Semi-Professional Help

My father in law and his friend came into town a couple days ago and are leaving in the morning bright and early. Is the master bath fully completed?  No. Not by a long shot. But it is at a point where I know what the hell I'm doing. So it's complete enough. See below.  

Two rooms, the formal living and dining room have floors. It can now be arranged and decorated to look like a home!!!!  It has me really excited because it looks really good. See below. The kitchen and den has crown molding again. The doors have been trimmed out as well as one window. 

It's really starting to look like a house. Pretty soon it will be a home. Yay!

Before:

During:

Before:

After:

Lessons from a NEW Homeowner

Lessons for hiring a contractor:

When someone says they found them on Craigslist, JUST SAY NO. Craigslist is 5 years past its prime and is now reserved for lonely hearts and serial killers. 

When you go ahead and hire him and your obnoxiously friendly dog growls at him, fire him. Dogs are the best judge of character in the 'verse. 

If for some reason you decide to stick with it, never, ever agree to any contract that asks for money before the job is done. Even if you are being bullied by the guy into signing, even if the price is really good. Never agree to this. I knew it but for some reason decided to sign anyway. 

If said contractor brings his dog and chains him in your front yard without asking, fire him. Highly unprofessional. I'm a dog person, but if I hired you to do a job, you conduct yourself as a professional and not some guy living in a van down by the river!

If you still decide to stick with said asshat, remember to be kind but firm. If you acquiesce, one time, the asshat will regard you as a pushover forcing you to assert yourself and look likes bitch for standing up for your home. 

We hired this guy to renovate and remodel our master bathroom. We agreed to 14 days and an amount. The payment schedule was broken down as 45% down, 45% upon demo and 10% upon completion. I thought that was a little crazy, but it needed to be done. During this time, he was Tiling the tub in the guest bathroom, and kept finding things he said he would just throw in for free. On day 18, he wasn't finished with the guest bathroom and demo'd the master. I said I wasn't comfortable paying him til at least one was fully completed. We got into a shouting match and came to an agreement that if he finished the guest I would stick with the contract. He hastily finished I paid him and haven't seen him. Today is day 23 and he has told us that he is not coming back and would send us an invoice of the work he provided. We've already paid him 90% of the agreed upon price and only demo'd the contracted work. I'm absolutely livid!  I know I made mistakes in this process, at least 5 as you read above, come on!  He claims I broke the contract and won't tell me how. I did no such thing. 

Luckily, my father in law and his friend are coming down tomorrow, originally to help put in floors, but now to do plumbing, framing, mold eradication, electric, drywall, and pour the slab on top of the sub floor. Then I can paint and we can hire a highly recommended from a trusted source tile guy. Floors will just be put off for another week or so. Which is fine. I'm just upset about the money. 

So for now, to lower my blood pressure, I'm watching Harry Potter and having a few or so Straw-ber-Rita's. 

Project Renovation

 Will and I just moved to Tyler, TX a month and a half ago. While I should have been blogging the whole time about the process, there are snippets on Facebook that show progress. I have way more before pictures right now than after pictures because nothing is fully completed. But it's getting there. Slowly!

This room is the 'man cave.'  

3! Count 'em, 3! Different types of vinyl tiles!  

It is much more finished now, but it is a mess since Will has started claiming it. Thats why there is not a picture of a fully finished room yet. But with furniture and stuff on the walls it definitely looks like a room that is functional. 

The half bath off of the man cave. 

There was only one layer of wallpaper on these walls but it was really glued on. But now it looks like this. 

The laundry room didn't need a whole lot of work, just paint, floors and organization. And a washer and dryer, but that's not a whole lot of elbow grease. 

It definitely has become a whole lot more functional and lived in in the last week. And there's plenty more to do. Add baskets for organization and some pretties on the wall to soften the blankness. 

The kitchen is by far my most favorite transformation. We decided to keep the existing cabinets but update them with a coat or two or four of paint. We changed out the laminate countertops and backsplash for granite and tile. Luckily, the three layers of wall paper up top can off without any effort at all. We literally just tugged and the whole thing came down. 

See what I mean!?!?!?  It looks a thousand times better. It's not quite finished yet. Needs trim and quarter round to finish it off properly but I love it!

The den or family room whatever you want to call it also had a drastic makeover.  It took elbow grease that's for sure and time. We even had to hunt down an AC vent that got covered with drywall and cut it out after the fact, but it was surprisingly easier than expected. 

With all the wood paneling gone, the brass fireplace insert doesn't bother me as much. Still want to do something about it but its not an eyesore any longer. And the red brick balances all the blue instead of having overpowering reddish browns in a main living space. 

The formal living room and dining room didn't have too many before pictures, because well they didn't require a lot of work. Carpets, up and paint on the walls.  But my what a difference it makes. 

These will probably be the last two rooms to be completed because they are the least used. Well right now they are used for storage of items yet to go in rooms that are being worked on. But as you can see I did add some homey touches. 

The hallway to the bedrooms doesn't require much, but pulling up carpet, paint and flooring.  Only two of which are done. But we did change out the light fixture which changed the look and we figured out how to work the switches. Old houses are wired so weird. 

The guest bathroom has been the headache from hell!!!  Plumbing problems, half assed jobs before us and some of our free labor. But look, a dark, dingy bathroom that should be complete one week from today. This room wasn't demo'd properly, so the reno was patching a half assed job in the first place. We put the tile up ourselves in the bathroom and it looked horrible. We did all the other tile in the house and it looked great, but in this tub, we would've had trouble reselling the house later down the road. 

After all the trouble and headaches this room caused we broke down and hired a guy to redo the bathrooms completely. It is definitely more than I want to pay, but then I always only ever want to pay $50 for anything. But what we are paying is an extremely good price for what we are getting. 

Things are progressing and like I said, in one week we will have a fully functional bathroom while the master bath is being done. That one I can't wait for. 

The office is not close at all to being done but is getting there. First person to label that color correctly will win a high five!!

Like I said, still needs a lot of work. 

This the before of our bedroom but all three bedrooms are the same. So when we get to the guest room imagine the same boring as below. 

Now we just need floors and I need to refinish the nightstands and then DONE!

Guest bedroom:

The master bath looks basically the same just in a bit of disarray. But it is definitely being changed by the end of the month.