Logan House | Remodelaholic

Feb

25

Small Bedroom Remodel; Retro Remodel

This room was by far the fastest project that we ever did. It is funny how after 3 years of remodeling a house, you actually learn how to do things quickly and efficiently, that and at this point we had all the tools that really made things simple.

When we first walked through the house we didn't even enter this little room. We couldn't, it was SO full of stuff that we actually couldn't even enter the room. So, it was nice to actually see the room for the first time ... and all the carpet (you will understand in a second)

This project was the first without a huge demo. We removed an old chimney and carpet, and more carpet and MORE carpet, the front of the closet and that was about it.

We decided that it would be far easier to just cover the old walls than deal with the mess of removing them. Also, we actually had to do more building out than anything else in this room because of the strange foundation which you will see in just a second.

Here are the first few shots of the room, I apologize for the quality, this is before digital and I had to scan them in, and they were bad to begin with.

Why yes that is carpet on the window bench and wall. And it was the first thing to go.

When we pulled it up we found the most beautiful wool carpet. It was ruined unfortunately. I wonder if it could have been repaired, either way we didn't have the money for it but here is a picture of the carpet.

Within the first year, Justin installed some carpet that we got from my mother's friend. It was only a few years old she was replacing it with vinyl flooring. It was free, and you know you can't beat that.

After that, we used the room as a closet and dressing room for about 2 years. We don't really have very many pictures, but we built a little free standing hanging rack and it was about 7 feet tall. Here is Kitty sitting on top of it, I think it is funny. (this house was a cats dream, so many places to explore)

We took out a few things almost immediately, like the board under the window seat, I think we were planning on taking the whole thing out, but that is when we found out that the foundation was hidden underneath it.

Why yes, every inch of the interior of that closet is covered with random orange

(and below purple) carpet remnants, very plush wouldn't you say?

We took the closet doors off because the closet was less than 16 inches deep, which made it almost useless, hangers are wider than that. I built the entertainment center from them, I showed you the in the master bedroom remodel post. We used the adorable hinges in our hall remodel.

After we rebuilt the master closet, we moved our exercise equipment into this room.

Here is what it looked like for a while.

You can see how the foundation juts out into the room here, at a sort of random height.

When we were finally ready to work on this room, the first thing we did was remove the chimney stack, A new roof had been built over it, so from the outside you didn't even know it was there, but it was an eyesore in the room.

Well, when we started taking it out, I guess at some point previous owners had filled that baby up with about 70 pounds of SAND! and it was filthy, we started taking out the brick, and sand just started pouring into the room. We got a little dirty (understatement). Oh, and yes we are wearing bike helmets... Uh... I was worried we'd have our head smashed in, and these were the closest things we had to hard hats!

Uh, yeah, those aren't flattering pictures, but at least now you can sorta see how dirty we were... sorta.

We found some holes for pipes, (more under the wallpaper) I really don't understand what this room was. But you can also the all the layers of wallpaper, and old paint colors in this picture and I always think layer pictures or fun.

Well we got it out and so we had a huge gaping hole in the ceiling, actually though, there were two. Over the window seat there was this little arch thing that made absolutely no sense. At some point the ceiling had been lowered, but they chose for a "design feature" to have this little thing, for lack of a better word. (you can kind of see it in the picture below, I never really photographed it, sorry!

We really wanted to raise the ceiling back up, but we ran out of time. Instead, we just patched the holes.

We removed the front framing of the closet entirely.

By the way, you can see the purple carpet tiles that were on the foundation better in the second picture. These were the same tiles that had been at the top of the stairs on the landing, that I never got a photograph of.

Then we framed in the new front of the now a normal depth closet.

And I had Justin frame in the foundation. I decided to bring the foundation height up to an average wainscoting height.

When it comes to drywall, we covered all the existing walls without removing the old stuff, It was the best decision we ever made. It went SO fast and was SO much cleaner!

After taping up all the seams, we primed and started adding moldings. (Oh and I finally painted that one wooden window... It took forever, and even though I used a primer, it kept yellowing the paint. urgh! But it turned out pretty decent in the end)

You can see the interior of the closet here, we decided to have a shelf at the height of the foundation, and a shoe shelf or what not below. We figured this would be an office or kids room either way.

One of the major problems with this room was the difference in windows. One is wood, one metal, I couldn't afford to change them out. The one thing I realized, I could at least mask was the different dimensions. By visually bringing one down and the other up, so the molding may look strange, but I promise it works in the end.

We decided on Valance boxes again, I have to admit, I like the formality of them when done right. But the other reason was the fact that the tall window was almost exactly the height of the ceiling, which made it hard to install the crown in the room. However, with the valance boxes, we could continue wrapping the crown around the whole room without strange stops and starts. This also helped to make the windows look more the same than they were.

Now we just installed all the moldings and painted...

Lastly, we installed new carpet. We did find one other fun secret. Under the closet, was a door to the cellar, and in the cellar you could see big grooves in the floor where there had been a ladder. The cellar was built in two sections. But this portion was part of the second addition to the house. The other portion was the third addition to the house. It was fun to piece some of these things together.

Ready for the finals?

And I made a quick composite image, not perfect but you get the idea.

What do you think about the windows now?

That was my favorite change in the room They actually appeared to be the same height.. Finally!

Do you like the room?

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Tags: Logan House, Our Houses, Remodeling, Retro Remodels
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Feb

18

Half Bath, Before and After; Retro Remodel

Here is the before and after for the half bath.

See the full explanatory post here.

Before:

After:

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Tags: Before and After, Logan House, Our Houses, Remodeling, Retro Remodels
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Feb

18

Half Bathroom Installation; Retro Remodel

One of my all time favorite accomplishments for the Logan house was adding a half bath. When we bought the house, it had only one bathroom and four bedrooms. Which is just not acceptable, and the other problem was that the inhabitants of the upstairs rooms would have to come all the way downstairs to use the restroom. not practical, especially at night.

And lets not forget cause I am sure we have all been there a second bathroom is necessary for that moment when you get home, burst through the door, run full force to the bathroom and tackle your sweetheart for the right to use the potty first. Like, I said, one bathroom is just not enough!

Two bathrooms is a blessing and from now on in our house, a necessity.

At first we wanted another bathroom but weren't sure how it could be done. Then, it was like the stars aligned. We found that hidden closet which made plumbing a breeze, got a free door from our friends that was incredibly narrow and fit perfectly for the space, and let the plan sort of take shape in our subconscious before jumping into it. That made it one of our fastest projects in the end, because we had a solid plan ready to go and the know how to accomplish it.

You have seen the space that became the half bath twice now. In the Yellow Room, retro remodel and the Hall part 1 retro remodel. We literally carved the room for a bath from both of these spaces. This is another one of those spaces where you need a quick floor plan sketch:

Before:

After:

So, lets get started with the REALLY ugly pictures. Here is a view of the closet from the yellow bedroom. It is the space behind the terrycloth curtain.

We forgot to take actual pictures of the closet. But when we started demolishing the hall we got some of the interior of the old closet. they are mighty scary! Don't cha think?

The wall next to the stairs was nothing but bead board. Which was a thick solid wood, but still, not really attached to anything, which made it sorta flimsy... not a quality you look for in your average wall.

So, we removed it one piece at a time and then trimmed the shelf above the stairs so our noggins' didn't keep getting bumped! Once we cleaned out all the old junk and had the drywall on the ceiling up above the stairs we reinstalled the original bead board, and drywalled the interior wall.

Once the wall was installed we put the door in place asap. That way little miss furry curiosity couldn't get into the attic. Also, this was where the half bath project stopped for quite some time. We finished the hall in the mean time and later we figured out how we could fit the bath in there. Next step, we carefully began removing the wall in the yellow bedroom. Then we framed in the wall, and reused the old bead board to frame it back in.

We decided that a plumber was mandatory for installation, and let me tell you, that 600.00 to install all the plumbing in less than 5 hours was more worth it than anything else we spent. We had him tie in the waste line, and bring up the water lines, all we had to do was up the sink toilet and faucet in place, which Justin has no problems with. Then we finished up the closet in the craft room.

On to the actual bath room progress. At this point the project was really quite simple just the wall and floor finishes followed by the fixtures. This stuff is the fun stuff with the quick return and makes the projects worth it!

Because we had the original bead board walls in the hall and upstairs bedrooms, we wanted to also have that in our bathroom. (you can see a sliver of the walls just outside the door in the picture below) The bedrooms were a larger scale bead board installed horizontally. Luckily we found a larger scale fake type of bead board in our price range. We installed it sideways to match the bedrooms. The sink area was wrapped completely to the ceiling. The other rest of the walls just had a wainscoting, which was as tall as the back wall (behind the toilet) and stopped at the slanting of the ceiling. Then pretty much every corner was wrapped with moldings.

Don't love this picture of myself... what can I say, when remodeling makeup is just not on my mind. We used peel and stick tiles again in this bathroom. We laid them in a brick pattern which I really love for tile, I seem to do it all the time.

Justin installed the lights, sink and toilet after the floor was in place. I was a little frustrated by the lights I choose, they looked beautiful but gave off no light... oh well, live and learn and look at wattage better. The point is we still sold the house.

One little detail that I wanted to show you was this board (under the ladder). We found it in the hidden closet in our master bedroom, that later became the linen closet. We decided to leave an access panel to the upper attic space in the bathroom ceiling. So, we cleaned up this old piece of a door, cut it to size and used it as the access door. This was one of my favorite details in the whole house. See the little key hole? fun, fun!

It was a very difficult space to photograph and I was too lazy to straighten towels obviously but it was such a jewel of a space all shiny and white. Very nice.

Since the space was tiny!! We used a medicine cabinet mirror for some storage and installed a small glass shelf over the sink. All told, it would be a perfect little bath for kids to get ready for their day/ or night in.

Forgive the dirty hand towel... totally is bugging me like crazy!

What do you think?

Do you like the way the space was used?

Think it needs more storage? (probably!)

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Tags: Logan House, Our Houses, Remodeling, Retro Remodels
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Feb

11

Hall & Stairwell, Before and After; Retro Remodel

Here is the lower hall's before and after.

If you want to see the whole explanation click here.

Before:

After:

Oh, it looked so clean and fresh!

I wish we had taken more pictures!

What do you think?

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Tags: Before and After, Logan House, Our Houses, Remodeling, Retro Remodels
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Feb

11

Hall & Stairwell, Part 2; Retro Remodel

It has been a few weeks but do you remember the first part of the stair remodel, check it out here the whole process or the before and after. Well, I am finally getting around to the second half. Valentine's week has kept me totally busy! But back to the remodeling...

These pictures are a little out of order. It is the only way to make sense of the whole mess. Also, because the space was so small it was hard to photograph. I hope these images are clear enough to explain what we did. I thought to help you figure out the space, I would draw a very quick floor plan... not to scale, but you can see the actual space and the different thicknesses in walls etc.

Alrighty, now the before pictures. This really was the scariest place in the house, I was cringing while walking through it feeling very claustrophobic and that Freddy Kruger was going to jump out from around each little corner!

The walls were all over the place. Some were lathe and plaster some where a weird fiber board, and the seams were hidious and so obvious. All the walls had been wall papered and then painted over. The light was a pull chain. The light switch in the corner was a decoy... or maybe we just didn't find the secret room that it lit.

Also the ceiling was really strange, it was lower then popped up in the center to almost 10 feet tall and it made the space seem even smaller or at least completely out of proportion.

The whole space was small and "bendy" You couldn't walk in a straight line anywhere. We got to demolish A WHOLE LOT! (oh and there is a new hot hairstyle I am modeling for ya... I am not really loving it looking back, I guess mostly just the color, I still like the cut but i really loved it all at the time)

If you remember from the master bedroom remodel we found that little closet hidden behind a book case. We chose to close it off, but we opened it back up into the hall. This space came in SO handy, as you can see for wiring, but it was absolutely heaven sent for adding new plumbing... (1/2 bath installation to come)!

Below you can see that we had a hole through the floor upstairs to the soon to be half bath.

The next demolition area was the wall between the hall and dining room, the plan for that wall was a total mess! If you look at the floor plan it jutted into the space and you always had to walk around it to get anywhere. A-nnoy-ing! It had to go! so I got out my hammer and beat the lathe out of it!

After the wall was removed, we framed a new one. It is important to note that this was not load bearing. We decided to cut out all the turns in this wall and just build a straight wall. This didn't take up any extra room in the dining room and it definitely opened up the hall. This is what the new floor plan now looked like:

I think if I were doing this house over, I might just frame the sides up and leave this space open. We decided not to, because all the heat went up the stairs, and it disappeared from there!.

Now the floor was a little strange. We ended up removing part of it because it was so creaky, this also helped us when we added the plumbing, but it was quite a surprise when we actually saw the joists.. at least the creaking floor now made sense.

Can you see the joists just kind of meet... scary. We had to add in some 2 x 4's on their side to bring up the height of two different floors. Also, you might notice the old door we found in the closet that the ladder is sitting on, we reused that later in the half bath.

Now on to the bathroom door, if you saw that remodel, you will know that the room was teeny-tiny! Try 5' x 6' with a claw foot tub. You could soak your feet in the tub, while sitting on the potty, and washing your hands in the sink without moving your hiney - tiny!

We have actually finished remodeling the bathroom at this point but we decided to put in a pocket door. That way more than one of us could brush our teeth at once. Since the interior walls done we used our trusty reciprocating saw to cut the drywall screws and nails off the studs, then pulled them out so we could install the pocket structure. This is one of our favorite tricks, we've actually done this three or four times.

When we uncovered that wall, it was pretty funny to see. The framing was a total JOKE! Check it out for yourself. They were 2 by 4's turned on their side and some just hanging in there connected to nothing! We had to fir out the walls to be able to use the pocket door, and feel good about the roof not falling in on our heads!

The great thing about pocket doors is the space you save and the fact that you can reuse the doors that you already have.

Next we decided to level out the ceiling and add some canned lights while we were at it, with guess what 2 switches... I know I feel like I have arrived... a 3 way switch, none of this pull chain junk!

And installing the rest of the drywall, through out the hall. Here is one of the doors we salvaged from our friend's house. They had some great solid 5 panel doors. I think we did have to trim this down about an inch in width.

Once all the drywall was up we started installing moldings and the 10 bottles of caulk to hide cracks from uneven walls etc..

You can see in the picture below there is an arrow, I was pointing out our lazy way of finishing the walls on top, instead of having to drywall it all, we just put up crown molding, but I promise it always looked really good! I can't prove it though in this space cause I didn't get a picture!

Lastly, we had it all carpeted, it made it look like a brand new house. It was such a nice space.

Do you like it?

What is running through your head right now?

Are we crazy? wait, I am not sure I want to know...

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Tags: Logan House, Our Houses, Remodeling, Retro Remodels
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Jan

21

Hall and Stairwell Remodel, Part 1; Retro Remodel

This post will have to be a two part story, sorry about that, there is just too much information to get it all down at once. It will have to be the upstairs portion and then later the downstairs, which is actually how we did the work, so I guess that seems logical.

By far the biggest project in the house was the hall. I know a hall? Who cares about a hall? It is

strange to put so much energy into it, but the space was at the very center of our home. It was the sole connection to all the bedrooms and the only bathroom.

It isn't a place that you linger in, rather you pass through on the way to your destination. And, putting so much energy seems wasteful. But is was very necessary, perhaps you will agree when you see what it looked like.

When looking at houses, it is important that there is a good flow. This house almost had that with a few problems. Let me list the pros and cons of the hall:

+ a wide stair way, with proper sized runners
+ no walking through one room to get to another, the additions made sense

-The space had a few funny little turns that were not necessary
-Several different finishes on the wall, in varying degrees of disrepair
-Pull chain lights, / not enough light.
-Low ceiling heights at top of stairs and very limited space
-Dirty beyond belief!
-no community storage, i.e. linen closet etc.
-the ceiling height was too low when walking up and down the stairs, I whacked my head hard a few times!

Okay, Be prepared for information OVERLOAD!

Before:

Let me explain:

This first picture is a view up the stairs. The portion of the wall that is the first story is lathe and plaster, but only on one side, the other is bead board.. All portions of wall above that is bead board that had been wallpapered and then painted. The big long string is "the light switch" It was a pull chain light, so they had a long sting that went to the top and bottom. You can also see the bookcase and short railing at the top

Secondly, sorry about the bad pic, this was before our digital camera joined the family. Each step has a different sample of carpet. Each sample was nailed down with approximately 1,159 nails. All these samples were on top of the original carpet, or something close to it, and under that was a horse hair carpet padding.

Also, we found a really cute letter from a little girl to her pen-pal, dated from the 50's. I should find that....

At the top of the stairs the ceiling sloped in at you which made everyone a little nervous and gave you a sense of vertigo. Someone had built these hand rails, that were only about 2 feet high, and were the perfect trip hazards. You can't really tell from the first picture but the door was only a foot away from the railing, so you had to sort of bend around it, with nothing to hold on to, so they had to go.

This is a little shelf that you saw directly at the top of the stairs. You can see that they "patched" something under the wall paper, who knows what exactly.

Let the demolition begin: (would you think I am strange if I tell you this is my favorite part?!! There is such an immediate change, and once you do it, there is no going back... so exciting!)

Here is the wallpaper coming down, or I guess it is down. The 2 x 4's are my bridge, scary, I weighted less back then.

Here is my mommy! What a trooper, this was all one weekend of crazy demolition. You can see the bead board now, but unfortunately there have been some strange patches like I mentioned before, so missing boards and sections of wall.

This is a shelf that was above the stairs. We frequently hit our heads on it, it was to short for code. You can see the walls uncovered. There were so many tacks and nails that we had to wear shoes for about two years. No matter how many times we swept or vacuumed we kept finding them, I think if there had ever been an earthquake the sheer number of nails in our house would have held everything together perfectly.

Once we cleaned up form this mess, we didn't touch it for a while. We worked on the bathroom and 2 upstairs bedrooms. But about a year later we were ready to really get to work again. The next thing we decided to get rid of was that book shelf. We only had a 2 ft landing at the top of the stairs and thought it would be better to have bigger space.

We took the bead board down carefully so it could be reused. This was the biggest mess we ever made! So, what did we do to commemorate? Take silly pictures. And what is more fun than taking a bunch of pictures of each other when you are sweaty and covered in crap? The answer to that question is a lot of things... But I can't not share, you have to have fun doing this kind of work, or it would be a nightmare!

The scariest thing we found was a bunch of LIVE wires that had just been cut and left sitting open in the insulation, obviously we were well looked after from a heavenly place while we lived in this house!

Here it is all cleaned out to the roof. You can see the old roofing boards, which is kinda fun, also the adobe brick insulation.

This picture is a view of the yellow room's closet. The wall was only made of bead board, although it was 3/4 of an inch solid wood, so I am sure there was some strength in it. We cleaned out all the mucky-muck. and actually removed the whole bead board wall to move it around a bit.

The only problem with solid wood walls was the fact that they left no way to get into the attic to re insulate, so over the years portions of the walls had been cut out to get back in there. You can sorta see the plywood board at the back of the closet, where they had cut out another portion of the wall.

This is what you could see when looking from the top of the stairs, to the back wall above the stairs (and the closet).

AT the top of the stairs on the landing where the book shelf had been we opened up the wall exposing the attic portions. We had to close off the space from our curious little kitty. And this is what it looked like in between. We just used old scraps of paneling from our master bedroom remodel.

The next step was to insulate. We made the mistake of getting an insulation that was a little too thick, and hanging the drywall was an awful experience. The screws kept popping out of the drywall and it was a back breaking, agonizing, torture holding it up... I was sore for DAYS!

We left the ceiling bead board intact, so we didn't have to deal with the sprayed in fiber insulation but we decided to cover it with drywall. That way we could reuse the other board to cover all the new walls we created. This hole is the space that we made for new can lights.

(Oh, oh, look, you can sorta see the doors that were upstairs, they were wonderful, an even larger version of bead board nailed together to create a door.)

Can you see what looks like 8,000 screws in that drywall, yep, half of those babies are holes from the drywall popping out.

Sorry that the last picture is fuzzy, it shows where we cut back the joists that kept trying to take out chunks of our heads. This was one of the best fixes we made on the house. Before this we could hardly get a mattress up the stairs to the bedrooms up there.

I had to throw this picture in of the little explorer, trying to check out the attic space! ( if you can even see her, the little solid black fuzzball! Love her!)

Remember how earlier I told you one wall was lathe and plaster and the other side was bead board? We decided to fix that, so we removed all the plaster, luckily the lathe made a perfect backdrop for nailing on new bead board. We had to buy the real true wood bead board for this project so that it would actually match the existing boards.

It was quite a bit more expensive than the bathroom wainscoting. It was almost a joke though, the new modern stuff was barely 3/8" of an inch thick and so flimsy, the old stuff was solid 3/4 inch thick wood as hard as nails. Needless to say it was a good thing to have the lathe behind there to strengthen it all up.

Here it is going up one little strip at a time. We should have bought a nail gun first thing... I think I had to drive in about 300 nail heads... BUY a finishing nailer if you have a lot of moldings to install, you will NEVER regret it.

You can see that we were not very worried about keeping the bottom of the bead board very straight. Mostly because we were going to be covering it up and that way we didn't use more board than we had to.

Also, you may notice from the second image that the floor boards from the second floor are sticking out, there really wasn't anyway to cover this up at this point, and it looked like that on both sides, so we had to get creative, but we did it in a beautiful way... stay tuned for that.

Next we started framing in the wall that would be over the stairs. We decided to add a little set of doors to allow future owners to get back into the attic if ever necessary. Oh, and you can see that with all the work on the stairs we decided to build solid "bridges". They saw a ton of action for a few years, we used them all over the place.

And so we are now re-installing the bead board that we so carefully took down. This is obviously not a bearing wall, although the bead board could carry quite a bit of weight, really. Justin is hanging drywall inside the closet of the soon to be new half bath, that was so beautiful it makes me want to cry that I don't get to have it anymore.

Speaking of being sad about selling this house, I have to say that I was so excited to move when we left. Just so I could start a new project. With my schooling and internships under my belt I was ready to really put into action what I learned. I am a little more sad now, especially since we don't have such wonderful character in homes nowadays. I want to buy a hundred year old house again... but a 50's rancher first! ...so a few houses down the road. (end of tangent)

This is the ceiling above the wall that will soon become the wall that will house the door to the bathroom.

I look kinda scary in this picture.... Anyway, painting bead board is the biggest pain ever, you have to get the coats even and in every single crack it is very time intensive and uses a ton of paint. But, the good news is I am now an excellent painter. Especially with a brush and I have quite a few tricks up my sleeve... Wait one second while I pat myself on the back. Anyway, I will have to share those tricks some day soon.

At this point we forgot to take any picture during the molding install, which was intense to say the least. The angels were all over the place, Justin ended up building the space in 3d so that he could figure out how to cut the moldings perfectly, We actually reused a small crown molding that had been in our master bedroom. Along with a bunch more moldings that we purchased, check it out.

You can see the little doors that we put in above the stairs. We called them the doors to nowhere. But we were able to reuse old hinges that were original to the house in an old closet in a room you haven't seen yet ( I made my entertainment center out of the doors to the original closet) And, now when the new owners need to get back there they won't have to cut through my precious bead board! Seriously!

I need to point out a little detail in the picture above. The stairs on the left side had a board that ran all the way diagonally with the stairs. We simply attached the base molding on top of it to finish it off. On the right side however they did not have this board, which looked a little stupid. To fix it we had to cut out individual triangles for each step to fill the space and have it look like the other side. See picture below.

At this point we worked on some other projects for a year or so. Then we came back to this and finished up the bottom of the hall and carpeted the whole space, and installed a new light.

This is what the final space looked like. ** We had planned on painting the stairs and just having a runner, but ran out of time and chose to have them carpeted. We did decide it would be worth it to have the nose of each step wrapped and it was worth the few extra dollars per step the look was much more polished.

This first picture shows the little linen closets that we added in the eves. Again we reused the original hardware from a closet in the house.

It was fun to see the different types of bead board. You can see that not only did we have the normal bead board (not shown) but the wide horizontal version and some v grove boards thrown in there, that didn't have the bead at all (pictured behind the mini paintings).

In this picture (below) you can see how we covered up the raw edges of all the bead board joints.

It was so beautiful.. sigh. If only...well, someday!

So, after seeing all that (which is only the half of it by the way...)

Do you think it was worth all the hard work?

What do you think of the space?

Check out our other Retro Remodel projects here.

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Tags: Logan House, Our Houses, Remodeling, Retro Remodels
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Jan

14

Master Bedroom; Retro Remodel

Our master bedroom remodel never seemed to end. It was a continuing project. We cleaned it out, then cleaned it up, finished and then started again, re-installed a closet and finally finishing for good. That sounds all short and sweet, but it happened for about 3 years.

I will explain as I go.

Before:

(you can see the old closet doors that later became

our interior window shutters in the living room project!)

Technically the wall paper is kinda cool, the blue print was actually velvet. But the room was just old and smelly and really needed to be refreshed.

We started by taking out the book shelves around the hall door (in the picture directly above). And we found a little surprise when they were removed.

The original closet!! It was so tiny! only 16 inches deep and on a diagonal.

Here is the view of the floor of the closet.

It was full of junk and we even found a purse with receipts in it. I wish that it could have been full of money!

Next we removed the paneling and all the wallpaper. We got rid of the junk on the ceiling.

This wall paper was under the paneling, I actually liked it but it was in such bad shape.

There was a cool painted design on the ceiling too.

The closet was really very small, and not planned very well. We had a room right next to ours that was really small so we made it our dressing room for a few years. We removed the closet, with huge future plans for an addition, ha. ha.

Here is the wall after. Can you see that there was once a sink on this wall? I think this might have been the kitchen at some point. The basement, suggested that it had been built on to where the new kitchen was. I wish I could know for sure! Honestly I think that the house was a little older than the 1904 date that was documented.

The floor came next. (At the same time we sanded the living room.) There had been a rug in the center of the room and the outside edges had all been painted. We got some heavy duty ventilation masks and Justin removed it. It is kind of scary to me now that we even did it.

At this point we lived with the bedroom for a while. We were working on other projects, so we brought the one scrap of carpet in the house that was relatively decent from the Blue Room and used it as a rug under our bed. Also, we had boxes around the edge to keep the floor in tack. Ghetto! Just the way we like it!

When I finally got around to finishing it, I had learned from the living room that I must stain. So, I did, the outside 3-4 feet and finished it, then we installed a rug in the center.

We didn't own a head board... Oh wait, we still don't! OOPS! Anyway, I had made these drapes for our apartment in Orem and as you can see the wall was sorta falling apart, so I made a curtain head board for the mean time. ( I ended up revamping these drapes and using them in the blue room with an added panel at the bottom)

I made these nightstands in wood shop. One of the only electives I took in college. I am so glad I took it!

I used a stain wax to finish them (thanks to the New Yankee workshop, I love you Norm!) instead of regular stain and poly.

Here they are with the clearance lamps we got at Kmart sporting goodwill lampshades, later we switched those out, with Wally-world shades! I Got rid of these lamps and now I totally regret not having them... What was I thinking?

You may have noticed that the walls were falling in around us. I got sick of it and used some left over bathroom drywall to do a patch... It is rather homely! You may also notice that the original door had been replaced with a boring hollow flat panel door...ugh!

Luckily we had a some friends who had a hundred year old house that was being torn down. They let us come and take all their old doors, and we replaced all the doors in our house and some more with original 5 panel doors.

Our good friend Jared who was a drywall contractor came and taught us how to really do drywall. Thanks Jared! It has helped us in all three of our houses! First we removed the crumbling plaster, and concrete patches, I think there were 2 truck loads of plaster.

We found yet another little surprise and more evidence that this was in fact the kitchen at some point. A fireplace flue. We decided to leave the lathes, since they would have just royally added to the mess.

Justin updated the room electrically., and added a 2 way switch! Thank heaven for switches at each door.

Luckily we had an electrician across the street for questions! Holy cow, we have great friends!

The drywall begins!

The window wall was the only wall in good enough shape to leave it intact. I primed the wall with pink, because I had some and thought it would make the painting easier, it did!

The actual paint is on below, now for the wainscoting, and crown. We used a trick for the crown which I didn't get a close up of. We used regular crown, then about 1-2 inches below that we put up a small half round molding. We painted the crown, small half round and wall in between the same color, so it looked like a huge molding. This is a similar trick to the base molding trick we used for this house.

We did this project before we had a nail gun! What a mistake, it makes me tired just thinking about it.

Here is our friend Matt volunteering for free labor! Thanks for that!

And finally real walls, with the wainscoting. We were so tired of the project that I think it took me about 6 months to actually even think about painting and caulking it all.

We added valance boxes since the windows went right to the ceiling and that sorta messed with the crown molding, which you can see in this image.*** We got a little smart with the moldings around the window, rather than remove them, we put the new boards on top. The problem was that they were level with the plaster, so it actually worked out well without all the demolition.

Here I am LOVING our new clean carpet. We bought a remnant had it finished around the edges, it looked great but we had a few problems with it From the very beginning, we should have installed it to tack strips and stretched it really well, so that it didn't wrinkle. Which we ended up doing later.

At this point I went our to Walmart and bought a bed in a bag set for cheap. I also made a headboard out of one of the old doors in the house. We were done with the room for about a year... And it looked like this:

We didn't have a T.V. at all for the first year, but we bought a little one at a garage sale. I built this entertainment center from wood scraps and two old closet doors, that were original to the house. We got rid of it when we moved to Asheville, it makes me sorta sad! Can you tell I regret moving into a tiny house... and getting rid of all sorts of cool things.... bummer.

Justin thinks it is funny that we removed the closet only to build another one in the exact same place, but with all due respect to my hunky spouse, it is just so fun to watch you be all tough and build stuff that I couldn't help myself.

The truth of the matter is that the old closet was 2 feet less wide and it was broken up at the top, and it only had one set of doors. What we did was basically build two small very organized his and hers closets.

We custom built the interior with the pre made vinyl shelving components you used to be able to buy at Home Depot, and MDF 1 x 4's. I measured all our clothes and my side was slightly bigger, but we both had two areas for shirts and a shared area for long stuff, with laundry at the bottom shoes on the doors and shelves in the middle. We didn't even need a dresser, and I have a lot of clothes.

Starting to paint the real color again. For some reason the second time I bought the paint it was not as good as the first batch and took a lot more coats. I also fell off the later doing this and burned my hand from the friction of grabbint the door way! It really hurt a lot... including my pride!

the Final Afters:

(I wish I had better pictures, but this will have to do, many were slightly fuzzy!)

The drapes are a long story, they shrunk in the wash and I had to add another layer of fabric, so to me they look a little like Neapolitan ice cream, not exactly what I was going for, but I didn't have the time or money to change them. Oh well!

Well, what do you think?

Do you like the way it turned out?

I really loved this room, it was sad to leave!

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RIGHT HERE!!

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Jan

14

Master Bedroom Before and After: Retro Remodel

I know I usually put the explanatory post up first, but I haven't quite finished it yet. The whole post will be up by 1:00 pm at the latest today, definitely come back and check out the HUGE bedroom remodel!!

To wet your appetite, and entice you to come back, here is the before and after for our Master bedroom:

Before:

After:

I hope you come back to see the whole stories and see more of the bedroom.

In the mean time, have you entered our giveaway?

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Jan

7

Living Room Before and After: Retro Remodel

Here is the recap of the before and after in the Logan house Living Room.

Before:

The rest of the living room's story.

If you would like to see more check out our Retro Remodel Series.

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Jan

7

Living Room; Retro Remodel

Welcome Back to our Retro Remodel Series.

This is the story of our first house remodel, while we were in college (FYI for new comers).

Surprisingly, we did the very least in the living room of the Logan house. It was in decent shape (shrug)... while other things were AWFUL. We tried over time to do little things here and there, but honestly that is as far as we got.

Not much to say: Here are the before pictures:

The room had great light, and good moldings. Also, one of my favorite features was the antique copper light fixture. The walls were in good shape but really dirty, the ceiling was popcorn, disgusting carpet, and there were vertical blinds in the windows.

The fireplace was totally functional, in fact we used it to heat the house, and it worked really, really efficiently. I just didn't really like the look. Unfortunately, it is something that we didn't get to change. I thought about painting the rock white, but the heat the fireplace put off would have been too much for the paint.

As for the flooring, the carpet was at least a few layers thick. We removed all of that the first weekend we stayed in the house. I was hoping for nice wood floors, but that is not exactly what we found. This is what we found:

The entire floor had been plastered! Yeah, believe me, I know. To even it all out, they plastered it. We spent a week pounding out plaster (the same time my Mom and Aunt visited in this post). Also a few spots had been replaced with plywood sub-floor.

The replaced spots were a big problem since we wanted to save the floor. This was not a wood that you could go out and buy. This stuff was 100 years old. What we ended up doing was cutting out the floor in the large front closet and using those planks to patch the holes. Then replaced the closet floor with plywood.

This image is after we sanded. The floor was an old pine. I actually really liked it, but I made one major mistake. After sanding we hadn't gotten around to finishing it. We were walking on cardboard boxes so that we wouldn't mess up the raw wood. One day out of the blue I decided I couldn't take it any more so I polyurethaned the floor, without staining the wood. You see, the wood looked like it was all the same color.... it was not! If only it had been stained, I would have loved the floor... Instead of just liking it. Oh well, live and learn, case in point, I stained the other rooms!

Here we are sanding the floor. If I had known more at the time I would have rented a belt sander, but a "know it all" salesmen told me exactly what to get... We were sanding for hours and hours, our necks were dead. We only had it rented for a day, and so we were up sanding til like 3 in the morning... I remember walking back and forth staring at the ceiling to change the position of my neck. It hurts just thinking about it.

That light picture is most likely a first hazard. I don't think we actually used the light much, (while the bag was on it) I just think the picture is funny.

now we have a huge room with no furniture... What better place to camp out! Oh yeah, a camp out with the niece and nephews!... Oh my goodness they are all SO little! The oldest is almost 17 now!

Here we are drinking huge glass of hot chocolate and moving in our free furniture! Oh my, that is a really big lamp! I got a matching set and the DI (or goodwill) I think we sold both the couch and lamps at a garage sale.

I am showing this picture not to be festive, but so you can see the bright blue wall that I painted on a whim! I did that a lot in this house, I should actually do that more here, it was fun to fool around like that and not worry about it! Even though I repented of that idea pretty fast.... but I still kinda like the color.

You can also see the blinds. Which I made my husband remove that very Christmas day, because he gave me a "coupon" for any project I wanted. And what I really wanted was interior shutters. Which we couldn't afford.

What we could afford was the old closet doors from our master bedroom, that were hanging out in our garage. They just happen to fit almost perfectly (after a slight trim), along with my mom's old copper hinges from her kitchen remodel, that just happened to match the light fixture... I was in re-use heaven. (My sister let us borrow her couches, while they were moving houses, just FYI)

Like I have said in other retro remodel posts, we were doing a lot of projects at once. And sometimes lived in utter craziness. Here is an example of that, our entire master bedroom and living room in one, just wait til you see the master bedroom... it is beautiful post to come in the next few weeks.

Talk about a MESS!

I have mentioned before that during my first year in college, I worked at the Home Depot. I saw a lot of good deals. One of which was this rug. I was trying to put it away and wasn't sure where it was supposed to go, so I checked the SKU and the computer said it was $25.00. I bought it on the spot. It wasn't exactly my style, but it was and 8' x 11' rug and it was only $25.00, I repeat $25.00 brand spankin' new!! And really the colors were not too bad.

I also bought 2 gallons of returned paint for $5.00 each. The color was Ralph Lauren Kauai. Which meant I had to prime my blue wall, I think it was only that color for about 4 months. Then my Mom and sister Tiffany came over and they helped us paint.

(btw you can see our "shutters" in these few pictures picture)

After it was painted the room really looked quite nice. I kind of hung my art weird but oh well. My sister needed her couches back, so we got another set of free couches. Only this time I decided to recover them.

Here is the (pretty non-informative) recovering process:

The old slip covers.

We didn't have cable or even local channels while I worked on this project. So I went to the library and rented a bunch of history channel shows. I think I watched the entire Presidents of the United States series.. (they are each like 6 hours long each!!) I like history, what can I say... Check out that old sateen fabric, yikes!

I was going through my red hair stage, actually these remodels document my different hair styles quite well, keep an eye out.

Anyway, I didn't quite finish for about 2 years...oops! This is what it looked like for a while. I decided to add a skirt to the front of the couches and make two large back pillows to update the look of them... and we still have them today. I am dreaming of the day when we have cash in hand for new couches!

That is about all we did. Here are the final pictures right before we sold the house.

What do you think? Really there were no big scary parts to this room,
besides the floor, but it looks pretty decent.

Check out the other Retro-Remodel posts for more before and afters.

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Dec

12

Blue Room, Retro Remodel, Before and After

I want to start posting just a quick before and after post, for those not interested in the background story. So here it is:

Before:

After:

Link to details of project.

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Dec

12

Blue Room; Retro Remodel

This week we are showing you the other upstairs bedroom. It was in much worse shape than the yellow room, but surprisingly was the cleanest room in the house! (or at least it felt like that!)

This was the room we moved into at first, when we were basically camping out, ripping out all the layers that were on the house.

Here are the before pictures, actually, the pics are mid removal. Since we were staying in this room, we forgot to take original pictures, but i think you will get the idea really fast of what it looked like.

The little old lady we bought the house from was so in love with the room. She called it here flower room and she loved the wall paper and carpet. But all good things must come to an end, and the wallpaper had seen it's day... But I did feel a little sorry for her as we pulled down the three layers of wall covering (even though she has never seen it again...).

My mom (in red) and my Aunt Linda came to help us! They worked so hard! Thanks!

How is that picture for Christmas spirit? Don't you want to break out in Rudolf the Red Nosed Remodeler... We were sooooo dirty! The dirt was literally pouring through the cracks as we ripped off the layers, as you can see in the background, that is, if you can see past my nose!

Here you can see the second layer of wall paper. Below that was a whole layer of fabric that had been tacked on all over the place.

To say that I resent the picture above is an understatement. Mostly because I did ALL the wall scrubbing which took about 3 hours! and my arms were sore for DAYS! But of course I said, oh we should take a picture of this, and he was in the picture. I know, get over it! Okay, FINE! but seriously those walls were SO disgusting! I cannot even tell you how bad they were.

After the walls were clean I caulked all the cracks, and I swear I am surprised I still have finger prints! My fingers were hashed!

So, like I said before, the fabric was tacked in place, and we had also ripped out some old paneling, so there were a lot of holes, we did a lot of patching. At first we used wood filler, since it was solid wood, but that turned out to be a nightmare. It never sanded smoothly, not to mention this was definitely lead based paint, so we opted for plaster which was so much easier and safer.

Then we started painting. First all the trim, doors, drawers, and ceilings.

Then the walls.

We installed the bi fold closet door. I would totally do it differently today.

I would make matching doors to the existing door and hang them properly.

I had to throw this picture of Justin in cause he looks like such a baby!

(in a cute young way! not that I think we are old now btw)

Here is the final room. This really was the easiest room in the house, we did it once and that was it done!

Here is the compiled image:

Next week, The Living Room.

Also see the Yellow Room and the Bathroom.

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Dec

5

Yellow Room, Retro Remodel, Before and After

Here is the before and after summary of the Yellow Room.

Before:

After:

Link to details of project.

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Dec

5

Retro Remodel: The Yellow Room

I know, I'm late this was supposed to be up yesterday.... Sorry! From now on I am just saying next week... to be safe.

So the "Yellow Room" was one of two upstairs bedrooms. It was one of the easiest rooms to tackle, so we started on it right away. (We actually finished this before the bathroom, but the time lines all overlap so... anyway)

The very best part about this house was the existing bead board. The bedrooms both had it, and later we also discovered it in the hallway. (after layers of junk peeling... just you wait!) The funniest part of this room was the flooring, you will see what I mean in a second.

I do have a few regrets for this room though. First, I wish I had kept the top rug! Now that I look back at it, I see the coolness of it. It would have been awesome in a little girls room or a funky living room. It only needed to be cleaned! But like I said, we learned how and what to save over time, so it wasn't a lesson I had learned yet!

Also, we didn't have the time to finish this project. We built a new closet and made doors to match the existing door to the bedroom, and didn't ever get to install them before we sold the house. So Sad! It would have been the perfect finishing touch.

Also, it would have been fun to have some of the furniture painted white... It would have looked so crisp and fun... Alas, we left the chair and book shelf when we moved, and the bed is still unfinished (I am debating on painting it bright pink??? DO I DARE?)

Okay, here is the process.

Before:

Check out the layers of carpet. It still makes me laugh!

The detail I miss most about the house, 3/4 inch thick solid pine bead board. Sob!

Okay, to work... First I ripped out all the layers of flooring, how many do you think there were? Oh, I know, lets count.

First, the cool pink oriental rug. dang it!
Second, three patches at the end of the room of random carpet.
Third, wool shell patterned carpet (which also would have been so cool if it wasn't so thrashed. (in the picture below I am rolling this layer back.

Fourth, green rubbery carpet padding (kind of like those rug grippers that we have today only huge and 1/2 inch thick.)
Fifth, Now this was also REALLY cool, a vinyl rug. Isn't that cool? Another thing that I would have loved to keep if it had been in better shape.

Sixth, paper...
Seventh, the actual floor! Finally.

Did I mention that all of these layers were nailed down? About a million times per layer?

The next project was caulking the cracks of the bead board. Some people are gasping now at the horror of my choice to caulk. But the problem was, the cracks were half filled and yucky, not to mention, I don't like spiders... What does that have to do with anything? I didn't want all the hidey holes!.. and I wanted it to look clean. I may or may not do this step again if I ever had the chance (here is hoping someday I get the option again).

Anyway, have I mentioned lately how much I love caulk? It is true. Caulk saves the project! And speaking of caulk... Stay tuned for our weatherizing the house this weekend... Moving on.

After the caulk, (the 15 bottles of caulk, I kid not!!!) we carpeted. My awesome mom, HI MOM! found out her friend was replacing her carpet with wood floors. The carpet was only a few years old! Score, FREE, doesn't get any better than that! We had enough to do three of the four bedrooms (not the master). And guess who installed it? Justin and my very kind bro-in-law Sheldon. (My sis, his wife, is also a fantastic remodeler, I should have her guest post her kitchen, I'll email her RIGHT now!, okay done, I hope she has pictures, her house flooded while she was out of the states a year or so ago so... )

Enough tangent, so, Justin and Sheldon carpeted the room. What we learned, after he had finished, Justin informed me that he will never do it again, and I have respected that. It was back breaking work! And the professionals do it so fast, just thought I would let you know. (although we saved a ton of money, so I don't regret it that one time.)

Next, we primed, patched and painted.

At this point, we were done with this room for about 3 1/2 years. In the mean time, it became our at home studio, since both our majors are design oriented (his-landscape architecture, mine-interior design) it worked perfectly to have an at home studio.

The problem with the house, was the fact that there was only one bathroom. The existing closet in the yellow room was big enough for a little half bath, also a funny little secret in our master bedroom made it possible to easily install plumbing (stay tuned for that find...).

I am not going to show you the half bath yet, since it was one of our final projects, but it was HOT!!! Let me tell you. Moving on, here is what we did in this room to rebuild a closet, and also repair some existing walls. First Justin carefully removed the bead board planks from the closet wall. We decided that it wasn't necessary to have it inside the closet and by taking it all down, we could wrap the outside of the closet in the matching board.

Also as shown in the before picture, near the door, at some time in the hundred years this house had lived, someone cut out a section of the bead board, most likely to insulate, and they patched it with plywood, so Justin, cleaned up the edge and reinstalled the plank bead board there! Yeah... That was actually a proud moment for me, reusing a very small amount of wood to make everything match.

In order for the bath to have a sink, which I think is a must.. believe me I know, ha ha, the bathroom space had to come into the bedroom's space a little. That made the closet in the center, too shallow for hangers. Instead, we did shelves.

The biggest regret for this room is not getting the closet doors in. I am so bummed that we never finished them, cause we had the wood routed in beads to match the original doors, which were adorable.

Here is the rest of the room. I realize that the shutters are a little small, but I found them at a garage sale and they were really rustic and fun, so I thought what the heck. I might have added a little something to them if I redid it today, then they would have fit, either way I really liked it.

Previous Logan House Posts: Bathroom

Next Week: The Blue Room

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Nov

28

Bathroom, Retro Remodel, Before and After

Here is the bathroom before and after summary post.

After:

Link to detailed description of remodel.

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Nov

28

Bathroom; Retro Remodel

The very first project just sort of happened. It started like many projects do, with me saying, "I think I will just change this one little thing...." Then when I begin "it" I find a problem with "this", which leads to "that". Or in other words the rooms secrets begin to come out and the "tiny project" turns into nothing less than our very own Everest.

Actually, this project all started from me getting food poisoning. We had just moved in, and were basically camping in the one clean room in the house. We were about to go to sleep when the dinner I had decided it didn't like me. I ran to our porcelain receptacle, and I had to sit on the most disgusting floor you can imagine, in my underwear. YUCKY!

So, the next day, while working at the Home Depot, I grabbed some clearance peal and stick tiles. I planned on giving us a clean surface for the mean time. (school was about to begin after all, so we didn't have the time to start a whole project) While being miserable the night before, I noticed the floor was a not level and had dips and voids in it, so along with the tiles, I purchased a leveling compound. When I started the project I thought, I'll just rip out the old vinyl, spread the leveling compound on the floor and slap on these new babies and we'll be in business.

Well, when I got the vinyl up, I saw that they had patched a section of the floor just around the toilet with plywood, and it was sinking. A closer look in the cellar revealed that when they replaced that section of the floor, they cut come joists. Basically, our whole bathroom floor was being supported by nothing but the plumbing! Oh and by the way, this was our only bathroom.

Let the remodel begin!

Here are the before pics:

You can see that there is a huge pipe that runs through the room to the roof for air. It was a huge, 6 inches around, cast iron beast! Also, if you look above the sink there is a weird kink in the wall? Who knows why? Oh and no plugs at all in the room, there was an extension cord running up to the light, that had an outlet on it! (Things we failed to really notice when buying the house, we just loved her and couldn't help ourselves! and I am still glad we did it)

Here is a little quick fix idea, I did right at first just to make myself feel better. **This is a great idea if you have ugly counter tops and no budget to spare. I used some self adhesive shelf liner and covered the old counter top, then I caulked the seam around the sink. At least I knew it was clean.

**I have a friend (Hi Em! if you are actually reading all this) who did this in an apartment she rented. She used a marble look shelf liner and it lasted for a few years, and I actually really like the way it looked.

After we cleaned out the floor and saw the big problem, we decided that we had to just begin the remodel. Especially before someone fell through the floor, with their pants at their ankles, while sitting on the commode.

We began by ripping out the wall of cabinets, then the walls, which meant we had to get rid of the vanity... By the time we were done all we had left was a tub, a toilet and bare stud walls.. Then guess what, school started and we had to live like that for about 4 months, or until Christmas break. One thing we learned, **You can adapt.

We found some really interesting framing in the walls. For example the wall above had the 2x4's on their side. The wall behind the toilet had also been tampered with. It was missing the bottom half of most of the studs. It was fun to see the old adobe bricks that had been the insulation. We think that at one point this had been an exterior wall.

When we began to remove the huge wall of cabinets, we found one of the reasons they were there. The old foundation that came into the room about 8 inches deep and 18" high. So we had to work around that too.

One thing we decided not to work around was the huge pipe that ran through the room. We chose to put that in the wall. That was when a Sawzall with a cast iron cutting blade came in real handy!

**p.s. Sawzalls are one of the tools that every remodeler needs, you can use them for about everything! We borrowed my sisters, a year later when she begged to have it back, we bought one for ourselves. My other tip is don't go too cheap, like we have, we are on our third, but we use it that much, so we always need one!

(Notice the Cheerio box covering the access to our heater vent. Kitty, really wanted to get in there! You have to be really careful when remodeling with pets in the house and children, but we didn't have those yet!)

I had to throw that last picture in of my feet hanging through the floor because, it became a classic picture that we imitated ourselves doing over and over through the remodel.

Next step, after the pipe was in the wall, was shoring up the floor which was a little tricky. We had to get sort of creative because the pipes and heating vents were in the way (which we think is the reason they cut the floor in the first place!) Also we had to find full boards to support the floor with. Then we replaced the floor with thick plywood, trying to reach the same thickness as the flooring under the tub, which was in good condition so we left it in place.

While the toilet was out I took the opportunity to get all the pink paint off, and Kitty helped. What a mess!

Once the floor was all in place and actually doing it's job, safely, we built in the wall behind the toilet. This required us to replace the studs that had been cut. It also had oddly sized studs, due to the age of the house, so Justin had to shim them to get an even wall.

Lets give Justin a big round of applause by the way, cause he did ALL the hard stuff!

The picture below shows all the weird framing. The new 2 x 4's are what we put in, the white is strips of panelling used to fir out the existing studs wall, the rest is a hodgepodge of wood that they used to frame it all in the first place. SCARY!

We also framed in the foundation. ** Notice the new plumbing air pipe in the wall!! I think we were excited about that for about 3 weeks. It is funny what you get excited about when doing a major remodel.

Justin took the chance to add some more lights and an actual plug in the wall! Welcome, Mr. bathroom, to the real world! Then we started installing drywall.

We decided to add a bead board wainscoting. Since the house already had bead board we thought it would compliment the rest of the house as well as the age.

Did you notice our awesome window treatment (stacked toilet paper rolls? huh? pretty good!) You can see our hand soap and towel on the tub were we had to wash our hands because we had no sink. I think it is pretty funny!

**Something I learned from this project is that it is much nicer to paint the walls before you put in your moldings. (which we didn't do, but I did later because of how annoying it was to paint and get clean lines after the fact) If I did this project over, I would have painted the drywall it's final color at this point, before putting up the top to the wainscoting and the crown. It is much easier to spot paint if necessary, than doing it after the fact. ** I also learned to paint the moldings themselves before putting them up, and spot patch and paint them, it is SO MUCH EASIER!

Here is the cap for the wainscoting. We wanted those little corbel looking supports even though they weren't necessary. We found that we couldn't nail them, cause they would split, instead we had to glue each one in place!

Next we installed the floor. There was a bit of a problem. The existing floor under the tub was a strange thickness (back before lumber sizes were standardized) We patched part of it with some vinyl flooring, then covered it all with new wood. (We figured the ghetto layers would just match the rest of the house, a little project for the next remodelers to find!)

We wanted to do tile, but since the floor joists system was so weird we were afraid it would move to much for tile and cause cracking. Instead, we did peel and stick vinyl tiles. Looking back, we probably should have done real tile, but the floor looked good, so oh well. (We used the commercial grade peel and stick tiles, so it would last longer at least)

Oh, and doing the floor meant moving that huge tub! We took the opportunity to switch the front feet with the back feet. As you can see, the back had never been painted. I took them and spray painted them silver, it looked pretty cool.

We finished the walls, by installing all the base and corner moldings then painting. Then reinstalled the tub and toilet, it only took us one day. And really, since we only had one bathroom, that is all the time we could spare.

We also put our shower back in FINALLY. We special ordered a new bar system for the shower. And forget to get a picture of it. We hung it really high so that is didn't take up visual space in our tiny bath!

Last we put in a very small pedestal sink, the mirror, lights and some storage shelves. Presto whammo! After about 9 months.... we finally finished! (the reason we did a small pedestal was the small size of the room only 6' x 5' tiny, especially with the huge -but awesome- claw foot tub!)