Christine, good to hear you've sold a few! That is great..helps fund the next project.
I am easily side tracked, I really don't concentrate on "a" thing. Lol...
I do spend way to many hours on my ipad, doing all sort of things. Many are quite wasteful of time. But some are quite good hours spent on project research. ~wink~

Congrats on getting the living room painted. I love rooms with little in them. They seem so serene. I also really appreciate what you did for the dogs. You have a good heart.

Happy New Year, everyone.

The East Bedroom is done/done. All that is left is to furnish it and figure out the storage in the closets. Without further ado...

This is the room as it was waaay back in April, the night I tore up the carpet:

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I then gutted the room and basically built it up from the studs. I've posted this one before...

..And ended up here. The Chimney tile shows a greenish tint, which is not actually there (stupid camera!)...

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A shot of the closet doors. This one shows the tile more accurately. We are planing to hang beads for the closet doors, just have to find the right ones.

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...and around to the bedroom door. The access to the storage area with the bookcase in mahogany is also shown, which has frustrated me from the beginning. I'll live with it for now, but someday I may just put a door there.

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Other projects during this one were installing a beam in the living room underneath this bedroom to stop the roof from sagging, then gutting the stairwell and insulating and drywalling the top half, wiring for the smoke and CO2 detectors, and finally replacing the main electrical panel for the house. Sigh.

Everything is now in place to start the heart of the remodel, which is to replace the plumbing and upstairs bath, hopefully starting next summer, and then moving to the downstairs rooms in 2016.

Doug, that looks great. Beautiful finishes!

That is some fine woodwork!!!

Distractions... right now there's taking down the Christmas tree and going over to a friend's place with a metal detector after work today to look for half of a hinge in their yard that belongs with a shed I gave them. We'll also put the roof on the shed since that's a 2-3 person job.

What I need to be doing is working more on the master bedroom/bathroom layout. One of the big issues is trying to bring the washer and dryer in from the garage. It's a bit of a story but its drain runs between the (original elevation) concrete slab under the dining room floor and the current floor. This does not work well so they're moving to the bedroom/bathroom/closet area.

Exterior wall space is hard to come by and one proposed location would have 16' of straight ducting for the dryer to vent through. There's one exterior wall location left to explore... I'm also trying to avoid a bathroom that feels small, which would contrast badly with the open spaces the rest of the house has. One thing that's surprised me is how others seem to favor mega-closets over bathroom space.

Doug, I love what you did with the room. Those doors are beautiful. I admit I cried a little when I seen that you tiled over the old brick. Meh we all have our preferences. Good job though! It looks wonderful!

My distractions are online. I am planning so many things for the house that I am constantly looking on here and planning and budgeting. Right now I am about to have a shower and then off to the hardware store to pick up things to make an industrial pipe chandelier. Blinging it out with some crystal after it I hang. I cannot find anything else suitable for my dining room and to buy one from my inspiration photo is cost prohibitive. DIY it is! ;)

Here is a link that might be useful: Inspiration

Distractions? Online?

synonym: Pinterest.
I wonder if people ever go through their Pinterest boards as often as I do mine? I'm actually gone through all my Favorites and Bookmarks and pinned whatever it was that caused me to save that link in the first place. Now, between them, eBay, Houzz, and Pinterest, everything's in one place. (I"m screwed if Pinterest ever goes under.)

But, I spend hours looking at paint techniques, cabinet types and layouts, bathroom fixtures, etc. If we must talk about distractions, that is mine.

Luckily, I actually, eventually, do projects influenced by these Pins. I actually use my hoard of construction materials. I actually DO things once I quit staring into space, dreaming, forgetting what I should be doing, and get off my ever-rounding butt.

Hey - I just watched a whole season of How to Get Away with Murder. I couldn't believe how well that show kept you guessing! I only had a clue once, of what was going to happen and that was at the very end. Looking forward to next season. Another reason to forget what I was going to do.

Off to work!

HF, I look forward to what you come up with!

Oh yeah, the internet is a huge distraction for me. This morning I was 3 hours late with my cat's insulin shot because I was reading and writing. Luckily she jumped up on my lap and that reminded me.

Not infrequently I find myself in a room where I knew I wanted to get something, but completely forgot what it was once I was there. In the seconds between leaving one room to another I was thinking about something completely different. (Internet related perhaps? :)) Go back to first room, sit down, oh yeah! that's what I wanted to get!

Too much multitasking going on in my brain sometimes is what I chalk it up to.

Thanks, everyone. It's such a relief to finally be done for a while.

Schicksal - Been looking for your final kitchen pics. Did I miss them? Like you, I'm now in full-tilt planning mode for a few months at least.

Huntingflower - I know how you feel, but that part of the chimney was never built for show. It has the old lime mortar that is very soft and fragile and the chimney flue is unlined, and I worried about fire gasses working their way out. In the end, it was felt best to cover the brick. It sure heats up nicely with a fire in the living room, though! Love the chandelier. Can't wait to see it.

Been hiding recently - mt - looking great. Glad to see some old friends.
Had our annual kings day brunch. I made birds nest eggs from super green nests and eggs baked in the oven. I thought I had enough greens but one box of kale was gross- so have to take it back to whole foods. That left me short greens but all liked them. I also made baked oatmeal and Stollen.
Had 18 friends and all enjoyed the food, tree, music and comraderie.
Goal for January- get rid of DD's old camera equipment! There are film camera users - but not finding them locally. I have 4+ crates of equipment

Distractions? My phone in general. I always have it on me and any time there is a slight lull during the day, I start browsing this forum, reddit, local news, etc. The only time I actually use my laptop is maybe once or twice a month to pay bills, everything else is done on my phone.

It is both a blessing (not having to wait until I'm near a computer to look something up) and a curse (I spend all day online and should really disconnect more)

Doug- the room turned out great!! You did a wonderful job on the tiling.

CEF- I'm so glad you found a home for the pups and that you were able to sell some stuff to fund your project/s.

As for me, I haven't posted much because we haven't done much. We finally had a winter storm blow in, after Christmas of course (am I the only one who still dreams of a white Christmas?) which pretty much shut work down on the addition.

When it is 10 degrees and snowing, NO ONE wants to go work in that!!! At least no one I know. It finally started warming up, most of the snow melted off today, so we should (hopefully) get some shingling done tomorrow. I will try to update then.

@Doug - here are the before and afters. I'm sure the thread is at least 5-10 pages deep by now. This board moves fast.

Here is a link that might be useful: Before / After Thread

Thanks, schick. It surfaced just today so I just saw it. I'm really happy for you. It turned out great. Best wishes for the next phase.

Thanks, I'm going to need it. We're still weighing our options regarding where to put the washer and dryer. That's been the hardest part so far. Then we get to talk about nice things such as materials and all of the more fun parts of the project.

Well, the weather did warm up yesterday so I climbed up and got some shingling done. There are two reasons I like roofing, one is getting views like this
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Believe me, its much better in person.

The second is because I get to use this
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I don't want to do roofing where I have to hammer in each nail, but I love using air tools like this nail gun!

We had 2 family friends come help and, considering neither of them had ever roofed before, I think we did pretty good to get the front and the side done.

Still need to get the back of the roof finished but it looked like this about an hour before finishing

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Of course, another bitter cold front blew in today with snow flurries and a high of 20 so we didn't get the back finished. Maybe tomorrow, I think we should be in the 40s.

Love the nail polish with the air gun!

A2- lol, I was wondering if someone was gonna comment on that. I've got a friend who owns a salon and she does my nails in exchange for tech support. I've had my nails continuously done for the past 6 years.

You should see some of the looks I get when I go to Lowes, HD or a car parts place in my grimy work clothes with my perfectly manicured hands. :D

No reason a gal can't take care of her house and car AND look great! ;)

Also, good luck getting rid of that camera equipment. My dad used to own a photography business, when he shut it down, we weren't able to sell it. Heck, we couldn't even GIVE it away!! Most ended up in the trash to be honest.

Schick- is there not a way for you to "carve out" some room in the garage for a laundry room? Run new plumbing, etc. and have a dedicated laundry room there?

Also, massive bath vs. massive closet, why choose one or the other? ;)

In all seriousness though, I need room to store my clothes more than I need room to cleanse myself so if I could only have one be large, it would be the closet but that's just me.

Speaking of which, I don't think I've even mentioned that since we were building the MIL addition onto the side of the house where the master bedroom is, we went ahead and included a new 6x12 master closet.

I WILL be coming here for planning ideas for not only the closet layout (I have a rough idea in my head) but also for the master bath.

Our plan is to, in the future remodel the bathroom. It is actually a ginormous room but VERY poorly laid out. 13x13, the current closet is in the bathroom as well as a standard tub, a 2 sink vanity, toilet and a pathetic excuse for a stand alone shower. Think athletic club sized, if that. Once we remove the closet, we will have a gigantic space to work with and make an amazingly large bathroom with a nice walk in shower and large tub to go with our amazingly large closet.

Funnily enough, our bedroom will actually be smaller than the bathroom/closet combined.

@Texas_Gem - we also have some pictures similar to yours with the nail gun.

The garage makes a bad laundry area because the only way to run the drain out there is to have it go between the original and raised floor of the dining room. Once upon a time it was built on a slab (vs. a crawlspace everywhere else), and it was about 12" lower than it currently is. The floor was raised when the garage was built in order to have space for the drain to run, along with the hot and cold water lines.

Water damage to the area tells me that one or both have leaked before, and repairs are impossible without destroying the dining room floor. Also, air does not circulate in there so brown rot has set in. The mini-crawlspace is 10" high and more or less sealed off from everywhere else. It's a very bad design.

In the latest revision we have 50+ sq ft for the master closet and the bathroom weighs in at 130+. This includes various built in areas (drawers, shelving) with a lot of space left over for racks. Due to windows it's difficult to take certain areas from the bathroom to give to the closet, and an even bigger challenge to place the washer/dryer on an exterior wall.

There will probably be a ton of research on houzz and everywhere else regarding where to hide the washer/dryer. No ideal solution has come up so far, but either way things go we're still looking at a huge improvement in every possible way.

I know I don't come here much... But I wanted to show you all the next-to-next-to-next-to last piece of the kitchen puzzle.....I was in a little places called Digs, and she had some COOL industrial pendants, but they were huge, and only one would have looked funny......so I kept wandering through her store. In the corner, on the floor, behind a table, was THIS. AND she wanted some of my barnwood in exchange!!

Sorry about the close up picture, but the rest of the room had just survived the pantry clean out, and the give always were piled everywhere!

I know I don't come here much... But I wanted to show you all the next-to-next-to-next-to last piece of the kitchen puzzle.....I was in a little places called Digs, and she had some COOL industrial pendants, but they were huge, and only one would have looked funny......so I kept wandering through her store. In the corner, on the floor, behind a table, was THIS. AND she wanted some of my barnwood in exchange!!

Sorry about the close up picture, but the rest of the room had just survived the pantry clean out, and the give always were piled everywhere!

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Love those pendants!

Texas- - I feel for you. I sold a number of lenses on EBAY and one went to a private collector in Germany. I can look at it on his website. Mostly DH wants them out of the house!

There are still film photographers out there and they like Nikon or Minolta x700s. I haven't quite figured how to get them to folks as I hate to toss them out.

Yo guys, I'm Allen
I live in a 1926 one room school house with 1875 basement walls. they tore down a schoolhouse/church in 1875 and replaced it with one with a basement. then that burnt down in 1926 and they bought a $3500 schoolhouse kit (online??) and had it delivered by train to the old depot on the north side of my property. That (this) school opened in 1927. This was an old coal mining town. the north wall had a full spread of 9 foot tall windows looking out on the steam engines when the tracks were still here. the main road is now a little road that ends at my house and the world moved on and the school house shut down in 1955. It doubled as a church till the late 30s. I was hoping to find some history in the walls, but other than a 1926 spider in the morter and a stenciled name on a board, they didn't leave me anything. I did find a malboro matchbox car in the ducts :) The walls are roughly 30x30, the main floor ceiling is 11.5 feet up with the original tin tiles. the big front porch and the bell tower are gone. I bought it for half the price I would have expected it to be. I moved in in 1993 and raised a girl here. Now I'm re-married and raising another girl. I am now basically opening up all the walls and building a new house in the skeleton of the schoolhouse. The roof and ceiling are sound and I put up a tin roof 10 yrs ago, but there are all kinds of challenges i find everytime I open a wall. (more on that on my kitchen link below). Here is a repost of my floor plans. North is down. The bottom 2/3ds of the pic was the "one room". the bath was the boys dressing room and the tiny library. the kitchen was the girls dressing room and the main entrance.

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Here is a link that might be useful: My post on my kitchen plans

This post was edited by pinkelephant64 on Fri, Jan 9, 15 at 10:15