofy!

We are planning on changing the wall sconces to face upward, and decided that the paint color is too light, so the next coat will be slightly deeper. We also have to add the door knobs/handles to the vanity, but haven't even picked those out yet.

The toilet is now nicely tucked behind the shower wall you can't even really see it from the hallway (as the picture above shows).

 We ended up deciding to move the doorway down the wall about three inches, so we could have enough space for the full door casing and tile work, and to ensure that the door would open at least 90 degrees. We weren't big fans of the doors throughout the house, and decided to replace it, especially since we'll be putting new doors in throughout the second floor. This door still needs to be painted, but I think it looks a lot nicer already!

 Here's our new laundry chute opening. It needs to be painted and have a knob added, but I think it's a good solution, as opposed to the previous arrangement where it took up half of the vanity space (it used the drawer compartments as a slide into the wall space, if that makes sense). We are going to add hook-ups for a washer and dryer in the second floor, so the need to drop laundry to the basement may quickly become obsolete, but my guess is that it'll keep Joseph very entertained for years to come!

 And before the contractor finished, we had him take out the door and frame to the second floor, partially to see how it would look and so that we could make sure our king size mattress will fit upstairs. Turns out, we're almost a foot short on clearance space, so we'll definitely be redesigning the opening to the second floor in the remodel!

 We really like how taking out the doorway opens up the space though, and are planning on actually opening the base of the staircase a few more feet, so that the bottom 4 stairs or so are exposed with handrails. We'll add back in the arch between the living and dining rooms, but make it higher to the ceiling so our tall friends don't have to duck to walk from room to room (which they almost have to do now).

This is the view from down the hallway bedroom, and yes, I realize how sloped the floor seems! I hadn't noticed it being this dramatic before the picture, but some of this will be fixed when we add another support post or two in the basement. A few of the floor joists are saggin, so we want to make sure that we start with a strong structural base before we add all of the finished space upstairs.

And the good news, is we think we have enough information to move forward, and are planning on hiring a contractor tomorrow to start the work upstairs! Hopefully we'll have the building permit and demo starting this week, and will be able to move home in a few weeks!