Bad Blogger Plays Catch Up Part-Two

Here we go again. Another five months between postings! Oh well.  Here is the second installment of "Bad Blogger Plays Catch Up" featuring the months of June and July. These document the final months of construction. We moved into the house in late July/early August.

It amazes me how much kitchen cabinets and a finished floor will complete a house! The kitchen was the one room I was always a little nervous about because it was hard to visualize. The room is oddly shaped (almost like a W) and I was worried about it getting cramped with the cabinets. However, once the they were installed, my worries melted away! It has become one of my favorite rooms as you will see in upcoming posts.

"Move-in-ready" pictures coming soon!

kitchen before cabinets

field trip! visiting cabinets to see the color!

master bath tile going in! John liked limestone and I liked marble so we went with best of both worlds

had to rig multiple ladders to hook up that puppy

kitchen cabinets ready to get installed! very pleased with how the color turned out!

living room ready for floors to be finished

mantle coming back into its home

mantle coming back into its home

Bad Blogger Plays Catch Up Part-1

So...life gets a tad busy sometimes and BAM! Five months go by and I have forgotten to update our blog. I'll do my best to work month by month. The first installment of "Bad Blogger Plays Catch Up" features the month of May.

 

laundry room floor

upstairs jack&jill bath

Behind the walls

This week they're going to start installing drywall, so I guess it's time to catch up on what's been going on inside the house.

 

Foam insulation in the ceilings

 The smallest bedroom upstairs get's the largest closet.

 Hopefully the shower won't be as scary once it's finished.

 Definitely need handrails

The insulation has made the house very quiet despite all the noise from West Main Street.

Safety rail please!

Here comes the sheetrock.

Brick House

When we first began renovations on the house, our initial thoughts were to to repaint the house. We had gone so far as to pick out exterior paint and trim colors. Then we sand blasted off the old paint to reveal the beautiful, gorgeous old brick! For now we are going to stick with the exposed brick.

One benefit to painting the brick was that we wouldn't have to worry so much about matching new brick for the addition to the old brick of the existing house. Exposing the brick presented us with the challenge of figuring out how to join the old and new brick. Our contractor worked hard to find new brick that would blend nicely with the old. We were pretty pleased with the outcome! What do you think?

scaffolding up, bricks are stacked and ready to go!

back of the house almost finished

moving around the the front

Finished brick!

From the ground up...

 First dig a hole ... then it will rain.

 After the hole dries, pour concrete.

Then proceed to build floor supports.

 

Don't forget to enjoy the flowers that have strangely popped up in the middle of the construction site.

Add floors...

 Then walls...

 Before you know it you'll have something that almost resembles a house!

Ode to the Mess Hall

Back when we first bought John's grandfather's house, there was a secondary building on the property. This structure was originally built as the mess hall for the divinity school (which also used to to be on the property). 

Unfortunately, we could not save the building as the backside was falling out. We did however discover many long, beautiful, cedar support beams running under the house. These we kept!

With a little inspiration from House Beautiful magazine, we decided to make the beams into a dining table for our covered back porch. Since the wood was taken from the divinity school's kitchen and dining hall, it only made sense that the wood be made into a table for eating. Our family loves spending time outside in warm months so a large outdoor table would be the perfect addition to our new home!

The table was finished just before our five year anniversary. We figured this was a very fitting anniversary gift for ourselves as this was our "wood" year! We cannot wait to eat around this table with our family and friends.

(picture shows table just before it was finished)

Big thanks to Bret MacFadyen at the Art and Invention Gallery in East Nashville for creating this beautiful table for us!!!