Bathroom Renovation: Closing the Walls
Now for the exciting part! With everything in place behind the walls, it was time to install the drywall, finish installing the subfloor and putting up Kerdi Board where the…
second floor
Christmas 2023
For several years now, we have taken scrambled to complete major renovation projects in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Christmas seems to be a hard and fast deadline that…
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…
Replacing Baseboards on the Second Floor
One of the final steps in finishing our second floor renovation was installing the baseboards. Our floors were installed and finished, our walls were painted and we were ready to…
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,…
Hallway Closet Renovation
We have a tiny little closet on the second floor and we wanted to turn it into a linen closet. It’s a very narrow but deep space, measuring only 20½”…
Painting the Second Floor
When we painted our living room and dining room, we did a lot of research on the brand of paint to buy and the type of finish. We wrestled with…
Building Access to the Attic: Part 2
Installing the Attic Hatch A couple of months ago we installed our new attic ladder. We then had to install an attic hatch. This was probably the most complicated part…
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…
Building Access to the Attic: Part 1
We are fortunate enough to have a pretty kick-ass attic space. It’s totally not usable right now; it’s dirty and there’s no insulation (not that the rest of our house…
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…