Victorian House Renovation in Bloomingdale, DC
There’s been am awful lot of white around here. And it’s come to stay. There is a lot of different variation of the type of white though, so I am hoping the various textures will layer nicely.
Exhibit A – tin ceiling (yes, I am still working on it, with occasional help from others). These have been stripped, primed with a rustoleum primer for metal with a rust inhibitor and finally painted.… Read the rest
So as I mentioned before our contractors had told us previously that they planned on taking a vacation week, which would be this week. No, they did not inform us at the outset. But they were quite clever in presenting it: “so we will be taking a vacation third week of july, and we thought that you guys could use that time to assemble the kitchen cabinets.”
yep, they are totally on to us – even though we are only doing less than 10% of the actual work, we are struggling to keep up.… Read the rest
A sneak peak into something awesome! Ta-da: Our upstairs bathroom floor.
Beautiful, huh? We are still so far away, and its moving sooooooo slowly. but at least we like where we are going with this. Here’s the floor with additional layer of thinset before the tile was put down:
There is some progress in the small half bath downstairs too. We got a ceiling frame and noise maker vent fan was installed.… Read the rest
Ah, if only stripping away part I was the one and only part. But no, in addition to the bathtub, there are also countless (or 21) tin ceiling panels and salvaged real wood doors – the ones we currently have are hollow core uglies.
This pretty much sums up how I feel about this stripping project:
But at least we are nearing the end of suffering. Here’s what we have got so far:
Just a few more to go.… Read the rest
the question mark is for the fact that I didn’t see much when I came home. Here’s what the kitchen opening looks like as of today:
not hugely different from yesterday:
whoever gets the most differences – wins!
anyway, we have got nothing to hurry for I suppose. One day here / one day there, at this point we will get there when we get there.
in the meantime, I might as well post about choosing colors shades of white for the kitchen.… Read the rest
Ok so construction day 2 did not bring us any surprises (unlike day 1) — though can’t say the same for our contractors. According to them, the second floor joists were not nearly the piece of cake like the first floor joists. In part because of the shoddy job that was done in patching them up before, and in part I imagine it’s much more difficult fit the beams into place than dropping the into place.… Read the rest
It has happened. The point of no return has been passed. No turning back. Thanks to seven of our friends who turned out on Saturday for 5 hours of smashing fun :)
I literary do not remember ever being so physically tired in my life as after Day 1 of demo. I could barely lift my hands – I don’t even know how the dudes fared since they were actually lifting and heaving heavy stuff.… Read the rest
While we wait for the kitchen work to get underway, I have been working on cleaning up salvaged tin ceiling panels that we got at the brass knob warehouse before they closed shop last year (check out the stacks of ceiling tiles they used to have).
we have seen a number of houses in our neighborhood with the original tin ceilings still in place; they look pretty similar to these.… Read the rest
while i am on a “dreaming about new kitchen” roll, i figure I might as well share pictures that I have been taking everywhere for inspiration.
The plan is to have exposed brick in the kitchen. i am not sure how that will work with insulation, so that may have to be scrapped. but for now, the idea is that the wall that houses the fridge/built-ins/bench will be exposed brick.and… Read the rest
This weekend we had brunch at Marvin’s and I found more inspiration for my planned tin ceilings. They also had really cool light bulbs that I don’t think came out that well in the pictures.… Read the rest