A roof over our heads

>> Thursday, January 12, 2012

One of the very first projects on the agenda for our new house was our roof. It had a few issues.

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The first issue was that the shingles were old and wearing and needed to be replaced. Simple enough. The second issue was that the roof sagged a bit over the garage. (The garage was an addition and was built with homemade rafters that obviously were not as sturdy as manufactured ones). The third issue was that it was boring! But luckily we were able to find a fix for all of those things!

So first of all was to fix the structural things. Luckily, our inspector told us that the garage was still structurally sound and that it looked like the garage would not continue to sag. A cosmetic fix was all that would be needed. Great news! Next on the agenda was to hire a contractor who could add some interest to the contour of the roof. My husband came up with the idea of the peak and we hired a friend of ours to put it up and to also fix the spot over the garage. We were really excited how it turned out! It adds so much to the house and just looks great!
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So now that the bones were in place, we could start shingling. We chose to do the roof ourselves (like pretty much everything else in the house). My husband’s cousin, who roofs for a living, was able to come help us. We also had lots of help from our family and neighbors.

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We somehow chose one of the hottest days of the year so we definitely owe everyone who came to help. It took us a day and a half but now it looks awesome! After pictures to come!

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Demo!!

>> Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Well, we are all moved in and mostly settled but before I show you current pictures, I need to bring you up to speed on all that has happened. I didn’t take a ton of pictures during the whole renovation process because, lets face it, I was working! This reno process has seriously been brutal! I don’t know if we would do it again if given the choice. But, man am I happy with how things turned out!

Onto the goods!

All of these pictures were taken one week after we took possession. It’s amazing how quick you can make changes with demo. I almost typed its amazing how quick demo goes but then I remembered that it felt like we were doing demo for-ev-er. If you need some before pictures to reference, check out this post.
SAM_0937SAM_0938So at this point we had ripped out almost all of the carpet and stripped most of the wallpaper.

SAM_0936We also knocked a huge hole in the wall. We took out the door to the basement and opened up the half wall to the stairways. We have a huge basement and I really wanted to utilize it, not for it to be this dark, dingy place. I think it really helps it join the floors together and help it to feel like living space. This was kind of a big project but now that it is completed, I’m so happy we did it!

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And, speaking of big projects, we totally gutted our kitchen…

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…and our bathrooms.

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It was really nice to not have to live here so we could go ahead and just demo everything at once. Although, it was a little inconvenient to not have a toilet while we were there working. Luckily my sister lives about a block and a half away!

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The bedrooms eventually got stripped of their flooring and carpet too. I don’t have pictures of the bare bones of the house but to give you the gist of it, here is a run down of all the demo that we did:

  • tore out all of the flooring in the main floor (including all of the linoleum and subfloors under it)
  • stripped wallpaper in pretty much every room in the house
  • completely gutted the kitchen, including removing some of the drywall, since we discovered lots of it needed to be rewired
  • tore down the door to the basement and half of the wall beside the stairs
  • completely gutted (down to studs in some places) both bathrooms
Demo was a lot of work! And the thing I hated most about it was that the harder you worked, the more mess you made. It just seemed like a never ending cycle. But luckily, once the demo was done, we got to start putting things back together! That part is a little more rewarding!

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