Learning from design mistakes: IKEA/Semihandmade Kitchen edition

When Jeremy and I decided to take on the roles of general contractor and designer, we knew we’d make mistakes along the way. So far, we’ve made several mistakes that revealed themselves only after purchasing or installing materials. The most frustrating mistake we’ve made was in the design of the kitchen. I’m sharing what we learned so you don’t make the same mistakes we did.

Mistake one: Wall cabinets too high above the countertop.

Our house came blessed with very tall ceilings. I wanted to take advantage of this height and install a VERY tall pantry with tons of vertical storage space. In our kitchen plan, I placed a 15”-high wall cabinet on TOP of an 85”-high cabinet like this:

Kitchen 1a — Industry standards should be followed for a reason. The wall cabinets were too far away from the countertops below

The problem with this design is that all the wall cabinets must be mounted at the same height as the highest point in my pantry. I thought it would be fine to have our wall cabinets “higher than standard” but when they were installed it was immediately apparent what a horrible choice I had made. I could barely reach into the wall cabinet (to grab plates/glasses) let alone reach the higher shelves. Luckily we realized this error on the first day of our kitchen installation, so Jeremy and I rented a van and drove to IKEA to purchase a different size pantry. In the end, we lost only 5 inches of vertical storage space by replacing the super tall pantry with a 90” high cabinet instead.

Kitchen 2a

While this mistake was relatively easy to remedy (and IKEA gave us store credit for the two cabinets we returned), it unfortunately means I will have to buy 2 new doors from Semihandmade and paint them again (remember this post about how many rounds of spraying they required?) because the ones I already have no longer fit. Ugh.

Lesson learned: While I wish that someone at IKEA’s kitchen department had pointed out this error, I suppose I have myself to blame. I knew I was going against industry standard but thought the vertical storage space was worth it. It was not. Do not repeat my mistake!

Mistake two: Purchased wrong size panel for under island.

The process of buying our doors and side panels from Semihandmade was a little nerve-wracking: I sent them our kitchen plan from IKEA’s 3D planning website and Semihandmade sent back a list of all the doors and side panels we would need. It is the customer’s responsibility to review and ensure the sizes of the doors and panels are all correct. Well I made the mistake of buying a huge side panel for under our island that was actually too small! Grrrr. The piece I bought was only 26 inches tall, when it should have been 36 inches tall. (FYI 36 inches is the standard countertop height in kitchens–the key to purchasing the correct size panel!). The piece I bought was actually meant to cover the side of a refrigerator. Blast! What a waste of time and money. Oh well, now I need to order the correct piece and paint it blue. We decided not to delay installing the rest of the kitchen since it would take several weeks to receive and paint this final piece–so for several weeks, the underside of our kitchen island was ‘naked’

Panel missing under the island thanks to my mistake!

Lesson learned: Make sure all side panels that go next to an island or base cabinet are 36 inches high!

BONUS lesson learned: IKEA has an ‘as-is’ sale section near check-out and they sell individual kitchen items for $20 per piece. We decided to buy this one panel from IKEA instead of semihandmade, and saved over $300 by buying an ‘as-is’ piece. If you’re painting your semihandmade cabinets yourself, I highly recommend buying your side panels at IKEA and saving a bunch of cash.

Mistake three: Cabinet door paint dried poorly

Scary close up of the strange paint job. Why so many bumps?!

This one I am perhaps most upset about. The final round of painting our cabinets did not go so well. I have no idea why but let’s blame the weather–it was less than 40 degrees outside when I applied the final coat of paint. And it dried TERRIBLY! It looks like my cabinets have acne. We didn’t have time to sand and re-paint before the installers came in December, so we decided to just install them now and deal with re-painting them in the spring. The good news is that only about 3 or 4 pieces turned out so bad they’ll need to be re-painted. The rest look amazing.

Lesson learned: Get your doors professionally painted or wait for warm weather to do it yourself.

Some tips on how to design your kitchen correctly:

Ensure there is enough clearance for people to comfortably walk through doorways, passageways, hallways, and around islands. We decided to make the passageway between the fridge and the island 47 inches wide, which is industry standard for “two cooks in the kitchen.” We also made sure the clearance between the island and any obstacle was 39-40 inches. The minimum you’d want to go is 36 but we bought huge appliances so we needed the extra clearance.
Similarly, make sure there’s enough clearance for someone to stand in front of the appliances with the doors open. At another property we looked at, you couldn’t swing the fridge open while standing in front of it because the island was in the way.
If you buy your kitchen at IKEA, make sure you fully understand where the white cabinet interiors will show around your doors and panels. We were surprised after our kitchen was installed that you could see a sliver of the white cabinet frame which we did NOT like. So we installed a second piece of panel/filler to hide the frame and make it look more custom built in.

Living room is coming together!

Living room almost ready for living! Just need to install baseboards, window trim crown, & finish the entryway white wall

Our living room is SOOOOO close to being finished, which means we are DAYS away from putting furniture in the room and having a place to sit down!! I feel like a kid the night before Christmas…I’m so excited that I can almost feel those soft sofa cushions under my butt. You see, we have not had anywhere to sit since we purchased the house except for two hard kitchen chairs the previous owner left behind. When we moved in last month, we added three plastic folding chairs to sit at our island, but we still didn’t have anywhere to lounge or relax at the end of the day. We’ve been waiting to bring our living or dining room furniture into the house on a few outstanding, dust-producing tasks to get done.

But it’s a three-day weekend which means WE ARE GOING TO DO ALL THE THINGS!! Now that the plumber has replaced an old pipe we discovered in the front entryway wall and ceiling, we are going to close it up and paint it! Then we will install baseboard trim and re-finish the trim around our entryway door and two front windows.

Jeremy and I are already experts at installing baseboard trim because last weekend we installed a ton of it in our living and dining rooms. We only have a few pieces left to install after we finish the previously mentioned front wall.

How to Install Baseboard Trim

Difficulty level: Easy

Compared to some of the other tasks we’ve done, installing baseboard trim is pretty easy. We had to buy two power tools to get it done, but we think they’ll come in very handy when we tackle the basement renovation later this year.

Step 1: Measure wall

We bought extra long baseboards to ensure a single piece could reach from one side of the room to the other. We didn’t want any seams showing in the baseboard. I keep yelling “million dollar house!” and these details are how we’re gonna get there (I’m partially kidding). We measured each length of wall that would need a piece of baseboard and accounted for the 45-degree angle cut the saw would make. The goal was to make perfect, 90-degree corners at each inside or outside corner.

Step 2: Measure and cut the baseboard

We bought a 10-inch miter saw to cut wood at a 45-degree angle. Unfortunately the blade was not big enough to cut through our 7.5-inch tall baseboards…which we learned the hard way. The saw only cut through about 6 inches of the board and then we manually cut the rest with a tiny baby saw called a coping saw. I wouldn’t recommend this process but we didn’t have any alternative.

This step was confusing because we had measured the wall but didn’t know HOW to account for the 45-degree cut at the end. After a bunch of trial and error, we figured out where to cut the boards to create nice looking corners. Not all of our corners are perfect, but hopefully our friends and family won’t be crawling around looking for slight gaps at each corner. Plus, step # 4 mostly made up for this problem

Step 3: Nail the suckers in

We bought an AWESOME new, light-weight nail gun for this project, instead of renting an old, big, heavy one from the hardware store. It is so much easier to use and got the job done so fast. We nailed the baseboards into studs located behind the wall. We were lucky there were studs integrated into the plaster/brick walls, otherwise we’d have to use liquid nails which is a fancy word for super sticky glue, which is a lot more stressful to work with. We used our feet to push the baseboard close to the wall, then nailed those suckers in!

Step 4: Caulk the seams and edges

To hide any gaps, Jeremy used his trusty caulk gun to caulk the seams and edges along the top and corners of the baseboards. At each corner, he applied caulk BEFORE nailing it in place, to achieve a fully sealed-looking corner. For those corners that did not achieve a perfect 90-degree angle, I applied wood filler in the gaps to manually create the look of a sharp corner.

Step 5: Put wood filler in nail holes and any dings, then sand

To make the baseboards look flawless, I crawled around filling all the nail holes and dings with wood filler. Baseboards are not made from solid wood–they’re super light weight so they’re easy to handle but they ding at the slightest touch! The wood filler dries very quickly, then I sanded it flat to create a smooth surface

Wood filler in the nail holes, before I sanded it flat

Step 6: Paint, then paint again!

We applied two coats of super white paint in semi-gloss. and BAM, we suddenly have a livable space.

We’ve been sanding the trim around our two windows, and Jeremy is cobbling together a new set of window trim for a window in the back of the house from scraps we saved during demo. I’ll post more on that once it’s done. For now, keep your fingers crossed for a productive weekend that will end in me sitting on a couch!

Rage and tears on move-in day

We interrupt your regularly scheduled and curated DIY content to give you some real talk about home renovations: it is hard and stressful and anxiety-ridden. Today I’m going to be honest about some of the harder aspects of our renovation, especially in light of the fact that we moved out of Liz and Harry’s house before Christmas and have settled into our half-finished home.

We decided to move into our house after one bedroom and the guest bathroom were fully finished and our kitchen was almost fully installed. We moved in the week of Christmas and spent two nights in our home before traveling for 5 days to visit friends and go to a wedding in other states. When we arrived back to our house after 5 days away, I immediately lost my shit and burst into tears. You see, we have worked on our house almost every day since August 15th, but we always had Liz and Harry’s warm and welcoming home as a safe-haven to retreat to each night. I feel like we have pushed ourselves out of the nest and barely know how to fly . But we wanted to move into our home when it became livable so now was the time.

In addition to feeling scared to live in a half-finished construction zone, I’m extremely upset with a major purchase we made that is impossible to un-do. I am fully unsatisfied with our new hardwood floors. I cannot believe how easily they dent and scratch. I feel rage pumping through my body every time I notice a new dent (which is constant), yet we are stuck with the floors now that they’ve been installed and our kitchen was placed on top of them. The hard learned lesson that I impress upon all of you is NEVER to buy Birch floors. We had told the salesman our two priorities when selecting our new flooring were price and durability. He sold us garbage and I will never forgive him! But now I need to learn to embrace the “distressed” and scratched look, because it will be that way for the rest of time.

Finally, I am realizing that my beloved blue kitchen cabinets that I hand painted are very susceptible to dings and scratches. Cue more rage flowing through my body. I thought the expensive Benjamin Moore Advance paint (which is specifically marketed for painting cabinetry) would be durable enough but it is obviously not. So now I need to remove all the doors and hardware, and cover with a polyurethane seal. I’d prefer to wait until spring when the weather is warmer but then I run the risk of many more dings and scratches that would need to be painted over. UGH UGH UGH!! All I can say it thank GOD Jeremy has such a positive attitude, because if we were both miserable about these issues, our household would not be a happy place.

Besides being scared to live in an unfinished home and feeling frustrated at the floor and cabinets, I’m proud to say that our house looks pretty incredible. It’s only half done, but we have really brought it such a long way since we purchased it in the summer. We have a ton of work to accomplish this month, including installing the baseboard trim around the first level of the house, installing the toilet, sink, walls, and paint the soon-to-be new powder room, and put up walls and a ceiling in the back bonus room. Every week there is progress, and I have to keep reminding myself to control the tears and rage and look on the positive side.

The staircase makeover

before and after

Our staircase has undergone a major makeover. When we bought the house, the stairs were looking a little droopy– it was pulling away from the wall at each step to reveal a half inch gap at each tread, plus some treads were loose. The post and banister were extremely wobbly to the touch and clearly could not support someone leaning on it. Further, the wood steps looked pretty rough, and the banister and post had been worn down almost to raw wood. To make matters worse, someone wrote on the gorgeous post in sharpie (why!?) and the sealant was all bubbly and discolored.

20181102_124952 — Before: faded, worn down, and sad!

Someone defiled the beautiful post with sharpie!

20181110_154942 — The 1/2 inch gap at each tread due caused by drooping stairs.

We knew we wanted the original stairs to be a beautiful statement piece immediately upon entering the home, so we got some quotes from floor refinishers on how much it would cost to fix her up. Let me tell you–it is NOT cheap. The estimates ranged from $3800 to pure insanity. These companies claim that it’s super expensive to refinish banisters and spindles, and recommended painting the whole thing white. We did NOT want to sacrifice the beautiful wooden details on our staircase, so we decided to tackle the project ourselves!

Task 1: Fix wobbly post and loose treads

Jeremy used a nail gun to literally nail the wobbly post back into a secure, immobile position. It was much easier than we expected. Our plan B that we didn’t resort to would have required us to install an L-bracket and cover it with baseboard molding like this:

Image result for stair post brackets

He also nailed the lose treads down so they don’t wobble on each step anymore! With just several nails, he was able to stabilize the entire staircase and avoid many thousands of dollars of work that several contractors had quoted us! The lesson here is ALWAYS try a simple fix first, before shelling out the big bucks.

Task 2: Re-stain banister and posts

We decided to remove what remained of the original stain and start over, to ensure consistent color throughout the entire banister and 3 posts. First, we stripped the stain off using Citristrip (which is a horribly messy process). Then we conditioned the raw wood to prepare it to take on the new stain. Then we applied to new stain (in red mahogany) in two coats. Finally, I applied four coats of polyurethane to seal the whole thing up. At this point in October, we haven’t turned the heat on yet to avoid construction dust infiltrating our HVAC system, so it took a long time for each step to dry properly.

The freshly restored banister after the stain and 4 coats of polyurethane dried!

Task 3: Paint stringer and spindles

Unfortunately, it is simply too labor and time intensive to re-stain the spindles and wall stringer (a.k.a. the baseboard), so we have decided to go the route that many renovated row houses in DC do and paint them white. We will still have the beautiful wooden panel below the staircase in all it’s original stained-wood glory. These are the difficult trade-offs that we have to make since we are trying to do most of the work ourselves. We primed and painted the baseboard trim, wall stringer, and the spindles to match the rest of the trim in our house (Benjamin Moore Super White). We were careful to not paint the steps white, but didn’t worry TOO much since we knew they’d be sanded and refinished the next week.

We don’t look happy because painting spindles is NO FUN

Task 4: Paint wall

Around the same time, we painted the wall a beautiful dark blue. We decided to go with Champion Cobalt–a gorgeous deep blue that will also be the color of our kitchen cabinets. I had studied Emily Henderson’s rules for incorporating “Modern Victorian” style into my home, and I think I *nailed it* with this deep, moody blue.

Newly painted wall, spindles and stringer (baseboard).

I painted the small, triangle-shaped wall under the staircase after we moved into the house, and Olive thought she could help somehow.

img_3568 (2) — We plan to install the baseboard trim next week

Task 4: Refinish steps

After completing the above steps, we had the treads and risers professionally refinished to bring them back to their glory. We had them stained red mahogany to match the banister and post. We decided not to refinish the floors ourselves for various reasons, but I’ll always wonder if we could have done it ourselves with the same lovely result.

Our beautiful staircase has come back to life!

Task 5: Caulk the gap

We don’t know if we need to caulk the gap at each step anymore, as it is no longer such an eyesore. Perhaps we will wait til the spring to decide what to do.

The gap at each step is still there but somehow less obvious

For now, we LOVE our staircase. It was worth the work to refinish it ourselves, and will hopefully bring beauty to this house for another hundred years.

Painting our kitchen cabinets

For our kitchen, we bought the cabinet frames from IKEA to keep the budget under control, but opted to purchase the door fronts from a higher-end vendor called Semihandmade. I had discovered this company a year ago and was so intrigued by their business model. They design high quality, real-wood doors that exactly fit all IKEA kitchen cabinets, for clients who want an affordable kitchen from IKEA but desire a higher-end, more custom look. We opted for the DIY option, which meant they’d delivered raw, unfinished cabinet doors that we could paint whatever color we desired. This option was appealing for several reasons: 1) obviously the budget–it was the least expensive product they sell and 2) I didn’t love their color options (they only had about 10 color options that were all very neutral) and was interested in picking the PERFECT color that was just right for me.

Well let me tell you, painting these doors was a WAY greater endeavor than I could have expected. I had read blog after blog of other women who had painted the DIY cabinets themselves but no one ever mentions how time consuming it is, or how heavy these doors are! I opted to apply one layer of primer and then two layers of color. But since I could only paint one side at a time, that was essentially 6 rounds of spray painting. We decided to use a paint sprayer instead of a brush for a more even application of the paint.

We received the cabinets on November 9th, and had until December 12th when our kitchen was scheduled to be installed to finish all six rounds of spraying. We were limited to days when the weather was not windy, rainy, or snowy (since the spraying was in the back yard), and of course we had to start before 2 PM to beat the early winter sunset. We had less than 5 weeks. Could we make the deadline? We sure were going to try!

November 11: I borrowed the paint spraying gun from our trusted handyman and set to work on the first round of primer. I set up our two saw horses with 2X4s and immediately realized I would need a WAAAAAY larger staging area to paint all 37 individual pieces of wood doors, trim, and panels.

After a LOT of troubleshooting, I started the first round with primer in the sprayer. I had to get the top of each door, plus the sides. The paint sprayer was a bit fussy and sometimes shot out a large glob of paint. To avoid this, I added water to thin the primer. It took me about an hour to do all 37 pieces, and I cursed SO many times I was afraid of what the neighbors thought. But I learned a lot that first round. We brought the doors inside after a few hours to finish drying.

November 19: I did the same set-up and spray painted the other side of each door with primer. This time was a bit easier since I had already painted the edges, I only had to cover the tops of each piece this time. Plus I applied the lessons I learned in the first round: thin the primer a lot so it’s almost the consistency of whole milk; hold a paper towel below the nozzle to catch those hated paint drips; never let the canister reach near-empty levels.

November 21: I had the day before thanksgiving off of work and thankfully the weather was a sunny 48 degrees, so I hauled each piece into the back yard yet again for the first round of color application! We selected Benjamin Moore Advance Paint, which is meant for kitchen cabinets–it’s a more expensive paint but it dries extra hard for added durability and longevity. I selected the same dark blue color as our staircase wall, Champion Cobalt, so that once the kitchen is installed, the entire south wall of our home will be the same color.

November 24: On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, my aunt and uncle came over and, like champs, helped to sand down any bumps and paint drips on the doors. Unfortunately some paint dripped down the sides during my previous application and resulted in small pools of paint along the edges. Cardinal and Joanie are professional handymen on boats in Annapolis, so they arrived just when I needed them the most: Cardinal showed me how to sand down the doors while Joanie carefully sanded and cleaned them off. They also helped us move 30 sheets of plywood from the curb into our house (god bless them)!! They worked in beast mode the entire time and I could truly see the Surette genes in action (we hate to slow down and are constantly cleaning things).

Cardinal and Joanie carefully sanding each piece

My amazing aunt and uncle carried all our plywood up the stairs for us!

Luckily, this was the FINAL application for the 2 huge pieces and the 6 long skinny pieces, since I am only painting one side of them (they will be screwed into place so we’ll never see their undersides). There are two more applications to go for all the remaining doors. Unfortunately it’s starting to get cold and windy, which means i’ll be spraying outside then quickly bringing them inside to dry for the last two rounds.

November 28: On Friday, the weather was clear and a warm 48 degrees so I took off work and sprayed the remaining cabinets that need a second coat. Unfortunately, my previous spraying technique resulted in highly annoying and ugly drips of paint that dried in small mounds on the edge of some doors. I was not a happy camper. To remove the dried paint bumps, we had to sand, sand, sand down the drips (huge shout out to my friend Elizabeth who helped with 2 hours of sanding on Thursday night!).

For this 5th round of spraying, I implemented a new technique where I sprayed 6 doors at one time (the max amount that would fit on the saw horses), then quickly used a foam brush to gently wipe the side edges of each door to remove any excess paint. Then we walked the doors inside our house and laid them out on long pieces of wood to dry overnight. This technique worked SO much better and the next day we happily discovered no cursed paint drips to sand off. Allowing them to dry inside helped avoid small pieces of grass, leaves and other natural debris from landing on the cabinets.

Friday December 7: Realizing we had less than a week left to finish the last round of painting and allow for adequate dry time, I did the last coat on Friday before leaving for a weekend away. This time I was HYPER efficient and whipped through all the doors as fast as I could. Unfortunately it was freeeeeeeezing cold and my fingers turned bright pink, but I survived and so did the doors! Huzzah!

Now that I am finally done with this gargantuan effort, I simply CAN NOT WAIT for them to be installed this week! We hired a company to install our kitchen for us because we aren’t completely insane and realized we needed help. After this painting saga, I’m not even sure if I like this color any more, but once they are installed I’m sure I will love them in all their glory!

Tips for anyone thinking about spray painting your kitchen cabinets:

Benjamin Moore Advance paint is designed for kitchen cabinets, but you need to wait a looooooong time for it to fully dry before touching or moving it. I would recommend a full 24 hours at least–during this time do not stack the doors or allow them to touch each other.
Try to set up 2X4s or something else for the doors to sit on as you paint and do NOT move them after they’ve been painted. We didn’t have this luxury but it would be best to keep them where they are after spraying to avoid touching the wet paint. I also noticed after I moved the doors away from the spraying area and onto a drying area that sometimes paint had dripped to the bottom where I couldn’t see it and then dried in and stuck to the surface on which it was drying (which brings me to my next point).
Remove any excess paint from the edges of your doors immediately after spraying with a foam brush. This will avoid paint from pooling and drying in bumps along the edge of your cabinets.
Spray paint in a garage or covered space if possible–little pieces of grass, leaves, and general nature debris would blow into my yard and get on the doors as they dried. I wish we had a covered place to spray paint but unfortunately we don’t.
Do your cabinet painting in the spring or fall! It was probably too cold to do it in November and December, but we had not choice. Paint drys better when the temp is above 50 degrees.
Think about where you will put your doors to dry and after they are dry to wait before installation. We moved these heavy doors around almost every room of our house two times during the last month during different phases of the entire home’s renovation, which was not fun (especially the long pieces).

Would I do this again? Not sure–it was a TON of work and I couldn’t spend that time on other renovation activities. Paying a professional would have cost a lot more but the finished product would presumably have fewer imperfections. Am I happy with the outcome? Yes, I’m feeling very accomplished and trying to embrace the small imperfections. Hopefully only I will notice them so please don’t point out any blemishes on my cabinets when you come to visit!

My life as a drywall expert

Two months ago, Jeremy and I installed drywall for the first time in two bedrooms. It was a true learning experience, and thankfully now we are able to put that knowledge to use!

The main floor of our house has gone through EXTENSIVE changes in the last month: We removed all the plaster from the walls and demolished the fake chimney, hired a company to remove the load bearing walls and replace with a single column and 3 support beams, had a team of four electricians rip out all the old wiring and install new wiring + recessed lights + light switches + outlets. The main floor is finally ready for us to close in all the open walls, beams, and column.

We need to close in all the open beams and columns with drywall

Last Monday, I got to work measuring the 4 sides of the support column, making sure to cut out square holes for the light switches and outlets. I felt SO proud of myself for getting it correct on the first try! Jeremy installed each side like a pro as I moved on to measuring and cutting the next side, until the entire thing was closed in!

open column framing with newly wired switches and outlets

My measurements were PERFECT

Measuring and cutting the drywall

Jeremy installed the first side while I moved on to measure and cut the next side

Installing the last side of the column!

By the end of the day, we had successfully closed in the column and were feeling very proud of ourselves!

The next day we tackled the slightly more complex job of the beams. In no time, the first beam was covered!

Successful closing of the beam! Please ignore all the crap around the room.

We are waiting to finish the other beam because the electrician needs to come back tomorrow to fix a tiny problem with a dead light switch. In the meantime, we hired a handyman to compound all the seams closed and the next step (hopefully this weekend!) is to start painting the walls!

Refreshed from vacation and hyper-productive

It’s been one week since we returned from our fabulous vacation and SO much has happened in the house.

For the first time in a long time, I feel calm and in control of the next few weeks. We know exactly what we need to accomplish between now and December first. The list is long and highly aspirational but at least it lays out our plan.

Meanwhile, last week the DC government came to the house and inspected all the work we’ve done so far and gave us the green light to keep going with our MASTER PLAN! Next week a company is going to remove the load bearing wall that goes the length of our main level. We were told we could save $3-4K if we did all the demo work ourselves—by demo I mean removing all the plaster/lath/drywall on top of the studs in the wall. So dammit, remove it we did! Of course we had tons of incredible and much-needed help from friends (thanks to Julian and Matt for channeling your brute strength to smash through all the walls) and stripped all the walls bare in just two days! Unfortunately, demo produces a LOT of garbage. In just two days, we filled 3 Bagster dumpsters (with a combined capacity of 9,000 pounds)!

We demolished the walls on the first floor, to be removed professionally next week

Julian went to town on that wall!

Matt literally smashed this wall to bits in only 2 hours!

Three huge garbage bags hanging out on our parking pad

Our house came with a fake fireplace. We knew it was fake and assumed it was just a thin brick façade. Turns out it was actually a full-sized fireplace made out of genuine (heavy) brick—except it was not connected to the adjacent chimney and therefore completely inoperable. Jeremy destroyed it with a small jack hammer while Matt and I helped him carry them out of the house. Cute enough, a previous owner had installed a fake log with a built-in light bulb (for warmth?). All of this work has helped to expose several square feet of living space that had previously been occupied by a useless pile of bricks.

Jeremy used a handheld jackhammer to destroy the fireplace

Tons of old bricks…what should we do with them?

Cute lil DIY log from the fireplace

On Sunday, our friend Lauren came over and helped us think out plans for our kitchen remodel. Always invite your architect friends over on the days you are finalizing plans for a kitchen remodel. She also helped us yank all the nails out of the window and door trim that we want to re-use. After marking on the floor where we envision the new island, we took a field trip the greatest place in the world.

It took us a few minutes to figure out this tool, but eventually we got it to work for us

We are pulling the nails through the back side of the wood so we can re-use the original trim around windows and doors

IKEA!

We are designing our kitchen using the frames of Ikea’s kitchen cabinets but covering them with the beautiful doors from SemiHandmadeDoors. Their doors are heavier, thicker, and more customizable than the options at Ikea, but still in the mid-level price range. And lucky for us, Ikea is having their annual kitchen sale in two weeks!

I love Ikea. It’s like a playground for adults—with meatballs!!

Progress in the bedrooms!

Soooo many activities happening in the house right now. We hired our favorite handyman to help out over the weekend because, let’s face it, we move really slow. He helped us add outlets in all the bedroom and change the location of the lighting fixtures on the ceiling. In prep for putting up drywall, we had to carefully pry all the old, beautiful, heavy wood trim off every window and doorframe. We hope to refinish and reuse the original trim because you can’t find that kind of high quality real wood anymore.

We started to pry off the beautiful door trim so we can re-use it after the walls are done.

20180909_133438 — Work always goes faster when friends come to help!

Jeremy and his buds and I started putting up drywall. The bedroom already looks so much better. We bought a drywall lift to assist us to hoist up the drywall and it was a lifesaver. This thing costs $130 on Amazon, compared to renting from Home Depot for $45 per day. We know we’ll get a lot of use out of it as we put drywall up in all the bedrooms. We also bought these cute little guys to help us put up vertical drywall on the walls.

Hoisting up that heavy piece of drywall

Alan and Chris came to save the day!

Starting to close up the closet wall

Loving these little drywall lifting tools!

Drywall is heavy and awkward to maneuver but the lift helps a lot. No room is perfectly square or rectangular, and our old walls and ceiling aren’t perfectly flat or level. Installing drywall requires lots of patience and measuring to get the piece the exact right size. Plus we need to cut out spaces for light fixtures, ducts, closet openings, etc. The process is slow but we are learning as we go. One painful lesson we learned and and tip I would share with anyone doing their own drywall is to purchase a single sheet and test it in your home before buying 30-50 sheets. We didn’t do this, and learned the hard way that the extra long size we bought was too long to fit up our staircase…now we are stuck with 45 heavy huge pieces of drywall that we must manually cut to downstairs before installing upstairs. I’d also recommend buying less than you think you’ll need because it’s just so big and heavy that disposing of excess when the project is over will be a huge headache.

I’ve also been smoothing out imperfections in the plaster wall in the master bedroom. We’ve decided to keep two of the existing walls as plaster and not cover them with drywall because they’re in pretty good shape and plaster has so much more character. Unfortunately one wall had taken quite the beating so I’ve been filling holes with joint compound.

Before: Lots of damage to repair in the plaster walls

There have been continual delays in turning on the HVAC system that I won’t go into too much detail on—suffice it to say that our contractors are all annoying in their own special ways. All that’s left is installing two outlets in the attic and then they can turn on the air!

All this demo and construction has produced a ton of debris, and we had been piling up old pieces of wood, trim, bags of plaster, and any other construction garbage in the bonus room/addition on the first floor. We discovered this awesome pop-up construction dumpster at Annie’s Ace Hardware in petworth. For only $130, this company picks up the dumpster from your house and hauls it away. It can hold up to 3,000 pounds! Unfortunately with this hurricane coming toward the east coast it meant I had to load it up in the rain on Sunday, but at least now we have our bonus room back!

My fearless mother helping load the dumpster during the start of the great rains

Exactly how do you remove radiators, anyway?

Our HVAC system is almost fully installed! We are so excited to turn on some A/C in this house! It has been very frustrating dealing with our contractor! Starting all this work in the hottest and muggiest month of the year has resulted in some unpleasant working conditions, and we are so looking forward to cooling off a bit. We decided to install a mini-duct HVAC system, which takes up significantly less room than traditional HVAC systems–here you can see the small ducts that we plan to hide behind a little wall that we framed. We have to wait for the city to inspect the system before we finish the wall with drywall.

Mini ducts squished behind a mini wall we are building to hide the duct work

Our new HVAC system left us with 8 defunct radiators and a huge boiler in the basement to dispose of. Our radiators are huge — each weighing in at over 400 pounds of cast iron. They are connected throughout the house by iron pipes that weave between floors and walls and ceilings. We were afraid we’d have to cut into the (soon to be refinished) wood floors to remove the pipes. Apparently cast iron used to be highly valuable and junk haulers would pay homeowners to remove them to exchange for cash at scrap yards. Due to changes in the global economy, cast iron is essentially valueless now. So we couldn’t figure out who to hire at a reasonable price to take these damn things out of our house!

So how exactly do you remove a huge, heavy radiator? It took a while to figure out how to remove them and who could haul them away, but Jeremy finally found a solution! Jeremy removed the radiators from the pipes by using a huge wrench and/or cutting it free with a reciprocating saw. Then he simply turned the pipe that was sticking up through the floor to detach it. It took a four men and two trucks to haul away all that cast iron, but they’re finally gone!

You can see the small hole where the pipe use to come out of the floor.

My hero admiring his handiwork

Don’t mind the mess behind the radiator, it will soon be covered in a new wall!

A crew of four dudes hauled away the radiators and boiler for the meh price of $550.

Unrelated: Our basement is quite content acting as a storage unit for all our possessions as we crash at Liz and Harry’s place this month. I realized I never shared how we cleaned it out. After searching high and low, we simply could not find a company to clean out our truly filthy basement. So god dammit, we did it ourselves! Jeremy and I wore ventilators and went to work sweeping and vacuuming all the dirt and cobwebs from the basement. We even had to scrap the floor to remove some mud that flowed in during a rain storm (we think we fixed the water issue for now). It’s still not my favorite place to spend time but it’s better than before.

View from the basement

Basement storage

We moved! And we started to build a closet!

This week we moved out of our beloved apartment. In order to get a mortgage for our new home, we had to rent out our Columbia Heights apartment starting September 1st. The timing is far from ideal but it’s what we have to work with. So we took a break from fixing up the house to pack up all our stuff and move on Friday. Unfortunately our movers were delayed by many hours and the crew finished moving our stuff at 1 AM on Saturday morning.

We decided the best plan is to move our stuff into the basement of our new house and live a nomadic life for the next few months until the house is in a better condition. Our amazing friends have offered to let us stay with them for a few weeks. We have precisely three weeks until we leave for vacation in Iceland and Germany, so it’s GO TIME!

On Sunday, we went forth and framed a wall! The area that we previously destroyed is being reborn as a larger walk-in closet. After watching some DIY tutorials on youtube (I highly recommend this one from Nils the Carpenter), we rented a nail gun and got to work! It took three power tools and 6 hours, but we managed to remove the existing studs and put up new framing for the closet.

Honestly, it wasn’t too difficult. We framed two simple, straight walls without any obstructions in the way (like pipes or HVAC ducts) so it was a great beginner-level framing project.

I’m living for that beautiful sunbeam through our newly framed closet

The view from the other side

Look at that huge closet!

Jeremy removed the mystery metal tank!

I’m realizing as we’ve tackled two major projects so far that everything is going to take longer than we expect, especially at the beginning. We literally wasted an hour trying to make the nail gun function and figure out why the circular saw only cut 3/4 through the stud before inexplicably stopping. As we finally got the hang of things and got into a groove, we were done with the wall!

We rented a compressor nail gun from Annie’s Ace Hardware in Petworth for 30 bucks. The people who work there are SO helpful and knowledgeable. I’d recommend Ace over Home Depot any day.

On Monday, we ripped out the remaining trim in the bedrooms upstairs and detached the radiators in prep for putting up drywall later this week. Before the drywall goes up, Jeremy plans to install more electric outlets in each room and change up some of the lighting.

I mustered up enough bravery to try the nail gun

Using a reciprocating saw to take these studs down

Removing the mysterious metal cylinder that was tucked behind the original closet

Using a circular saw to cut the 2X4s down to size

Sawing the shit outta this wood

Nailing the frame together

I’d also like to point out that we still don’t have A/C yet! The process of installing the HVAC and upgrading our electric panel has taken much longer than we expected it to, but hopefully by this Friday we will be able to turn the system on!