HGTV Lies, Lies, Lies

Not that I thought gutting, designing, and adding an additional 1500 square feet to an existing house was going to be easy, but that little liar HGTV had me hoping that things would at least maybe take less than FOREVER to finish.  Apparently Denver is the only city in the world where homebuilding is actually booming, and 10 weeks is the projected timeline for permits.  That's just to GET PERMISSION to build.  Then we tack on another 24 weeks for construction and probably 4 weeks for weather delays if it decides to snow this winter, and I'm going to be 30 when we move into this house.  

I've never been more ready to rip a roof off of a house.

Anyways....while we continue to wait, there are some changes that have taken place.  We've had a lot of masonry work done to move windows, brick up windows, cut new windows, doors, etc. 

Below is our front door opening before:

This is after moving it over 6 inches and taking out the additional width of the old sidelights.  It's an amazing art to be able to tooth in brick like this:

These are the new windows in the sitting room off the kitchen (there was zero light on this side of the house - very depressing).  They are HUGE - we actually had no idea how big until we went to check out the progress last Sunday.

More pics that show the handiwork of the mason - the written instructions on the wall were classic.

Anyways, I know it's hump day and on hump day the week never seems like it's going to be over, but I leave you with this little nugget that a client sent to me:

Down with the tree

Believe it or not, Brian and I put an offer on this house without even seeing it. The owners put it on the market but weren't doing showings for another couple of weeks, and we knew it would go fast.  So we checked the size of the lot, put a lot of contingency language that would get us out if we realized we just made the biggest mistake of our lives, and said a prayer.  

So when we actually got the chance to look at the house that we were buying, one of the things we loved was this 150+ year old tree in the backyard.  We loved it right up until we bought the house and realized it took up all our yard, its roots were growing into our sewer line and cracking it, and it probably was about to fall over on our house due to being stressed from drought.  So, down it came.  This is what the backyard looked like with the garage and junk of the previous owners:

I drove by last week after they had taken it down (along with the garage) and almost crashed my car.  It's amazing how much bigger the lot actually looks when all of the overgrown plants and shrubbery are ripped out.

Now we have moved on to picking out finishes.  4 hours at Ferguson made me need a drink badly.  But we got a lot done and someday soon you'll be sitting on this in our guest bathroom!

Stolen Porch and a Man Cave

I don't have much of an update - we are in the waiting period of permitting which could take 8-10 weeks.  However, a few major demo items have been completed.

1.  Someone stole our porch!  Thank God.  See ya old porch, can't wait for our new one.

2.  Brian is dreaming big dreams for his basement man cave.  Gone is the green shag carpet and wood paneling but other manly things will take their place.  Most likely surround sound and blackout shades and an obscenely large TV.

Designing Bathrooms Around a Window

We are officially almost done with the design process - at least for the floor plans and the elevations (what the house will look like from the outside).  Next up - tile and paint and woodwork and built-ins and more....Thank God for Houzz.com, because we've got the basic aesthetics down after hours of ideabooks and pinning.

Now I totally understand why some houses look funny from the outside.  It is quite a task trying to place windows and doors while making the inside functional and the outside look good.  I think we redesigned our Master bathroom at least 5 times trying to figure out how to get the window placement just right on the front left of the house.  

Here's an example:

Weird, right?  The upstairs left windows are too small - because we had our shower on that front wall.  So we moved the shower and bathtub around and ended up with this:

Another weird thing about elevations is that because they aren't 3D, it's hard to tell the depth of some areas.  The door on the left of the house is actually about 50 feet back and is a door into the garage that you can't even see from the street - not a random shed on the side of our house like I thought the first time I saw this.

Demo and More Demo

We are smack in the middle of demo and it's coming along!  Because the house was built in 1928, we have had to have lead and asbestos abatement.  Luckily there wasn't a lot, and it's almost all done.  

One of the best parts of remodeling an old house is being able to use some of the old materials and blend that with all of the new.  We are keeping the solid oak 1928 hardwood floors - they are in amazing shape (thanks to the 60's and 70's, where carpet over the hardwood was all the rage) and we are also cutting the old wavy glass exterior windows and using them as the glass front in some of our kitchen cabinets.

Here are some of the demo pics

Right side of the main floor, looking from living room to the back of the house (buh bye, radiators)

 

From the middle of the house looking towards the front left - this used to be one of the bedrooms

From the middle of the house looking towards the back left of the house, where our new kitchen will be!  This used to be another bedroom.

 

This Is Happening

Well, this is really happening.  The lead paint and asbestos abatement was started this week and we are in week 2 of designing the floor plans.  Just so you guys can see the inside and what we are working with, I thought I'd post a few pictures of the interior.  Don't be jealous.

The narrow and enclosed front porch.

 The front entry. Don't miss the doorbell chimes on the wall behind.

Dining Room looking towards front Living Room.

Purple striped bathroom with wood toilet seat and carpet, so stylish.

Kitchen.  Yes, they took the cabinets, applicances and even the crumbs on the floor.

Brian's new basement man cave, complete with radiant heat and wood paneling. 

Next up - demo and designing the outside of the house.  Still pinching myself that we are building a house :)

We Bought a House - Yay?

We closed on our house!  Quite a looker, huh?  We hired a great design/build firm, TM Grace, and are getting the plans rolling.  Brian and I have been scouring Wash Park for about a year for the perfect lot and older house with great bones that we could make into our family home. 

Here's a look at our new neighborhood....we've got some serious work to do.

This is our neighbor to the North.  We will not be keeping up with those Joneses.  

This house is about a block south of us and I stopped in my tracks when I saw it.  Love at first sight.  We are using this as our template for our plans.