Top 5 Home Renovations of 2013

by: Pete

We've been here in our beautiful country house for over a year now.  It's time to post some of the updates we've done to the place. 

1) The Foyer

It was over a year ago when I first spoke of the foyer... it's *almost* finished now... I just have to finish up the trim and touch up some paint here and there... Here are some before and after pictures:

As I said before, it was not an ideal situation.  The only entrance to the house led through the garage and there was no closet for us to hang jackets and place shoes.  The object was to have a front door including an entryway and a closet... if you looked at last year's post, you saw how we came to a solution by taking a corner out of the garage to be the new foyer.

This will work when it's not freezing outside.

After completing the drywall for the foyer, I added a couple of places to hang jackets in the garage... Remember, I was basically doing this project on the weekends, so it took awhile to actually finish the closet on the inside and we still had the problem of coats being thrown on the floor.

the original front door became the door into the garage

I removed an extra stud to widen the entry way (hence the hanging switch box). 

This was a pretty exciting moment to actually see the entryway come into existence!  After framing out the closet and adding the doors, I added the light both in the entryway and outside at the new front door (which you'll see later).  As a novice electrician I learned a lot... the first wiring job dimmed the lights in the living room... it was pretty funny actually (even though it meant I had to go back to the drawing board and figure out where to draw electricity from).

This archway was pretty cool.  I bought it from FastArch and it was super easy to install. I had to build a header above the archway and just attached it to that with roofing nails!

Then came the job I enjoyed the least: drywall.  I gained a whole new appreciation for those who do drywall for a living... It's a lot more difficult than it looks!

  Putting in the new front door was fun at the beginning, but again, I have a whole new level of respect for someone who perfectly installs doors.  I finally was able to get it to sit in there nicely, but it took awhile!  Take note of the outdoor light.  We never did get around to getting the sidewalk poured, but I did build a set of stairs, so the door is functional!

Like I said, the drywalling was not easy... I put a nice plastic edge on both sides of the archway, so hopefully that will last.  Now it's ready for paint and trim!  Speaking of paint, Now's a good time to point out another considerable upgrade to our house: Paint!!  My cousin came to the house while we were in New Orleans for a wedding and painted the majority of the interior of our house.  There's nothing better than coming back from a vacation to a new, beautiful home!!!  She did such a wonderful job!!

Are you ready?  Drumroll please...

from Theresa: Thank you, Pete! its beautiful! and I even got my oval window front door with fancy handle! <3 br="">Oh and that beautiful signature piece of photography was done by http://www.hwportraits.com/

2) The Living Room Floor

 One of the other beautiful renovations to the house is our living room floors.  The carpet was stained in several places and we believed that it still held some of the cigarette smell from the previous owners, so we opted to do hardwood floor.  I had a friend of mine help me with most of it... it was actually quite easy once we got going... and what a difference!!

And here are the results!!  Someone commented: "it looks as if it was meant to be hardwood all along!"

Theresa put together a wonderful image of what it looked like before and after:

3) The Hobbit House

The next project was for the boys...The closet under the stairs was not really being used, so...

...we cut a hole in the wall....

 ...and added these cute little doors.

Voila!  The Hobbit House!  I took the door off the closet on the other end so that they can get some light in there... one of these days I might even add a light, but as you can imagine, they love it!

Theresa is painting a mural on that wall... it looks just like the Shire.  We'll post pictures when it's completed.

4) Under the Deck Roof

This project was unexpected, but I needed a place to park the lawn tractor and even though under the deck was the perfect spot, it was not dry because it dripped down from the deck.  There are lots of expensive solutions out there that look very nice and then there are 10 foot metal roofing panels and some strips of 1x4s to help make the panels slope so they don't hold water...

  Believe it or not, this was a one-man job.  I built a frame that held one end of the metal up while I screwed in the other end.  I also framed around the perimeter and put up clear plastic roofing panels up so that it blocks the wind and not the light.  It makes for a nice storage place and the cat keeps the mice out!\

5) The Storage Shed (OK, so obviously I didn't feel like I had enough storage...)

Speaking of cats.. here's our cat "Socks"... I'm also pointing out the last project.  I wanted to build a shed on top of the concrete slab that the previous owners left behind (it was for their dog kennel), but in the end, it looked like it was going to cost me more for the supplies (not to mention the time).  I found a Rubbermaid storage shed which matched my siding pretty well (and fit the slab almost perfectly).  Sure it's just plastic, but hey, I don't need it to withstand a hurricane or anything.  It only took one day to build and so far it's a pretty nice shed!

Well, I hope you enjoyed our first year's worth of projects!  I'm sure there are many more little things that we've done, but I think that covers all the big projects!

a punch to your shoulder

the Martins