Before... and After

This is a Cliff Notes version of what's happened since late February. I hope to get you up to date, dear reader, so that I can continue posting as we go forward with our project. By necessity, a lot of fascinating (and from Sam's perspective, some frustrating) details are left out, but I hope you'll get a sense of the magnitude of everything he's accomplished in three short months.

We'd been getting the exterior of the house ready for plastering. We're going to be using a synthetic stucco in order to get the deep colors that we want. The exterior of the house has gone from this, covered in paper and chicken-wire...


... to this, with two base coats of plaster on the new structure, and a fresh coat of beige stucco on the old. The old stucco needed to be re-covered, so that it will grab the final, colored layer better.



In the kitchen, we'd been here. The new cabinets and countertops had been installed...


And then Sam put up the matching siding, and a black granite backsplash. I love our kitchen.


Sam was anxious to get the garage bathroom done, because once it became functional, he planned to tear out the last working bathroom in the house (the master bathroom). He needed to do that because new footings need to be poured... and he needed to do that before he could start building the new structure for the stairwell and the cupola above the existing house.
So since I last posted we went from this garage bathroom....

... to this.


Isn't it cool??? The shower is smoothed concrete, and Sam made the countertop out of concrete, too. Then he edged it with aluminum.


He made the sink out of a stainless steel bowl!


He laid all the nifty rubber flooring...


and did all the plumbing...

He also did the magnificent paint job all by himself- although Michelle helped to design it. I get to claim credit for finding the matching shower curtain, and the shower curtain track. Of course, Sam installed it!


In getting the back of the house ready for the plasterers, Sam had to finish the back deck and the walls of the back of the house.



He got some help hauling the big glass doors up to the second floor.


Once they were installed, it started looking pretty neat back there.




Sam is getting so many nicks, cuts, and bruises that I don't even document them all. But a good whack to his head made me pull out my camera. When we say 'blood, sweat and tears' went into this remodel, we're only exaggerating about the tears! (you can click on the picture to make it bigger, and get a good look at his nasty cut.)

The view 'outside' one of those big glass doors:


And then there is the garage, which is, of course, the main reason we got into this whole project in the first place! In the time that the blog has been 'offline' we've gone from this....



... to getting all the drywall up, and installing some overhead storage...


... to getting the drywall mudded, and everything covered, ready for painting...

...to a base coat of white, and lights installed. (The lights are kinda nifty, in that you can turn them on or off from pretty much anywhere in the garage.)


Then, however, he added some color!



At this point, although there was still a fair amount of construction stuff in there, and things weren't as organized as they eventually will be, Sam had a fully functional garage. Prince that he is, he immediately took advantage of this fact by fixing my brakes!




Sam is still working on forgiving me the fact that my car was the first one up on the lift. Later that evening, we put the truck up there, just because it was so cool that we could!


There was still work to be done on the garage, though. Sam worked for a couple of days finishing the concrete floor...



... and then applying a special epoxy under the lift, so that oil spills will clean up easily.



Hmmm... he also put a nifty yellow stripe around the dark grey, but I can't find any pictures of that right now. I'll take one and post it later!

Now that the garage bathroom was done, he could tear out ours. So he did. Here's the door that used to lead to our bathroom.


And here you can see the green wall, that was part of our bathroom. Other stuff 'missing' from this part of the house: storage cabinets, the guest bathroom, and several walls. You can see that behind where Sam is standing, the floor is missing, too.


I like this next picture because on the right you can see part of our lovely kitchen, and on the left the destruction that we're living with!


It's rather interesting to stand in the kitchen and be able to see clear through to the bedroom, and into the backyard beyond.


Next Sam tore out all the old cast iron plumbing, and a bunch of other plumbing, and replaced it all with shiny new copper.



Then, since tearing up the floor and tearing down the walls wasn't quite enough, he tore down the ceiling!

And that is the Cliff Notes version of what's happened over the past couple of months. As I mentioned in a recent post, he's put up the huge support beam in the living room. And the plasterer guys are doing their thing as I type this. These are the colors we're doing: the blue on the far right, and the grey.


Check back soon to see how it turned out!