Its (Almost) Done!

Big News! The upstairs is 95% done! Finally
I won't over do it on this post with a lot of words, I will however, share A LOT of pictures! 
At the end, I have a few updates about the downstairs :)

Now that you've seen the Kitchen, Master Bath, and Guest Bath, I am happy to finally show you that our living room and dining room are back in order!

I do need to explain a bit about this (now) living room. The before pictures are a little bit boring. Our (now) living room was originally a "study" and the dining room. We demo'd the wall between the two rooms, (location where you see the sofa below) and made this area our living room. 
I should mention too, that the shelves you see in the background were not original to the study, but the fireplace was part of that room. (by the way, when I said 95% done above, the last 5% is finishing out those fireplaces!)

living room December 2014

And below, opposite side of the room (again, this was the dining room of this house).

Why would someone want to have the living room on the opposite side of THIS view?!?

Now that I've cleared that up - here is what the original home owner had as the living room, which we made our dining room. (does this all make sense)?!

Dining room, December 2014

Below, I've done a side by side, of our original front door, and the updated (Decorated for Christmas) New doors :)

March 2014

Front Door - December 2014

Below you will see one of the two upstairs guest bedrooms. The one pictured below, is the only 'functioning' room right now, considering the other is Mr. Kitty's room (for now) and storage. 
I have to say, every time I walk past this room at night, I stop... Can't help but love this tree/room. Picture does not do justice!

As for the basement

Today the trim was being finished - and a few guys started painting the bedroom, bathroom and office space. They will be painting in those areas until Friday. 

I am told, the floors go in sometime around Tuesday, of next week. With the 'finish outs' we were told, it Could be done as soon as 4 weeks, but at the most 6 weeks. (if all goes according to plan)
I do have to admit, the basement is going SO much faster since nothing is in the way down there.

I will leave you with one last photo - one I really want to brag about - Our House, with Christmas lights - put up by yours truly! 

As always, thanks for reading....

The Guest Bath Too

I touched on it briefly in my last post, and maybe I've said it somewhere else - but yes, we are doing a 2nd re-model, of the Guest Bathroom too!!!

But before I get into explaining the details behind the 2nd re-model of this bathroom, let me show you how this room looked when we purchased the house in March.

March 2014- The Guest Bath

March 2014 - black granite And black toilet!

You guys, this bathroom was CRAZY! 
No your eyes are not deceiving you... You're seeing Black carpet, and Black tile, and Black granite, and a Black toilet! And then, Gold, yes, real gold plated fixtures.... But that light -  I Loved that Light!!!! Unfortunately, Brian wouldn't let me keep it :(

We call it our -we don't know what might have gone down in this room- bathroom.

So the first re-model, even though, it wasn't my perfect bathroom...it was still a decent room.
First go around, we didn't get custom cabinets made, and the floors were a bit uneven - but still, it was a fine room for the time. I had chosen 1 inch hex floor, and a white subway tile for the bath-tub surround, and painted the walls the same color I used in the rest of the house. I just wanted a 'clean' bathroom...(See below)

June 2014

Fortunately or not, we found out around mid-September when the guys were working in the basement and took out some of the old ceiling that This shower had a leak too.

I'd like to think God really took care of us during this second re-model, because had they not removed some old ceiling, we never would have found this issue too.

This meant, Every time we took a shower, water was spraying and dripping in the walls, and below to the basement. When they found the leak (again, not until September), they also told us, the walls had already started to grow a little bit of mold, so not only would we have to take out the shower completely, but we also had to address some mold growing in the walls.
But, wait, we couldn't do anything to this bathroom until our master was finished because this is the only one in the house that worked...and Our master wouldn't be finished until mid-November!


This resulted in a slow down of basement work, to focus all attention on the 2 upstairs bathrooms.

In fact, even after the leak was found Brian and I got this text while we were in NY when the actual walls came down in this bathroom.

"Hey guys, This is the plumbing for your upstairs guest shower. There are so many things wrong with this, that I am lost for words."

And, heck, Brian and I are no plumbers, but we did agree, this didn't look right. The hole you see at the bottom of the picture was where the water was dripping into the walls, and one of the turn valves was where it was spraying. Brian and I never dreamed this one would have the Exact same problems as the master. But this time, it wasn't a shower pan, rather just no waterproofing of the walls, and just poor workmanship on the plumbing job.


So, we got back from NY and this was the status of the room - While I had hoped it would be done by the time we got home, it was enough I could see progress... and I knew I could now use the master bath.

As you will see, I changed the tile altogether, different floors, and went a little darker in the shower.
The reason for the floor change, as I mentioned earlier, they were a bit uneven, but also very stained. Turns out the first contractor didn't use a stain free grout, yes there really is such a thing as stain free. But it wasn't entirely the first contractors fault, this room was originally the main entry point of our attic besides the garage, and everyone who came to work on the house was going to the attic through this bathroom! So while the grout stained, the rest of the floor just looked awful from constant traffic!


So I went with a white tile in a herringbone pattern this time. I assume with a larger tile and less grout lines, should any grouting stains occur they won't be quite as noticeable. AND we removed the entry point to the attic - and now, you have to use the one in the garage :)



As of today (December 1) this is the room:

 

I have to admit, this room may be my new favorite room in the house. I made those curtains on Friday, and then found some wonderful paper at The Social Type to fill in my frames!

We hope, for now this is the extent of the upstairs re-model.  At least until I decide on a fireplace. Seriously of all the re-dos in this house, picking a new fireplace has been the Hardest. If you'd like to weigh in on my choices see my post here - (the Very Bottom of the post)! We were told the downstairs has approximately 6 weeks until completion. Not exactly the best news, but hey, people are out of my bedroom (upstairs) for a while....And I'm planning to post soon about the upstairs, you guys its finally CLEAN!

 

Our Master Bathroom... and How we are Surviving

This is going to be a long post. Lots of pictures, but I promise, worth reading!! 

The master bath is 90% finished. Let me show you a few before - this was what the master looked like when we purchased the house in March:

M aster March 2014

Master Bath March 2014

That bathroom, believe it or not, was something I would Rather have dealt with for the last 8 months than the first re-modeled one. Let me explain...
When we looked at this house in February, I told Brian, I could live with the house, as long as we fixed the kitchen first. The rest of the house was fine - sure outdated, but fine. We opted to do a total house re-model and the master bath (besides the kitchen) were the two largest parts of the re-model. We never lived through this:

Master Demo 1

Master Demo 1

The demo above was done by our first contractor, Brian's uncle, and crew.
The bathroom was done around the time we got married - in fact we came home from our honeymoon and moved in June 1st.  The room looked like This:

Master Bath June 2014

Master Bathroom June 2014

 Unfortunately, we had a MAJOR problem with this bathroom. We would not know it for a few weeks though. 
Brian and I moved in the new house like I said, around June 1st. We were So excited. The upstairs was 99 % done. 
The story goes a bit like this... Brian asked his uncle (and workers) to leave for a few weeks. We needed to 'live' in our house for a week or two as newly-weds, and have some peace and quite. The upstairs was 'done' and we just needed to enjoy it. Plus we were trying very hard to get our old house sold; and we Had to get moved in, so that process would be a bit smoother.
See - this was our house - almost done June 2014:

Dining Room

Hank in the Hallway

Guest Bedroom 1

Living Room

Again, unfortunately we were in for the biggest upset, and shock of our lives during the month of July! I went downstairs to our basement to check on a load of laundry. Brian had just come home from the gym, and was taking a shower. While I was downstairs, I could hear what sounded like rain. Felt strange, but we didn't go in the basement much (unless it was for laundry) because in June/July we were taking a much needed break from re-model. I started walking around, concerned but not ready for what was about to unfold. I noticed it was 'raining' in our basement (coming from the upstairs master shower). I ran up the stairs and explained to Brian the situation.
The following day, I had a plumber meet me at the house to see if the drain was cracked or something? Unfortunately the plumber began explaining that we didn't have a shower pan.
How is that? no shower pan? and what did this mean?
Brian contacted his uncle, he assured him the plumber was wrong. So we went through a few days of showering in the guest bathroom, and tried to get a grip with the master situation. We had a second opinion, another plumber. Sure enough, he said the same thing. The water was just seeping right through the grout in the shower floor, straight to our basement. (At this point, thankfully NOT finished).

This picture below - I can never fully explain the day here - I don't want to re-live it - ever. It was the first and worst fight of our marriage.

This day was July 3rd. Like I said, I never want to re-live this day again. We screamed and yelled, and screamed. Words were hurtful, and hateful, and just....bad. It was honestly the worst day Brian and I have ever had. I say this, because it is true, this re-model has been hard on us. And now it's November, and although we live in it, we are making it. And much stronger because of it. 

So, that picture. Brian jackhammered out the shower tiles from 'the first remodel' - turns out, the minute he took out the tile, we could see straight below to the basement. There was NO shower pan. We just shut the door to this bathroom for what felt like months. It took us until September to actually figure out what to do... The tile was SO expensive, and the reality of our situation was, we had to take all of it out. I - was - Sick! We figured, Brian and I took all of 3-4 showers in that bathroom. OH, and did you notice the glass above? I'll get to that in a moment.

2nd Master Demo - Oct 2014

So like I said, we shut the door until September. Many other issues would unravel after this bathroom problem was found. Turns out the plumbing was done incorrectly as well as the electrical. So not only did we lose my pretty tile, we had to do a complete overhaul of the entire room. The picture above was taken (October 2014) the weekend Brian and I demoed our master bathroom (this time ourselves to save money) and unfortunately a second remodel was about to be underway. For those of you who have been reading, I mentioned this demo earlier under 'bad news 2'.

These pictures below are of the bathroom as of today - November 23, 2014.

November 2014 - 2nd remodel

November 2014 - 2nd remodel

In the end, we had to put new floors down, and re-do the entire shower. The hardest part - that glass was already cut for the prior shower - and while that sounds like no big deal, just re-build the shower the same size. The problem was that the walls were not originally waterproofed, and we had to address the shower pan - so the shower shrunk, but the glass couldn't be trimmed. So the contractor and the tile guys had to modify the walls to Fit the glass. It was a very stressful re-build. The glass thankfully fit. The granite broke during the removal; we had new cabinets made. Not sure if you paid close attention above - our first cabinets were actually just particle board and very rough and messy. The 'new' cabinets are amazing. custom. and exactly what we should have received the first time.

So how are we surviving? We are. We just are.The house honestly looks like this:

We have 2 toilets in our dining room.... The furniture is all covered with tarps.... It has looked like this for 3 weeks. 3 weeks!
Brian and I went to New York last week, and hoped to come home to a 'finished' upstairs, unfortunately we had some issues in the basement, and the living room is pushed back. Go figure. I was told I could put the furniture back in its place and straighten up December 1. 
People. It's almost Christmas, and I need to decorate!!!

The top left picture of this photo grid is of our guest bathroom. It's coming along a lot faster than the master...that's because we didn't have to completely demo this room. I'll post about it another day.

My momma came to visit me last weekend, we had a great time. Brian was out of town, so we spent time figuring out how I'm going to tackle the house over the next few weeks - and enjoy the holidays.
We wanted to have Brian's parents and Grandma, and my family HERE to Little Rock for our first Thanksgiving. It was our little dream for the house - back in March, that was all we wanted, to be done by Thanksgiving. ...looks like that 'dream' may be on hold until next year...


Thanks for reading ....I'm heading to Lonoke to see Brian -- and Hank! He's back from a 6 week stay in Oxford / Training Camp! 
I'm going out to put on some waders and watch Hank in action! Should be fun :)

It Just Feels Slow

Some days are just slower than others, the week of (Oct 19-25)  - there was zero movement in the house. Nothing, Zilch, Nada, Zero Movement - No one came to work.....And when I say that, its really hard to believe, because we have SO much work that needs to be done here!
But, thankfully things are progressing This week (Nov 3-7). Sheetrock has been put up in the basement, which means, I have walls :) We hope they will be finished out soon, and paint up by two weeks! (I just want these rooms finished by Thanksgiving!)

view down new hallway

view into office/ window in distance is bedroom

The master bathroom is not going as quickly as we hoped, unfortunately one of the workers had a death in family. It looks good - but, unfortunately the room is not finished. As I've said before, once this room is finished, we start demo of the guest bath. We are actually planning to start that work mid next week - Nov 13th-ish. It will look like an entirely new room! I went with the same look/stone/layout for the second go around in the master --- but you're all in for a surprise with the guest! I hope it turns out like I plan for it to....

new master shower

The termite damage is fixed - sort of... we think we still have a few issues, but for the most part, the area under the kitchen is fixed! I won't share a picture it's not that exciting. I did end up having someone from the State Plant Board come out to the house to confirm the damage was properly repaired, and he did confirm that.... but also, confirmed our suspicions that we had more...Our attic had quite a bit. We have 30 days to get a response from Terminix about repairing that damage.

We got a garage door Last week. I'm not as happy with it as I hoped I would be....Trust me, it's better, but it's not what I was expecting. Hopefully it will grow on me.

old house/ new house

 That's all I have for updates right now - But I do want to share two pictures, of inspiration. I'm deciding between these two pictures below for finishing out the fireplaces upstairs. Both cost roughly the same, but both give the house a completely different look/feel. So....here is my inspiration for the fireplaces you've seen before. Thanks for reading, hope you have a fantastic weekend.

option 1 (cast)

Progress

So... What's up in the Wardle house lately?!

A LOT! Thankfully...

In my last post, I shared with you a photo of what would be a downstairs bedroom/bath area. Below is a picture of the same area, with framing. This happened at least 3-4 weeks ago (September 12th ish). If any of you have ever been through a re-model, or new home build, you'll know that during the last few weeks we've undergone a lot of plumbing and electrical work - which means the basement pretty much still looks just like this!

And while it feels like the basement looks the same, its amazing what work has actually been done. So thankful for the electrician and the plumber...Their work is like the veins in our bodies, without them we wouldn't properly function. So while the work they've been doing is going to eventually be covered up by sheetrock and some paint, the work done by these guys has been amazing. Thanks Gary and Terry and crews :)

 

This photo (below) is of Brian's "Man Cave," as I like to call it, opened up, ... The New Contractor, took out that hideous hole in the wall which I previously shared. We've come to discover the 'hole' was actually done by the previous contractor to remove an existing electrical feed, which has really caused some (additional) headaches these past few weeks. Not nearly as big of a problem as a few I will share later in the post.

Man Cave, as of October 1, 2014

Ah and here I am -demoing -(*Sunday, Sept 21st) our bookshelves in the living room. We are personally taking (a few) things out this go around. We have to save where we can, since this is the second time most of this work is being done. If you look in the left portion of this photo below, you will see one of the 3 fireplaces in the house. Rather it be luck or misfortune, we have torn out both of the fireplaces in the upstairs living room/dining room.

Demo Shelving September 2014

Let me explain. After the first contractor was gone, I (may have) complained, about the smell of gas in our house. BUT - (and Brian would want me to be honest about this part too) - I also HATED the living room fireplace. It was NOTHING we had planned originally.  The New contractor agreed to do a pressure test on the line and check for a leak.... and as (MY luck) would have it, there WAS a leak. As a result we HAD to take out the living room fireplace. The line connection was within the walls of the fireplace and the only way to fix it (and stop the leak) was to remove one of the walls. Since we would be updating one, we opted to update both. And for our safety, updating these gas lines in a 50+ year old house was the right thing to do!

This picture (below) is the current state of my living room. We won't be setting anything back up in this room for a while. Have I mentioned at one point our house was completely done?! See the picture after for what this room looked like prior to gas leaks!

Living Room Fireplace September 2014

Little Mattie, taking a nap July 2014.

And now for Bad New Part 1:

After the demo of that bookcase, Brian and I took Hank down to the river for a short training session/playtime in the water. When we got back home Brian continued to train Hank in the back yard - to dry him off a bit. I went inside, and I could hear water dripping.

Some of you have heard me tell the story before about our basement flooding (but it was raining when that happened) so no, this was different. It was dripping. A lot of dripping.  

I immediately walked into the dining room, knowing I was closer. And there it was.... the light fixture in our entry was Leaking! HOW IN THE WORLD?! I ran to our patio yelled at Brian "come in here" -- he was not quick enough, because I walked back in the living room and could still see him picking up Hank's gear....he thought he'd take his time I guess... I ran back to the patio, this time "GET IN HERE NOW" (screaming). This time, he came running. I guess seeing your wife OK, didn't resonate anything was 'really wrong'

- He had a few choice words himself once he got inside.... What happened was this: earlier in the week our basement A/C unit was installed. In the grand scheme of things, something (or someone) moved a line that was connected to our upstairs unit, and the line was broken. It flooded the living room on Wednesday of that week. This time, (we aren't pointing any fingers here) the line (which we thought was repaired) had come loose, and over the course of time, flooded the upstairs. Again, luckily, or thankfully, it was only in a small portion of the house. We are still determining the fix for this problem. I am sharing a picture of the bubbles that formed that day. (Yes, these are full of water, and would eventually be all over my entry way!)

And now for Bad News part 2:

This one is just sickening. Get ready for it.... You ready? We are now officially taking out BOTH of the upstairs bathrooms! So both bathrooms? Why is that? Well, since the guys have been working downstairs we have all noticed a bit of water here and there (coming from upstairs). How is that? That is because the ONE and only shower we are allowed to use right now has a leak! AND it also wasn't properly waterproofed. I think I'll end up doing an entire post later about our bathrooms.

Our master bathroom (which yes, at one point) was entirely finished.

Master Shower before Brian Demo - October 12, 2014

And now... Is now entirely torn out! ALL of it! Brian and I did the demo ourselves this weekend. (Sunday, October 12th).

Chuck told Brian and I to expect 3-4 weeks before we could use it again. And when that happens, we will then demo the guest bathroom. (No picture to share here) Trust me guys, we removed a portion of the wall in the guest bath, and water Literally Sprays out when the shower is turned on. This is Great news we found this before any walls or ceilings were put up in the downstairs. Yes, as a result of this issue, it is slowing down our progress in the house, because work has been diverted from down there, to Back upstairs.

Picture below is our master bath, after 2 hour with a sledge hammer (trust me that felt great) and several rounds of wheelbarrow rolling in and out of the house.

Neither of us were really happy during the process - but Both agree, this was a lesson we learned the hardest way possible - Never let family offer help. Just don't do it.

We've now spent double what we ever dreamed

Master Shower after (2hr) Demo, October 12, 2014

  

So there you have it, our lives (in the house) as of lately. I plan to do another post very soon, because I have a Part 3 Bad news, that starts sometime this week! And its only something we can laugh at...we hope!

  

Update

 When I started this blog, I thought, wow, I could post daily...nah, maybe once a week with the amount of work we have going in the house. But here I am, its been over a month since my last post and Honestly, there hasn't been much work done! --- Remember my last post, and I mentioned the bathroom ? Well, yeah, that still isn't done.... the tile to finish was on back order.

So what have we been doing for the past month - ?? We have been interviewing contractors - 5 to be exact - to finish our house but mainly take over the basement.

As a side story, when interviewing for a new contractor they have a lot of questions (at least the first one did) and I learned the hard way - just tell them what happened.

So contractors 2-5 the moment they walk in the front door, I gave them a 10-15 minute "here's what happened, has happened since then, and how we plan to handle it - this go around" --- believe me they were shocked about most of what I said, but ALL thanked me many times for just being honest. I'd like to say we interviewed, but this time was A LOT different - I did the first screening for at least 4 out of the 5 contractors we spoke to.  

Brian let me set up all the interviews so that I'd know who I would feel comfortable with working in our house, and in the big picture, I'd be the one making a lot of the design decisions, so we had to find someone who fit ME! And this go around we only interviewed people who were highly recommended, have worked in LR for years, and had a reputation in town (a good one). We knew we wanted to hire someone that we could go back to later on and hire them for other jobs.

Like I said, I screened, felt out the potentials and then had Brian come for the second conversation and the bid revealing should they come back with one.

So, back to the bids - Some were reserved because they knew we had fired our previous contractor (and he'd left with our money not entirely completing the work); given that reluctantly they question how much we'd already spent on the basement. So again, some were scared to give us bids because they didn't want to offend us. And probably some thought we'd never be able to afford the work that we really needed done down there.

A few gave us straight up answers and while we might have been inclined to hire one of those, we just couldn't afford it because we didn't have that much money anymore (construction loan)... However, God is good. He brought along Chuck.... Chuck is our new contractor for the house. I feel so blessed to have him for this job. He's licensed, and has all the credentials one would need to make us feel better about hiring him this go around. We even went and looked at a few houses he's worked on to reassure ourselves he's the man for the job.

That being said, I'm here today for good reason! Now that we've given Chuck the OK -we start demolition on the basement tomorrow! YA! Bright and Early Friday morning a crew is coming in to demo a few things and start framing the bedroom and bathrooms.

So I wanted to share a little preview of the entire basement. All the picture I am posting today are the current state -although it's been an evolving mess/nightmare over the last 6 months.

We still had a ton of crap down there (storage while upstairs was being worked on)...and building materials were just scattered about over the last 2-3 months.  It took Brian and I a few shots at cleaning it up, but I'm happy to say we did it!

Below I'm sharing a picture of the laundry room. Yes the ceiling is already torn out, thanks to Brian! 

Seriously, Can't wait for this room to be finished! I get a sink and new cabinets! Plus this room serves a dual purpose its going to be the cool spot for the dogs to hang out during the day. They will have access to the back yard via the new door being installed in this room.

 

Moving right along... This is a view of what will be the new bathroom and bedroom downstairs. We felt with nearly 2200 square feet in the basement, we'd be silly not to add the bed and bath. This area of the basement is rather large, what you can't see is where I'm standing will be an open concept office/ sitting area. Really looking forward to seeing this space evolve over the next few weeks!

On to.... THE MAN CAVE. AKA Brian's room.

I thought to myself this morning actually --- whether this is "Brian's Room" or not, I want to Want to go downstairs. Does that make sense? Its been a hard few months for this newly married couple -- we both dread going downstairs

1. we know its a disaster, but

2. it brings a sick feeling to your stomach when you see how much money was spent down there, and yet none of it was done.

3. the parts that were done have all been 're-done' and paid for (yes, a second time).

So that pit in my stomach when I walk downstairs, I look forward for it to go away soon~

a

After much debate, (actually no debate - we both agree we never wanted this done) see that cut out in our wall below --- well we're just going to take the whole wall down.   Originally someone suggested to Brian that we make a bar there- that plan just wasn't meant to be. And now that the wall will be coming down I've designed him one kick ass bar! but minus that hideous hole in the wall.

This picture (below) is to a broom closet  -- and actually has been the only spot in the house were we've encountered real 'water damage' - thankfully, THANKFULLY our new landscaper (Clark) and his crew came to the rescue and sealed our foundation and the pesky hole where the water was coming in! Again, thankfully this was taken care of so we can rest assured no water will damage all the new work being done in the house.

Hi Hank :)

For those of you who know, yes, I am leaving one room out of the mix for now. The media room/swimming pool...but that's because I just can't bring myself to go in there for a little bit.

And, because it's the last thing on our list to be worked on.

Below I leave you with our lovely stairwell. These stairs are the LAST of what is left of the original house. And in true fashion, they will be the last to go -

I hope you've enjoyed this little rant, narrative, rambling about the happenings in our basement. Trust me, I have a good feeling about things this go around, and know it will all be okay!