Now that the kids are back in school we have officially started tearing up the house with remodels. We painted the cabinets before our trip to Utah and now it was time to paint the walls. I think if I had any idea how hard it was going to be living in a remodel, I might have just left it the way it was! The paint fumes were the worst. But it was really exciting to see the house take on a new form. Because they were painting all the bedrooms, we had the kiddos all sleep in our room to avoid the fumes. Ours was the last room painted. Bye bye beige!!
The first thing the painters did was take away all the cabinet doors and drawers to their warehouse to be painted. Then they came back and painted the actual cabinets. The paint fumes were so bad this day I thought we would all have an immediate bout of cancer by the end of the night. I tried to be outside with the kids as much as possible but it was so blasted hot we ended up just going to restaurants and the pool.
The worst was sleeping in the house at night. Because our bedroom was downstairs, the air quality was terrible! We changed our filters almost every day because there was so much dust!! I didn't sleep very well because I was so worried about brain damage and Eliza. Chase was convinced we would be fine, but I still freaked out! Too bad we aren't billionaires and can't stay in our 'second home" while they blast paint into the air. So glad this episode of the remodel is over!!
The honey oak cabinets are officially gone!! Next steps are to paint the beige walls and pick a new back splash!
We went with a really light gray called Eider White by Sherwin Williams for the walls throughout the downstairs and main rooms and did a nice bright white in the bedrooms. We did the office and the downstairs bath in Repose Gray. At first I was kind of freaking out because the walls looked purple. But after the new floors went in and they painted the cream trim a brighter white, it started to look a lot better.
It looks chaotic because it was!!
We told the painters to not worry about the floor because it was getting replaced by hardwood in a few weeks. They didn't worry about the floors. There was paint EVERYWHERE!!
One of the most exciting transformations was the downstairs half bath. It had extremely textured walls so we had them strip that all off and re-float everything in there.
The walls look a ton better but they didn't lay the tile as meticulously as I would have liked but at least I didn't have to do it! They put the new hex tile on top of a thick backing in the bathrooms so the toilets all had to be re-positioned by a plumber. It was sad because Chase can usually install the toilets himself, but they were smelling so bad after he installed them we had to call a plumber to come figure out what was wrong. I guess they were just too high off the ground and the seal wasn't keeping the sewage smell out!
Basically home remodels just stink. Literally!! There was one incident that was truly the low point of the whole ordeal. Actually there were so many low points that this one couldn't possibly take the metal at being the worst, but believe me, it's up there!! So the tilers put Jack's toilet in his bathtub so they could tile the floor. Well, while waiting for the floors to set it probably took us too long to put the toilets back on because Jack started using the toilet in his bathtub! After a few days we smelled something REALLY bad coming from Jack's room every time we walked by. His room usually smells kind of bad because he's a stinky boy, but this was abnormally foul. Turns out Jack had been doing his business for the last few days on this toilet in the tub! He obviously didn't think twice about the fact that it wouldn't flush. He just kept right on using that toilet! Common sense didn't take over, and we partially blamed ourselves for not explaining it to him. Getting that full of waste toilet out of the tub and onto the floor was one of the nastiest experiences ever! It was messy and it was everywhere. Use your imagination!! And after all that, we still had to call a plumber because the smell never went away. The only toilet that didn't smell was the one in our master bath. We figured it was because we didn't change the tile in there. Geez!!
Another low point of the remodel was when our painter stained our banister while we were in Round Rock for Sammy's birthday party. When we got home we were greeted by a black banister. It was stained so dark it looked like shiny licorice!! I started freaking out a bit and called him to say it was TOTALLY the wrong color. We left a sample of the floors that were being installed and told him we wanted them to match. They were WAY off!! He came the next day and tried to get most of it off but it was looking pretty terrible. I finally told him that I would do it! I borrowed Jenny's sander and went to work!!
It wasn't perfect but it was pretty close! It took forever but we were finally ready for the floors to be installed!!
It was really the worst time to remodel with a new baby, but the floors were literally falling apart! We went with a company called Carpet Close Outs and in retrospect have sadly learned that when you go with a cheap company, you'll get cheap service and even an even worse product. Picking out the wood and the carpet took me forever. I didn't feel like they had a very good selection. I would take whatever I remotely liked home and was never very impressed. The showroom was 40 minutes away too. I felt like I was always driving up there!!
Eventually they finally showed me this wood and I felt like it would look awesome in our home.
I also felt like we signed away our souls when we bought the 1500 square feet!
It was so fun watching them rip out all our disgusting old carpet! I'm pretty sure it was infested with fleas. When I'd sit on it, my legs would itch and get red spots. The whole reason we remodeled when we did was so Liza could have a clean and sanitary place to crawl. She was getting close and actually started crawling the day after all the floors were installed!!
She approves and so do we!!
We loved the new wood floors but ended up pretty unhappy with the way they installed the tile and carpet. The carpet wasn't even soft to walk on and we would occasionally feel big bumps under our feet. We got a the pad manufacturers out here and they ended up upgrading our pad for free because the other pad was defective with almost crystallized pieces throughout the surface. We also noticed a pretty big bump in Sadie's closet and upon further investigation found a piece of the train table under there. We won't be recommending our installers to anyone!
The tile was just kind of sad. One bathroom was done so poorly they said they would have to rip it all out and start over again. I guess the guy they hired to install our tile didn't know what he was doing. It has been a pretty big headache!! And because the tile was installed over floor backing, none of the doors fit anymore. They're too long! So I had to hire a guy to come cut the bottoms of all the bathroom doors too! Can I get another GEEZ?!
This guy ended up leaving before finishing one of the doors and we still can't open Sadie's bathroom door all the way. He did do a good job cutting our granite in the kitchen to fit the new cook top. No more electric coil cook top!! And here's the new oven. I love it!!
I found this massive built-in on our garage sale FB group. I paid $100 for it. I knew it was quite hideous when I bought it, but I saw its potential.
Chase and I started painting it and the walls ourselves on night. It ended up taking us so long we figured it would probably take us an entire year to paint all the rooms in the house. That's when we called Gabino. He painted the whole darn thing for such a great price, we couldn't say no. He even painted this book case for me!
It's so pretty!!
You'd never know its owners gave it away for a measly $100 bill by looking at it!
We are still disputing the tile and carpet with the installers so I haven't gotten around to taking "before and after pics" but they'll come one way or another. It's so fun to watch this house finally come together. Chase and I have been loathing these beige walls and cracked floors for years now and would often talk about how much better it would look with new floors and some lighter paint. It finally happened!!
