The Deck is Finished!!!

March 11, 2013

I love the new deck!  Shawn and Jordan were awesome and we loved having them around.  Not only did they do great work, but they cleaned up after themselves every day!  So here are some pictures of the old and new...

Back when we found out we needed to dig up the deck to fix the sewer, the kids were more than happy to help...

Then we found out it was a blessing in disguise be cause the deck supports had rotted as they were not made of pressure treated wood...

We begin to dismantle it...

 They dig for the sewer...

Then winter sets in while work is being done on the inside of the house.  We are finally ready to start digging to set the new deck supports.  This is Jordan and Shawn taking out the last of the old deck - we had left the stairs in so we could go in and out.

 And the new deck support framing is done with the properly treated wood...

Every day they made sure we had access to our back door.  These guys are really thoughtful.  They even made a temporary walkway through the mud and snow for us...

 And now the deck is finished with a two toned design...  Here are the back steps...

Those are the new french doors...

I wanted the herring bone pattern, but didn't think they would be able to do it... luckily, I was wrong...

We will build a new walkway off the front edge of the steps rather than the one that currently goes off the side...

The old deck used to go way out past the house.  It was an unused area of the deck and it took up a lot of play area for the kids, so we stopped the new deck at the house so that we could put more grass in...  

We still have a lot of clean up and stone removal before we reseed the grass...

We love the look of the entire deck...

Can't wait until everything is green again and the house is repainted...

In the meantime, I needed to preserve the height measurements of the kids.  I used to just write it on the wall on the stairs down to the basement, not very attractive...

 

  

So I bought some boards and decorated them with sharpies and marked their height and weight every year. 

 The bottom of these hang 12 inches off the ground.  They are six feet long, so they will go up to seven feet tall.  Jason was worried that he would outgrow his by the time he was twelve.  David told him he didn't have to worry because if he was over seven feet tall at 12 years old, he would be a famous basketball player...

 A closer look at the sharpie pattern...

So next we will have the outside of the house painted and hopefully get the back lawn seeded.  So nice to be almost finished...
~Mary

Basement Before and After

March 5, 2013

The basement is mostly done, we just need to get a handrail in along the stairs and finish the door to the cupboard under the stairs.  Here are some before and after pictures...

This is just as you come down the stairs and look towards the back door of the basement.

We moved all of the mechanical things like the furnace and such over into the left back corner behind that white door....

 When you come to the bottom of the stairs, you used to look at the furnace and the opening to a small office space...

Now, with everything moved out of the way and the walls to the old office demolished, the only thing left of the old stuff is the support column that we ended up staining to match the new stair treads.

Looking back at the stairs, that open space to the left used to be our pantry as there was no room in the old kitchen. It used to bug me to have to go down to the creepy basement to get food...

 
Now we have storage cabinets for games and art supplies as well as a little refrigerator for drinks and a microwave for popcorn.  Gotta love movie night!!!  David and I stained the stair treads and put five coats of polyurethane on them.  I just love them...

This is looking into the old office... notice the drain pipe running through it... that really used to bug me...

Now we have room for a big comfy sofa and bean bag chairs.  The drain pipe was completely taken out, and now we have a great room to just hang out and play games or watch movies...

We love this large refrigerator under the stairs for all of our extras, especially because it fits entire pizza boxes!  We really didn't want to get rid of it, but it doesn't look too nice...

So it is hidden in the mechanical room behind closed doors!

 Standing in the corner where the new mechanical room is, you look back towards the center of the basement and all you see is a mess of equipment around the chimney.

 We took the chimney out and along with moving all of the equipment, it really opened things up.

Looking from inside the old office towards the stairs...

Now it is so open and much lighter...

This back corner of the basement is now enclosed in the new mechanical room...

 

We have our water softener to the left, and furnace is behind that white thing on the right.  The white thing is our new hot water on demand system.  

This Baxi hot water system heats all of the household hot water including the underfloor heating.  It is awesome and has already saved us loads of money in heating bills...

The old back basement door that goes outside to stairs that lead up to the deck...

What a difference a remodel makes...

This is the area to the right of the basement door.

Standing here, you can look back towards the corner of the basement where the stairs come down.  You can't even see the stairs because of the chimney and all of the other junk in the way...

Now it looks like this... so nice and open...

Of course, we used to have a toilet down in the basement.  Jason is the only one who ever used it.  When we were taking things out we found out that it had just been set there, never bolted down.  So lucky we never had any mishaps...

Now we have put in a full bathroom, so any of you out of town visitors can have a place of your own.  (in town visitors can stay over as well)

 Took the door off for some of the pics...

 That's me saying "cheese".  Take special notice of my waterfall tile design.  That came to me while I was out to lunch with David one afternoon.

It looks small, but that is actually a six foot tub that is three feet wide.  Luxurious...

Had just enough room to put in a toilet...

And this is what it looks like if you are standing in the bathtub...

Last but not least, the back door leading out to the stairway up to the deck.

That is just a teaser as my next post will be about the new deck.  So excited that we are nearing the end here...   We will have an open house when the deck is finished and the last few things inside the house are done.

Until next time...

~Mary