We Bought a Fixer - Making Progress

Hi there. How are you? 

Though we still have soooooo much to do at the house prior to move in, we are starting to rebuild from the ashes. We now have 2 bedrooms that are all finished and ready for furniture! 

The first room we tackled was our master bedroom. Other than getting rid of the carpet and and painting, there was not much to do here. Luckily, this room did not have wallpaper! Are you ready for the reveal?? 

Ta-da! Isn't it amazing what a little paint can do?

We gave the whole room several coats of bright white paint. We're actually painting the whole house white. White gives it that contemporary Scandanavian look that we love and will make a great backdrop for our massive art collection.  And how about that cork flooring? Love it!

We're installing this lock and click cork flooring in all of the bedrooms, hallway and the living room. Isn't it pretty?  

It comes in long planks (about 12" wide x 35" long) that float over the subfloor. No glue, no nails. You just lock the panels together. Though it takes a little elbow grease, it really is quite easy. A lot easier than refinishing hardwoods! The cork feels really nice under foot (much more give than hardwoods) and is supposed to be good at retaining heat. This was especially important in the master, as it sits right over the garage. Brr.

 

The last thing we did in the master was change out the granny light fixure and replace it with this. This puppy came from Lowes and cost less than $90. 

 

We've also made over the mysterious "blue room."

We still have some trim to install at the bottom of the "secret room" wall. 

I'm pretty excited to turn the "secret" room into my office. 

The light is great, and it's actually quite a large space!

Next up...The kitchen!

The demo is done and we are anxiously awaiting the builders who are supposed to start work next week. 

Ta-ta for now!

 

We Bought a Fixer - Archeology

Happy 2013 friends! 

We can't wait to spend this year in our new house. Only 2 months until we move in. Lots to do! 

In it's "natural' state , our house was covered in lovely brown carpet (even in one of the bathrooms!)

As we've been renovating, we've discovered all sorts of secrets under those rugs. 

When we pulled up the carpet in Jack's room (bottom left) we found hardwoods!

And hardwoods in good shape at that! 

This was a total surprise as we had already torn out the carpet in the hallway and master bedroom and only found sub-floor.

We really thought about refinishing it and keeping it until we found this.

Drywall as a floor patch. Huh?? 

We deduced that there must have been a closet and built in here, the mimics the one on the other side of the room. 

Though we could have taken some wood out of the closet to patch the missing planks, we've decided to go ahead and lay our cork floors over. We'll leave refinishing the flooring for the next owners. 

Now enter the "blue room."

Even before removing the carpets, the third bedroom was a mystery to us. 

Though it is difficult to see in this picture, there is a small room within this room. 

What looks like a mirror to the left of the door is actually a doorway into another small room.

We found out from our kitchen remodelers that this was once a "secret room."

The wall was covered in mirrors and if you pushed on a certain spot the door would open. 

Strange.

 

Here is a look inside the "secret room." There's even a window inside. 

At first we thought the space for this secret room came from a large walk-in closet.

After pulling up the carpet and seeing more drywall patches in floor, we realized that this room was once two bedrooms. 

The patch marks the old closet and the window in the secret room was once in the 4th bedroom. 

After ripping out the hallway wallpaper, we found the old door frame for the room too.  

If the whole "secret room" thing wasn't strange enough for you, there is also this "dog door" in the wall??? Hmm.

 

We've decided to keep our secret room. Until my new basement studio is whipped into shape, I will use this as my office.

It's really a large space -  more that I have now in our condo! 

The main room will serve as a guest bedroom. We decided it was OK to forego a closet in there for now. 

Demo, is really pretty much done now. We're starting to build things back up again. 

Next week I'll show you our transformed master bedroom! 

Ta-ta!