Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Demolition - Part I

So a lot has been happening here since the cabinet trip from hell. It's hard to find time to keep this blog updated with all the work that needs to be done, but I'll take a break and give a quick update.

We are well underway in the demolition phase of this project. Last week we had our basement waterproofed, so while the guys were out here I decided to just have them knock down our garage too! If you go look at the pictures on our Flickr account you will see that it was leaning pretty good and needed to come down anyway. Now the decision is: where do we build the new garage and how big do we build it?

The basement looks 100x better than it did before. It might actually be able to be used for storage space or something. Right now I have the wall cabinets from the kitchen down there and am starting to paint them. That's a whole different project in itself.

We've actually made one improvement to the house that doesn't involve tearing something down. Dad and I worked last weekend up in the attic laying down another layer of insulation. Hopefully it will help the heating bill some. I also made a door to the attic at the top of the stairs to keep the cold air up there. I'll upload some pics of it sometime...

Next on the agenda is to get our new windows installed in the kitchen, living room and dining room. Hopefully that will happen this weekend or early next week. Stay tuned.

Be sure to check out our pictures on Flickr.

Friday, January 16, 2009

The Cabinet Trip from Hell

I had mentioned in the previous post that we have started doing research on the type of cabinets that we want to go into our new kitchen. I have to share this story about the lengths that we will go to to get a good deal on our cabinets.

Last Saturday morning all of northeastern Ohio was hit with a near blizzard and all the roads were snow covered. The night before we planned on making a trip to Lordstown to the Kraftmaid cabinet outlet, where it was rumored you could get any type of cabinet for a single price less than $100. That was music to the ears of the little stingy man inside of me.

I woke up a 6am and looked out the window and saw snow coming down, but the road outside our house didn't look TOO bad. I woke up Kirsten and she said she still wanted to try to make the trip. We hopped in the car and headed toward Hartville to pickup my Dad's pickup truck in case we actually decided to buy something. It normally takes about 30 mins to Hartville from Wadsworth. It tooks us over an hour! I know somewhere along the way I wanted to turn around, but I guess the stingy voice inside my wife told her she wanted to keep going.

We finally arrived at my parent's house in Hartville around 7:15am, got in the truck and headed back out toward Lordstown. We got on I-76 East and it was down to one lane, the road was completely covered and all I could see were the tracks of another daring driver somewhere up ahead of me. Needless to say, we did make it to Lordstown around 8:45am.

Once inside we were overwhelmed with the rows of cabinets that were organized by species and finish. We looked first at the Natural and Honey Spice Maple, but there were already names on the cabinets we wanted. After looking around for a while and feeling underwhelmed, we went back to the Maple rows. Realizing that we couldn't find enough cabinets in the same style and finish and in the sizes we needed, we decided to brave the weather and head back home.

So we risked our lives and gave up our Saturday morning to come away empty handed. But at least now we know what the warehouse had to offer and that we would rather pay a premium at Lowe's or another store to know we will be getting our kitchen installed in 4-6 weeks. Now we just need to decide what we want and order it. It sounds easier than it actually is...

The Journey Begins

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

We have officially taken our first step toward renovating our house in Wadsworth, OH. We were able to move into the house on January 6th and it was all I could do not to start tearing down wall paper and ripping up carpet. Kirsten kept reminding me how important it was for us to move our things in before we started working on it. Luckily for us, there are two rooms in the house that do not need desperate repair. These are the two rooms we are going to be living in for the next two months.

We have laid out our project in phases, although we have started Phases I & II simultaneously. Phase I includes the repairs we feel must happen first, such as replacing all of the first floor windows, waterproofing the basement and adding insulation to the attic.

Phase II will be a complete remodel of the kitchen including new appliances, cabinets, countertops, tile floor and paint. We have started looking at all of these components, but the jury is still out on what to order.

There's still lot's to be done but we are trying to take it a step at a time.