My Big Fat Renovation

[67ChevyRedneck]

Ohhhhh, how I wish it was that simple.... that's just the primer on the walls. I still have to tape off the entire kitchen to paint it! Not looking forward to it at all... I do REALLY like the white cabinets. I hated them at first, but with the new paint, they just look really sweet!

I had a setback today
I was also sick since last wednesday. Wasn't swine flu, but I had a nasty cold, I usually get it in the fall because the temp changes here are so severe

The setback was that we went to go buy a new french door. I saw them at the local lowe's for only $450. Well, it turns out we don't have a commonly stocked door size and that door is about 3" too narrow, so we have to custom order a door for about $700 to get the one I want. Sooooo. that's going to have to wait a few more months. Turkey day and Christmas are coming up soon. Those are more important. The current door is fine for now, but I was just really disappointed On a positive note.... THE COUNTERTOPS COME TOMORROW

[Sillyoldman]

Change the RO of the door and save the $250.00. Its easy to do.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Originally Posted by Sillyoldman

Change the RO of the door and save the $250.00. Its easy to do.

RO? Do you mean the trim? I thought about that, but if I use fatter trim on the sides, I can't use it on the top. It would look awkard with thick trim on the side and skinny on the top.

My wife is OK with the more expensive door and waiting on it, it's also more "energy efficient" than the ones in stock, and it closer matches the door we have now with the "inside" window panes. The current door is completely fixed on the right side and someone "made" a new centerpiece for it that looks like crap (they must have broken it at one time).

[383Ram]

No, he means the rough opening (RO) . Thats what i would do also. It shouldn't be very hard to do if everything goes right----notice i said shouldn't. But i understand wanting the more efficient door also.

[383Ram]

Oh, and the white cabinets rock if the rest is done right.

Our bathroom is a nice yellow with white wainscoting and trim. Except for the simulated oak vanity and medicine cabinet it looks very striking and appealing. But that is why i was asking about the cabinet paint also, i want to paint the vanity for now untill we can get a new one.

[67ChevyRedneck]

I went back and captioned all the pics! So if anyone is bored, there's lots of reading!

I got a lot done while the boards pic uploading thing was down, so there will be a lot more pics tomorrow (well, I guess, really later today )

I was sick for a week, and now I'm "down" with a slightly injured back (old snowboarding accident that comes back to haunt me every now and again,) but I should be hitting it hard again in a day or two.

[my67chevytruck]

Looking good Jesse...

[67ChevyRedneck]

Back to the pics!

Going to go off on a little side story for a second...

I worked on the house from May to July without ever turning the A/C system on. Everything tested "good" during the home inspection. I needed the windows open for ventilation even if it was 105 degrees upstairs (should have taken a pic of the thermostat!)

Anyway, our realtor pushed that we get the home owners to pay for a 1 year home warranty... well it paid for itself!

We were having trouble with this thing as soon as we turned it on. It froze up at least once a day. I figured it was because of large % of the fins being closed off. The top was also bent all to heck. That's even after I straightened it out some! I called the insurance company and for $60 they came to check it out. After looking at it, they determined it was "bad." It took almost 3 weeks to get the insurance company to shell out for a new one, but we got it! All for only $60!

Well, here's the real kick in the nuts. After about a week this one started freezing, and man was I pissed. I saw no evidence of leaks (there's usually an oily looking mess around where the leaks are) and started doing some online research. I figured out that the problem had to be with the upstairs unit in the attic. What was happening was the outside unit was kicking on when needed, but the inside fan was staying off and that was causing the freeze up conditions! With some online help I determined it was the capacitor, fan relay, or fan delay switch. With my sweet searching skills I was able to find all of the OEM style parts for under $40 shipped! I replaced all of them, being 90% sure it was the fan relay switch, and we've enjoyed a working system since late august. The downstairs one has worked well since we got the place.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Back inside...

1. My wife picked this one out. I like it, it goes with all the other fixtures well. It took me 3 days to prime and paint the ceiling in these rooms. Overall, it was about 14x38 or something close to that.

2. New fan up...

3. View overall...

4. I popped the lights down to get a nice even coat underneath them. Kind of reminds me of "Whack a Mole"

5. Ceiling painted and lights installed. They're not in this pic, but we got new energy efficient bulbs at lowes. They were on sale and we had a $10 off coupon. We basically got $40 worth of bulbs for $20, I couldn't pass that up! That and even with all of the bulbs on, they use LESS power than TWO of the old bulbs! They look exactly the same as the old bulbs, but they have that little coil light thingy inside of them.

[67ChevyRedneck]

1. A couple days before the counter top install, I remembered that I wouldn't be able to reinstall the front fake drawers to the cabinets once the sink was installed! I had to bust out the Wagoner sprayer to do just these two drawer faces. If you look back, these were smooth, but I decided I wanted a uniform look, so I drilled the center holes out (they were already pre drilled on the backside!) and installed matching hardware. Will this fool some people, yes
I also didn't like that they were originally "flush" with the cabinet, and the doors and other drawers are not (they use soft rubber bumpers to keep them "away" from the cabinet face. So I took anal to a whole new level and put 6 evenly spaced rubber bumper things (3 on the top, 3 on the bottom) to make the fake drawers look more "real." I really like how it turned out.

2. How it came out Also, it was going to be a couple weeks before the new counter tops would come, so I reinstalled the old sink, which apparently had a leak. It ruined my new paint job before I realized it had a leak! It turns out the sprayer hose had a crack! Oh well, It'll get fixed/repainted soon enough.

WOHOOO!!!

New counter tops! I friggin' LOVE it! I think we got a heck of a steal on it. 53 square feet of granite counter top, brand new stainless sink, and the install for under $2,200. We did go to local vendors and couldn't find anyone that could beat Lowe's deal. Basically, the sink was "free" and if you have Lowes install something in your home, you don't pay any sales tax, Lowes pays it, so that saved us another $150 almost!

3. Pic during the install. The install guys were all nice and did a good job. They had to shim my bar cabinet, which I knew was off a hair, by that point of my cabinet leveling, I didn't care anymore They didn't have to use shims anywhere else

4. You can see the first back splash going on...

[67ChevyRedneck]

1. All done!!!

2. The "money shot."

3. Close up of the sink and the new holes. I had to let it sit for a day before I installed my stuff. Because I was sick, it ended up being 2 days. It's also a nice close up of the material. My wife was super happy when she got home. Crap, now I have to tape EVERYTHING off and paint... crap... crap... crap...

We actually wanted a different sink. It was square and had equal sized basins, but our stupid cabinet was too small!!! So we ended up with this one. Which I actually really like now. We didn't know about the difference at first and bought an awesome faucet set that we had to bring back. We found out about the sink change during the templating process.

4. Just another close up...

[67ChevyRedneck]

1. This is why we had to bring back our other faucet set. It had temperature handles on either side, but with this style sink you almost "have" to have the center nozzle with a single faucet. I like this one too. It goes well with everything else.

2. It almost looks like I'm done, doesn't it?

I still have to paint ALL of the lower doors and some of the drawers

3. I spent a little extra $ under here too. The old disposal was really loud and smelled bad from years of neglect. The new one was only $70 and is super quiet. I bought a new drain for the left side and cleaned up/reused the old drain pipes. I did purchase all new seals though! I also bought new braided lines for everything. The old plastic ones felt like they were going to crack at any second. It's been over a week, so far not a drop has been dripped Also, plumbers putty makes your hands smell funny for a couple days

...and we're all caught up once again! My back is still a little tweaked, but it was a lot easier to move around today. I hope to be painting at least the great room by this weekend and maybe have the kitchen painted by the end of next week!

[ERASER5]

I spy NyQuil! You feeling OK?

[67ChevyRedneck]

I am now. I was sick for over a week. NOT swine flu. Never threw up, never really had a fever, I was just congested bad, felt really weak, and coughed a lot. I'm good now

[VA72C10]

Read through it all. Nice work. Great improvement to the house!

[383Ram]

Looking GREAT!!! Still waiting for you to come over do my house though......

[Select]

Looks good man. Remember post 32 pic 2 for open splice in wall. Hopefully you got that resolved before covering it over. To bad you didn't put in power for the future tv over the fireplace while you had the wall open. Good luck with the rest of it. Don't take to much time off from working on it, it will drag out even longer because you aren't looking forward to it....I know from experience.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Yeah, I'm kinda kickin' myself for that one. The TV/den thing was an afterthought after I put the drywall back up. I thought it would just be a big open room with a small dining table with some shelves, maybe a hutch, then my wife came up with the den idea and I really liked it when I realized how cool that could be with a TV above the fireplace. Oops It won't be horrible to see a cord along the wall, just sucks.

My back finally got to the point where I woke up and it didn't hurt, so I spent a couple days cleaning up the lawn/yard and getting rid of the rest of the crap the PO's left us. I brought in a bunch of junk, the old dishwasher, and FOUR window A/C units that were stuffed in the shed. Why they had them? I guess they needed where they lived before and kept them, then left 'em.

[Sub-versive]

Originally Posted by 67ChevyRedneck

RO? Do you mean the trim? I thought about that, but if I use fatter trim on the sides, I can't use it on the top. It would look awkard with thick trim on the side and skinny on the top.

My wife is OK with the more expensive door and waiting on it, it's also more "energy efficient" than the ones in stock, and it closer matches the door we have now with the "inside" window panes. The current door is completely fixed on the right side and someone "made" a new centerpiece for it that looks like crap (they must have broken it at one time).

Originally Posted by 383Ram

No, he means the rough opening (RO) . Thats what i would do also. It shouldn't be very hard to do if everything goes right----notice i said shouldn't. But i understand wanting the more efficient door also.

You can do this. You just CENTER the door in the opening, add 1/2" or 3/4" plywood (or appropriate size) to the 2x4's(or 2x6's) and use wider trim on all sides. Or add strips of drywall and mud, or for the lazy, blob the hot mud or fixall (personally I don't condone this) in the space with regular sized trim over that.
Just be sure to caulk and flash it properly for long life.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Guys, thanks for all of the tips, but I just don't want to use bigger trim. My house has 4 exterior doors and they all have the same trim on them, I don't want to use a wider trim. The "right door" isn't all that more expensive

[faribran]

looking good..... did u ever consider hinged blanks in front of the sink... they make a great place to stash small things for the sink..

[67ChevyRedneck]

The sink is HUGE, it only fit inside the cabinet by 1/8" on each side. There probably isn't more than an inch of room behind the drawers. Not sure what I could stash there that wouldn't fit under the sink.

[67ChevyRedneck]

I haven't been slacking, I've been busy!

I spent a couple days cleaning up the yard, I still can't believe how much crap the PO's left behind!

I also finally got my garage cleaned up some.

Another side project was this freezer. It was my wife's parents old freezer. It still works well, probably sucks a little extra juice, but it was free. I spent a little money on that peel and stick stainless steel stuff I saw used on HGTV and tried it out. It looks much better in the pics than in person, but that's only because the door and sides had a fair amount of scratches and dings. I tried to fill them in, but it wasn't perfect, but it does look OK. It's going in the little nook I created by closing up the wall in the kitchen anyway. Oh, the reason for the covering was the scratches and dents, but also because it was what I like to call the "classic 80's yellow" color, which I kind of despise

Edit: Found a pic of the freezer "as is." I originally tried to spray it black using "appliance paint" and the finish came out nice, but it really showed the waves, dings, and scratches which really made it look like crap, but the fake stainless steel stuff makes it look much less crappy.

[67ChevyRedneck]

My poor truck got kicked outside for a few days to paint some stuff, don't worry, it was dry last week

1. I tried just cleaning up the drawers, but alas, just like the cabinets, no matter how I scrubbed, they still had a dingy yellow cheap look to them. So I completely blew all of the drawers apart and repainted them. I think it was worth it.

2. We actually have two lazy susans, one in each corner, and sadly, this is what they looked like when I pulled them out when we moved in. Ya know, if you turn your head and draw an eye on it... it looks just like Pac Man.

3. After a really good clean up and some Krylon Plasticoat white paint, they were looking pretty good. The stuff is nice too because it dried really fast.

[67ChevyRedneck]

1. I guess you can't really see it, but I lined the cabinets with a shelf/drawer liner. It makes for easier cleaning and will prevent paint chips.

2. After cleaning up the pole some, I reinstalled the freshened up lazy susan. It actually works well. I still have to paint/install the one on the other side now...

3. This is what the drawers looked like after being cleaned, painted, reassembled, lined, and reinstalled. I think they came out nice.

4. I happened to paint this drawer face and cabinet door face when I did the upper cabinets, so I installed them. I think it looks great. Supposed to be super nice this weekend, I should be spraying the other door and draw faces then!