The Downstairs Dream (2): The Front Room

One of the last posts I did before my years-long hiatus was about taking down a wall and putting in an i-beam to open up our downstairs. Prior to the wall coming down, we referred to the room it created as the “front” room. This is because it was a long, narrow room that stretched the length of our house if you were looking at it from the street. If it sounds like a weird room, it was. A prior owner decided to close in the front deck and make this room, thus its strange shape (and a host of roofing and flooring problems to go along with it). Either way, this room was a big undertaking and I’m going to share photos of its progress below!

lacquered particle board floors for the win! How this room looked originally (mostly)

wood paneling, floors gone- time to add insulation!

the wall the separated the front room from the rest of the house

taking the wall down

sheet rock up

getting there…

done! (pre-kitchen/living room swap)

Opening up this room to the rest of the house made our downstairs feel so much bigger and lighter. My favorite part of this front room makeover is the ceiling. From the skylights to the beautiful redwood panels, it’s breathtaking! Thanks to Jacob’s dad for taking the original paneling and planing it, and to Jacob for installing it.

The Downstairs Dream (1): A New Wood Stove

Jacob and I have done a lot of work on our house over the past 7 years to make things better, but what we’ve done in the past 6 months has been super exciting. One of the first things we wanted to do when we started making real changes on the house was to flip the location of the living room and kitchen. We’ve talked about it for years, and we finally were able to do it over the course of a few months this past fall and winter.

However, before we were able to do this flip, there were other things we wanted to take care of. One of them was putting in a new wood stove- and then we decided to get all fancy so we “built” a brick wall to go behind it!

the beginning stages

we had to use 2×4 to keep the brick from falling down

no mortar

mortar!

now for the platform for the wood stove

getting there…

With this project complete, we were one step closer to flipping the rooms and finishing the downstairs!

Side Yard #1

While I still have a backlog of already-completed projects, I wanted to share a newly-finished house project that I took the lead on! Usually I am relegated to baby-duty when we work on the house on the weekends (You know, I’ve got the boobs with the food). But there was one project that I really wanted to tackle and that was to create an outdoor play space for the kids. So I took advantage of the extra time (i.e. all of my time…) at home and finally did it!

I started this project way back in June by cleaning up the side yard and laying down the weed cloth. Before I could get the gravel in, I had to lay the base bricks for the retaining wall that we will eventually have all across the back of our house. In order to lay the bricks correctly, I had to make sure each one was level so we don’t have any issues arise as we add height to the wall.

**Between the brick laying and the gravel is about an 8 month break… other projects took precedence in the meantime (installing hardwood in all of the downstairs, a new kitchen, new living room…).

It took a total of 2 yards of gravel (4 truckloads), and countless buckets going up close to 40 stairs total to get this all done. It was a lot of work, but so worth it!!

The final photo I’ll share is the “final” product. (Still a lot to do in this area: finish concrete brick retaining wall in the back, build stairs going from the deck to the side yard, etc. but it’s usable now!) And as you can see, the kids have already claimed it as their own 🙂

The Final Roof

When we first bough our house, we were told that the owner had just put on a brand new 7-year roof! YES, we thought, one project we can hold off on! Well, turns out the 7-year roof leaked. A lot. We have spent several years going from roof to roof fixing all of the issues and putting down new framing, sheeting and shingles. Winter brought sights of blue tarps atop our house for many years! That is until 2 summers ago. We finally finished our last roof, including replacing all of the skylights and adding new ones.

Fro this image, you can see the rain! And guess what… no leaks!

As you can see from many of the photos above, my dad (like usual) had a huge hand in making this (and all of the other roofs) happen. Thanks again, Dad! Even though this was a couple of years ago, we still get a lot of joy out of no longer having tarps covering our house during the rainy season!