The Result

Here's the rooms we showed on the house tour, and the cleanest our house will ever be. Thanks for reading and following our project!

Front of house:

Family room:



Office:

Dining room:

Kitchen:

Owen's room:

Ben's room:

Play room:

Final days of insanity

We spent last week getting the house put together for the house tour. Richard got out his tall ladder and washed all the windows. In my final act of insanity, I had the roof cleaned. We actually have a white roof covered by black moss and goo. You can see it partially cleaned here.

Friday night Richard and Owen went to the coast so I could stage the house without cleaning up after Owen. Susie came over Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights and Saturday morning to help organize, clean and stage. She put up with my many lists (actual to do item: "write on pig"). We got it all together in time on Saturday morning and set off to see the other homes on the tour.

Saturday morning, 10:00 AM marked the official end of our renovation. No more work will be done on our house until Ben is out of college- 2031, I believe.

Dining room

Kitchen

Fireplace done- for now

We will eventually put up a mantle, and likely adjust the stain color a little darker and redder. But for now, we are crossing the fireplace off the list. We love the colors in the slate tiles.

Finishing Up

As of 10:00 AM, this Saturday morning, we are officially done with our house renovation. The tour of homes is this weekend, and has been a good motivator to finish up all the little projects. There's still some things the house needs, but I think we've run out of steam for a while.

We tiled and grouted the fireplace, and tonight Richard is working on a wood trim:

I ironed 1100 sqft of curtains- my grandma would be so proud!

We painted the final 5 doors, and this hallway cabinet, and put on new door knobs and pulls: We stained the banister, and painted the trim and door frames downstairs:
We put up some flower baskets and did a little landscaping (which will look good in a few years once everything grows!):Here's the view right now from the dining room- the cherry blossoms are beautiful!

Pics from the Pro

Here you will find Erik's pictures of the dining room and kitchen- currently the first two on this page:

http://jenerikimages.zenfolio.com/p998292405

He put together several images to get the correct exposure for the outside view, inside lighting, and to remove reflections from the appliances- very impressive.

I'm ready for my closeup

Powell had some professional pictures taken of our kitchen for promotional purposes. It was fun to watch them stage the kitchen and to see the photographer, Erik Lubbock, at work. It took over two hours for two shots. This is the view from my camera, not Erik's.

Corvallis Tour of Homes

Our house has been selected to be one of the six in the Assistance League of Corvallis's 2009 Tour of Homes. The theme this year is remodeled homes, and we are the example of a 1970's home. It will be on Saturday, May 2nd. More information will be available here:

http://www.alcorvallis.org/hometour2009.html

Family room

I realized that I hadn't posted pictures of the family room. We still need to tile the fireplace- I am thinking slate tiles- and Richard is going to build a surround. We also need to replace the TV stand- the This End Up hutch has been good to us, but I think its time to move it downstairs. Eventually a throw rug would be nice- Owen is loud and the lack of fabric makes this room deafening. The bottom picture is the home's original fireplace (dolled up for Christmas, '06).

First Thanksgiving

We hosted Thanksgiving this year, and got to put our new kitchen to the test. We learned that convection ovens cook turkeys very very fast. Everything turned out great and we enjoyed sharing the meal with my dad and my sister's family on our new dining room table.

Richard keeps working on the house- he painted and replaced the hallway closet doors and is working on Owen's door. Owen helped him replace the front light. My dad is helping paint and prepare the nursery- we'll be needing that in about 4 weeks. The fireplace insert has been installed and the last step there is for us to tile the surround... maybe a project for 2009. In the meantime, we've been enjoying warm fires at night.

Moving In

Richard finished up painting this weekend and removed all the blue tape. We moved into the kitchen and Owen's room. We still have several boxes to go through (where are those coffee mugs?) but we've made a lot of headway. It will take a while before I can easily find where the different kitchen items have been stashed- and gets even trickier since Richard and I tend to keep re-arranging things- but this is a good problem to have.

Owen seems happy back in his room. Getting him to sleep has been challenging, but he's stayed in his bed through the night. Richard hung up his pictures tonight, and it looks clean and fresh in there.

Goodbye Dean!

See the rainbows over our house?

Powell and all the subcontractors and the port-a-potty have left our house. I suppose that should mean the remodel is done, but we still have some work left to do: Richard's still painting, we have a few more lights to install, and we need to tile the fireplace surround. And there's the little matter of moving everything into place...

Dean finished up this week on the deck and all the little details that were left to do inside. Everything was left immaculate. We couldn't be happier with the way everything has turned out. We both have said we'll miss seeing Dean in our kitchen each morning on our way to work.

We cooked our first dinner on the stove this week, and reheated it there the next night. The new refrigerator is in place and works great- the fridge is full now, and I need to move over the freezer stuff. It was a good opportunity to sort out all the expired condiments- yuck.

We will be moving upstairs slowly this week. It will be good to have our bedrooms again.

New light, Old light

Think we made an improvement?

Hood, glass

The hood was installed, we put in the microwave, the oven is in place. They also put in the first part of the gas fireplace insert. The glass for the cabinet doors was installed yesterday, and it looks great- seeded glass doesn't photograph all that well though. Richard put in the hallway lights last night. Left for next week: stair railings- inside and out, some wall patching, a switch for the disposal, and the remainder of the fireplace parts will be delivered and installed. Left for Richard: painting, painting, painting, and installing some more lights.

Lights!

and some more appliances!

Pulls and washer

The cabinet pulls were put on today. The plumber was here, and the faucet and disposal are hooked up, and the dishwasher is put in place. Dean finished the railing on the top part of the deck- here our are neighborhood deer checking out his work.