Mudroom Renovation

I'm not sure this really counts as a renovation, because this room was just empty of anything other than our stuff.

This is the best before picture I have of how we were using this room. A desk was on the left, Stella's bed was hanging out, and we had some extra stools just chilling in here. 

When we first bought the house, the room was a dining room (however, the owner was using it as a study).  We had to move the dining room wall back a significant amount to build our kitchen, so the room was changed to about half-size of a typical room. We thought it'd be perfect as a mudroom, because it's right off the garage.

This is what it looked like when we first bought the house. These pics aren't great, but they do show the dining room/study combination.

This was the wall we moved back. At first, it was right there where you see the wall paper border change.

The mudroom was put on the back burner as we worked to renovate all the other areas of the house. It's been that empty room with all of our school/work stuff in it for a year and a half.

We were really impressed with the contractor we used to do our downstairs, so we called him about 2 weeks ago and showed him this picture.

We also asked him to fix our awkward window.

Because we had to move that dining room wall during the kitchen renovation, we ended up splitting a large window that had been in the old dining room. So, he also moved that window for us.

Outside Before

This shows how close to the wall that window was. It looked really awkward. 

So, they got started on Thursday.

At the end of the day Friday, we walked into the mudroom and saw this. At first, I was so excited. It looked so good. There had been a sheet of plastic up, so I had not seen anything until that moment.

I just walked into the room and glanced at it from this angle and was so excited.

Then, Michael said, "I need to show you something that might make you mad."

I didn't take a picture of it, but if you look at this picture above, you can see that the 4th cubby is considerably smaller than the other ones. 10 inches smaller in fact. The first three cubbies are 30 inches, and that one is 20.

Then, I started looking and realized the bottom didn't align with the middle and top.

My OCD self about started hyperventilating.

So, Saturday morning, we had to have a discussion with the contractor. He said that because of the doors of the cabinet (see our inspiration picture), it meant he had to make some changes. I was really confused and told him that I would rather not have any doors and have everything align.

The bottom portion were all perfectly spaced and 28ish inches each. I asked if he could just make everything that same way.

He said it would take some rebuilding, but he agreed to do it.

At the end of the day yesterday, we had our mudroom! I believe my communication could have been better on the front end, and I would not hesitate to use our contractor again.

We will post more once the paint dries and we can add hooks and baskets and all that good stuff!

The Lake House Renovation: Kitchenette and One Bedroom Complete

We are getting closer to wrapping up the downstairs renovation!

The first guest bedroom is done. It includes the two twin beds. Michael and I disagreed about which way to position the beds. This is the way he wanted it. It actually looks pretty good. The main thing is that the nasty carpet and rough paint job are gone. This is also the room where we had that weird pipe thing going on that made the wall bulge out. Now, we have a door to nowhere. It looks fine though. We still need to add some type of decor to the walls, but that will come later.

BEFORE

BEFORE

AFTER

AFTER

AFTER

AFTER

Door to Nowhere

This is my favorite part of the renovation downstairs. The kitchenette looks so much better! Our contractor took a little bit of a gamble and selected and installed the granite without showing it to us. Lucky for him, I like it. The only thing that bugs me a little bit is that it is really close to the floor color, which I think looks a little weird. Otherwise, I'm completely happy with it. He did all of this from one picture. I am very happy with it.

BEFORE

AFTER

AFTER

The other bedroom isn't quite finished yet, because we are moving our queen size bed down there since we bought a new king size bed. I am so excited! The mattress came today. It's crazy how it arrived rolled up into a box that wasn't that huge. We can't lay on it for 24 hours while it pops up to the correct size. 

That's a KING!

This after about 30 minutes of being unpacked.

I'll post more pics after we finish everything else!

The Lake House Renovation - It's always something!

Drum Roll!

Check out our new floors.

While this was the least popular flooring choice on Facebook, Michael and I thought it suited the space best. For one, it is so dark down there, because there are only windows on one side since the basement is half underground. This color just really brightened up everything. It also seemed to work with almost any color of furniture. Since the furniture down there is a hodgepodge of things we've bought or been given, it was just the easiest. I also like the cabin look it seems to give the space. We are really happy with it. 

Our kitchenette is starting to come together too. 

I am so excited with how this is looking. It looks so much better than what it was before.

So, with the good news, come the bad news.

Once we had a new coat of paint up, we discovered that one of our walls was warped. 

We got to thinking that worst-case scenario there was some sort of leak coming from upstairs, so we had to cut into our beautifully painted wall. 

Turns out, there's a pipe right there with nowhere to go. We aren't sure if we never noticed it before or if it just got worse because of the cold temperatures or something else. Now, we have to figure out a solution, because we can't move the pipe. We are thinking we are just going to box it out in some way. Either way, a little bit frustrating.

Additionally, the painters noticed a discoloration in part of the ceiling they had just painted a few days ago. So, they came to the conclusion there was something wrong with our toilet in our master bathroom. So, we had to get a new one of those as well.

We are praying this is the end of our surprises!

The Lake House Renovation: Before Pics of Basement and Preparing for New Flooring and Kitchenette

Yesterday, we had carpet and stick on tiles down in our basement. Here are all of our before pics. 

Living Area

Living Area with Stick-on Tiles

Bedroom 1

Bedroom 1

Bedroom 2

Bedroom 2

Kitchenette Before - See the awesome job I did trying to tear down the wallpaper. 

Today, it's all fresh, clean, and ready to have flooring and a new kitchenette put in place. This also shows the new paint color we chose. No more flower border or striped wallpaper. :)

Main Room

Bedroom 1

Hallway to Bedroom

Kitchenette

Bedroom 2

Closet

The Lake House Renovation: Downstairs

Guess what that dust means...

Phase 2 has started! 

We've started the process of scraping the ceilings and painting downstairs.

We will keep you updated on the progress! For now, here's our house looking like a scene out of Dexter.

We are still trying to decide on paint colors, but I think we will go in this direction.