New Shore Doors

We kept the original doors from the first floor while we worked on getting the house livable but as the summer went on it was clear that the doors were in bad shape.  They were old and the water damage was causing some of the veneer to peel and crack.  We took measurements for all of the first floor doors and then we waited.  Lowe's finally ran a promotion for a free upgrade to a solid core (a savings of about $30 per door) so Andy and I stopped at Lowe's and placed an order for all new doors.  The old doors were flat slabs but we decided to go with 2-panel doors to match the hardwood doors on the second floor.

Old powder room door.

Old kitchen door.

New pre-hung doors that Andy and Kyle picked up a few weeks ago.

You know it's serious work when the Carhart bibs come out!

Shimming and leveling.

New kitchen door is already looking better.

New bedroom door that required an interesting cut at the top left corner to get the frame to fit.

Bathroom and kitchen doors.

New powder room door.

A few of the doors required some minor trimming in the bedroom for the carpet. Andy taped the edges and made the cuts.

With four new doors in place Andy still had the bi-fold doors to hang in the laundry area.

I sanded and painted the trim earlier in the weekend so that Andy could trim it to fit and rehang.

The bi-folds went in easily.

And we had a few extra knobs from our bookcase at home so they got put to good use.

While Andy worked inside I took all of the old trim outside, removed the hardware, sanded, primed and painted.  It took most of the weekend.

While Kodak barked at me to throw the ball that he wouldn't retrieve because the water was too cold.

About half of all the trim drying in the garage.

Andy had enough time to finish the edges of the white-washed ceiling with cove molding.

A Temporary Inconvenience

With the majority of the Phase 1 projects complete it's time to start planning for Phase 2 which will include the laundry room and powder room.  Our powder room is TINY and very dated.  About a year ago I found a copper vessel sink on clearance at Lowe's and knew that I wanted to use it in the powder room.  What we didn't know is what the base was going to look like.  The vanity it small and we don't love the position.  Andy wanted to mock up a few options so he started demolition.

We discovered several layers of wallpaper, paint and flooring.

The original base design was similar to what was there previously but without the cabinet door on the bottom. We thought it was just OK but decided to try an option that would extend left, toward the door, to provide more counter space and fill an otherwise useless space between the wall and vanity.

Andy mocked up a narrow, rectangular vanity with a rounded base under the sink.  The final top will be a bit more free-form and will transition from the flat, rectangular section to the rounded front more gradually. But the mockup was good enough for us to picture the final product and keep moving forward with the demolition.

With the room cleared out Andy removed the drywall behind the vanity.  We plan to tile this entire wall floor to ceiling so the drywall will be replaced with new backer board.  It also makes some of the plumbing and electrical work a bit easier.

With the wall out Andy got to work on the floor and discovered several levels of flooring.

And now it looks like this. We ordered our tile last week so hopefully we'll start work on the new powder room in the next few weeks.

Weekend Mini-Projects

While Andy had the chainsaw out a few weeks ago we decided to remove some old boxwoods.  We want to do some work in the backyard next spring and so it made sense to take advantage of the fall yard waste pickup since the Township only picks up in the fall.

While he was working on tying up the branches we discovered two snakes.  The bigger one (2+ feet) was too quick (and scary) so I only got a picture of the tail.  

The smaller one (maybe 18") went out in the grass.

And then after all of the snake excitement he managed to get the new knobs on the bookcase doors that I previously painted.