A Home In College Hill

This post is long overdue! I am still planning to write individual posts about the trim and carpet install/sub-floor, but I couldn’t wait any longer to share the before/after photos with you.

Now when I say before and after, I really mean before and (95% done, ran out of steam, broke as a joke, almost) after.

The basement renovation has been going on since November 2011 and I am WORN OUT.  Once the carpet was installed, Geoff and I sprawled out on the floor and temporarily gave in. It’s sad really because we are so close. All that’s left for the main living space is a little bit of trim (baseboards and staircase trim) and cabinet doors. The bathroom and laundry room are another story. The bathroom needs a new tile floor and tile tub surround. The laundry room needs a tile floor, counter top, storage cabinets, and new appliances. We will get to the other rooms…..later this year I’m in full on gardening mode now so the rest of the indoor projects will have to wait for rainy days or cold weather.

I didn’t take terrific before photos- my mistake. This is what I could find in the archives:

The Beginning

In the picture above you can see couch covered in plastic. The wooden structure in the back right corner was an old canning room and the source of the basement leak  and was removed. The water heater under the window was removed and a new one was installed to the left of the giant ancient blue boiler, which you can barely see behind the white support post.

After Insulation and Framing

This picture is after framing and insulation. The water heater and canning room mentioned about are now gone. There are new walls in the right foreground for the laundry room and the left background for the boiler room.

Ta Da! This is the current state of the basement after electrical, drywall, carpet, paint and trim.  Doesn’t the space seem so much larger? Yes, that is the same couch and coffee table. We wrapped the support posts in wood for a more finished look. All of the utilities are now behind the louvered door in the boiler room, and the washer and dryer are tucked away in the laundry room.

Laundry room door

Bathroom and Boiler room door

Above you can see the staircase and the corner of the bathroom framed and insulated.

Here is the staircase after drywalled and painted. The open area in back right corner will be a storage closet. We still need to make doors.

Above is one of the windows framed out.

Below is a finished window boxed in with wood and trim.

We boxed in the beam and posts.

We plan to make a little door to cover the access to the electrical box.

We wired the basement for surround sound before putting up the drywall

Hey everybody,

Last week was surprising terrific for A Home In College Hill in the blog world.

• A Home in College Hill was featured by Materials Unlimited on the Facebook page. Materials Unlimited is a local architectural salvage/antique/lighting store in my area. We partnered up with them to do a tutorial on refinishing antique doors and hardware I purchased there. If you missed those posts you can check them out here.
• I was contacted to locally participate in a user review/demo of a new plug-in Are You A Human is developing for WordPress.org users. It s supposed to eliminate CAPTCHA while still providing a lot of security, by making it fun with games. Makes me want to move over to WordPress.org sooner than later. I need to get on that. It was fun to do, really fast,and hey, who doesn’t hate CAPTCHA. The more work you need to do to leave a comment, the less likely you are to do it.
• Purdy Paint Tools will be featuring my refinishing antique doors tutorial on their Tip Tuesday tomorrow. Holy Cow! I was so excited when they asked.
• I was contacted by a restaurant who was looking for local food bloggers to attend their wine tasting. So awesome! I was out of town on business OF COURSE. I let them know I would like to drink their wine pretty much any other time I’m in Ann Arbor, so I hope they invite me back.

Which brings me to an announcement:

I write my blog in real time so it follows what is happening weekly in ours lives as we work on the house. Last summer I added some information about the CSA I joined, local food, and gardening These topics are not about home renovation, but they have to do with our property and the area.

I am going to expand on the food portion of the blog this summer and…….add recipes.

I cook meals from scratch using local ingredients 4-5 times a week. The other days we are eating left overs, or we go out/order-in. That means 5-6 days a week, we are eating meals made almost entirely from local food. It’s not what you think either, because we eat well. We even eat local filet mignon and shrimp. Yup, both raised in Michigan.

The recipes will be once a week or, maybe less, but I hope it’s something you will enjoy. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Cheers,

I haven’t posted about the basement for a bit, because, to be honest, it was starting to dominate the blog. Basement updates with trim, carpet, and more will be back next week.

In the meantime, I thought I would entertain you with some humor. We do not move seamlessly from one project to another here at A Home In College Hill, even if it appears as if we do. Here is a sampling of the current frenetic mess of unfinished projects:

• I started to strip the kitchen cabinets last summer…..

and only got this far….

• We can’t turn on the fan in the bathroom because it currently vents into the attic, not outside. It makes for a very steamy or a very stinky experience.

• The doorbell is on its last leg.

• We replaced the door sill for the dining room french doors LAST summer, but I never got around to staining the other half of threshold.

• We had to bribe the mason who fixed the fireplace to temporarily cement this step in place, while the rest of the porch crumbles around it.

• The air conditioner leaked right after I painted and so I refused to touch it up in protest.

• The laundry shoot is unlined and has wires crossing through it so I have to use a broom handle with a hanger duct taped to it to get the clothes out some times.

• Our washing machine is possessed and frequently in need of an exorcism in the form of a weight adjustment.

• The company we hired to fertilize the lawn aerated it by mistake and broke the overflow valve on the dry well.

I hope these made you laugh. I tend to show a lot of progress, which is not always the reality at our house. We have a lot of little projects to finish this summer. Looks like we will be busy.

Flowers are blooming and trees are leafing out in Michigan, and with the upcoming week of warm weather I expect to see some more blooms. Along with the flowers  the bees, mosquitos and that mysterious thing that lives in the hole in my backyard have all woken up. Also, I need to check on my Dahlia shipment, which should be on its way soon.

I will make my first trip to the farmers market this Saturday to pick up some cold-hardy greens to get the vegetable garden going. All of this warm weather means it’s time to take down the few storm windows that we have….which is really out of the order for things since we already had to mow the lawn. Tulips blooming before daffodils is backwards too. What a strange Spring it has been.

Here is what has been happening in the garden the last few weeks:

Red bud tree

Rhubarb

Star Magnolia

budding hydrangea

Iris

Crocus

Jane Magnolia

Jane Magnolia

Hosta

Sage

Fern

herbaceous peony

herbaceous peony (4'x3')

English lavender

Roses