DIY Renovation: Creating a Plan

Plan your work and work your plan. Those are words to live by, or work by at least.  The first step in our renovation was creating a floor plan.  When my husband and I were searching for a home to buy, the area we were looking in was all old houses. No matter what house we bought, it would need work. We were given the advice to always go for the house with more square feet. When we were deciding between our top two options, we did just that.  The first house looked more finished, but was smaller.  The house we bought looked like a hot mess, but we bought it anyhow. Both houses actually started out with the same floor plan, since the majority of the houses here were identical when they were built.

My neighborhood was built in the 1940's. The houses were almost all 2 bedroom, 1 bath houses with a living room, dining room, fire place, screen porch, and eat in kitchen. Most of the houses have had additions over the years. Mine has had two. Unfortunately, when those additions were made, the goal seemed to have been to simply make a bigger house. There was no regard to what the additional rooms could be used for, or the traffic flow through the house. The original back porch of the house had been used at the foundation for the first addition, and a new back porch was added next to it.  The next owners decided that one bonus room wasn't enough, and used the new porch as a foundation for another addition. They did not add a new porch. The biggest problem was that in order to get from the back of the house to the front of the house, you had to walk in a big U shape through the two bonus rooms, the kitchen, the hallway, and then the living room. If we were leaving from the back door and couldn't remember if we had locked the front door, it was faster just to run around the outside of the house and check than it was to walk back through the inside.

It took my husband and I a long time to agree on a floor plan. We knew we wanted to have a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house with a new kitchen, but we couldn't agree on where those things should go. I spent hours in front of the computer almost daily drawing every possible layout. Finally, after months of deliberation, we nailed it down.

This is the original floor plan:

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Please excuse my simplified drawing. I originally only created it for me to be able to work through different floor plans, so while I did draw out where the windows were, I didn't bother to draw any doors.

This was the floor plan when we bought it:

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In addition to the long path from the front of the house to the back, and the kitchen being in the middle (which turned out to be really annoying for a number of reasons), the screen porch had been turned into a bedroom. It didn't have a closet, and you had to either go through the living room or another bedroom to get to it. It wasn't exactly private.

Another major problem was the kitchen layout. Once the toaster oven was on the counter and the canisters were put out, there was no counter space left. Since the original pantry had been sacrificed to add more counter space, the pantry had been moved around the corner into the hall linen closet. The washer and dryer were also crammed in the tiny space, sort of. The wall between the dining room and kitchen had been cut down to a knee wall to open up the space before the last owners bought the house. The space left in the kitchen wasn't wide enough to fit a washer and dryer, so they knocked down the knee wall to make more room. They patched the floor with a scrap piece of plywood. Everything about this room was a mess.

This is what the house looks like today:

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This is the only drawing where there aren't supposed to be doors in every doorway. The wide doorways between the sun room, dining room, hall, and living room are all open.

While I realize that my house isn't perfect, it's about a million times better than where we started. There are a few things that I would do differently if I had to do it all over again, but overall I think it turned out well.

DIY Renovation: Bathroom Makeover Part 2

Putting it back together


Once we got the tile grouted and the trim caulked, it was time to paint. We primed and painted the walls with no problem, but when I started to paint the window trim (the only trim that was originally in the room) I noticed the paint that was already there was peeling up in places. It turns out that the window trim had been painted with oil based paint, and then later someone painted over it with latex paint.  That's a big no-no without using the right primer. 


My solution was to cover every inch on the trim with packing tape, and then rip it off, taking the top layer of latex paint off too. It was like waxing, but with paint. It worked pretty well, and I was able to prime the window trim with Zinsser 123 bullseye and finish up the room.  


Here are our after photos:

Bathrooms are one of the most expensive rooms to renovate.  We saved money by buying as much on clearance as we could, and not putting in that heated floor that my husband still reminds me to this day that he wanted.

Luckily for us (and not luckily for them), Linen-N-Things was going out of business when we started this project, so I had all of the decor under control for cheap. The tub, shower and sink faucets are in a finish that was being discontinued, antique pewter, so they were more than half off. It doesn't match the oil rubbed bronze that is in the rest of the house, but it looks cool. The sink and tall cabinet are from Ikea, also on sale. We had a coupon for a percentage off of our entire purchase at Lowes, so we bought all the tile and trim from there. I think the only thing we paid full price for was the mirror.

All in all, this was a probably the most difficult room in our renovation, but I think it turned out well, and it didn't break the bank.

DIY Renovation: Bathroom Makeover Part 1

Tearing it all down

The soon-to-be bathroom with the previous owners stuff in it.  

We started out our renovation with the master bathroom. When our house was built in 1944, the room was a screen porch. At some point, the porch was enclosed, and turned into a "bedroom"(according to the previous homeowners).  At best, it was an office. It was only 9'x9', and had two doors. One opened into the living room, and the other into the master bedroom. Plus, there was no closet. Not a bedroom in my opinion.

The empty room.
Notice the blue and purple indoor/outdoor carpet. 

The first thing I did was drywall over the doorway into the living room. I strongly dislike bathrooms that have doors into public spaces in a home. Bathroom are private places, and their doors should be in hallways, or bedrooms. At this point we were still coming up with ideas for the floor plan, fixtures, and colors.  Here are a few of my inspiration photos. Since this was done 5 years ago, I do not know where these photos came from.  If you recognize them, please let me know so I can give credit.

I really like the fixtures here, and the use of baskets and shelves instead
of cramming everything into a cabinet.

Once we got our floor plan nailed down, my husband and I pulled down the ceiling tiles, only to discover another ceiling above it. We tore that one down too, and guess what? One more!  None of them were sheetrock, so we had to start from scratch and hang new sheetrock on the ceiling joists. The walls were already done (except the section we added for the shower wall), but the sheetrock had been put up after the lowest ceiling was hung. That meant there was a large gap between the top of the sheetrock on the walls, and the new ceiling. I was extremely stressed about this. I absolutely did not want to cut strips of drywall to hang all around the top of the room, and I especially did not want to mud and sand it.  Luckily, the very largest crown molding that you can buy was just barely big enough to cover the gap. Problem solved. 

I pulled up the carpet and discovered that the floor was not plywood. It was built like a deck out of 2x6's, over top of cement.  I did not plan on having to break through cement to run pipes into this room. The reality of renovating an old house, that had already been renovated once before, really set in at this point. 

Making progress!

We hired a plumber to rough in the water and drains for all the fixtures. It was mostly an unpleasant experience to work with them, but they got the job done. We put down new subfloor over our "deck", and then hardibacker. I give the hardibacker two thumbs up, it was very easy to work with, although you need special screws.

We decided to go with a separate tub and shower. We bought a jetted tub, which looking back, was kind of a waste. We never turn it on. A soaking tub would have been just fine.  Also on my list of regrets is buying our tile from Lowes. I'm happy with what we have, but we went to Floor and Decor for our most recent project, and they have an infinitely better selection and better prices. Also, after much debate over buying a shower base vs. tiling the shower floor, we decided to go with tile to match the walls. It would have been so much easier to buy the base. So. Much. Easier. I cannot stress enough that there is no way in hell I am building or tiling a shower base ever again in my life. It is too much work for too little reward. Tiling the walls was fine though; we even built in a little recessed area for our shampoo bottles.

After we  framed the shower walls, we had cover the base of the shower with waterproof material that you seal with really stinky glue. The walls of the shower got a vapor barrier before the backer board went up. The tub was easy enough to install. We built the frame for it to drop into, and laid it in a mortar bed.  The water pipes went up the knee wall at the end of the tub, as well as the studor vent. This may all sound complicated to any would-be DIYers, but if you buy a book on home repair with lots of photos, you will be able to do it too. I like this one and this one. 

Since most of the walls already had sheetrock, the drywall work in this room was minimal, just the ceiling and the outside shower wall. My husband and I are on the small side, so rather than wrestle with heavy pieces of drywall and try to hold them up while also screwing them in, we bought a drywall lift, and then sold it once we were done. I'd like to take a moment to state that I absolutely hate sanding ceilings. Hire someone to do it for you. It's well worth the money, if you can find a good drywall person. 

We had just one more hard part left before I could have fun decorating- the tile.  All in all it wasn't that bad. The room was big enough that we were able to use 12" tile on the floor without it looking out of proportion. We used 6" tile for the tub and shower walls. The floor was a breeze, but the tub and shower were a little more work. We had a ton of cuts to make. Thankfully, my husband was able to borrow a tile saw. I cannot imagine trying to use one of those snap cutters for this many cuts. 

Stay tuned for part two of the bathroom makeover. It's going to have the fun stuff, and the "big reveal" of the after photos!

DIY Renovation: My Ugly House

A little over five years ago, my husband and I bought our first home. To say it was a fixer-upper is an understatement. The house had been flipped in the 70's, and some of the work wasn't done properly. Our home inspection didn't find any of the major mistakes (you aren't allowed to check behind the wood paneling after all). On top of that, the previous owners hadn't taken the best care of the house or yard. We had our work cut out for us, maybe a little more work than we expected.

We have been renovating the house one room at a time, hiring out some of the more difficult tasks, but doing most of the work ourselves. It definitely put a strain on our relationship at times. It was hard, frustrating work, but also very rewarding. Now we are almost done. There is one light fixture left to hang in the hallway, and I need to put a better closet system in my daughter's room. 

I'd like to take a look back and share a little of what we went through, the surprises we found, and of course our awesome before and after photos. Hopefully some of the work that we did can serve as inspiration for other people undertaking projects like this, and hopefully it will help boost the confidence of other women who are intimidated by power tools, like I used to be. If I can do it, so can you!  Since this will obviously take several posts to cover all of the projects, I'll start off with the before photos.  This little house didn't look like much, but it was truly a diamond in the rough. 

What will become a Bedroom

Sunroom

What will become a Bedroom

Small Bathroom

Master Bedroom

Living Room

What will become the Dining Room

What will become the Kitchen

What will become the Master Bathroom