Joe and Jamie’s Blog

As promised in this previous post, here are some pictures of the painted pantry. This took a lot longer than expected, and still isn’t fully completed. Too many birthday’s and busy days at work I guess are to blame. I still need to move the refridgerator to paint behind it and finish painting the cabinet doors so I can hang them. I’ll get around to most of that this weekend…hopefully.

This past month I have been gradually repainting the kitchen. My mother, well all of us really, were tired of the old wall paper that was starting to come down. It had been up there for 10 years, my guesstimate. So after a few weekends and weekdays, skipping a bunch of days in between, the kitchen is now freshly painted. Just need to paint the outside door and I’m all set. I am waiting on the weather to warm up a bit before I start the door.

Now I have moved into the pantry. We stuck with the same colors since the rooms flow into each other. I am about half done with the pantry. I need to finish the trim, paint behind the fridge, and inside the cabinets. From the pantry I get to move into the dining room and start all over. Fun, Fun, can’t wait.

How the kitchen looked before the project

Above is what the kitchen looked like before we started this. Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture so I had to crop this from an older photo. At least you can see the color and wall paper.

Aww so pretty!

Snazzy looking corner there!

See the pantry, that's next!

Here are the past articles on this topic to follow along:
2008/03/23/a-little-housework-remodling-the-attic
2008/03/24/continued-house-work-in-the-attic
2008/04/14/progress-on-the-attic-project

Now as you probably notice this has been going on since March. Well from April til now nothing has gotten done except for maybe a few touches here and there. We both were way to busy on the weekends with soccer and work to get anything done. We don’t normally take this long to do simple painting, but eh, it’s done now.

Jamie and I wanted to finish painting our bedroom before school started, which was Monday. We did get it all done last week which was tough but great now that it is all finished. The colors came out nice and we are happy. Only thing left to do is paint the door and jam, but I am waiting for a day that I can remove the door to fix it up a bit. After we finish the door, there is just a section outside that needs to be completed, behind my clothing rack. This was a pretty inexpensive area to do, just a few gallons to complete the whole floor. Now I have to go finish hanging all the pictures again!

Jamie’s sister Casey and her husband Andrew just recently moved into their new house. The guy before them left it very dirty so we all pitched in to clean up. All week long Jamie and I kept going back to help unpack and paint. The house looks so good now that it is painted and clean. Casey and Andrew are very happy.

Here are some of the shots of what it looks like now. I’m killing myself for always forgetting the before pictures.

This is the kitchen. It’s hard to tell but it’s not white but a very, very light green.

Here’s the living room, it really looks great with the yellow and fresh white on the trim and windows.

Casey and Jamie enjoying a drink after all their hard work.

Their dog Webber and I just hanging around…

This weekend was incredibly eventful at the house. I actually woke up earlier than I do for work both days and did a lot around the house. We cleaned out one side of the attic and painted it with the new colors. We were able to use all the colors on certain areas that we planned out so we got to see what each one looks like. They are pretty nice, I think they will do well being light colors in a small area. The fresh paint just makes everything look so much nicer and cleaner. I mounted the pole for the coat rack and finally patched the whole in the drywall, still need to plaster it though. I primed the new railing we made on the left and boy did that new wood soak up the paint. We went with an interior flat enamel paint that is very low-lustre so it will help reduce glare and shine to hide some of the imperfections in the ceilings. The walls are antique white (light tan/beige color), the trim is going to be that blue color (forget the name) and the railing is brown (also forget the name). I know in the photo the brown looks like the walls but its a nice light brown, kinda looks like the color of hot chocolate or a melted milk chocolate bar. Let us know what you think about the colors.

After a few weeks of Jamie getting on my case about moving the attic redesign project I finally got off my keester and did some work.

Here’s some back story:

Jamie and I live at home with my parents. Yeah go ahead and laugh, but we are saving a lot of money in the long run while we both go to school. It also allows us to get into a better financial situation so that when we do move out it is to a nice area and not the ghetto. We have the entire third floor of the house to ourselves. It’s the attic, but completely finished and not like 3 foot ceilings or anything. The room is big enough for two people easily, just running out of room for dressers and desks. The outside of the room used to be a computer/workspace for my father, but we moved his computer stuff into the basement since he has a laptop now that he uses in the living room. We are going to move half the dressers outside the room, leaving more space for us to move around and allow us to get a bigger bed. Two people sleeping on a twin is NOT FUN AT ALL. Outside the room has two parts, divided by the stairs to the rest of the house. The other side not directly outside the room is smaller due to 2 slopes of the room. We are going to put storage bins and hang our jackets over there to utilize that space.

Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the before, but some of these pictures will show you what the layout was and where things were. I’ll explain along the way.

Here is our room currently. There are 4 dressers, 2 computer desks, a DVD shelf and a stand with photos and nick-nacks. Talk about cramped. On both sides of the room there are what we call outcoves (not sure if thats a p.c. term). Those are full of our storage bins and laundry, but we can barely get at them because of dressers in the way.

Here is a picture of the outcoves outside the room. They are a great use of space since the slope of the roof makes it impossible for the walls of the room to meet the outer walls. You would have to be 1 foot tall to fit in those, we have to crawl, but hey, storage bins fit great!

This is the spot outside the room next to the door. It used to be my father’s computer desk. I am going to make a clothing rack there now because closet space is very limited as well.

This shot is outside the room from the angle of the doorway. The dresser to the left is our new 5th one, but that was not always there. That was put there after some of today’s demolition of a fixed shelf I did. This is where I wish I had the before picture, but its not hard to imagine a shelf I guess. You can see the crappy clothing rack I have now; damn thing falls over like once a week.

Here is the left side of the upstairs outside the room. It’s the part where you have to cross the stairs to get to with the double sloped roof. You can see the desk I removed as well as all the pieces of the shelf (too lazy to bring them downstairs at midnight).

Here’s a closeup of the old shelf. My father builds things to last so it was pretty tough getting it apart.

This is where the old shelf was. It was also good to have there so you couldn’t fall right off and down the stairs. We are going to put in a small wall or backer of some sort behind the dresser to secure it or us from falling. You can see the old spot on the wall on the right where the shelf started and went across to the gray poll on the left.

Here’s a front shot of the new dresser and where the shelf used to be. See what I mean how you can just fall off down the stairs!

Now it’s time to kick back and relax with my Molson Canadian and trusty Peak bottle opener, courtesy of 107.1 The Peak (one of the radio stations I do work for). It’s the last one, so I bought myself some Molson XXX for next. If you can’t tell I am a fan of Canadian beer. Well that and Heineken.

Tomorrow I’m off to Home Depot to get some wood to create the backing to that empty spot as well as pick out paint colors with Jamie. She wants to go with a blue, chocolate brown, and some tanish color. It sounds bad, but it looks good.