Kitchen Renovation: Part 9 – Floor Installation
Our kitchen floor will have two surfaces – hardwood floor (extending from our dining room) and tile. The mix of flooring is to address the problem that the door in…
hardwood flooring
New Basement Stairs: Part 3 – The Railing
Once the stairs themselves were finished, I still had to sort out how to build the handrail. I knew that I wanted it to match the style of what I…
New Basement Stairs: Part 1 – Opening the Stairs
When we opened the dining room, we wanted to also widen our basement stairs. But at that point we thought that we would have to reroute our radiator pipes, so…
Kitchen Renovation: Part 3 – Materials
Once we had our contractor on board, it was time to advance our kitchen project and start making some big decisions. With our general design nailed down, we could now…
Load-Bearing Wall: Part 6 – Patching Hardwood
After we removed the dining room wall, we were left with a small trench in the hardwood flooring where our wall used to be. We were planning on waiting to…
Load-Bearing Wall: Part 5 – Removing the Wall!
I’ve had a hate-hate relationship with the wall in our dining room since we moved in. Even though we managed to make it slightly less ugly, my issue was with…
Second Floor Final Reveal
It’s been two years since we bought our house and it’s amazing how much has changed. In addition to our downstairs renovation, we have now completed our upstairs renovation. We…
Stair Upgrade: Part 2
Once the floors were finished, we were ready to finish our stair upgrade. Handrail During our design, we determined that both the handrail and baserail would be exactly 2½” wide.…
Master Bedroom Closet Renovation
The major change (or one of the major changes) in our upstairs renovation was the installation of a new closet in the master bedroom. The reason we started this project…
Basement Renovation: Part 3 – Furnace v. Boiler
The only major scope creek that we had during our basement renovation was our decision to change from forced air (a furnace) to radiant heat (via a boiler). We made…
Stair Upgrade: Part 1
We originally planned to hire someone to come and rebuild our stairs – both in the basement and the handrail on the second floor. But as our basement work progressed,…
Replacing Hardwood Upstairs: Part 2 – Demolition of Back Bedroom and Hallway
Once the master and middle bedrooms had subfloors installed and were painted, we moved into those rooms and started demolishing the hardwood floor in the back bedroom and hallway. Removing…
Replacing Hardwood Upstairs: Part 1 – Master and Middle Bedroom Demolition
The upstairs floors were generally in better shape than they were downstairs. There were, however, a few problem areas that looked like they fell victim to water damage. Given how…
Renovating the Second Floor: Let the Fun Begin!
It’s been almost a year since we completed our living room/dining room renovation. We finally have a social life again, we can relax in the evenings and on weekends and…
First Floor Reveal
It’s been a year since we bought our house and a lot has changed. We’ve replaced our electrical wiring, fixed our fireplace, replaced our hardwood floor, painted the walls, installed…
Vestibule Tile Installation
Our front door has a small vestibule. It was originally covered in tile, but when we replaced our hardwood floor we took this nasty blue tile out. We opted to…
Replacing Hardwood: Part 8 – Sanding and Finishing
Alex and I are tired. Over the last few months, we poured concrete, tore up our floors, built a wall and installed new flooring. With winter definitely here, we were…
Replacing Hardwood: Part 5 – Shimming
After yet another trip to Home Depot with an AutoShare cargo van, we think we have everything we need to start (and hopefully finish) the subfloor. Our house isn’t level,…
Replacing Hardwood: Part 4 – Leveling the Floor
I feel like I’ve read every article and seen every video on installing hardwood flooring. The most common advice I see if that the finished floor is only as good…
Fireplace Renovation: Inspiration
It all started with the floor. We tore up the old hardwood and with it came the stone in front of the fireplace (also know as the hearth). No problem,…