No More Purple

Paint can make such a huge difference in a room. I guess a new ceiling doesn't hurt either.  Here's a before and an after of one of the bedrooms. Note the acoustic tile ceiling and dark purple paint in the before. 

Before

After

Penny Rounds

The penny round tile has been installed in the hall bath, and I think it looks terrific. It still has the grout haze in the after picture, but it's a big upgrade.  I had debated using grey grout, but I went with white in the end. 

Hall bath tile before

Hall bath tile after

Passthrough

I'm having a passthrough put in between the kitchen and the living room. The original plan was to take down as much as the wall as possible, but Frank the contractor explained the difference in price was roughly $400 for the passthrough and roughly $4,000 for the wall demo. The issues were that (a) it's a load-bearing wall, (b) there's plumbing running through there, (c) there are ducts in the wall, and (d) there's a good amount of electrical running through the wall. So, I went with the passthrough. 

Before

Passthrough in Progress

Frank couldn't make the passthrough as large as I had hoped, and there's a structural (which translates to a financial) reason for keeping more of the wall than I wanted. Either way, it makes a big difference already to the feel of the place.

Acoustic Tile Ceiling

Those are three words that don't belong together. One of the bedrooms had acoustic ceiling tiles. I don't get it, and I never will. Anyhow, I had the drywall guy pull them down then work his magic. I've tried drywalling, and it's a lot more difficult than pros make it look. It has rained ever since he put it up, so the mud is still drying. 

Here are a couple of befores and a progress picture. 

As if the acoustic tile ceiling tile weren't enough, they painted the room a dark purple.

Home for Now

Here's the obligatory pathetic "Where are you sleeping?" pic.

The taupe color on the trim is going to be seen a lot in the living room. I'm going to use it on the ceiling, trim, and brick wall/fireplace. 

Hall Bath

This is a before picture of the hall bathroom. I really liked the odd slope to the vanity, but I hated the tile and pretty much everything else. Originally this was going to be my project, but Frank, my contractor, convinced me to let his tile guy handle it. The way they used to lay tile was to put it on a mud (AKA concrete) floor. The tile on a mud floor doesn't come up easily, and it wasn't going to be that expensive. So, I had Frank's guy bust it out and demo the vanity. 

Here's a progress picture. In renovation, it always gets worse before it gets better, and progress sometimes looks a lot like regress. 

Moving Day

Actually, it was more like moving weekend... plus a day. A fundamental law of physics is that nature abhors a vacuum. Well, a little known codicil to that law is that sheds abhor not being full of shit you'll never use again. Honestly, I diligently got rid of stuff in the packing phase. It was fun to leave stuff on the side of the road to see how long it would take for someone to scavenge it. Despite my best efforts, there was still a ton of stuff. Brent, Sharon, Felipe, Rick, and Dick are all heroes for helping me move all of my stuff into the garage of the Hawthorne Rd. place. It took 4 loads in a 14' Uhaul truck to get it done, but it's done. 

In addition, I took 1,900 pounds of junk to the city dump Monday morning. In that pile of stuff were boxes of books that had remained unopened since my last move in 2006. When I lamented, "I hate throwing books away." Rick muttered, "Not me. I'll do it."

Anyhow, here's a picture of the packed garage. You'll note that the pool table got moved. More on that later.