House remodel

This will be a big deal post because this was such a big deal for us and for our family and our house.  When I was thinking about doing it in one post, I didn't imagine it would be so long! But, alas, this might be the longest, most epic post to date-and that's saying a lot since I've definitely had long posts before!  Here goes...

 

When we bought our house, we didn't necessarily love the dated 70s look but we loved the house itself (we liked that it had it's own personality and wasn't the twin of every house in the neighborhood), we liked the location (hello, no subdivision and houses piled on top of each other), and we loved the space (large yard, so many trees, more secluded), and I loved the larger kitchen (the kitchen being as big as the kitchen and living room combined in our town house).  We figured it had so many things going for it that we could ignore the stuff we didn't love-besides that was all cosmetic and we could change it when we had money to do it.  Fast forward nearly 5 years (!!!) and this old house had given us a few surprises.  First, it was the furnace in the fall of 2016.  Then it was the roof a year later in 2017.  We've replaced every appliance minus the water heater-fridge, microwave, oven, dishwasher.  Also the washer and dryer but we brought those with us so I guess it doesn't count.  We finished the rooms in the basement and redid the main bathroom but that was not a have-to thing like the others.  The last "surprise" that we got going into the winter of 2018 was that the chimney wasn't fit to burn and was actually quite hazardous.  We burned anyway because we would have frozen otherwise but we knew we couldn't press our luck and burn another winter so Justin started researching some different options.  Anyway, one thing turned into another and we ended up cashing in on some equity that we have in the house (we definitely bought at the right time before the market in Utah got so, so bad and house prices sky-rocketed) and proceeded with a humongous remodel.  We figured if we had to replace part of the living room, we might as well do the whole thing!  We have looked at each other several times over this process and asked ourselves if we were completely crazy to take this on while still living here-but the outcome was totally worth it.  I tried to document as much as I could and this is the journey we took to make our house a little more updated and modern.

Basically, we decided to overhaul the entire living room.  We demolished the rock around the fireplace first.  The kids all helped a little doing this.  All that rock, the mantle, and the fireplace were tossed.  We took down those awful curtains that hung halfway up the main window wall-good riddance to them, I hated them and only closed them if I absolutely had to (in the winter when I was trying to save some heat from escaping).

Gene, April, and Brett came up and helped us with some demo.  More of the fireplace and the big job-the window wall.  Over the course of three days we took out every window and took down every last bit of wood on that outside window wall.  We had two 4x6's that ran from floor to ceiling as support as well as a tow strap connected to the walls at the top so that the walls didn't fall out.  It was so surreal and a little bit nerve-wracking for half a day.

 

  

My dad came up to help Justin and they ended up getting the chimney down.  My dad got up on the roof and just pushed it off.  It was in bad shape!

The fireplace came out this day as well.  So we had no wall and no fireplace.  Justin nailed a piece of plywood over the hole where the fireplace was but for the wall, he had to hang up some tarps along the bottom half each night which left the top half completely open until the wall was rebuilt-probably about a couple of weeks or so.  It felt a lot like camping and I worried about a critter getting in the house (raccoon or skunk) but we were okay.  We had a bat fly in the top one night-and right back out but that was it.  The mornings were cold and we had a lot of flies in the house but we managed.

After all the demo, we had a crew come and help us with the re-build.  The biggest reason we thought we could do this was because a friend in our ward, Jason Grant, who is a contractor, told Justin that they could do it together fairly quickly.  So we had him helping, along with Gene and Eric and Josh Knowles and Brad Hansen from the ward.  We rented some scaffolding so it's kind of hard to tell but at one point, the whole side of that house was completely open-no windows, no wood anywhere.  It was a little crazy to see! Here is some of that process-taking off the old wood, replacing it with new, and rebuilding that wall.  It is so stable and secure now!

peek-a-boo Ivy!

this is how we would "lock up" for the night

Once we had the wall mostly built, Justin was able to nail in some plywood along the bottom for the nights.  That was better than the tarps but it was a huge relief to get it all closed in with windows and everything.  The Young Men came and helped one week for their activity.  We have a pair of brothers who are so, so tall and we teased them about not needing the scaffolding.  The scaffolding became a constant source of entertainment for the kids.

Easton Anderson and Molly

 Gene and Justin hung up the waterproofing stuff on the outside.  The wall was built by this point but no windows yet.  The first window was put in that night.

Brynn was always willing to help in whatever way she could

This is what it looked like when all the windows and the new door was in.  Also, the insulation.  It looks so, so, so good.  Justin drew up the plans all on his own and it couldn't have turned out better.  We love it and are so happy with everything about it.

We were also planning on replacing our ceiling since it was also very dated and had big stain in one corner where the roof had leaked before we moved in.  The old ceiling was foam tiles so they were easy to get out.  Stockton and Brynn even helped!

Justin also put plywood on the inside of the wall.  Not necessary, but just to make our house extra closed-in and insulated.  This wall is built so strong and way better than it had ever been before.

Justin took a day to build the hearth for the fireplace.

 Sometimes we were working late to meet a deadline.  This particular deadline was the fireplace.  The new one was coming on Monday but we still needed to build the "doghouse" on the back of the house for it.  Justin works well late into the night.  We finished it in two days, the night before the fireplace was set to be installed.  Brynn can be a really good helper when she's in the mood.  She was that day and helped so much-mostly she and I hung the insulation.  It was an itchy job and she needed a shower as soon as it was done.

This was the house on October 7th.  We hired out the sheetrock.  He hung the sheetrock right over the wood paneling.  I was not sad to see that gone!!

I'm not sure what Justin was doing here.  He has always been super afraid of heights though so it had to be documented that he was up there on that scaffolding a lot.

Long story:  We got a new roof two years ago.  It was a lot of money but we were relieved to have it done and over with and figured we would never need another roof again.  We had a couple of people come look at the chimney who mentioned that our roof needed replacing so we thought we better have the roofers out to see what was up.  The story they told was that one of the rafters in the ceiling above our bed in the master bedroom was broken and that we just needed to repair that and all would be well.  Justin figured he would do that while everything else was torn out.  Turns out, when he got in there, all the rafters above our bedroom were rotted out.  The roofing company saw them, ignored them, and covered them.  It was all very upsetting.  We had our contractor/friend/ward member (Jason Grant) who had been helping us come look at them and he was sick over it...he said we had every right to sue the company.  We didn't necessarily want to do that, but we did call Eric (a lawyer) to get his advice.  He said to contact the company first and see what responsibility they would take so we called them and had them come look at the roof again, this time from the inside.  At first, he tried to play it off and say it was not rotted rafters, just regular house settling but when our contractor started to oppose him and tell him what it really was, he changed his tune and said they would do a new roof at their cost.  That's really all we wanted anyway.  Long story continued:  I had my dad come up and help me tear out all the sheetrock and insulation in preparation for Jason to replace the rafters.  I was shocked, horrified, appalled at how bad and how negligent and basically how blatantly irresponsible and dishonest the roofing company was.  We found old plywood that they never removed (for which we paid them to) that was completely rotten.  Along the worst of the rotted rafters, they had nailed shims of wood so that they had good wood to nail the plywood to since a nail wouldn't attach and hold to rotten rafters.  I was floored...I guess I am just too trusting of a person and like to think that people are going to be honest.  It was shocking to see that they had intentionally covered something like that up without telling us anything about it and thinking that we would never know.  Getting to the end: they did end up throwing out all the two-year-old shingles, not only above our bedroom but the whole taller/main part of the house had to be replaced.  So the trick was on them after all.  We felt very fortunate that we found it when we did and that it didn't cause damage to anything or anyone.

rotten plywood we found

you can see all the rotten wood on the underside of this insulation

it made a mess

a side by side comparison-this is the rotten rafter next to one of the shims that they put there so they had good wood to nail the plywood to

close up of rotted rafter

 

The whole roof fiasco caused a little chaos since Justin and I couldn't sleep in our room-there was no roof since we had to replace the rafters before they could replace the roof.  We had to move our mattress down to Molly's room and bunk with her until it was finished.  Brynn was already sleeping with Stockton since her room was the tool-dump zone so we moved Ivy downstairs as well so she wouldn't be by herself upstairs.  We were one cozy family in the basement!  We also had to find a spot to put our dresser, bookcase, side tables, etc...these bobbleheads needed a spot too.  They ended up on the floor in the loft.  (If you don't know about Justin's bobblehead collection, I did a post about it forever ago.  He still collects so his collection has become rather large.  He's like a little kid.  One of our kids' favorite things to do it go upstairs and help dad dust the bobbleheads.)

it was cold enough in that part of the house that we were wearing our coats

We finished cleaning out the insulation that night.  Jason Grant was coming the next morning to start tearing out old rafters and building new ones.  My dad and I had carried garbage bin after garbage bin down the stairs and outside to the junk trailer in the driveway but Justin's way was much better. He just hooked the junk trailer to the truck and drove around to our deck.  Who else can say they can drive their truck all the way around their yard?!

This was the view from our bedroom the following afternoon...just open to the sky.  We hired Jason Grant to replace the rafters and we were fortunate that Justin's schedule allowed him to help-and cut the cost in half.  There have been so many tender mercies during this project and the fact that Justin was able to be moving around on that roof with ease and without fear was definitely one of those blessings we received.  The crew was pretty funny too so he enjoyed himself.  (Another blessing was having Jason in our corner-we didn't know him two years ago and we felt so reassured knowing we could put our complete trust in him.) The finished product from those few days of work is built so sturdy...it will last years and years and years.  We counted our many blessings during those few weeks.  God's timing is always perfect!

Justin and Jason

 

We finished this project right before heading to Hawaii.  Needless to say, that was a stressful week for Justin which made our fabulous trip all the better!

One good thing happened while the roof drama was going on: our fireplace was delivered and installed.  Yay!  It took us a lot of debating until we finally settled on just going with a gas fireplace and I am so glad we did.  It was so much work to cut and stack wood and carry it in every time we wanted a fire.  With our busy schedules, this will be much more convenient.  We have had many pleasant nights by the fire, all with just a flip of a switch. 

Like I said, it had been a stressful couple of months so our trip to Hawaii couldn't have come at a better time.  It was so nice to leave the house behind for a week and just relax.  Jason installed a few windows for us while we were gone.  Also, the roofers replaced the plywood and shingles-again, we were so grateful to have Jason there to check up on them and make sure they had done a good job and had done everything they said they would do.  He kept Justin updated and sent photos.

new windows in master bedroom and loft staircase

new sliding door in master

new windows for Ivy's room

One of the first things that Justin did when we got home was inspect the roof.  It passed inspection.  They still needed to come back and finish a few things-like raingutters-but the roof itself looked great.  And we knew what the rafters looked like so everything is all good and should be for a very long time.

new roof but before they came back to finish the drip edge and fascia

While we had the ceiling torn out and the roof was in good shape, we figured we should redo the insulation.  The existing insulation was in bad shape and was nowhere near being up to code.  That was unplanned from the get-go but ended up being almost necessary-and a no-brainer since we already had the ceiling open.  We paid a company to put in spray foam in the living room, loft, and master bedroom.  It set us back a week but was so worth it and has made a huge difference in the house staying warm.  We pulled out all the insulation on a Saturday and they were supposed to finish it on Monday.  Go figure it ended up being record lows that weekend-down to single digits in the middle of the day at the end of October.  Justin's boss found out and made arrangements for us to stay in a hotel down the street (paid by AFCU).  A bit of an inconvenience but exciting for the kids.  We even let them swim in the pool for an hour even though it was Sunday.  There was much more inconvenience to come since it took them several days to finish the insulation, rather than just the one, and for one afternoon and one morning they made me leave the house because of the chemicals they were spraying in.  That was fine but I had no heads up and they informed me in the middle of a piano lesson.  Also, it took weeks until there was not insulation being tracked all over the house-it was a major pain.  So itchy and messy and hard to clean.  It was the worst part of the whole project (in my opinion) and I was so relieved when that part was over and done with.

Ivy's yoga moves at the hotel room

this is what we had to go through to get in and out of our closet-good thing we could laugh about it!

our bedroom ceiling remained insulation only from October to mid-April

bedroom insulation-an extra layer since we don't have heat up there

living room insulation

In November we started the ceiling.  We decided to do a tongue-and-groove/shiplap ceiling instead of just sheetrock.  It took a lot of Saturdays and one Monday.  That first Saturday that Gene came up they got all the electrical to the lights (can lights-yay!) working and then we only got about 4 rows done.  By the next week, we kind of knew what we were doing.  Gene gave up 4 Saturdays and one Monday to help and Eric and Heidi gave up 3 Saturdays helping.  We are so grateful to them because we couldn't have done it without them.

those 4 rows made us pretty excited!

that's me up there on the scaffolding!

Eric and Gene

Gene and Justin

On the last day, Heidi and I puttied all the holes and everyone helped tape and cover the beams and windows with plastic and then Justin and Eric sprayed.  The end result was so good and worth all the weeks of work.

the beams were already there and we left them as they were.  We have plans to someday go back and update them by wrapping them with a different wood/stain as well as adding some beams going the other direction.

My dad came up one afternoon to help me with a few odd jobs.  We needed to put flashing around the windows on the outside of the house before winter.  This just seals them up extra tight.  I've never been so high on a ladder and it made me a bit nervous.  He also shingled the little doghouse that Justin built for the fireplace.

Justin came home from work to see how it was going and couldn't resist getting in on the action even though he wasn't dressed for the right kind of work.

Paint!  After a couple of months of seemingly no progress (there was progress-it just felt like it was going sooooo slow), this seemed like a big deal.  Justin needed to paint the fireplace wall first so that the built-ins could be installed.  Primer then paint.

On the Saturday before Christmas, our built-ins were installed.  This was like an early Christmas present for us.  It was an exciting day-our vision was finally starting to take shape and look like something.

Justin couldn't help himself from working a little on Christmas Day.  We were home all day so he worked on some electrical stuff in the built-ins off and on throughout the day.  He put an outlet in every single shelf so that I could have a place to plug in my Christmas villages.  Then he connected them all to a switch on the wall right next to the built-ins for easy on and off.  I am so excited to see it work this Christmas!  We also added those sconces over each built-in and a can light centered above the mantle.  Justin has learned a lot about electrical work since buying this house.

January 9th:  I put the first decorations on the bookcases.  The rest of the room was still torn apart but walking by this every day made me smile.  I bought that sign at Gardiner's Village when Justin and I were there last September during Seminar.

Painting in the loft and over the staircase was a pain for Justin.  But it looked so good that night!  We even hung up a canvas map I had found for the loft.  We were very happy seeing it come together.

The last area to paint was the big wall opposite the fireplace, the other half of the window wall, and the TV wall and hallway.  Justin hates the prep work required for painting but doesn't mind the painting itself.  I saw the color years ago on a blog that I drool over (everything is too expensive) but got cold feet right before.  It's so much wall to cover and I panicked for a day and thought that maybe we should just do white.  But Justin had already bought the paint and there was no going back.  Justin loved the paint because it was such good quality that it only needed one coat.  And I loved the paint too, once it was on the walls.  It is just what I wanted and imagined and it makes the white from the bookcases and trim look so crisp and nice.  I have no regrets over the paint.

January 24th.  Another exciting day: carpet!  Our carpet had been rolled back even with the wall by the piano since the end of August.  5 months of a non-functional living room and everything crammed into our kitchen. That afternoon while I was at preschool, our carpet guy came and laid down a new mat and re-stretched our carpet back out.  It felt amazing to come home to all that usable space.  It seemed like it had been forever and that it had never happened at the same time.  The next few days were very exciting as we slowly started putting furniture and other things back and it felt so nice to have that room back.

This looks a lot cleaner than it actually was for that 5 months.  It was normally filled with tools and such-we had just moved all supplies up to the loft for the carpet guy to be able to do his job.

Molly and Ivy were the first ones home to see it-they may have been just as excited as me.  We hosted Ivy's birthday party in the living room that night before moving all the furniture back.

The day after the carpet was rolled back, Justin and Stockton got to work on something of utmost importance: hanging the TV back up.  To be honest, we hadn't really missed it, although movie nights were not as fun in our bedroom.

The kids love wrestling with Justin and they got right back into it once we got the carpet back.  There hadn't been a lot of that since late August!  A couple nights later, they were playing with Justin on the hoverboard.  He was spinning the girls around and they were loving it.  Can you tell how happy it made us to have the space back?  We were in heaven!

And the next Friday-movie night in the living room!  This was so exciting! Man, I really have no words to describe how wonderful it was to have that space back.

My dad came up to help Justin get the rock started on the fireplace.  Justin had never done it and was a little nervous to do it on his own.  My dad had slightly more experience than Justin since he helped put it on the front of Christopher and Erin's house when they built 10+ years ago.  But together they figured it out and it was starting to look so good!  They weren't able to finish that day (we ran out of rock) but they did a good chunk and it gave Justin the confidence he needed to finish.

We loved the wood-burning stove but it took a lot of work each year!  We changed our minds a few times but finally settled on a gas fireplace.  It was already plumbed for gas in the crawl space so it was really simple to install.  We loved the ease of it all winter!  Just a flip of a switch-or, in our case, a push of a button on a remote.

We decided to hang shiplap above the mantle and it turned out so good!  I've always wanted shiplap somewhere in our house so I am happy about this, even though it's a small space.

Justin was able to get some more rock for the fireplace and finish it up a couple of weeks after he started.  He was very proud of his work as a mason-as he should be!  It turned out amazing and I love it!  Brynn was excited that she was able to add her own rock.

all done! 😍

Brynn again hard at work with the house project. She is pulling tape off of the ceiling.  It is super high and she wasn't afraid even a little bit.  I got up there to help with a piece she couldn't get off and I was a little nervous being that high.  That kind of stuff just doesn't faze her at all.

Justin started casing and framing the windows at the beginning of March.  We needed to get the windows measured for shutters and blinds.  Gene came up and helped but I didn't get many pictures-I took less as less as we got to the end of the project.

Our bedroom ceiling had just been sitting there, unfinished, for several months so we took a Saturday to finish it.  We did the same tongue-and-groove/shiplap as we did in the living room but it was much easier to do.  It was a smaller space, obviously, but Justin was able to measure and have all the boards cut beforehand.  With the living room, we had to measure, then cut, then nail in place and repeat for each board we hung.  Justin and I, with help from Molly and Stockton, were able to get it all done in one day.  It was an exhausting day, but a successful and productive one!  Brynn was the photographer that day.  This was also one of those days that the kids were almost completely unsupervised and I included a few pictures Brynn took of them as well.

Molly was a trooper that day-we couldn't have done it without her extra hands helping

look at that girl working a nail gun!

this was so uncomfortable it was painful

we also added can lighting to our room-as opposed to the fan light that was there before.  We also hung a fan but one with no lights.

Time to get those windows done.  Justin hung all the trim.  He is a perfectionist and that's a good thing when it comes to trimming windows.  He is very proud of those windows, as he should be.  The trim is as close to perfect as they can be.  We've had window cleaners and the blind installers both think it was professionally done.  You can tell how amazing the view from the picture windows is turning out the be.

I think each of the kids got a turn putting up the trim.  Even I got up there just for the sake of saying that I helped.  But, it was totally all Justin.  Being the perfectionist that he is, he measured so precisely and they turned out amazing.  Even that window in the staircase is so pretty.  It always had old, ugly blinds on it that were never used so this picture window is perfect.  It showcases the trees along the pasture fence line-they bloom pink and white in the spring but I never gave that window a second glance before now. 

 

 

When the top of the bookcases need dusted, Brynn and Ivy are our girls!

When the windows were all framed and trimmed, it was time for paint.  We actually hired someone to do this last part-we did it a little backward and Justin did not want to have to tape off the windows, cover basically the entire house with plastic, and spray the trim.  That would have been a hump we might never had gotten over if we had had to do it on our own.  It was very much worth paying someone else to do it.  But it also meant that everything went back into the kitchen and the living room was off limits.  Brynn and Ivy's rooms got plastic sheeting put over their doors so they had to pack bags and survive with that for a few days. They slept on the floor in our bedroom. The downstairs bathroom was covered for a little while and then the upstairs bathroom was.  Never at the same time, thank goodness. You couldn't even go into the living room for a day-if anyone needed to go to the bathroom, they had to climb the ladder to the master bedroom deck and use the master bathroom upstairs-then climb back down.  It was a funny few days-and hard to believe that we had done that for 5 months!  Thinking back, I can't even remember where Justin and I slept.  Our bed was taken apart-we must have just laid our mattress down on our floor or something.

Everything back to the kitchen-our couches got so trashed being right there for the whole time.  I am definitely wanting new furniture but that will have to wait.

 

Again-it was nice to get back to normal...and look at those windows!  The gray paint and crisp white trim was beautiful!  We had been picturing it in our minds and talking about it for so long but it looked so much better than we ever could have imagined.

this is our loft window-it looks so much better than it ever has before

A few weeks after that, our shutters and blinds were delivered and installed.  We decided to do shutters on the bottom three windows and roll-down fabric blinds for the top 6.  We have a remote control for the roller shades.  They rarely come down-usually when we are watching a movie-but it's nice to have that option.

 

It is hard to even describe how it felt to get to that point in the project and I really can't find words to describe how much we love our windows...and the whole living room.  The transformation is so incredible, and even more incredible that is was mostly US that did it (with lots of help).  It's hard to even remember what it used to look like and we couldn't be happier with the end result.

We still have a few things to finish up, but this has been an epic post (9 months in the making!) so I'm going to end it here with some after pictures to share.  I wish I had been better at documenting the before, but you can always refer to the post I did when we first moved in to see what it looked like back then-and all the posts I've done since then.  Quite the transformation!  It hardly looks like the same house!  We have been so happy here and, not that we needed an updated house to make us happy, this space brings us a lot of joy as we build and work on strengthening our family in this little space.  

we still want to replace the loft railing-make it match the rest of the room-but that is something that also will have to wait

I am very proud of Justin who, minus a few hired out jobs (sheetrock, insulation, painting the trim, new roof rafters but he did half of that job), took this job on while he was managing his branch + 3 others, working as a Young Men's President and then the priest quorum advisor, coaching Stockton's baseball team, and just being available as a husband, father, and friend.  This wouldn't have happened without his vision and commitment to hard work and doing a job well.  What an example to our kids!  He is a dreamer and I love that about him.  I am sometimes skeptical about his "dreams" but he is always willing to follow through and work hard to make those dreams a reality and I love him all the more for this trait.