The Grand Tour: Video Version

For your viewing pleasure, may I present the video tour...

The Grand Tour

It is official...we are finished with the house project! Hooray! We couldn't be happier or more pleased with how it all came together. We held our open house this past Friday and Saturday (Jan. 6 & 7) and had a great turn-out of local friends and neighbors who were curious as to what we had done with the place and, consequently, blown away with what we had done to the place. They were pretty impressed.

So, for all of our out-of-town family and friends, here is a grand tour of the finished house. And if it's been so long that you can't remember what we started with, feel free to take a quick tour of the "before" photos. Okay, on to the tour...

The outside...

The living area...

 The downstairs bedroom and bathroom...

The kitchen and dining nook...

 The half-bath off the kitchen...

The back porch bonus room and laundry room...

 The stairway and upstairs hallway...

The upstairs bathroom...

The master bedroom, view from the bathroom...

Bedroom #1 with adjoining closet...

Bedroom #2 with adjoining closet

Bedroom #3...

 Upstairs hall closet...



As a special treat, we recorded a video tour of the place, because it's pretty hard to get the feel and layout of a place just through pictures. My mom did an awesome job as the "tour guide" and I couldn't love this piece of video more. However, it won't upload to blogger because the file is too large (I think!?), and I need to get help from my technically savvy husband, who has been unusually busy the past few days and unable to assist me in my time of need!? So until I can rope him into helping me out, these pictures will have to do. I will keep you posted on when I get the video up and running...hopefully before the weekend.

Total Investment: Around $80,000 (we still need to crunch a few numbers to get the exact cost, but we're sitting right around $80k...$15k for the house, and $65k in renovation costs).  

Asking Price: $130,000

Time: 4 months (mid-Sept through mid-January)

Next Flip Project: NEVER! Just kidding...I'm sure we won't be able to resist doing something like this again, but give me at least 5-10 years to forget the craziness and stress of this job first.  :) 

Sale prospectus: We haven't had anyone truly interested in buying it yet, however, the word is out and it's on the market, so we'll see what that brings. I'll keep you posted.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed our crazy journey. I can't say that it was all a bed of roses, but seeing the finished product really did make all the craziness, frustration, and hard work totally worth it.

Carpet Installed and Open House Plans

This week, my sister and I made our way over to Cokeville on Wednesday and Thursday to see what we could accomplish. We managed to touch-up paint and hang a couple of bathroom mirrors, which was nice and easy...

And we managed to clean the kitchen and refrigerator and install the under-cabinet lights, which we love, love, love....

I'll be honest, installing the under-cabinet lighting kind of freaked me out. It involved cutting permanent holes into gorgeous, brand new cabinets. After reading the instructions and thinking about how to get it done, what I really wanted to do was just forget the whole idea and letting the homeowners tackle this one, if they even wanted to!? But I new that whoever got this house would  probably never get around to it, and we had had our electrician run a special switch for our lighting outlet, so I knew deep down that we really should just do it and get it done. So after enquiring with my bff google and watching a few tutorials on the HGTV website, I gathered my courage, and went for it. And I am so glad I did. It turned out great and wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be. Whoever gets this house is going to love them...I sure would!

And while we slaved away in the kitchen on Thursday morning, carpet was being installed. Happy day! And it looks amazing. It is amazing how carpet can completely transform a place. It finally looks like a home someone could actually live in.


Our open house is scheduled for next weekend - Friday, January 6, & Saturday, January 7. It's scheduled to be advertised in all the local/surrounding area papers and everything, so it's official...come hell or highwater!? If you are in a 2-3 hour radius from Cokeville (and anyone in Northern Utah/Western Wyoming/Southern Idaho is) and have been at all curious, you are not going to want to miss this. The weather should be great for a drive next weekend, and the local restaurant, Blondies, serves the best mushroom-swiss burger I've ever had. So go ahead and plan on it...

Kitchen Cabinets and Odds and Ends

I am five days past my usual update post, but it's the Christmas season, and things have been busy, and I'd rather sip hot chocolate and eat treats from the neighbors than deal with pictures and blogging. But it's a slow night in the McComber household, so here am I am with photos to prove that we actually did some work last weekend, and that we really are getting close to being done...

I spent Friday and Saturday in Cokeville and we accomplished the following:

Installed the air registers, installed closet rods, rehung the doors (since we had to take them off for painting), installed doorknobs on all the doors, installed the stair banister, installed bathroom hardware (tp holders, towel rods, towel rings), washed windows, and tried to clean up a bit. And while we did that our electrician got to work installing all the light fixtures. And our plumber was suppose to come sometime last week or this week and install toilets and sinks. Electricity and running water...happy day!

And below is a sneak peak of the new kitchen cabinets. I really like them and I really like the layout. I thought the peninsula might be too much and take up too much room, but I think it's the perfect size. We are missing the cabinet that goes above the fridge, as it was too wide and we had to return it and pick up a smaller one in Logan. And the toe-kick area needs some finishing work. But we have our handy man, Bill, working on all those items, so they'll be done soon, if they aren't already.

Our carpet is scheduled to be installed next week, on December 28 and 29, and we can't wait. And we have a tentative date for our open house, January 6 and 7 (barring any major disasters or snowstorms). Mark your calendars! So between now and then, our finish list looks like this:

• Touch-up painting
• Pick-up and install the stove and dishwasher (ordered from Lowes)
• Pick-up and install the back door (special ordered from HD)
• Hang bathroom mirrors
• Install door stops
• Clean, Clean, Clean!

This list looks like heaven...short and sweet and completely doable. We really are SO close to being finished!

Paint!

This last week my mom worked her tail off priming everything and painting the ceilings, trim, and bedrooms white. She was planning on finishing up with the paint sprayer on Friday, and we would be painting the living areas (living room, dining rooms, kitchen, bathrooms, and upstairs hallway) our chosen wall color with rollers and brushes. I left for Cokeville early Saturday morning, and with a view like this greeting me at the top of Logan Canyon, I was sure that it was going to be a great day of finishing up ALL the painting!

Well, I arrived in Cokeville at 9am and was quickly informed that we were out of caulk, and we were out of white paint...and the five bedrooms definitely needed a second coat of paint sprayed on. And there were lots of places that still needed caulked, or a second application of caulk. Since I had JUST come from Logan, where I could easily have stopped to pick by BOTH materials before coming over that morning, I was a little infuriated that I hadn't been called to pick those things up. I hate wasting time, and coming all that way without those much needed materials drove me a little bit crazy!? Especially since without those materials, we couldn't finish the painting portion of this project, which was my goal for the day. Maddening!

Then, as we were taping off all the trim in order to apply our creme-colored paint, I finally realized that our electrician had installed all the outlets and light switches, even though we hadn't painted yet!? My mom had told me the week before that our electrician wanted to install the outlets and light switches before we were done painting. I was skeptical and asked one of the contractors in our neighborhood about it, who said that was a TERRIBLE idea, and "don't let him do that!" So, with his advice we agreed that the electrician shouldn't install those items until we were done painting. Especially since we were painting with a paint sprayer, and overspray would get ALL over the brand new fixtures, not matter how good we tried to cover them. Well, my mom never called the eletrician to tell him our wishes, so, of course he installed them all when he was here last Sunday. I was livid!

One, my mom should have communicated with the electrician; and two, that electrician was just being lazy and trying to take shortcuts and get his job done faster. Not that he's EVER been in a hurry!? When I talked to our contractor neighbor, he looked at me crazy when I even mentioned the electrician installing the outlets first  It's just not how it's done. And for good reason. Just as I predicted, we had overspray ALL over the new outlets and light fixtures, even though my mom did her best to cover them.  Now we have to either replace them, or we have to waste our time scrubbing paint off. SO maddening!

It's hard to see the white-on-white paint job, but you get the idea with the white on black. The light switch on the bottom right missed getting taped altogether. It's completely covered and will definitely need replaced...

The good news? Our handyman, Bill, installed our front door and put our stair railing together, and both look amazing! Oh, how I love him!

So, we resolved that my mom would just have to make a trip to Logan and finish the painting and caulking next week, without my help. We were able to finish the wall color, except for touch-ups, which we can do next week/weekend. I arrived at 9am, and was on the road by 6:15pm. I would have loved to stay a few hours longer and make my Saturday really worth it, but what can ya do!? I hate being 2 hours away from Lowes! No matter how prepared you think you are, and how much extra you think you're getting, it's never enough!?

So, here are some pictures of the finished painting product. We are really loving how it is coming together. And we really love that it's just coming together, period! We really are SO close to being done!

Here are some shots of the rooms without the lovely blue tape outline. The lighting is a little weird, but you get the idea...

And there you have it. This next week our handyman, Bill, will be installing our kitchen cabinets and countertops, and vanities, and maybe we'll have a backdoor in by then too, if we're lucky, which is a whole other story I almost forgot about...

When Bill installed the front door earlier this week, he was going to install the back door as well, but our special ordered back door was too tall to fit in the space!? I had special ordered it to be shorter than a normal door, but it arrived 1 inch higher than what I had specified, and was the height of a normal-sized door. And since the backdoor goes right up to ceiling of that back porch area, that extra inch was a huge problem, which was why we special ordered it in the first place. So, I had to spend an afternoon on the phone with Home Depot, figuring out what happened and ordering a new door. This new door should definitely be shorter, as the cost was considerably more...$330 for a shortened door vs. $230 for the stock door we were apparently given. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I am not at all impressed by Home Depot. The good news is that since the door we "special ordered" wasn't really special ordered, we can return it and get our money back.

Have I mentioned that I can't wait to be done with this house? Because I can't.

Trim, Floors, and Taping

This was an awesome weekend. The work was fun, the company was great, and we were SO productive. I feel like we might get done with this place eventually after all!?

We picked up some more trim during the week, so first things first, we finished trimming out the windows...

Then we finished trimming out the closet doors (on both sides, mind you), and installed closet shelving in all of the bedroom closets, as well as pantry shelves in the kitchen pantry downstairs.

We picked up more flooring during the week, so we finished laying flooring in the back porch laundry room and mud room/sun room. We also installed the floor-edging pieces (below/top picture)...which ended up being no small feat!? It's funny how the things you think will be easy end up being hard and time consuming, such as those stupid little floor-edging pieces (we had 7 edges to figure out and install!?)...

 And then the things you think will be hard, end up being easy, such as taping and plastic-ing all the windows and tubs, which was actually remarkably easy... 

It was a long, hard weekend of working, but it felt good when we were done. We worked on Saturday from 7:30am to 9:50pm, with only one short break that included a PB&J at about 4pm. We were both completely beat by the time we finally stopped, and I know I am still recovering!? But we got SO much done, so it was totally worth the very long day of manual labor.

This week my mom is planning on finishing up all the caulking. She practically caulked the entire house single-handedly this last week, so I'm sure she'll have no trouble finishing up the trim we added this weekend. Then, if we can get our handy-man, Bill, to come over to install the front and back exterior doors and the stair banister upstairs, our next task will be painting! All the floors and windows are taped, and we're ready to go with our fancy paint sprayer and buckets upon buckets of paint. Next weekend, hopefully we'll have a painted house for your viewing pleasure. We're getting there...

Floors, Doors, and Trim

We had so much to do this weekend! We were planning on finishing flooring (easy!), hanging doors (which I had never done before and was kind of freaked out about) and putting up trim (which I have very little experience in and was kind of freaked out about). Needless to say, I was extremely anxious about how everything would turn out, and I was extremely anxious to get it all over with! It was a long week...

I arrived in Cokeville on Wednesday afternoon. We spend that afternoon and evening laying the flooring in the kitchen and dining areas. It was easy enough, but we ended up not having enough flooring left to even start the laundry room or mud room in the back porch area, so those had to be left undone, which kind of sucked. We were seven boxes short!? The good news is, that even though we had originally special ordered our laminate flooring (which took weeks to come in), Lowe's actually had some in stock when we called and enquired about ordering more...hallelujah!  So, we will be able to finish the flooring completely this next weekend...phew!!

On Thursday, Thanksgiving day, we hung doors, from 9am to 4:45pm. Lucky for us, my cousin Tami's handy husband, Casey, was kind enough to spend his entire Thanksgiving afternoon helping us. My mom and I would hang the door with the help of the quick door hanger hardware, and then Casey would come after us to shim and screw the door into the jam. He was a lifesaver and I will love him forever for helping us out as much as he did! :)

Nearly every door in that house had to be cut down to size, which meant we had to unhinge the door, cut down the jam, cut off the door, separate the cut-off  paneling from the bottom piece of the door, and then glue the bottom piece of the door back inside the shortened door, clamp it in place, wait for it to dry, then re-hinge it and hang it in the jam. It was quite the process?! And while not too terribly difficult, it was a bit tedious and time consuming. But the doors are hung, and they open and close like a dream, and they look amazing!! I love them!

Since we felt so accomplished with hanging 10 doors on Thanksgiving day, we took Thanksgiving evening off. We closed up shop at 4:45pm, just in time to make ourselves presentable for dinner at the Teichert's at 5:15pm. Thanksgiving dinner was amazing, and even though I wasn't spending it with my husband or little boy (they stayed back in Logan since I would be working non-stop anyway), I was still with family and it still felt like home. 

On Friday we started on the trim downstairs. We were able to trim out everything except one window (which was covered in peices of sheetrock and boards that needed to be hauled away), and the back porch laundry room and mud room (since we hadn't layed flooring back there, we couldn't put in the floor board trim). We also sent my dad to Montpelier (the nearest civilization 30 miles away) not once, but TWICE...once for some finish nails, and again for a new saw blade. He was not very impressed with our lack of foresight, but he helped us out nonetheless. When cutting miter cuts, the saw was SO hard to use. Once we got the new blade it cut our miters like butter! There is nothing like a new, sharp blade...it truly makes all the difference!

On Saturday we started in on trimming out the upstairs and worked a 12 hour day, from 7am to 7pm. We got every entry doorway trimmed out, and nearly all the floor boards down, but we ended up running out of 3.5 inch boards, which meant none of our eight windows could be finished, nor could three of our closet doorways. Then we ran out of finishing nails (again!?), and then we ran out of the 6 inch boards, and then we just plain ran out of time. So pretty much, we ran out of everything this weekend...flooring, nails, trim, and time. We did everything we could to get as far as we could and use what we could, but it isn't all finished yet. However, next weekend we will be able to finish things in no time flat.

So, next weekend the plan is to finish the flooring in the back porch. Finish all the trim. Hang shelves in the closets and kitchen pantry. Caulk and putty all the trim. Tape for painting. And if we're really lucky, maybe we can start priming. It'll definitely be another busy weekend.

So, I'm sure you're dying to see some pictures...behold, we have doors and trim! I am loving how things are turning out in this place...

 (Below...beadboard and trim in the bathroom)

And because it's Thanksgiving week, here are just a few things I've been really thankful for the past three months during this renovation adventure.

• I am thankful for my amazing husband Eric, who has never complained once about me being gone every, single, weekend, and having to be the sole childcare provider for our little boy while I'm away. Being a single parent three days out of the week can't be fun or easy, but Eric has never complained and has never been anything but supportive.
• I am thankful for my mom, and that she knows how to do everything and isn't afraid to learn how to do something new. I'm also thankful that she owns every single power tool known to mankind. They have all come in very handy and one point or another!
• I am thankful for my dad, and that he is our un-official garbage man. The dump is gross, especially in the cold, wet wintertime, but he happily hauls our garbage away, week after week. I am also thankful that he is our un-official chef. He always has something hot and ready to eat for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, whenever we walk in the door. He is too good to be true sometimes!
• I am thankful for this journey. While at this point in time no amount of time or money could convince me to do another renovation of this magnitude, I have learned SO much. I have learned new skills, new things about houses, new ways of doing things. I feel pretty much invincible about renovating houses at this point. I figure if we can fix up this 100-year-old dump of a house, I'm pretty sure we could fix up anything worth salvaging. And that's a nice feeling. While I am constantly reminded of why I happily paid someone else good money to build my house last year, it's good to know that if I ever need to draw upon my reno' skills someday, I certainly can.
• I am thankful for my wonderful life. Being away from home each weekend is hard, and I don't like it...at all. But being away makes me realize how much I love and adore my little family, and my house, and my friends, and this little city of Logan, and my amazing life. The drive home every Saturday night has never been more exciting...I can never get home fast enough! I have it so good!