Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Update

We got the extra tiles for FREE! Sweet. As it turned out, we had miscalculated in the beginning. Still no reason why it took a month for 6 tiles to get to us, but all in all, this worked out okay. Our contractor is coming back on Friday, so barring any disasters, we should have a working shower in the guest bathroom by the end of the weekend!!! HOORAY!!!!!!

I guess protocol is that whoever did your plumbing has to come back and install the shower head and knob that turns on the water. As we've got an unofficial restraining order against our old contractor (as in, if I ever see him again, regardless of where we are, I will go batshit crazy on him), we're enlisting a friend of our new guy.

So, taxes are done. We're getting back about $8K with the new homeowner tax credit. SWEET! I think our next projects will be:

  • Beadboard ceiling for the attic - Under the premise of "needing to insulate", Eric totally destroyed the attic. As of now, he's put the baffles in under the insulation, because HA!, whoever did this before had neither soffit vents or any sort of venting system to get the hot air out of the peak of the roof, hence the 110 degree temps up there in the summer... We bought a solar attic fan for up there, as well, so we'll need to get that installed on the room. We're just going to go with the pre-cut sections of beadboard, paint them white, and screw them up there. Will look nicer than drywall for a fraction of the price.

  • New carpet for bedrooms and attic - I mentioned a couple months ago that our current carpet situation was starting to wear on my psyche. We've got very limited carpet in the house, which is nice, but what we do have is absolutely disgusting. So much so that I have to sort of suspend my instincts when walking upon it in anything less than tennis shoes. It will be delightful to have new clean carpet. I'm thinking a neutral color, maybe with a pattern? If we were smart, we'd go with black carpet to hide the dog hair, but that would be ridiculous.

  • Carpet runner for stairs and foyer - We went to a Progressive Dinner in our neighborhood last month. Our neighborhood is full of really neat old houses that people have really brought back. One was an old Victorian over on Delaware that particularly impressed us. The owner had laid this great runner down the stairs with those neat little rods to hold it in place. So that's what we're going to do. We're also going to extend it from the front door to the kitchen. I didn't realize how inconvenient it is to not have a mudroom or little foyer to put your shoes and coats until this winter, when I've gone through at least 3 bottles of Swiffer Wet Jet floor solution cleaning up all the bootmarks and salty pawprints.

  • Refinish the hardwood throughout the house - Oh, our hardwoods are delightful, and original! They've been through a lot, though. They're nailed down, every 4 inches or so, and someone in their infinite wisdom used a beltsander against the grain of the wood, so there are some black marks around the nails. It also looks like someone spilled a can of stain and didn't bother to wipe it up. Anyway, we're going to do some surgery and replace the couple boards that are bad, sand it all down, and then stain a darker color to hide the burn marks and spill. If I could do the whole house again, I think I'd go with a charcoal undertone--I think that looks so cool--but that doesn't match the other woodwork, so we'll just go with a dark brown.

  • New fireplace tiles - Ugh. I thought this was going to be one of the first things we'd get done. When we bought the house, the fireplace had this gross faux brick tile, and honestly, I don't think it was ever even cemented to the backer. Pieces were falling out, so one day, I just decided to tear out the whole thing. That was about 5 months ago, and I've had a bare, ugly fireplace since. We're going to go with a nice neutral green color, I think, and once Big Sweetie has completed the built-ins, the whole thing will look something like this, minus the big-screen and stained glass:

  • Master bath: Our master bath is totally weird. It's HUGE, for one thing, but is oddly shaped and even more oddly-laid out. When we bought the house, the master had a teeny-tiny little shower--one of those pre-fab things, and it looked ridiculous. Now, in retrospect, we probably should have kept that shower there for a while, used it, and not had to traipse up to the attic every morning, but that is neither here nor there at this point. When the contractors took out the old shower, we had them build a very large stall, more fitting the size of the room. So, we'll have our new contractor do the pan, and I think we'll try our hand at tiling. We'll do the shower, a new floor (currently slate--in a bathroom???), and there's a Jacuzzi tub (which works!) that is tiled in, too, so we'll replace that stuff. Our closet is basically carved out of the bathroom space, and is pretty small, so Eric's going to move the closet door into the bathroom, and extend the closet walls a bit. This will also mean we'll have a window in the closet, so it'll be more like a dressing room. Sweet.

So, there's my wishlist for the time being. I hope it translates into reality.

1 comment:

lizzie said...

Glad they forked the tiles over free of charge. Crikey!

Excellent news on the tax return! Wow, you guys are ambitious. I can't wait to see all of these great projects come to fruition. What fun--you must be so excited!