our house... an introduction + an update

so i've never posted about my house on this blog. i have an entirely separate blog i started for that project over 3 years ago, however i haven't kept it up. (last post: may 2010) when we were working every day for the first 6 or 8 months we owned the house, there was a lot to post about. the main purpose of the blog was to keep my family and friends updated with our progress, but once all the big ticket projects were complete, i think everyone lost interest. so i'm hoping to change that, and to move my house blogging here - where most people know to find me. i'm also hoping to pick up the blogging again. i want to force myself to document our projects, no matter how small they are. looking back at the old blog is actually rewarding to see all we've accomplished and how much our house has changed in the last 3.5 years. i also want to blog more because i've begun to realize (with the help of some friends) that we actually do some projects around here that other people could learn from (with most of that credit going to my hubs, who is the brain power of this renovation). my husband builds houses. i design buildings. i think we have something to offer, and i want to blog with that in mind. we're tackling a lot of projects that most people would hire someone else to do, but that we do on our own. we always try to do it the proper way. we're always trying to make the house and resulting space better and more energy efficient. and most importantly: we always do it on a tiny budget.

you will probably not see my finished house revealed anytime soon, because i'm not sure when we'll ever be truly "finished". (we claim we're 95% done with 90% of the house.) i haven't even really started "decorating" our house yet. we rearrange rooms constantly, and i am always thinking of new projects for our house... new ways to add storage or make a room more functional, new ways to make a room live larger than it is, and i've even designed another addition for our house. believe me, though, i am very critical of what we've done so far. i know for sure that if i had it do over again, i would have done many things differently, but i would not trade what i've learned here for anything. at the end of the day i love my house... truly love it. i love the light in the mornings. i love the way it feels open and much larger than it actually is, and how well it really does function. yes, i might have been an inexperienced, 3 months-out-of-grad-school designer who didn't think long enough about details when designing this house, but i am still proud of what is here and what my husband and i have made.

i didn't mean for this to become some manifesto, so i'm going to stop now and show some projects. i hope anyone who reads this learns something and maybe feels inspired to work on their own home. if you want to read more about our house you can see the galleries here and here, or go back and read all the posts from 2008 - 2010 documenting the bulk of the work here.

the first project i'll post is light on process photos ... i managed to miss documenting the entire process of the living room built-ins, with the exception of one (crappy) photo taken with my iphone. (to be fair, i think i was at work that entire weekend working on a deadline...)

so first is a photo of how we lived for over two years. we simply put an existing bookshelf we had in the space i had designed for the built-ins... complete with a sloppy swatch of paint to test a color. it functioned fairly well, but i didn't really realize how bad it looked.

...and the finished product.

we had been waiting to save money to hire someone to do something really funky and cool, but we realized that saving that money was never going to happen, so instead we went into the shed and used scrap materials that we already had and went with a less is more design. in the end, we didn't spend a dime to make these that we hadn't already spent on materials for something else... not even on the paint. not bad, eh?

below is a detail view of the shelves. i wanted them to be thick and substantial, and i did not want to see an underside... i wanted them to be (or appear) solid.

here is the one process photo i took (sorry for the poor quality) from my phone. robby nailed cleats into the wall to act as the main bracing for the shelves. from there he nailed a top and a bottom for each shelf into the cleat and then nailed the face of each shelf on the outside. you san see the puddy in each of the nail holes in this photo to get a better idea of where the cleats were on the wall. then we caulked, primed, and painted and they're done.

one overall view from the living room looking through to the back of the house. the built-ins made a huge difference in unifying the feeling of thick, usable walls where we had to drop LVLs and builkheads in order to remove walls and open up the entire public living space. i love having my collection of books on display, though i already need more built-ins somewhere else in the house...

the next posts will show the work we're doing to the front bedroom (we stripped the walls down to the bare plaster and replaced the trim) and to the updated fireplace in the living room (we removed the mantel and surround, put up new drywall, and we'll be making a new custom walnut mantel). then we have a major project to tackle: the exterior of the house. despite our best efforts to scrape the loose paint off the original wood siding (we saved it from under decades of aluminum siding) and restore it, (here and here) the new paint is falling off. so we have to scrape all of the old (lead) paint off the siding, sand it, prime it, and repaint. then maybe we can start to work on more fencing and landscaping... it truly never ends.

i hope that if i force myself to write about what we're doing, we might actually be motivated to accomplish more. we'll see how that theory works out...

Comments

[Allison]

I feel tired just reading your to-do list! The house is looking great and I'm so glad you're going to start blogging about it again. When I found your house blog I read through the archives and I can't wait to see more!

[Constance]

Love it! Danny said, "How come you know more about what's going on with my nephew and his wife than I do?" LOL!! Thanks for posting this. When Robby is done, can you send him down to SC - we can put him to work as well :-)

C

[Mom/Beth]

So glad you are bringing us up-to-date! I love your house, too! Oh, by the way, I get first dibs on Robby and you when you are done with your house--but like you said, I doubt that one ever finishes, especially when they are constantly thinking about ways to change their house! Thanks for sharing!