New Floors

Our hardwood flooring has arrived. We went with a teak wood or Brazilian Walnut, which is a very hard and durable wood with a lot of color variation. The flooring had to be stacked on boards between each layer to let the wood acclimate. After a week of acclimating it was time to install.

Lower Cabinets & Doors

The uppers are in, so now it's time for the lower cabinets and the doors to go on.

Island with wine rack

Seating side of island

Doors!

Lots of pull out drawers on the island

Ready for countertops!

Upper Cabinets

It's finally time to install the cabinets and being thismuch closer to having a full functioning kitchen. We worked all last winter to get the cabinets built and finished and they look great. The upper cabinets went it fairly easy, but needless to say they were moved around several times before they were in their final place.

Time for some drywall

With the insulation finally complete, it was time to start putting our house back to together. First up, drywall. We hired Nick's uncle Tony to complete the drywall work. He is a professional and got the job done much faster and did a better job that what Nick and I could do on our own.

Looking into the soon to be kitchen

Looking from the kitchen to the family room

East wall in family room

Front living room

Vaulted ceilings

Dining room

Warm (or Cool) Again

Since the wiring was completed it was time to insulate the house. For the most part the weather had cooperated with us to where it wasn't too hot or too cold without the insulation, but there were some mornings where it was freaking cold! There was very little insulation in the house when we did the demo, so adding any amount of insulation was going to help out. We decided to go with spray foam insulation. It costs a little more upfront than the rolls of insulation, but it will definitely cut down on our heating and cooling costs and it's more airtight. We can already tell a difference from one side of the house to the other.

Prepping for the insulation

Spraying in progress

Finished!

Wiring Finished!

After careful consideration as to where all of the electrical components should go, we have finally completed the wiring. We ran all new wiring back to the box from the outlets and lights. We even added speaker wire for built in surround sound, security wire, and HDMI cables to hook up our TV (once we buy a new one of course). Here are just a few pictures of the wiring. Not too exciting.

New Doors

The original front door to our house was a double door that was painted red with red double storm doors. The glass in the doors had the same diamond pattern as the giant front window. Although the double doors were nice to have when we moved in, we just didn't use both doors that often. So when we replaced the door we just went with a standard craftsman style single door with sidelights. This door just gives the house a whole new look and feel.


In the family room we had an old dutch door that we liked to call the Mr. Ed door. Although the door was cool, it just wasn't going to fit in with the style we were going for in the house. We still have the original door, however Jessica's dad wants to install it in his garage.

In place of the Mr. Ed door we installed a french door. This is only a 4ft wide door because we had limited space to work with and we wanted to make the door symmetrical to the window on the other side of the fireplace. The new door lets in so much natural light and it's a lot more energy efficient than the Mr. Ed door.

Support Walls

Since our ranch house had standard 8ft ceilings, we wanted to raise the ceiling up to give the house a more open feel. We are also removing part of a load bearing wall to open up the kitchen into the dining room. In order to do all this we had to put in two support walls to install a new support bean where the original wall was. Once the support beam was in the new ceiling joists were installed, raising the ceiling height to 9.5ft .

Support wall on the left looking into the hallway

Support wall

New ceiling joists

Removal of original wall and original staircase wall to basement to open up the rooms

New support beam and ceiling joists

New doorway framed in from the garage to the mudroom

View of the front room with the original wall removed