Moolie - Happy Thanksgiving :)

wow, that looks fantastic!! :) thank you so much for putting up the photos, it really gives me hope that one day we might be able to do similar. it's amazing how nice it came out!

i think i'm gonna reply to your other post in here, if that's okay, since i don't wanna hijack the other thread :)

our house i believe was built in the '50s, updated in the 70's hah. some of it is very charming, some of it not so much. i would LOVE to knock down our wall between the kitchen and living room, and put in a nice pantry or something (storage is an issue here) but i'm scared of trusting my own judgement as to whether or not the wall in question is load-bearing. our other biggest "problem" is the bathroom, which still has its original sink/tub/toilet (pink!) and is carpeted (ew) and the shower/tub area is that cheap plastic insert type thing with old, cracking caulk. blah. i'm also mildly scared that there may be mold behind those walls, because of the cracked caulk - so i'm afraid to crack it open to check. heh. i do NOT have the money to even think about starting DIY renovations at the moment, let alone tearing open a wall and immediately needing to call in professionals...

in my fantasy world, i'd also like to re-do our attic. our house was originally two stories, but built back when most ceiling heights were 7'. at some point, a previous owner of this house had a family member who was really tall, so they decided to raise most of the ceilings on the first floor at expense of losing the second floor living space. so the "upstairs" is now stripped and very attic-like, no floor etc, and they put in roof trusses that look like a V instead of an A (does that make sense?), so you can't even walk around up there. it still has adorable windows though. i'd LOVE to take out the annoying trusses and finish it as an upstairs master bedroom sort of thing. i don't even wanna think about what that type of project would cost though, and i don't know if that'd ever be within my skill range for DIY... i feel like i'd probably have to replace the entire roof. hence why it's my fantasy, hah.

thank you also for your book suggestions and letting me know about classes at home depot! i totally forgot that they offer classes... i think we only have a lowes locally here, but i think they also offer similar classes. i'll definitely be checking that out whenever funding becomes less of an issue. :)
 
Sounds like structural issues all around--the kitchen/living room wall is probably do-able but you'd need an engineer to check it out for you. They make some fabulous laminated beams these days if you can afford to totally open it up, OR you can leave some pillars in place to hold up the existing beams, but that may affect the look you are going for. FWIW we left the wall between our kitchen and living room for similar reasons.

Your attic is probably not inhabitable at this point, it sounds like they totally re-did the roof when they put in the trusses and you'd need to rip it off and re-build to change it back :( Our house had a shallow hip roof (slanted on all four sides) so there was no going up in our case even though we didn't have trusses.

The bathroom sounds totally promising for a DIY fix though :)

When you are ready, a tub surround is an easy replacement unless you need to replace the tub as well. Just pull those plastic panels down, pull off any old drywall or green board, and screw up cement board in its place (with stainless steel screws) and then glue on something nice like Barkerboard or go whole hog and tile over it :) There are lots of books that will give you the basics on tiling, start with your kitchen back splash to try it out :)

A retro pink tub/sink/toilet set can work really well with the right paint colours and tile/flooring, we only had the tub left in pink--the toilet and sink had been replaced before we bought and there was no way to match the tub colour anymore so we had ours re-coated to be white.

If there is any mold, it is likely only in the drywall (older house so very possible that this is all that's behind your plastic panels) or green board (if the surround was put in during the 70s remodel you might be lucky and have green board which is mold-resistant drywall).

The carpet is likely over top of vinyl flooring, so just peel up a corner and check. If so, you'll have a new floor in short order just be getting rid of the carpet. If it's over the plywood subfloor, you'll need to pull it up and put in a new floor. Tile is easy, but more expensive, and you can do it by the book. The tile guys at your Lowe's should have great advice as well. Otherwise go with vinyl. You can do peel & stick tiles or sheet vinyl, both are pretty easy and just get stuck/glued down--again by the book.

If your vanity is tired/dated, just paint it--you can buy counter top paint as well for a quick and cheap fix until you can put in something you like better :)
 
hehe you're getting me all excited thinking about renovating the bathroom... i agree, that would probably be our best starting point (and probably the place that is in most need of TLC anyway). i tend to get kinda down over wintertime, but having projects can often help me with that... so depending on my finances, i might actually try to do something with it. you make it seem much less daunting than i was thinking it would be. :D

and we do actually have some sort of vinyl tile-ish something under the carpet in there (it's hiiiiideous, hah) but it doesn't line up well with the existing subfloor. the carpet just kinda covers where there are gaps between the subfloor and wall (vertically and horizontally). so i think we'd have to put something else down first, or else any new vinyl won't be tall enough to hide the gaps. our house i believe is structurally sound, but we've discovered that quite a few cosmetic shortcuts were taken with various things. (did i mention it's also got white wood panelling in there? hehe)
 
We gutted and rebuilt our house 6 years ago (thanks to katrina) and it's a shame I am ready to do most of it over again. I've decided I don't like the tile we put in and the pattern, which I love, is going in the wrong direction. I want to put in new vanities in each bathroom and change the paint in one of them. We took out a bedroom wall to opened it up to the living room, but we should have used the next bedroom and opened it up to the bar area instead. The flow would have been better, so I'd like to fix that. I don't dare bring any of it up to my husband. He'd blow a gasket. :duc :lol:

What you did with your old house looks great. You did a real good job.
 
Thanks everyone!

Dreaming, I totally hear you on "flow" issues, that was my biggest concern with the kitchen when we re-did the cabinets--but it all worked out super and I absolutely loved that kitchen for the 10 years I had it. When we bought this house we wanted something that didn't need any work, so that was what we bought. But although our kitchen is in good shape, I really miss my lower cabinet drawers.

This kitchen has doors and very few drawers except a few cabinets have drawers above the lower doors. I am constantly having to get down and sit on the floor to find things shoved more to the back like casserole dishes etc. We keep cardboard box "drawers" in a few lower cabinets just to avoid this (one holds my tea towels as there isn't a big enough drawer) but I don't think my "ghetto" drawers will last forever.

No money to do much else, but hubs may be able to retro-fit some home made drawers into the existing cabinets so that we still have the doors but can more easily get at whats inside. Just need a plan and some wood and drawer runners. First one to be done needs to be my tea towels, followed by my canning jars!
 
Metal, I think we had the same house as you--our home was owned by an electrician and then a junk collector before we bought it. The electrician was the one who originally "finished" the basement did all sorts of weird electrical stuff everywhere, and the basement had 3 different kinds of ceiling, two different kinds of fake wood paneling (some painted, some not) plus drywall and a weird kinda stucco wall. By the time we moved, that basement was beautiful AND all up to code :)

The junk collector left a pile of his stuff in the attic space, and when we called a company to come blow insulation up there they told us we had to remove the stuff (which we hadn't known about) before they could do the work. We called one of those "1-800-junk" type companies and we literally filled one of those trucks. Vacuum cleaner hoses, toilet seats, rugs, broken lamps, broken stuff galore--it was amazing. We had only been in the house for 2 weeks and really should have looked in the attic before we made the offer so we could have made the owner deal with the junk :rolleyes:
 
I'll just pop in here to add a note of caution with those trusses. If they are true engineered roof trusses, you aren't even supposed to put any kind of flooring, plywood, etc on them to try to make a finished attic area. I was surprised to learn that most are not engineered for that extra weight unless specified.

We've done a LOT of remodeling through the years, did a complete house re-do like you, Moolie. I bet we spent every weekend for a year at our daughter's house, tearing out and putting in a new kitchen, bath (yeck, hate those), new drywall...you know the drill. After that for some reason we decided to help a young couple we had met remodel and restore their two story Georgian style house.

Now that I think about it, I have spent the last 35 years eating plaster or drywall dust.... :lol:

Back to lurking on this thread....
 
Aw, thanks guys! :hugs

Marianne, don't you dare disappear from this conversation--sounds like you have lots of valuable hard-earned experience to share!
 
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