It’s been almost two years since we finished our full home renovation! An upcoming feature of our kitchen renovation on the website Kitchn.com really forced us to look back and think about all the work we did…and it’s still mind boggling that we actually did ALL of it. We really were naïve when we decided to buy a hoarder’s house and renovate it ourselves but maybe that’s the best way to take such a huge gamble. We were lucky to actually enjoy the DIY renovation life and we learned so much along the way. Here’s a summary of what we did and what we learned. Honestly, we did so much work this is really only the tip of the iceberg:

Buying a ‘fixer upper’ aka a hoarder’s house:

In June of 2018 we toured the house and it was a wreck. Somehow we were able to see past all the damage (including a cracked roof beam and water damage on many ceilings) and junk (hello bathtub full of unused condoms) so we put an offer in on the house. In August We closed on the house and immediately had 8 trucks of junk hauled away. Then we got to work cleaning the whole house of the top layer of grime and had the roof replaced.  We spent several weeks cleaning and planning the next few steps of the renovation, which was exhausting. Our first time demolishing a wall was a doozy because it was 100-year old plaster (which was necessary in order to build a walk-in master closet. We also removed the horrible fake wood paneling from a bunch of rooms.

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Starting at the beginning….lots of cleaning, learning to use tools for the first time, and planning the layout

September 2018: We moved out of our apartment and into our dear friend’s extra bedroom (‘for a month’ so we thought…which turned into 4 months). We got to work framing out our master closet which was the first time I ever used a power tool… it seems so cute now in retrospect because I was so scared to touch them and now I can use saws and drills and nail guns in my sleep!

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We carefully removed the original window and door trim (to restore and re-install later) in order to maintain the original character of the 100-year old house. We started installing drywall in the bedrooms and discovered the extremely helpful drywall lift for ceiling installations. Our HVAC system was installed throughout the house so Jeremy closed in the duct work, added a bunch of overhead lights in the bedrooms, and then we finished drywalling the walls and ceilings. Jeremy spent many hours at DCRA trying to get the permit for the structural changes to our first floor.

October 2018: DCRA approved our structural plans so we demo-ed the plaster and lathe over the walls on the main floor of the home. Demo produces a LOT of garbage. In just two days, we filled 3 Bagster dumpsters with about 9,000 pounds of debris. Then a contractor came in and replaced the load bearing walls with three beams and a column. Jeremy demo-ed and removed the fake fireplace brick by brick. We started to plan our kitchen renovation using IKEA’s kitchen planner software

Complete Kitchen Makeover: Much of our kitchen renovation is covered in the Kitchn.com series but I also summarized it here. It took about 4 months and a little under $30,000 to turn our kitchen from a small galley kitchen with a passthrough window a gorgeous open concept with dark blue cabinets, a huge white quartz waterfall island, and so many details that we love.

This was all made possible by removing 2 structural walls and replacing them with three beams and one column. Jeremy and I decided not to do several aspects ourselves due to cost/time/expertise so we called in a company to remove the load bearing wall, an electrician to re-wire some lights and outlets, and a plumber to move the gas and water line for our new appliance locations. Then we got to work! We covered the beam and column with new drywall, which we had become so efficient at that we joked we could do it in our sleep. We ordered our kitchen cabinets from IKEA (and learned from some important mistakes when designing a kitchen that we will not make again!). Our cabinet doors are from Semihandmade, and I decided to paint them myself. I was not prepared for how much work painting those doors would be (and I wrote about it here). We also finished the back sunroom to incorporate it into our new open kitchen & dining room (documented here and here).  

Primary Bathroom: We took an empty room in the back of our house and turned it into the most glorious primary bathroom imaginable—full of marble floors, white quartz counters, matte black cabinets, and bushed brass accents.After demo-ing the fake wood wall paneling and crumbling plaster walls, we called in a professional to ‘rough-in’ plumbing for our new bathroom. Once they were done, it was our turn to finish the space by closing up the walls, installing heated flooring coils, tiling the entire floor and shower, installing a double vanity and linen closet, and installing all the plumbing fixtures.

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Basement

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We tackled the unfinished basement last. When we bought the house, it looked like the scene from a murder mystery….it had a few dangling light bulbs, no outlets, and none of the walls or floors were finished. We applied all of the skills we had learned over the last year and finished the basement ourselves! Like any renovation, the bulk of the time is spent preparing things that are ‘below the surface,’ AKA the plumbing, the electric, and the insulation. Jeremy removed the old broken boiler and cast-iron pipe system. He moved ALL of the dangling plumbing and electric wires that were hanging below the ceiling joists so we could regain those precious few inches of ceiling height. Then we demolished some interior walls and closets, moved the hot water heater to it’s new home under the staircase, re-built the bathroom walls (expanded to allow for more room).  We laid down luxury vinyl tile flooring, refinished the original cast iron bathtub, insulated all the walls and ceiling, and then tackled the gigantic task of drywalling the entire basement (about 800 sq ft of space). Jeremy installed a new toilet, sink, and the original tub, along with some electric baseboard heat so the pipes don’t freeze in the winter.

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Taking care of the little details

Our house came with incredible original trim full of unique details that have been covered in gloppy paint over the years. Before we demo-ed anything, we carefully pried the original trim off the windows and doors and spent hours filling holes, sanding, and stripping off the of layers of paint and stain. We are decided to do all of this because we really wanted to preserve some of the historical integrity of the house. 100-year old homes in DC have so much character, and all of this work to restore and reuse some original pieces will hopefully make our house stand out! Jeremy spent hours restoring the original trim, and I spent many days of my life carefully stripping old layers of paint, sanding, and refinishing the original doors. We refinished the original stairway and banister and I’m so glad we kept them instead of ripping out and replacing with more modern options.

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We replaced the staircase going into our basement! To tackle this task, we decided to keep it as simple as possible. We originally had dreams of building under-stair storage with cute doors, but by the time we hit the 15-month mark on our renovation, we were both so fatigued that we coined the mantra “It’s Just A Basement.” We decided not to kill ourselves on the details and just FINISH the damn thing.

When we bought the house, the basement was unfinished and the staircase was barely holding on. The bottom step broke off, forcing us to leap down to the floor (which my mother hated! Sorry, mom). The railing and post were real wobbly and every time I walked downstairs, I braced myself for impact in case the stairs collapsed.

It took about 13 months of living here and running up and down these steps, but we finally got around to replacing them! We waited to do this project until the VERY end. I wanted everything else in the basement to be finished so that we wouldn’t get dirt or drywall dust or paint all over the new steps….but also because DAMN this task intimidated me. Why? Because steps have angles, they require cutting each step and riser with precision, and because the current staircase was such a deathtrap, I didn’t know if we could make it safe.

Luckily, the three stringers under the old staircase (which are the zig zag looking pieces of wood that support the steps) were in good enough condition to re-use. Otherwise, we would definitely have to have hired a carpenter to make new ones for us, which is not cheap. So here’s how we did it:

First we installed the walls and ceiling that surround the stairs, then painted them. Always try to paint the walls and ceiling before replacing your floors! We did this all over the house and it saved a LOT of time covering and protecting the floors. Then I painted the stringer white while Jeremy reinforced the bottom step by ‘sistering’ new blocks of wood next to the three older pieces. Now it will never collapse! Gravity: thwarted!

Next, we pried off the bottom riser and step using a crow bar. Easy enough. For the risers, we used a primed, 8-inch wide piece of finger jointed wood. We measured from the edge of the step to the wall and made a straight cut! It wasn’t so bad! For the step itself, we used these unfinished steps, which are sold longer and wider than you need so you can cut it to the exact size of your staircase. (Side note: stair cases are like snowflakes, they are made by carpenters to fit your exact home. If your home is like ours, the floors, wall, and ceiling are neither level, nor straight, which makes this next step harder). We measured and cut the width and length of the step using a circular saw. A CIRCULAR SAW? ARE WE NUTS? Yes, we are. Because a table saw would have been infinitely easier but we didn’t want to shell out $200 for a tool we’d need on the very last project of the entire renovation! Jeremy had the genius idea to use a straight stud as a guide, and he managed to rig up all the pieces and use the circular saw to “rip” the steps (rip is a fancy shmancy word for cut a long straight line). Once cut, we nailed them in place using our beloved nail gun, aiming to use as few nails as possible so they wouldn’t be too obvious.

We removed a few steps at a time, so Jeremy would cut outside while I measured inside. We got into a nice productive rhythm. Before we knew it, we had replaced all the steps in a few hours!

A few days later, we installed the post on top of the bottom step. There are many methods and ways to do it—we chose to put the post on top of the step because the floor is concrete and nailing into it is very challenging. We bought this post that came with a block that you nail to the ground, then you plop the post over it. It was not that simple but after a little bit of trial and error, we had our post securely fastened!

I didn’t take any photos of the last few hours of work, but we basically installed and painted the bannister and spindles. Then I applied polyeurethane to the steps to seal them, and BOOM, we were done.

The steps aren’t perfect. But they are strong, they are functional, and they are way better than what was there before! Plus, It’s Just A Basement.

The kitchen is FINALLY complete! I started writing this post a YEAR ago but have waited to share it until now, because renovation delays are very real. Since everyone likes a good before and after shot, here you go:

BEFORE: The kitchen was dirty, dated, closed off (with a pass-through to the dining room) and cramped with the fridge, sink, and stove all in a row along the wall.

AFTER: The huge island is open to the dining room and living room, with blue cabinets and brass accents. The sink is across from the fridge and stove, and the cooktop is gigantic.

Read on for all the juicy details about our kitchen, including the cost at the very end.

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After months of demolishing, prepping, planning, ordering, and waiting, we can finally cook in our home! This kitchen is HUGE, open to the rest of the house, and so fun to cook in.

Preparing the space:

To prepare the space before we planned out the new kitchen, we had to rip out the old kitchen. An engineer drew up our plans and a contractor removed the load bearing wall and installed some support beams.

Then we hired electricians to rewire the electric to where the appliances and lighting  would be. After the electricians finished roughing in our electric work, we were ready to “close in the walls” with drywall. After doing the two bedrooms upstairs, we were easily able to cut and install drywall around the new column, support beams in the ceiling, and the kitchen wall behind the cabinets and appliances.

 

We had to install new flooring BEFORE the kitchen was installed. Sadly, the existing floor was in such bad shape that it could not be refinished. We picked a reasonably priced solid birch floor to flow throughout the entire first floor, including the kitchen. Before it could be installed, we had to install a new plywood subfloor to create an even, flat surface for the hardwood to sit on. We decided to screw down the plywood ourselves to avoid spending $$$ for someone else to do it. Home Depot delivered 35 sheets of plywood to our curb and my awesome aunt and uncle helped us haul it inside (FYI this all happened in November of 2018).

Then Jeremy and I had the joyful task of cutting each piece to fit the entire main floor of our house, and screwing it to the floor with 24 screws per sheet. My knees were aching by the time we were done, but it was worth it when our new hardwood was installed.

Installing the kitchen cabinets:

IKEA delivered about 40 boxes of our kitchen cabinets in November, and the installers started putting together the cabinets in December–it took about a week for them to finish and we are SO GLAD we hired them to do it. We had enough on our plate. We designed our kitchen at IKEA with the help of a kitchen planner, who visited our house and took measurements to ensure the design would fit.

Going with IKEA for our cabinets was truly a budget-driven decision, but we wanted the kitchen to be a showstopping centerpiece of the home. After all, we spent a lot of effort and money removing the walls to create an open concept, so the kitchen would be visible from all vantage points on the main floor. To achieve a more luxurious look, we decided to purchase real wood door fronts for the cabinets from a higher-end company called Semihandmade. I like to think our kitchen is the perfect combo of high-end and low-end finishes.

Read all about the incredible effort that went into painting these beauties here. Just know that using a paint sprayer to paint your kitchen cabinets is not for the faint of heart. You need TONS of outdoor space for painting, tons of indoor space for drying, and lots of patience to repeatedly carry the doors inside and outside as it requires six rounds of spraying with ample drying time in between–I’m talking weeks of work, not hours. These doors have been in every room of our house to dry, and spent lot of quality time in our back yard as well.

The cabinets are a bold blue color called Champion Cobalt by Benjamin Moore, paired with a white herringbone tile backsplash. White subway tile is inexpensive and classic, and the herringbone pattern elevates it to a higher level (but damn, was it hard to install!)

After the cabinets were installed, a countertop company came to measure the tops, then returned a few days later to install it. We selected a marble-looking quartz countertop called Statuary Classique by MSI. We decided to have “waterfall” sides to our countertop, which  means the quartz flows down the side of the island and hits the floor. This added significant cost to the project given the size of the island, but it was something we could justify from saving a lot of money doing most of the work ourselves (a breakdown of all the costs is at the end of this post).

The handles and knobs are from Pottery Barn. I knew I wanted brushed brass fixtures (I am a millennial, after all) but didn’t want anything overly trendy or modern, given the age of the house. These handles are really gorgeous against the blue cabinets and I love how uniquely they’re shaped.

ISLAND

The faucet is by Delta in champagne bronze color, with a matching soap dispenser. We looked for a kitchen sink that could fit into a 30” cabinet with only one bowl. Luckily we both agreed that we didn’t want a two-bowl sink, which some people like but we don’t care for. Our kitchen sink is a 28” steel undermount by Elky. I was much more attracted to the look of a quartz sink but was scared away by horror stories of quartz sinks cracking after people poured boiling hot pasta water down the drain, which was enough to dissuade me. This is probably my biggest regret (or “what if”) about our kitchen design, because I’ll never know if those fears were founded. Either way, our steel sink will NEVER crack and that’s good enough for us.

Over the island, we hung 3 gorgeous Structural Glass Geo pendants by West Elm. Figuring out the correct number and size of the pendants was a real struggle but I think we got it right (our island is HUGE by the way–committing to a 10-foot island was a little scary but it’s really the central cooking, eating, and gathering point of the home). I wanted simple, clear glass pendants with a brass finish. I scooped up these bad boys on sale during Black Friday (last year!!).

One of the first pieces of furniture I bought for this house was the set of three bar stools. They are so comfortable and pretty and I love looking at them!

APPLIANCES

Deciding on appliances is hard. There are SO many options and SO many conflicting opinions and reviews on the internet about brands and models. We have been using our appliances since December of 2018 and so far we love all of them.

Our fridge is by LG. It is so huge and I feel like I’m walking into a spaceship when I open the French doors. It has a secret smaller door for you to grab a quick snack or drink, and it even beeps (in a soft pleasant way) if you accidentally leave the door open. Our microwave is by Ikea and is built into the tall pantry/cabinet. At $700, this thing was NOT cheap so hopefully it will last a very long time. We learned that larger, built-in microwaves are unfortunately very expensive but we didn’t have a lot of counter space along the wall so we knew it had to sit in the cabinet.

Our range is our favorite appliance. We opted for a larger, 6-burner range because we love to cook and knew we wanted it to be the center of the kitchen. It’s 6 inches wider than a standard oven, and man those six inches cost a LOT of money. Most 36-inch ovens were in the $4-6K range, which was WAY over our budget. We opted to go with Zline, a brand that makes range hoods. There weren’t hundreds of reviews on their range, giving the impression that it’s a relatively new product. But it was way more affordable so we took the risk and ordered it anyways. Our hood is also by Zline. You can read about how Jeremy installed it himself here.

We cooked our first thanksgiving meal for our parents in this kitchen last month, and I’m happy to report that the stove worked perfectly, the turkey was fully cooked, and the space functioned exactly as we had envisioned!

COST BREAKDOWN: 

For those interested in costs, here’s a breakdown. We had budgeted a max of $30,000 for the kitchen, and we were extremely happy to come in below that number. We hired tradesmen to do the electric and plumbing work, and a team to install the kitchen cabinets. Besides that, we did all the rest of the labor ourselves (including demo, drywalling and painting the walls before the kitchen was installed, painting the cabinets, and tiling the backsplash), easily saving at least $10,000 in additional labor costs. I didn’t include the cost of floors because they were installed throughout the first floor of the house, nor the cost of removing the load bearing wall.

Labor	Cost
Plumber to move the water and gas lines	$1,600
Electrician to move the wiring in the kitchen, living room, and dining room	$3,200
Installation of cabinets	$3,480
Materials	Cost	Vendor
Cabinet boxes + microwave	$2,174	IKEA (during their kitchen sale)
Door fronts	$2,642	Semihandmade
Paint for door fronts	$300	Ace Hardware- Benjamin Moore
Countertop	$5,615	Granite outlet of maryland
Refrigerator	$2,898	Home Depot
Gas range/oven	$2,549	Zline from Lowes
Hood + accessories	$487	Wayfair
dish washer	$500	Home Depot
Knobs/pulls	$244	pottery barn
Sink	$312	Elky
Faucet + soap dispenser	$443	Wayfair
Garbage disposal	$313	Wayfair
Air switch cover	$18	Lowes
Pendant lights + bulbs	$446	West Elm
Backsplash tile	$280	Floor and decor
Grand Total	$27,501

 

 

 

 

When we started renovating our house last August, the basement was the last thing on our minds. We knew we wanted to eventually finish the basement and make it part of our living space, but it felt very unimportant in light of the massive undertaking the rest of the house required.

All this junk was waiting for us on day 1

In the first month of home-ownership, we needed to accomplish two things in the basement: remove the junk and get a new hot water heater. The previous owner left a lot of ‘stuff’ in the basement (including 8 mattresses and a bathtub full of expired and unused condoms), so a junk hauling company removed it all the day after we closed on the house.

We needed to replace the broken hot water heater in the first month of owning the house. At the time, we told the plumber to place the hot water heater in the same place as the old, one. THIS WAS OUR FIRST MISTAKE! We were overwhelmed by all the house-related decisions we were making in that first month and we didn’t think critically about the type or location of the hot water heater. In hindsight, we should have selected a tankless gas heater instead of the gigantic electric tank we went with, and we would have put it along the exterior wall instead of plop in the middle of the living space! At the time it felt like a huge feat just to get hot water working in the house so we patted ourselves on the back…and then we stopped thinking about the basement for many months.

Then…in January, a general contractor added plumbing for our two new bathrooms upstairs and connected it to the sewer line that’s accessible in our basement. They dug a huge hole in the floor, connected the pipe, and then covered the hole with cement. We started thinking a little be more about how we wanted to use the basement: where should the washer and dryer go? How big do we want the basement bathroom? When we removed the load bearing wall upstairs, we had to put two additional support columns in the basement which presented new challenges for the layout of the basement. We did some thinking and then continued to ignore this space while we finished the kitchen, the bonus room, and the master bathroom.

By the time summer rolled around, it was time to get serious about finishing the basement. It seemed like a huge undertaking since it’s about 600 square feet, including a staircase, the laundry, and a full bathroom. Before we could start making it look livable, we had to fix one huge glaring problem:

All the pipes and electric wires that feed up into the rest of the house were hanging below the ceiling joists. This prevented us from installing a ceiling in the basement because the pipes and wires ran across them. So Jeremy did something I didn’t think a homeowner could DIY: he moved all of the pipes and plumbing himself (except the gas line….for which we hired a plumber).

The old cast iron radiator pipes were hanging reaaaaal low

Jeremy diligently spent the better part of three weeks tinkering away in the basement while I provided emotional support. Well, I did help to remove the old cast iron boiler pipes, but that was it.

To remove the cast iron pipes from the now-defunct boiler system, we first tried to smash the elbows with a hammer and mallet, at the suggestion of our plumber. It was basically impossible, so then we used our reciprocating saw with a metal blade. It worked MUCH easier, but it was LOUD.

Then Jeremy cut the copper plumbing lines that were hanging below the joists and connected them to modern plumbing connections using the Shark Bite brand of plumbing materials. This man learned how to cut, move, and re-establish all the plumbing lines in our entire house by googling it and watching YouTube videos!

He was able to move all the plumbing up into the beam, and run it around the house along the beam in the basement. There was only one or two major hiccups when he forgot to glue two of the connectors together…which we discovered when we turned the water on and it sprayed all over the place. Ahhhh the joys of DIY remodeling.

After Jeremy moved all the plumbing around, we decided it was worth it to move the hot water heater from it’s unfortunate location in the middle of the living space to underneath the stairs. We emptied the hot water tank by hooking up a hose and sending the water outside to an outdoor drain. Then we cut the connection and literally swiveled and danced the hot water heater across the room until it was in place under the stairs. Jeremy hooked it back up to the water lines and voila–we had successfully hidden the hot water heater and reclaimed a large portion of the basement for ourselves!

In my next post, I’ll share how we framed out several walls in the basement and installed electric outlets and ceiling lights, and how we insulated the basement to protect from the cold and sounds from upstairs!

Today we reveal our master bathroom. It took over 8 months, but we finally made it. And It. Is. Glorious. All of our hard work paid off in a huge way, and I am proud to share the work that went into finishing the bathroom.

As a reminder, we started in December by demo-in the existing space, hiring a general contractor to ‘rough in’ the plumbing and electric, laying down the cement board on the floor and putting greenboard on the walls. After that, we painted the walls and picked real marble for our tiles. Then we got to work tiling the floor in a herringbone pattern, but not before Jeremy installed the heated floor! Then we tackled the most intimidating part of the room, which was tiling the stand up shower.

In June, we were finally ready to install the vanity and linen closet! We ordered ours from Ferguson Showrooms instead of buying a pre-fab one because we wanted it to fit the entire room from wall to wall. Basically we ended up placing three separate cabinets next to each other and then installing a countertop over it–just like you’d do in a kitchen. We went back and forth about the linen cabinet because it was not cheap but we wanted it to match the vanity and maximize as much space as possible for storage. We decided to go for it and purchased the linen closet and I REGRET NOTHING. Just look at it! It even has a pull-put laundry basket at the bottom. Form and function never looked better.

The vanity came in four pieces. We had to drill holes in the two sink cabinets for the hot and cold water lines, plus the drain. It took a lot of measuring, a few mistakes (which luckily will be hidden in the bottom of the back of the cabinet under the sink), and these drill bits to cut perfect holes in wood, but we did it!

To install the vanity, we had to address the challenge of the floor being slightly sloped in one direction. We thought we’d be able to shim them but it was proving too difficult. So our friend Chris came over and helped us to screw all three of the vanity cabinets together to create one long piece, then we lifted it over the hot and cold water pipes into place. Pure genius! Then we shimmed it to make it more level, and secured it in place by screwing the vanity to some studs

We hired a handyman cut some filler pieces to fill the gaps on the left edge of the linen cabinet and right edge of the vanity — it was just a few inches of blank space. When designing and installing kitchens and bathrooms, filler is your friend! It’s way better to fill an empty inch of space then for your cabinets to be too large to fit!

We went to countertop heaven in Maryland and selected a remnant of an all-white quartz counter. Hot tip: you can buy leftover pieces at great prices from other people’s countertop projects at  marble and granite yards. And they are really fun to walk around! They installed the counter the next week, including these undermount sinks.

Ok, back to the shower. Jeremy installed this shower system by Delta. Technically the color is called Champagne Bronze but it’s a brushed brass look. I don’t love this product. Our kitchen faucet is also Champagne Bronze by Delta and they both suffer from showing very obvious water spots. I brush them clean about once a week with my towel but it’s still mildly annoying. Unfortunately there are not many affordable options for ANY fixtures in brushed brass, which is why I stuck with Delta. The pictures below show the fixtures how they normally appear with water spots, and after I cleaned them with a towel.

When we tiled the shower walls, we cut holes for the plumbing so Jeremy could attach the fixtures. Our general contractor had to come back to fix one of the roughed-in pipes but luckily we hadn’t closed up the wall behind the bathroom yet so it was easy enough. Then we tested both shower heads in a moment of truth and luckily the shower heads functioned just fine! I was sort of expecting a pipe to burst and flood our entire house, but thankfully we don’t live in a movie and that didn’t happen.

For the glass shower door, we got five quotes from glass companies that ranged from $1900 to $5000. The range of quotes we get is proof that it ALWAYS pays to get at least three quotes. We didn’t want to blow up our budget so we selected the cheapest option (they had many good reviews so we hoped for the best). And they did an EXCELLENT job! We ordered all the shower hardware in satin brass, to match all the hardware in the room.

Here’s a close-up shot of our perfect shower niche

In July, I went away for a girls weekend to the beach, and Jeremy got to work! In just two days, he installed the baseboard and window trim, the faucets and plumbing under the sink, four wall sconces, and the toilet. I married right.

Months earlier, Jeremy had the foresight to plan where the electric wires for the lights should go, so now that he was ready to install the lights, all he had to do was cut a hole and pull the wire through. It worked perfectly for three of them, but the fourth wire was stuck behind a stud (blarg! so close!). He did some adjusting and cut a few holes in the drywall and the stud, but eventually he pulled it through and installed all four lights.

We purchased our wall sconces from Amazon and they are beautiful. I actually bought 4 different styles and brands of light, and this one by far was the best in terms of quality, and at such a great price. I won’t go over the inner struggle on selecting a style, but suffice it to say that picking one light from an infinite pool of possibilities is difficult. I didn’t want everything to be too ‘matchy-matchy’ but I also wanted it to look a designer who knew what she was doing was involved. I think this one is juuuuuust right.

The mirrors are actually medicine cabinets! They are huge, so they fit tons of stuff, and they are pretty! The faucets are also from Amazon, by a lesser known brand called Symmons. Again, finding ANY faucet in brushed/satin brass was proving to be a small fortune, to the point where I was going to give up and get one in black. Until I stumbled upon this brand. They sell several brushed brass faucets at a fraction of the price of the established brands.

The cabinet pulls are a slightly cheaper version of some beautiful and more expensive ones I originally bought. They look almost the same and you can’t tell the difference once they were installed. I bought this template to and followed this guide on how to drill holes for the cabinet hardware and it worked like a dream.

We decided not to install any window treatments, but rather frosted the bottom half of the window for privacy. And we luckily don’t have back-door neighbors! We painted the walls the same color as our hall bath, Sleigh Bells by BM, and it brings some much needed color to an otherwise black, white, and gray room.

Our bathroom is everything I hoped it would be. It was so difficult making all of the design choices. I was nervous that it would look wrong, or things wouldn’t match, or it would look like someone who didn’t know how to design a bathroom obviously did this one. But it looks amazing and I couldn’t be happier. Jeremy did so much work to do all the final tasks and finishing touches. I am so lucky that he knows how to AND enjoys doing both plumbing and electric work!

For reference, this bathroom cost us just over $11,000 in materials, and we easily saved over $20,000 in labor costs by doing it ourselves. Purchasing slowly over the course of eight months definitely helped to soften the blow of such expensive materials. We are hoping that the quality of the materials plus the addition of a new sweet-ass, baller master bathroom will increase the value of our home to make it worth it. But even if it doesn’t, my love for this room and the amount of happiness I feel when I’m in it is worth every penny.

Somehow an entire year has passed since we closed on the house and started the most challenging, rewarding, and time-consuming undertaking of our lives. We haven’t posted on the blog in a while because frankly, we are just too busy working on the house! But the good news is we see the end in sight. We finished our master bathroom (a reveal post is coming up shortly), and we’ve started doing a TON of work on the basement. But today I’m going to pause and think about all that we’ve learned in case anyone reading this is thinking about doing a similar DIY home renovation.

So what have we learned? In no particular order:

Nothing is a simple or fast as we think it will be. But things do get easier over time as we apply new skills over and over. For example, I remember the first time we installed drywall, I was so intimidated that it would be hard, or it would look bad, or we wouldn’t figure out how to do it. Fast forward, after installing it in many, many, many rooms, we can now install drywall in our sleep. We estimate how long a new task will take after googling it and watching a bunch of how-to videos. I usually over-estimate the amount of time it’ll take and Jeremy usually under-estimates it. We faced so many time-consuming delays that we’ve learned to roll with the punches and have a flexible timeline.

Buy all the tools. We started this project with just a few hammers and one lil baby drill. Every time we started on a new task or room, we ended up buying a new tool. Some tools can be rented, but everything is so cheap that buying just made more sense. Keeping the tools organized has been a struggle so we make time about once a month to go around the house, gather all the tools, and organize them into boxes by category. We bought:

• A miter saw, a reciprocating saw, an oscillating saw, and a circular saw
• A random orbital sander
• A nail gun compressor with two different types of guns
• A gun powder actuated nail gun (to drive nails into concrete floors)
• A drill-driver, a hammer drill, and an impact driver drill (all for different uses)
• A ton of drywall tools
• A ton of painting tools like brushes, rollers, poles, drop clothes, etc.

And so much more! The point is, don’t be afraid to buy a new tool and learn how to use it.

Youtube and google are everything. We have learned how to do 95% of our home renovation tasks by googling it. We literally watch videos and read how-to instructions online before buying the tools and taking it on ourselves. A lot of people assume because Jeremy is an engineer and a male that he has done this type of work before. But the truth is, neither of us have done any sort of home renovation work before. Jeremy has always been handy and confident with tools (he could always fix any broken appliance), but we are BOTH learning as we go. Jeremy has a natural inclination for learning how stuff works and why certain methods are best. And I have a natural inclination for reading the instructions. So if you think you can’t do something to fix up your house, just tell yourself that you don’t know how to do it yet, google it, and then try it out. We figure that materials cost 1/3 of a traditional home renovation, while labor costs about 2/3 the total price. We have saved close to $100,000 by doing almost all the work ourselves. Which brings me to my next point.

 

Always get a ton of quotes!! We hired professional help for several aspects of the renovation that we just couldn’t do ourselves. Namely: replacing the roof; installing a brand new HVAC system for the first time; updating the electric box; moving the pluming around in our kitchen; removing and replacing the original gas line in the basement; installing the glass wall in our shower; adding rough-in plumbing and electrical for two new bathrooms; and removing a load-bearing wall. The range of prices that we get quoted are truly mind-boggling. For example, quotes for the glass wall in our shower ranged from $1,900 to $5,500!! For the exact same product! The basement gas line also got an insane range of quotes–from $950 to $10,000!! How is that even legal? It always pays to get at least three quotes, but five is better.

Taking on a full gut renovation is a LOT OF WORK. We did not realize when we committed to this project just how much work we were taking on ourselves. It has really changed our lives in a profound way–we have way less free time to socialize or travel, and we feel that we should be working on the house every evening and weekend. After a year of living like this, we are ready for our lives to go back to normal soon. We always have the option to hire help, but every time we consider the costs and benefits of hiring someone, we decide to keep slugging along at our own pace. This home is a huge investment for us, and we are trying to keep as much money in our pockets as possible to make it worthwhile. A single day of work by a handymen costs around $500! One potential benefit from doing it all ourselves  is we can start investing in properties that need more work–because now we can do the work on our own. This past year has been one long apprenticeship in home renovation/construction, and we will NEVER need to hire a handyman again.

Historic homes deserve love. Our home is 100 years old and luckily had many gorgeous original features intact. We were very careful to keep as many of them as possible, even though restoring them has proven to be incredibly time consuming. For example, all the window and door trim and the staircase banister and railing are original gorgeous solid wood. It took a long time to strip, sand, and paint or stain them back to their glory, but it was so worth it. I’m currently in the midst of restoring all our interior solid wood doors (including removing layers of paint from the hinges and knobs) and let me tell you–its a TON of work. But they are going to last for another 100 years and hopefully bring joy to many people who will live in this house.

Home renovations are dirty, unorganized, and chaotic. Our house still doesn’t feel like our dream home, because it’s full of piles of tools and old doors, an ugly work table and dirty chairs that the previous owner left behind. And honestly, it is always filling with more dust no matter how much I vacuum. Home renovations produce insane amounts of dust and dirt–especially when you demolish plaster walls. The one piece of advice I wish I had known to follow was to cover all our possessions being stored in the basement  in huge plastic sheets. We did not, and as a result we had to dust and vacuum every single thing we owned before moving it upstairs as the bedrooms and kitchen were ready to be moved into. Also we haven’t had time to fully unpack and move into our master closet, even though it’s been done for months! There just hasn’t been time to get organized and decide where we want things to permanently live in our house, so for now it’s just an unorganized mess. You have to be able to embrace the chaos during a DIY home renovation. For example, we had to remove and re-paint 4 cabinet doors in the kitchen due to a shitty paint job, but then the summer was too hot and humid to spray them outside. So we just didn’t have cabinet doors for about 3 months. In conclusion, your house will not look like the big reveal at the end of an HGTV show for a looooooong time. But it’s a process and each day we see progress.

The most work goes into planning and prepping, which is not satisfying at all. The planning part is mental, and includes looking at the existing space and thinking about what the new room will look like, what we will use the space for, and any structural things currently in place like pipes, wires, supporting walls, etc. The prepping part is physical–it includes removing or demolishing any old materials, pipes, wires, and cleaning off or prepping any surfaces for new building materials. Actually installing and finishing floors, walls, ceilings is quite easy once you get the hang of it. The planning and prepping don’t come with the satisfying feeling of making progress, but they are both vital steps!

 

 

There are a TON more that I could add but I’ll stop here.

It has been a whirlwind of a year. When I go back and read some of our earliest posts, I genuinely can’t remember everything we’ve already put into this house. It almost feels like childbirth–I’ve just blocked out the difficult parts so that I can keep on going.

Up next, we plan to finish our basement. It was a scary mess when we bought the house, but we plan to add a ceiling and some walls, paint some of the brick walls, and add a floor. Jeremy has spent so many hours removing or moving the pipes and electric wires so that we can close up the ceiling, and we are almost ready to do it!

But we hope to be finished with the basement by November, and then we can start the fun part–decorating!! We don’t have much furniture of our own in the house besides Jeremy’s loved and hated couch, but we are very pleased to announce that we have found it’s replacement! Once we get the couch, I’m ready to furnish the rest of the living room. I already have a master plan in my heart, but it’ll take a while to make it a reality. Like I said, this is not like an HGTV show with a hard deadline and a big reveal, but rather a slow evolution. In any case, we are ready to take on the last interior space in the basement, and then we will move on to the exterior!

We spent a week in Iceland and Germany with our good friends David and Catherine. It was a much needed break from the house, which was honestly starting to kill me.

Iceland was fabulous. I felt like an animal that had finally been let out of a cage after 2 months of being locked in our construction site. Iceland is a place to enjoy the wonder of mother nature.

We drove all around the southern part of the country and took in some of the most incredible views I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing. The cold air was refreshing and we actually got to see the northern lights!

In Germany, we spent three days partying it up at Oktoberfest in Munich.

Oktoberfest is similar to a state fair except LOTS of beer and sausages. We made friends with some delightful people and came away with these incredible outfits to wear on Halloween for the rest of our lives.

We ended our trip in Berlin, where we learned so much about the fascinating history of this city. We also had a drink at one of the best bars in Europe. All in all, it was a great, restful, fun, and adventurous week that we sorely needed to remember what life can be like without construction looming in the background. Our next big trip will probably be our honeymoon in April, so please send any recommendations our way! I’d like to go glamping in the Amazon but I could be convinced otherwise.