Renovations Week 1: The Rip Out

So if you missed it, we bought a new, little project. I explained everything in this post here. This was probably the hardest closing I've had since becoming a Realtor (almost two years ago!). Annoying things kept getting in the way of closing on time, including the furnace breaking down not once, but two times! But alas, we closed last Monday and we've already began the process of ripping it apart. 

If you like progress, DIY blogs that are in the moment, then you've come to the right place. My goal is to have this be a livable space come March 1st, so we can put our current house on the market. We'll see how that goes. 

So far I:

 -ripped the carpet out of the living room, then had to rip up some suspect looking tiles. Please don't follow my lead on this. They were probably asbestos tiles given the age of the house, and general size and shape of the tile. I did not have them tested. Most of them came up easily, then we'll encase the floor with new flooring on top. 

Before

-Next I punched a hole in the wall to see if I could open up the wall between the dark kitchen and living room. There seems to be four heat vents running up this wall so we're having a contractor come in today to look at costs of rerouting these. Also, for those Fixer Upper fans out there, I swear the old wall under the dry wall looks like ship lap, so that's kind of fun. 

I also was a little hammer happy so I opened up a water-damaged wall in the kitchen, only to find an old, stone wall behind it (I'll get pictures of this next time). I was reading up on stone walls and I guess they need to "breathe". Don't we all. I'm thinking of leaving it exposed so as not to ruin yet another piece of dry wall, but it desperately needs re-mortared. 

The third floor got a new paint job. The whole house is painted in what I'll call "renters white"- which is pretty much what I've seen every rental painted. It's fine, but kind of dull and the room was dark so I thought I'd freshen it up a bit with some Ultra White paint. 

Before

See the difference ? 

During

Attic spaces are tricky because of the sloped ceilings. I read up on whether or not to paint the ceiling the same color as the wall, and most experts said yes. Since I chose white and not a color, I was pretty much stuck doing the ceiling anyways which wasn't too bad because it's relatively low. 

I know white's kind of a boring choice for me, but I really like how the light bounces off of the walls (it really made a difference) and I'll get to incorporate some colorful repainted furniture in this space.

After

 While I've been working on those projects, my husband has been ripping out the flooring in the bathroom. I'm so glad he did this because we found some nasty black mold on the plywood underneath.

Before

Currently

This room is so scary to us because there's an open crawl space under the house where our pipes are exposed to the elements. They've already burst once and were replaced with PEX before we bought the place. We really need to use our noggins to figure out how to better insulate this bathroom before fixing it up. I'm thinking in-floor heating for toasty toes. 

Oh, we have our hands full, don't we? It's kind of fun to have a project in the middle of winter though. 

Next week's plan: Kitchen, stairs, hallway flooring, and lighting.