Christmas at Lakewood Manor

A backdated photo tour!

First tree in the house, stockings are ready

Made a holly wreath from the bushes out front

Extra branches became mantel decoration

Decorated the foyer/sunroom

Found Edison lights at Target and Adamo fell in love with them
(Seriously, you do not want to know how many pictures of these there are)

Decorated the Holiday Tree upstairs in the office

Meanwhile, this is what our back porch looked like

The dining room

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Compared to the kitchen and bathroom, the dining room was a small project. However, I failed to mention one *teensy-tinsy* thing... we started construction October 21st, and we were hosting Thanksgiving just one month later. Nothing like having your extended family over for motivation to get the work completed!

For starters, ripping out the pantry and built-in had left a fairly gross, never-finished portion of the original flooring.

Unnngh so grossssss

 My parents very generously loaned us their sander, and we got to work starting refinishing the floor.

By we, I mean Adamo. I am not good with the sander.

Everything was blocked off, which only made the cats intensely curious about what was going on and desperate to huff sawdust. Luckily, it didn't take more than a day to finish sanding.

That may be a lie.

We still need to varnish the floor and stain the threshold to the kitchen, but we figured it would be prudent to save doing that for a time when we could open our windows.

After sanding all of the drywall patch and then vacuuming up everything, we were ready to go with paint. (In retrospect, we probably should have done all of this in reverse order.)

Taped off by Adamo

I don't know what it was about that orange paint, but I just could not paint cleanly with it. Maybe it was too cold? Adamo ended up basically doing the whole thing, what a swell fella.

Adamo is literally watching paint dry

I did help a bit with getting the edges (I am pretty good with that) and I am TOTES A PRO at taking off tape. I ended up needing to cut the paint with a utility knife. There was a lot of tape due to the plate rails along two of the walls.

They are also a little bit curved at the bottom, just to make things more fun!

 Then, finally, we remembered that we needed to put the popcorn stuff on the ceiling where the pantry and built-in had been. (Did I mention we should have done this is reverse order? We really should have.)

Adamo did the popcorny stuff because he is taller and therefore closer to the ceiling

 The popcorn ceiling texture stuff was very messy. Adamo was covered.

Poor Adamo

 VERY messy. It ended up getting all over the floor wherever the tarp wasn't covering. Luckily, it was fairly easy to clean as long as I got it while it was still wet.

so, so messy

 But I think it turned out pretty well. I find it difficult to tell were the seam is because the popcorn texture hides it. I suppose that is basically the purpose of popcorn ceilings: to disguise.

One day we will get rid of the popcorn ceilings, but this was not the day. 

I think Thanksgiving turned out fairly well, all things considered: 

Seating for 13 people

Later, we added some curtains:

Please ignore all the tools on the table

And then a mirror above the buffet/bar:

That martini light is called the drinkin' time light

I think it looks nice. 

Now I just need to find a carpet, finish the floor, reupholster the dining room chairs, and get a new-ish, not-off-center chandelier in there!

Best Office Ever

Well, maybe not the best office ever, but my favorite setup so far.

Neglected office, a few weeks after moving

Even though the office room was as big as the master bedroom, it was still a challenge getting our his-and-her desks/computers, a guest bed, and a bunch more of his stuff, arranged in a way that didn't require climbing gear... like it resembled for the few weeks after we moved in:

Internet ON, but that's all that's setup here. And Megan's station. Everything else is my junk!

To make matters worse, the closet door opened the wrong way, there was a big radiator in the middle of one wall, and there were limited outlets available for our gazillion devices.

Enough plugs?

This room was the last one we setup (the living room, bedroom, official guest room, and kitchen all came first). So after weeks of looking like a storage closet, we finally arranged what we had at the time according to our "must haves:"

• Adjacent desks
• Avoid using exorbitant amounts of extension cords
• Out-of-the-way placement of cat-box
• Able to look outside from desk 

The view wasn't even that great - just our neighbors' driveways.

A good setup, at the time. It was kind of sparse though - a lot of empty space in the middle of the room behind our desks, and nowhere comfortable for guests to sit when we inevitably forced them to watch us play Minecraft hung out at our computers.

I grew up with a computer across from my bed. Since elementary school I was always able to gather my friends and either play computer games or watch cartoons, TV and movies late into the night. I loved having my main computer spot the same place as the hangout spot, and things stayed that way all the way up to the point where Megan and I started living together.

At that point, we couldn't really fit two sets of furniture in the bedroom, and Megan introduced the paradigm as the bedroom being a place that was computer-free - a quiet space to decompress and unplug. It was a big change for me, but I did grow to appreciate it.

Anyway, I wanted a couch in the office, so I could get that old hangout feeling back.  Plus, we rationalized that if we got a pull-out, the office could double as prime sleep-over space when there were more guests than our dedicated guest-room could hold.

45% off a new full sleeper couch? Free shipping? Thank you JC Penny! 

Of course, we had to re-think our office layout to make everything fit, and spent weeks scribbling layouts down and then ditching them and starting all over again

Icovia planner screenshot - very handy for room set planning!

We don't even have that many IKEA bookshelves. What was I thinking?

That's it! The top left corner! Pure inspiration.

Late one night we came up with the idea of pivoting the couch in the corner so it faced both of our computer desks. It was like an epiphany. That left plenty of room for a couch coffee table and room to pull out the bed. The only down-side was not being able to look outside from our desks, but it was the best we could do for the immediate future.

Behold, office 2.0:

Standing with my back to the closet/corner

Don't let the foreshortened view fool you. Plenty of room in here!

Yes we still have a tube TV. It's 1080i! Perfect for classic gaming (SEGA, N64).

The room still needs a bit more love though. Our upcoming plans include:

• Larger, more colorful rug
• Painting the walls
• Putting a bunch of wicked cool posters on the walls
• Putting up shelves
• Switching the hinges on the closet
• Adding curtains and blinds

Stay tuned for office 3.0!

UPDATE 5/27/14

Just found the room planner screenshot from our current design - at work, no less. Here is the model:

The Kitchen Phase 1.5

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Originally, adding the downstairs bathroom was going to be "Phase 3" of the kitchen remodeling, in which we also would be gutting the kitchen and installing glorious IKEA cabinets. Since I couldn't wait for an extra bathroom, we ended up merging this in before the planned Phase 2. (Which I guess I will talk about at some point later?) Therefore, Phase 1.5.

To start, first we needed to make up for the removed pantry. That thing was *full*. (Contents went into the sun room, piled onto the former kitchen table.)

I found this pantry on craigslist; a very nice lady was remodeling her kitchen and didn't want it to go to waste.

A PERFECT FIT HOW LUCKY IS THAT I MEAN REALLY

For the record, AFTER we got the pantry to the house we realized that it was finished on the wrong side. Oops! So we put it in upside-down :P You can't really tell, right?

Adamo's uncle very kindly set it up, attached it to the wall, and added trim to the bottom!

It's kinda nice to have at least SOME cupboards with knobs. (Knobs are in Phase 2, promise!)

Adamo's uncle left when he finished the bathroom; however, that left us with the sanding, cleaning, priming and painting in the kitchen and dining room. We used a light to make sure that everything was flat. I don't know, it made a lot more sense when Adamo was explaining it. 

It took FOREVER

We also ended up moving the cabinet that was sitting awkwardly on top of the fridge to on top of the radiator cover. I have random appliances in there (probably not the best spot, but whatever). It became sort of a dumping ground for tools.

And caulk. And caulk jokes.

We ended up having to take it off soon after plopping it on there because we realized that the radiator (which we had moved for redoing the floors) was spitting and leaking all over the place. We finally got it with this MASSIVE WRENCH.

I really like this wrench. It makes me feel powerful.

After that was straightened out, we lugged the cabinet and appliances back onto the radiator cover, and now it is a landing zone for my and Adamo's purses. I mean, manly bags. 

Side note, the stairway to the basement (off of the kitchen) was in such rough shape that I had to take a mo and patch the plaster and then paint the damn thing with KILZ.  The "before" walls were SO disgusting that I did not permit a picture to be taken. Also, for the record, those wobbly giant patches were NOT my handiwork; you can't even tell where I patched. *snooty sniff*

This is what it looks like *fixed up*

 By the way, I think I forgot to mention that we were also trying to get this stuff done because we were planning on having a bunch of people over for Halloween, just a week after construction was finished. We only managed to paint the exposed drywall before guests arrived.

But hey, we did Halloween lights outside so it's ok, right?

 We were literally painting until just before people got here. Check out Adamo's sweet chief engineer costume!

(Trust me, he had the correct number of pips.)

 Adamo was a TAPE MASTER and painter's taped the crap out of everything. It was a sight to behold.

Before paint

After paint

I simply LOVE the color that we picked for the walls (svelte sage), but after living with it for a while, I think it is a little too gloomy for a kitchen. Therefore, the wall color will be changing in Phase 2 and Adamo will get to tape everything all over again! Whee!

Building the bathroom

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You know what stinks (literally and figuratively)? When you need to pee and A CERTAIN SOMEONE is hogging the only bathroom in the house for an obscene amount of time. I mean, there is the lonely commode in the basement, but there are spiders down there, man! Two months into home ownership, it was decided: we needed another bathroom.

Luckily for me and Adamo, Adamo's uncle is an amazing architect and contractor who is completely awesome and stayed with us for a week to help us add on a bathroom. (LEGIT, all construction was all done in a week!) In advance, we picked out the wall colors, toilet, sink, faucet, and all that other fun stuff so that (almost) everything was ready for Adamo's uncle! Because I chose such a teeny sink and toilet, we ended up changing around the bathroom plan a bit—the initial plan had the door coming from the dining room (a little awkward during dinner, but whatevs):

I got a teeny toilet so that I could keep my garden window!

We ended up switching the toilet and sink diagonally, putting them against the inside wall, and moving the door to the kitchen side—this way, we also didn't end up needing to worry about putting plumbing in an existing wall (that is probably full of horsehair and magazines and crap). We also left the original dining room door (which was about where it is in the picture above) to add a little broom closet where I AT LAST had a spot for the vacuum!

Either way, we still needed to tear down my pantry and the built-in so that we could get to the dining room from the kitchen.

I wasn't actually at home for the destruction of the wall and our built-in. It was too much for me to handle T_T

But here is a little collage BOATLOAD OF PHOTOS of our progress:

Kitchen before, note awesome garden window!

Beginning to dismantle the built-in

Beginning to frame up the bathroom. Goodbye pantry, I miss you even though you smelled kinda weird

more framing, note the new plywood subfloor

There goes the pantry

no picture of the the built-in smashed up for you, too traumatic for me :(

and now there is a hole!

finishing up framing, including the closet, also that drill was left standing on its bit and that's really bugging me

Insulation and drywall up on the outer wall

Added poop hole, beadboard, drywall, and bathroom fan

beadboard on the outside, drywall nail holes patched, our awesome tile floor!

Btw: this is the tile we picked (but with a light gray grout:

We liked the classic style

Priming the beadboard

painting the beadboard

Painting the drywall, please excuse my terrible technique and instead note that now there is a light

Hole in dining room now patched!

Sink and toilet are in! (Aren't they lovely??)

Adamo's uncle brought his dog, and we learned pretty quickly that the floor was a dangerous place

Finished, with mirror, lights, towel bar and art! 

Check out that sweet antique marble doorknob! The door and door frame are actually what was formerly the pantry door, re-purposed. Unfortunately, one of the original hinges was broken and the other mysteriously disappeared (aka Adamo forgot it in the garage), so we ended up needing to get new hinges.

I still really need to paint the bathroom side of the door; it looks like someone was murdered against it via axe.

Anyway, that is all for the bathroom—however, this project meant that a lot more work needed to be done in the kitchen and the dining room! They get their own posts, so that I can keep all of this straight!