Final house renovations

Okay so I can wait until our house is completely clean and ready, or I can just show you what we did to our house when it is super close to being complete, but not completely clean. :-)

If you forget what our house looked like before the reno, I have a few pictures on this post and a few more on this post. I also posted updates throughout the renovation here and here. And if you are feeling extra bored, you can go to the "house stuff" tag on my sidebar and read all of the posts since August 2012 detailing what we have done so far.

Without further ado, our new and improved house! We'll start upstairs and make our way down.

First up- our new master closet. It was just one door a few months ago which meant that CP's stuff on the right hand side was getting lost. We had the contractor re-do the door frame and put on two doors so that we both have access to the closet- my stuff on the left, his stuff on the right.

Not a super exciting change, but it makes CP's life a lot easier.

Next up, the second floor bathroom, our only full bathroom in the house. We made a few changes to make the room feel bigger (raised the ceiling above the shower- it used to be curved), shortened the closet to the right of the shower so that it is flush with the tub instead of sticking out, and moved the door so that it now swings out into the hallway. A few things make this room feel bigger even if the footprint did not. Plus it's soooooo nice to not have a black bathtub anymore!!

I wish we had room for a larger counter, but we try to put most of our stuff in the medicine cabinet.

Now down to the first floor where we knocked down the entire exterior fireplace because it was a disaster. If you have brick, please don't paint it. Not only is it bad for the brick but then it makes it impossible for contractors to figure out where there are problems. So instead of worrying about our fireplace falling over in high winds, we now have a lovely new one outside!

Inside there was a problem with the actual firebox (or something- I didn't quite understand what was going on) so we had to get one of these firebox covers/faces (the black thing). I think that it will actually work out well because it is a bit of a hybrid and while it burns real wood, there is a fan that circulates the hot air into the room, potentially heating up more than just the 5 foot area around the fire. Because the white mantle wood came too close to the black box we had to get new stone to surround it as well as you can see below. I love the way it turned out! (Now we don't love the red tiles surrounding the fireplace but that is not a high priority right now.)

Next up our first floor half bath. We moved the wall that juts out on the left back a little bit so that when you sit on the toilet you are not as closed in as before. Whomever put up the walls of the bathroom did not use drywall or plaster so in order to fix that we had to totally rip everything down and start fresh.

Next up is CP's favorite new room, the new and improved kitchen! We totally gutted the old one and bumped out the back of the house about 8 feet to create the new open kitchen that we love! I love how open the room is with both the dining room and the new family room. Izzy loves sitting at the island on the stools to eat.

Hard to see in the picture but the island is a dark blue and there is some blue in the countertops as well.

CP's new baby- a Wolf commercial oven/stove. We had a different backsplash but happened to come upon this awesome Ann Sacks concrete tile (thankfully not expensive) and decided to go for a big pop instead! I love it (hard to see but it is blue).

A bookshelf for all of CP's cookbooks!

The kitchen opens up into the new family room which is also a few feet bigger than the old one. We still need some shelving, curtains, and at some point, a sectional instead of the couch and armchair but the latter isn't financially feasible right now.

The new larger opening between the dining room and the family room:

The new larger opening between the dining room and the new kitchen:

Next we head down to the basement. We walled off the mechanical stuff and now have a large space for shelving and storage, but at least we have separate rooms now. Here is the new hallway with new flooring and a painted wall which leads to the new  basement. Clearly we haven't unpacked the kids' toys just yet. :-)

My new laundry set up which is just okay.

The new basement (it resides under the expanded part of the kitchen and the new family room). It two will eventually house a sectional, cubbies for the kids, and of course, my lovely new treadmill (pictured).

Outside is where most of the final work is to be done. The contractors ripped up most of our patio so every time it rains this area is a mess. I'm not sure where the big pavers have gone so we might just have to make do until the spring when we can hopefully cobble together enough money to get the patio done.

The new back part of our house (they still have to fix the driveway).

Other than that we did mainly not-so-fun things like revamped our HVAC system to install another zone on the second floor, installed another sump pump and battery backup for the new part of the basement, etc. Can't wait for the entire project to be done!