With some rare company due this weekend, I convinced myself to scramble and get fireplace (mostly) finished.  The previous owner of the house had some sponge-painting tendencies, and they had the misfortune of being applied to what was once a simple brick fireplace.  After a layer of thick and impenetrable stucco and a combination of yellow, pink and green painting, however, I decided it was best to just cover it up and start anew.  My first reaction was to install a tile surround directly over the stucco.  But, inspired by an image I had seen in a west elm catalogue, I ultimately decided on a different route.

the fireplace pre-renovation

The concept for the fireplace surround is a sort of mosaic of 4×4 blocks cut at different depths and arranged in a random pattern to give some depth and interest to the facade of the fireplace, with solid (and un-sanded) cedar posts and beams to provide the structure.  Each of the 4×4 blocks is glued to hardiboard to provide support and a consistent vertical surface.  The surround actually sits about 2″ in front of the original fireplace, and can be easily removed if the style doesn’t suit the tastes of someone down the line.

the surround, pre-stain

After installing the surround and returning it to the wall using cedar 2×6s and cedar fence posts, I stained the entire unit.  I used Watco oil (providing more moisture to the wood than actual stain would) in a dark walnut color to reflect the color of the new wood floors.  Because the camera flash washes out some of the shadowing and grain detail, the pictures,don’t do a great deal of justice to the fireplace.  But I’m very pleased with the way it turned out.  The last piece to complete is a mantle, and I’m considering going with concrete to match the kitchen countertops.

 
stained and waiting for a mantle

I’ll clearly never be burning any open fires in this fireplace - but I may one day get a gas insert for it (better for the air anyway).  At any rate, it’s a piece that brings some interest to the living room - and will surely provoke plenty of conversation…

I hope you’ve all gotten used to writing “2008″ on your correspondence by now! As you might have been able to tell from the dearth of posts recently, we had a crazy December. The first half of the month was spent rushing around trying to make the condo livable to make a December 15 move-in date.

We made it. We made it in time to cobble together a Christmas tree complete with trimmings and that fresh pine scent (a welcome change from the Pine-Sol we used this fall to get rid of the cat smell!). We thoroughly enjoyed seeing family and friends over the past two weeks, and we even scraped together enough chairs to host a few minor gatherings for out-of-towners who might not be around for a late-January/early-February house-warming shindig.

It feels good. Really, really good, in fact.

We still have a few things on our list, though, before we’re ready for an official unveil:

1. Finish the built-in bookcase in the living room
2. Face and finish the fireplace (it’s a gaping hole right now)
3. Get a long-awaited plumber to pull a drain up to our condo for a washer, install drywall and tile in the washer-dryer nook, paint, finish etc., and put in the washer and dryer.
4. Figure out some solution for a couple of spots where kitchen and bathroom cabinets do not quite meet the wall — we’re not crazy about the weird glimpses into the unpainted baseboard and support beams you get from these three gaps

Otherwise, there are the usual tidying-up tasks, including unearthing our office desk from the avalanche of books, old mail, old magazines, Christmas receipts, etc., that have taken over our second bedroom. We also probably need a little straightening up in the bedroom and kitchen, too. But again — it feels good to have a home again.

We’re already looking ahead for 2008, though. We worked hard to make this place nice, but we always intended it to be a temporary spot. We’re eying places to build, kicking around ideas, weighing the relative merits and demerits in the historic landmark districts around here (ARGH), and thinking about how to approach the year. In the next few weeks, we’ll fill you in on the bookcase process (we had to remove our front door to get the case into our living room…), the fireplace designs and the never-ending search for a plumber.

Happy New Year to all of you, and we’ll be sure to let RV readers see all the after pictures…as soon as I can persuade myself to clean.

…but I hope it tides you over for a while.

Tai took this Christmas Eve on his iPhone while cooking us a delicious lasagna for the holiday. The kitchen is fully functional but still not fully pretty.

We are about 98 percent unpacked and done with the renovation, but the remaining tasks sort of stick out (as in, gaps in the wall, unfinished book shelf, no fireplace cover, etc.). So we’re waiting to do a full spate of “after” photos until we are more done.

The updates have kind of fallen off the map here in Denver.  As we were entering the holiday season, I told myself that the Christmas tree wouldn’t go up until the trim and baseboards were completed - so as to not have the tree in the way of that effort.  As it turned out, though, a series of events and decisions led to no trim installation and Christmas tree decorating two weeks ago (you can’t keep a 4-year old from his Christmas tree).  So December has been a very slow month in terms of progress around the house - but at least it’s been a festive house…

The plans for the coming months include new windows for the entire house, followed by the infamous trim.  Also, I owe updates on the status of the fireplace - which will no longer be the ugly stucco’ed and sponge-painted mess it is currently.  Plenty of work to stay busy once the focus on the season has passed us by.

 Happy holidays to all.  Here’s looking forward to a productive 2008…

As Kersten said in an earlier post, I chickened out on the concrete countertops. Time was running short, and trying to learn a new technique on such a tight schedule was giving me panic attacks. Instead we opted for the Numerar countertops from Ikea (pronounced “eee-kay-ah” in our house because it’s more fun that way).

Because the walls are as far away from being square as you can imagine, I had to scribe the ends and cut them at strange angles so there wouldn’t be any gigantic gaps between the countertop and the wall.

Once the cuts had been made I dry-fit the countertops in place to make sure that everything fit right before moving on.

Now it was time to cut a gaping hole in the countertop for our sink. We had originally intended on doing an undermount sink, but with the change in countertop and the nearly impossible task of finding an undermount that would fit our 30″ sink base cabinet, we ended up with a top mount also from Ikea.

Making that many cuts to the countertop made a big mess.

Final step was to fasten the countertop to the cabinets and call it a day (except I probably kept working until really late)

We’re not doing a concrete countertop.

OK.

Now that I’ve got that out there, this is what happened — we ran out of time. Making our own concrete countertop would have taken the better part of two weeks. We were ready for a countertop about a week ago, concrete would have taken longer, and I wasn’t about to delay our move-in date of TOMORROW — GASP! — because we really need our own space during the holidays. I hope you all still love us.

Some day — some day soon, we hope — when we are running on more than a few hours of sleep and when Tai hasn’t been up the night before until 4 a.m. installing a tile backsplash, and when I’m out from under a bit of stress from quitting one job and starting another and selling a car and packing up our life in the middle of it all, we will show you pictures of this place. If I don’t say so myself, it’s looking mighty fine. Even without a concrete countertop.

We’re officially in the design phase of our project and realizing it’s much more difficult than expected (more on that soon), so we apologize for the lack of posts. Congrats to Kersten & Tai and Chris for making so much headway. We’re also trying to keep warm in our temporary living space, which is without heat and will remain that way for some time. Don’t feel too bad for us though because it is San Francisco, and personally I don’t think it gets that cold here. Nonetheless, I wanted to share a before and after photo of our temporary living space. As mentioned before we’re living in about 150 square feet of our house, while the rest has been completely gutted. I will share more photos of our temporary living space later this week.
It might not look like much compared to all of the excellent renovations featured on RenovationVoyeur but it was actually about a months worth of work; removing a horrific drop ceiling and wood paneling, adding insulation in a few key places, installing a temporary plywood floor, sealing windows, installing electrical outlets, and painting about 10 coats of white paint to help make the space livable.

Stay tuned later this week for more images of our living space, as well as some updates to come on the design phase of our project. You can see more photos from our project here.

I put up the bedroom ceiling fan ALL BY MYSELF the other night, and I didn’t shock myself once.

It went from this….

To this (if you can even tell what it looks like from this picture)

We couldn’t have done this process without all the help from our families. We’ve mentioned Tai’s rock-star dad on this blog many times before (see subfloor 1, subfloor 2, tile) with even a picture of the fine gent here. We interrupted his Saturday night with a desperate call for help wiring our dishwasher and garbage disposal. He graciously responded by crawling around on our floor for several hours:

My mother bravely trekked downtown in the middle of the season’s first blizzard to help us paint some closet interiors. The hall linen closet and the living room coat closet both now have paint thanks to her.

The brothers-in-law helped put down the bamboo, and my grandfather spent two back-breaking days under our kitchen sink trying to figure out our antiquated plumbing. Bless his heart — he is SO tired of doing our plumbing. He’s also been housing us since mid-August, so I’m pretty sure he’s sick of that, too!

My dad and little sister even got in the action by priming on our kitchen walls and front door. My dad made an encore appearance to prime the bathroom baseboard (ah, our lives are so glamorous!). My mother and grandfather made a much-needed dump run for us, which is why you haven’t been treated to a final photo of the old toilet in an odd setting — they got the honor of throwing it into the dump pit. I got word this morning from my mother that she ironed and hemmed our bedroom and office curtains for us (”It’s curtains for you…” was her exact phrase). And Daniel and Lacy gave us a jump start on our kitchen cabinets one very cold night just before Thanksgiving.

So, this is great. When I grumble about living in Utah (see: the last three years), it’s usually because I’ve forgotten what a benefit it is to live near family. Help with our remodeling project is just a small reason why I’m constantly reminding myself that we are indeed lucky to have all trillion of them nearby!

But not because of the co-op. They met and said they were fine with an investor, though they wanted me to put 10% down rather than 5%. But because the whole thing has been taking so long, my financial situation has changed, and I’m less sure now than before of whether or not I can make a decent profit from the deal, I backed out. I made another (lower) offer but she rejected it. Bummer.