Home Improvement Afters

I finally blogged and told yall what we've been working on, showed you some "before" and "during" reno pictures, but I suppose you'd like to know how our projects turned out, huh? :)
Here's a few from our almost-but-not-quite-finished home improvement projects:

My fab aqua trim in the re-decorated bathroom!

The Bathroom: got a complete redesign, going from black and white toile wallpaper to soft gold walls with antiqued aqua trim on the window and door frame. I haven't finished getting all of the accessories, but we did buy a new mirrored medicine cabinet and did away with the over-toilet cabinet. I found rugs the same color as the walls, but haven't decided on fabric for a shower curtain...still searching for just the right thing!

Wide-shot of the wall color with the trim!

Shot of the inside door trim...still deciding on painting the entire door aqua...what do you think?

The trim work was painted aqua, then sanded down with the power sander and then glazed with 2 coats of brown glaze to tone-down the blue and antique it.

This was my inspiration for painting and antiquing the trim:

This was taken in our room at the B&B we stayed in in Montreal last year for our anniversary!

The other major project we tackled was the laundry room addition! I haven't taken a lot of afters with the shelving in and my new, fun laundry sorter, but these few pics will give you a good idea of what it looks like!

My brother Jacob & Tommy hard at work, with my dad supervising :)

You can see how the room was extended out to the right, enclosing what was the outside door from the kitchen (you can see the white door behind the ladder). The room was also doubled in width! And then, you can see the window that's now being enclosed, right in the center of the new room. On the other side of that window is the 2nd bedroom (that we use as a den), so that window got taken out and drywalled in.

Here's the new room with walls! That hole is now the door to the outside, which will walk out onto the new deck (yet to be finished)

So you can get a good idea of how it looks now! There are two windows that were cut out after this pic was taken, and of course a door installed. We changed the roof-line so that we can accommodate any future additions!

I painted the walls a nice light tan. For the flooring, we finally chose a tile that looks like travertine. Maybe I'll get pics of the inside soon...

Oh, Hey, I Remember Blogging

I suppose I should talk about how sorry I am about not blogging in such a loooong time. But instead, I'll just do some pics n' bullet points about what's been going on in the Leveille household in the 6 months since I last talked on here...

Scott and Ben hard at work tearing the laundry room out!

Ok first up is some home improvements! We hit the house stuff pretty hard this spring and early summer because of Scott's 2nd shoulder surgery (more on that later). Here's what we did:

• Bathroom--stripped the old wallpaper, saying "au revoir" to the toile...made me a little sad, but it was time for a change. And if I ever try to wallpaper something again, slap me. Stripping wallpaper is NO fun!
• Bathroom--got repainted to Pale Gold 2 and the trim done in turquoise with an antique-ing and brown glaze to tone down the blue. Definitely a very different style!
• Laundry Room--we totally demo-ed! The "before" LR was a lean-to type of room tacked onto the back stoop outside the kitchen. Some of the college group guys came over and had fun slinging sledge hammers through the walls!
• Laundry Room--we hired a general contractor to help with the re-design. The new LR is about triple the size! The back door was moved, the hot water heater has its own little closet, and I have LOTS of storage space! 
• The rest of the front facade was re-sided to the cedar shingles and the door and window trims re-worked. No more shutters, but pretty, wide woodwork! The front of the house is now much more presentable!
• Deck--oh golly...the poor deck was demo-ed, but hasn't been put back together yet...but we've re-designed it and it will be bigger, wrap around the side to the back, meeting the new laundry room addition. Hopefully we will have that finished soon!

Laundry Room in the middle of demo!

So, while the laundry room was torn apart, we had to live with my mom, because the hotwater heater lived in said laundry room, and it spent 6 weeks in the middle of the backyard. Can't live very long without hot water! But, my mom was very gracious, letting us take over her house, doing our laundry, and generally putting up with our messiness. And, as home improvement tend to go, an estimated 1 week project turned into 6 weeks. 

At the end of which, Scott had his 2nd shoulder surgery, stemming from an injury when we were overseas last summer on missions. 

So here's how THAT weekend in June went down:

Scott has surgery + staying overnight in hospital + Ann Marie coming down with stomach flu + lack of sleep because of hospital neighbor singing all night/Scott in crazy post-op pain/Ann Marie running to the bathroom + Ann Marie in mini-tern at UAB with crazy amounts of papers to write + a house that was torn apart and dirty = we were REEAALLLY glad to be staying at Mom's house! :(

OK I think that I've reached my writing limit for this afternoon...stay tuned and I might will finish the story later this week. 

I'm trying to be more disciplined in writing....but don't hold your breath! ;)

Posty Post

Long time, no blog, eh? Sorry for that. It's been busy at work (so, ya know, that comes first, right?), been off for the Easter holiday, and just generally busy!

On the "busy" note front: My typical response lately to the question of "How are you? How have you been?" has been, "Busy!"

So, here's one thing that has contributed to my perpetual state of busyness:

Home Improvement

The front of the house. You can see the progression of the re-siding and the old front door.

Owning a home of any age requires you to almost constantly be doing something to it. But owning an older home requires some TLC. And some creativity.

Our house was built in 1948 in Bluff Park. We love it, and I would much rather have a quirky, old house than even a custom-designed new one! Well, let me amend that: Old house, but with a custom-designed new kitchen.

Back to our cozy (AKA really tiny) cottage. When we bought the house, the day before our wedding, it was not live-able. As in, the bathroom was disgusting and non-functional and neither was the kitchen. Now, this is a long story for another day, but needless to say we have done lots of home improvements/renovations over the last 7 years!

Scottie hard at work. There was some water damage that caused some rot in the wood underneath the old siding that had to be replaced as well...it's never simple.

Our latest project is on the outside of the house. No, not the landscaping, yet, but re-siding the entire house. The original siding is whatever they put on it in 1948, painted grey, with a plain cinder-block foundation, also painted grey. The house featured dark green shutters, a matching shutter door (a pre-cursor to storm doors?) and an old fashioned 3-window front door.

We (Scott) are (slowly) in the process of replacing all the siding with cedar shingles. We wanted to give it a Cape Cod cottage look. The process is quite time-consuming, but once we (Scott) figured it out, it has gone quicker each section that we (he) do! We have also picked out a natural stone product that we'll use to veneer the cinder-block foundation, the concrete front porch and stairs.

My latest contribution has been to pick out a new front door, and, let me tell you, this is harder than you would think. And more expensive than you would think. After looking for about a month, liking the doors that cost multiple-thousands of dollars (yes, multiple), we finally bought one last weekend at Home Depot, for just a few hundred dollars. It's not the solid-wood Craftsman that I loved at another place that sells only doors, sigh, but the style will work with our home's new facade.

The old front door, out and discarded....sad!

Now I have to decide what color to paint it...

My dad, of course, helped Scott install the new front door.

Au Revoir, Toile?

We have been in our house for almost 7 years. We are slowly renovating our 1940's cottage, but as most of you know, we are quite short in the spare-time department. And, like everyone else, if we happen to have a little time, we have no spare money to spend on home improvements!

I love our bathroom--we had to rip it comepletely down to the studs and re-do everything before we moved in. However, for some reason the ceiling in the bathroom develops mildew. Like, an abnormal amount. Scott thinks it's becuase of the lack of insulation in the ceiling of the bathroom. So, every few months we get out the bleach or heavy-duty cleaner, scrub the ceiling, and prime and re-paint the bathroom ceiling. Ok, not really that bad of an ordeal. Just a little inconvienient.

HOWEVER, we have discovered that the wallpaper is now mildew-ing. (is that even a proper verb? I think it is: "to be developing mildew". There.) And I LOVE my bathroom wallpaper! Wallpaper has not been very popular in the last 10 years or so, but toile patterns on anything have been. This is my pattern:

We did mostly white tile on the floor and tub surround with black accents. I have red rugs and towels too. I heart my bathroom! (it IS a very 'me' room...poor Scott puts up with alot!)

Now I may have to rip the wallpaper out and either re-paper or plaster the walls and paint.

I have mixed feelings about this revelation. On one hand, as stated I heart my bathroom the way it is. I mean, I really like toile. Seven years of it and I don't hate it. And I love the color scheme of black and white with red.

On the other hand, I like re-doing rooms and redecorating! Always fun! (I do *secretly* think that Scottie is tired of the toile and would like to re-do it. That's ok...like I said, he puts up with alot. Our house is pretty girly.)

So, we will see. Scott and I have to figure out what will be the best thing for us to tackle right now...not to mention the lest expensive! I'll keep yall posted!