Goodbye To Our First House

Recently we decided to move Houston to be close to family and so that Jason can go to school in the fall. The past couple of months have been pretty busy; putting finishing touches on the house so that we could put it on the market and get it sold before we need to move this summer.

Before we met with a realtor, we showed the house to a friend who owns a few rental properties in our area. He agreed to buy the house from us directly so that we wouldn't have to pay realtor fees, which is awesome! However, he wants the house NOW, which means that we have to pack up and be out of the house by the end of the month. Fantastic.

Once the sale of our house in Dallas finalizes we're planning to buy one in Houston. For the time being, Jason is still working in Dallas and will live with a friend. I've moved to Houston to find a new job and the critters and I are living with my parents.

My parents love the dog, are indifferent about me, and hate the cat. The next few months will be challenging.

I was looking through house photos to give the realtor when I came across all of the photos Jason took when he first moved in. It's pretty neat to look back on our poor, sad little house and to see how far it's come. Anyways, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share what we've done with the house over the years. A lot of the stuff we've been able to do ourselves, but some of the bigger projects (oh, like the roof) we've had to hire folks to do it for us.

Entire House

What we did:
paint everything (inside and out)
replace roof
replace all interior and exterior doors (except front door)
replace all doorknobs
replace all floors with carpet or vinyl
replace all baseboards and trim
replace all outlets and switches with white
add window blinds


Kitchen



What we did:
replace oven/stove
replace lights
replace counter top and back splash
paint cabinets
build shelves for pantry
remove skylight


Living Room:



What we did:
replace ceiling fan
add fireplace mantle


Bedroom:



What we did:
add ceiling fan
add curtains for closet


Bath:



What we did:
paint cabinet
replace yellow striped bath with fiberglass
replace faucets
replace towel bars


Master Bedroom:



What we did:
replace sparky fan with non-fire-hazard ceiling fan
replace dog-pee carpet 


Master Bath:



What we did:
replace yellow striped shower with fiberglass
replace sink and vanity
replace faucets
replace towel bars
paint cabinet
add shower doors
add wall cabinet


I think it's pretty amazing what a little paint and some hard work can do to a place. What do you think?

Hint:

= awesome fun times

I've had this on my brain for a while, ever since I got my IKEA catalog back in June. I'm finally doing it!!!

EIVOR pillow
Sharpies

Kitchen Sources

Clockwise from the top:

Basisk ceiling track light. IKEA now has a whole series of these, so you can get pendant lights to match.

The drawer pulls I got are no longer available, but these are similar. Knobs, $12.55 for a 10-pack and drawer pulls, $16.95 for a 10-pack.

Armstrong laminate flooring. My color is discontinued. You can find similar products at Home Depot and Lowe's. Lowe's has a better selection, but expect to pay a little more.

Stainless steel sink. Our large single basin one is $75, but you can get a standard kitchen sink with divider for $55.

Wilsonart laminate counter. Link is to Amazon, but we got ours from Home Depot because they didn't gouge us on shipping.

Pressed aluminum backsplash. $11 for a clear-coated 18"x24" sheet, more colors available if you order direct from the supplier.

Behr paint in Pinedale Shores and Sandstone Cliffs. Depending on the formulation you get, Behr paints range from $25-35 a gallon. You can also test out 8 oz. samples before you commit to a gallon.

Things I've Learned

My goal in remodeling this house is to make it look as nice as possible without spending a lot of money. Granite counter tops would be wonderful to have, but they're just not cost effective for a house in this neighborhood. After we move, the house will probably be sold to someone to use as a rental property. While it's important to us to pick paint colors and things that we like to decorate the house with, it's equally important to not personalize the house too much. I've tried to use either neutral colors or colors that I think other people will also enjoy while decorating.

Later, I'll post links to where I bought some of my stuff.

Here are some things I've discovered while remodeling this house on a budget...

Learn some new skills
Why pay someone to do it for you when you can do it yourself and acquire another power tool at the same time?

Paint
I used Walmart paint when we first started working on the house because it's cheap and I didn't know any better. Don't make the same mistake I did. Use Home Depot's Behr paint. That's probably the most important thing I've learned. You'll end up applying fewer coats (1 with a few touch-ups instead of 3) and the paint is more durable. This means less paint gets used, and your time isn't wasted painting the same wall over and over again.

Buy good paint brushes, cheap paint rollers. Dampen your brush before you start painting, it helps to keep the paint from drying on the bristles. Clean your brush well after you use it and take care of it so it will last a long time. The first time you use a roller, wrap it in tape to pull off the extra fuzzies. If you need to take a break from painting, wrap the roller in a plastic bag and put it in the fridge (I've done this for up a day or two). You can never wash all the paint out of it. Reuse it as many times as you can, then toss it.

Plumbing
Buy a good quality faucet (Delta, Kohler, etc.) from eBay. They sell last year's models at discounted prices. We paid about the same amount for each of our good quality faucets as we would have for one of the junky ones from Home Depot. 

We found our kitchen sink supplier through Amazon. We paid about $80 for a better quality sink than the similar $200 sink at Home Depot.

Lighting
Get your light bulbs at IKEA. They're cheap and they last pretty good. One of our ceiling fans uses special bulbs. Regular compact fluorescent bulbs burn out too quickly so we have to use special vibration resistant ceiling fan bulbs that are $$$. I discovered the regular IKEA ones last just as long as the special ceiling fan ones.

The type of lights that I wanted for the kitchen (halogen track lights) were over $100 at Home Depot. I found something similar at IKEA for $25. 

Wait until the Hunter ceiling fans go on sale. Don't waste your money on the cheap Hamilton Breeze ones. They break.

Our under-cabinet lights came from Walmart. We paid about $12 each but saw similar lights at Home Depot from $20-50. They aren't hooked up to a light switch, they plug into a wall outlet. Good that you don't have to do any electrical work, bad that you have to search for the tiny little switch to turn each of them on.

Flooring
Peel and stick flooring has come a long way. We have a 12" faux slate, but I've seen newer 24" tiles and strips of faux wood that I would love to have had. Starting at $1/sq. ft. it's the cheapest option. You only need a couple of simple tools to install it yourself; straight edge and a box cutter.

Our carpet is used. Yup, that's right. My parents bought a new house and replaced all of the carpet with hardwood. Because their house is bigger than ours, we had plenty of large pieces to work with. We found someone to install it for about $400.

Contractor packs
These are your friend when you have a lot of one thing that needs to be replaced. The downside is that there isn't as much variety to choose from and you sometimes have to buy more than you actually need.

We replaced all of the old almond colored outlets, switches, and wall plates with white. For example, light switches are are $0.69 each at Home Depot, or you can buy a pack of 10 for $4.90, which will save you $0.20 on each light you replace.

We also used contractor packs for the kitchen drawer pulls and hinges. I have found that Amazon has a better selection of these than Home Depot.

Shop around
I wanted a back splash for the kitchen that was easy to install. I found sheets of molded plastic at Home Depot that looked like a pressed tin ceiling. They were $20 for an 18"x24" panel, which I thought was too much to pay for a hunk of plastic. I found a store online that sells a better product for half the price. They make theirs out of aluminum and they have a better selection of patterns and colors.

Finished Kitchen!

Here's the craptastic kitchen that I started out with.



I'm not exactly sure why all the cabinet doors are open, but it probably had something to do with airing out the previous owner's funk. Notice the lovely, gold rimmed, boob lights? The counter tops don't match each other, the cabinets are stained a hideous orange color, and the Harvest Gold oven doesn't work. We were all a little horrified when I cleaned the counter top near the sink and discovered that it was off-white and not tan. The walls are shiny, shiny white and are stained with nicotine (see that light spot on the wall under the "E" in before? They had something hanging on the wall that kept it from being coated in nicotine).

There have been a few changes to it over the years, but we never quite finished. The broken oven was the first thing to get replaced. Jason's roommate bought it in place of his first month's rent. Then the boob lights got replaced with some little halogens from IKEA. We repainted the whole house a nice, neutral tan and replaced all of the doors and trim. I painted the inside of the cabinets with lime green enamel to create a barrier between the old homeowner's funk and our nice, clean dishes. I attempted to strip and stain the cabinets, but never made much progress. We redid the floors after the dog was house trained.

Last year, when we got a new roof, we had them remove the skylight because it was causing major problems with condensation. If I cooked anything on the stove when it was cold outside, condensation would cause the nicotine on the walls around the skylight (never painted up there) to drip on the stove. We replaced it with a third IKEA light.

Six years later, the kitchen remodel is finished and I love it!









The fruit plaques, above the microwave, belonged to my Grandma Bessie.



The red and white flower hot-pads are from Gram's family.



My little elephant belonged to my great-grandmother, Granny Myrick. All of the decorative bowls I have (there are more displayed on top of the cabinets) are either gifts or inherited.



It's been a lot of work, but I'm happy to finally have a pretty kitchen!

Thoughts on Painting

I think I started painting almost a month ago. It's been so long I don't really remember. All I know is that I'm sick of it, but I should be finished by this weekend.

It's taken me so long because I'm trying to keep the kitchen as useable as possible. If I had of packed up everything in the kitchen into boxes, taken all of the doors and drawers off at the same time, I probably could have finished in a week or two. Instead, I've been working on one cabinet unit at a time. I take everything out of one cabinet and stack it on the bed in the spare bedroom, then I get to work sanding, priming, and painting. It takes a few days to get each cabinet unit finished after waiting for the paint to dry between coats.

After I got the first section of cabinets painted, Jason came home and said, "Wow that looks just like your mom's kitchen."



Shut up. No one asked you. That's a completely different color.

Now I'd like to take a moment to complain about Kilz.

In order for the primer to stick to the old polyurethane, I'm being forced to use is Kilz Odorless, which is oil based. I hate it. I'm sure that it smells less than Original Kilz, but it is in no way odorless. False advertising, y'all. I've decided that it smells like shoe polish with a hint of fish. I've never used Original Kilz before, only the latex Kilz. I have no way of comparing the two oil-based Kilz, but compared to the latex, that stuff sucks. It's too runny, it dries so fast you can't touch-up spots you just painted, and it leaves really bad brush marks.

I've tried using both brushes and foam rollers. Brushes leave very obvious brush streaks. With rollers I expect an orange-peel finish, but what I get with Kilz Odorless is a sandpaper finish. No bueno. This house isn't my perfect forever house and I'm too lazy to sand between coats. I've opted to paint everything with a brush instead of the roller because I'd rather the next homeowner look at my handiwork and say, "My, those are some brush strokes," instead of, "Did they paint over sandpaper?"

Stuff in My Sink

The old sink was an enamel coated, cast iron behemoth. We considered reusing it, but it was difficult to keep clean, scratched, and Dr. Plumber permanently adhered it to the old counter top. Also, it may have been damaged a little when it was accidentally dropped then hit repeatedly with a hammer during demolition.

We've had the new sink in for a few weeks now. It's been enough time to thoroughly test it out and say that I like it!

We were pretty sure that we wanted a single basin sink. At Home Depot a stainless steel one was over $200. The cheapest, flimsyest, double basin sink was almost $90. Things seemed a little overpriced for the quality you were getting. Jason looked online and found one from MR Direct. Not only is it a better quality, thicker gauge steel than the $200 single basin sink, we also paid less for it than the cheapest, smallest sink that Home Depot sells.

So, new sink looks really huge, but it's the same size as a normal stainless steel sink, only without the divider in the middle. It's amazing how many dishes it holds. How easy it is to wash large, bulky things, like my enormous pots and pans, casserole pans, and cookie sheets.

Just to give you an idea:

Giant skillet and pot.



Cookie sheet, muffin tin.



Dog.