Where I've been, where I am

The kitchen and the bathroom are the two areas of the house that require the most attention. The kitchen looked like this:

  And the bathroom looked like this:

Not really horrible, but it could certainly be SO much better! So, the first order of business was the remove the fixtures (vanity and sink, tub, toilet) and then remove the paneling on the walls. Of course, things didn't go in quite that order. :) The tub came out first (and it was a doozy getting it up and over the toilet and the vanity), and then we pulled up a few of the floorboards just to have a looksee at what was going on. Turned out that the entire floor was going to need to be replaced.

Hello ground! I can see you from the bathroom! Haha. Anyway, once we saw what was going to have to be done, we got right to it. We removed the vanity and the toilet, then went ahead and tore out the floor.

We also had to remove part of the wall between the bathroom and my bedroom, as well as some of the boards from my bedroom. The plan was to replace those floorboards with some 1x4's, but to replace most of the bathroom floor with some 3/4" plywood. To get that down, nails had to be removed from the joists.

Then, the real fun began.

The floorboards were replaced, and the plywood was brought in and set on edge while we assessed the situation. The plywood wouldn't be big enough to cover it all, but since the main part of the bathroom is 5' x 8.5' (rough estimates - it's an old house, NOTHING is square!), the plywood would cover most of the floor. The 1x4's would suffice for the rest.

And the floor (well, in this case, subfloor, since eventually thin-set and backerboard would be placed over this layer) is done! Next was the always-fun task of adding insulation to the walls!

That pink wallpaper behind me was the original for the front bedroom. This house was built without a bathroom (I guess they used an outhouse), and the bathroom was later added by carving out space from the two bedrooms. Interesting fact: Antique wallpaper was placed on walls with netting. The netting was nailed to the wall, then the paper covered the netting (at least this antique wallpaper had netting behind it). Evidently, people even wallpapered their ceilings back then. Also, if you notice in the picture above this one, there is a beam running down the center of the bathroom ceiling. The owners that added the bathroom evidently weren't sure what to do with the beam, so they designed a false covering for it (which we tore down). We're just going to cover the beam, and the ceiling tiles, with white beadboard.

Although currently I'm concentrating on the bathroom, I've also begun doing things with the kitchen. Those photos will have to await another entry.