The Remodel: Episode 1

    Well, I am finally getting around to writing a blog about the remodel of our new place.  There is so much to talk about and we did so many things that I am going to break it up into multiple posts, otherwise I might win an award from Guinness for the longest blog post.
    We finished the interior remodel a few weeks ago.  It took about 6 weeks to do it. Our last house I remodeled in under three weeks.  This one took longer because I wanted to do it better since it is our long term house, we were living in it while remodeling, and we have two very young girls that require lots of attention and like to get into everything.
    This house had not been updated since it was built which was 1988. It was super 80's, and not the cool 80's.  There was brown swirl sculpted carpet, wood paneling wainscoting in every room with wallpaper above, old school linoleum, old brown colored cabinets and vanities with ugly countertops, super ugly light fixtures and chandelier, lots of lace curtains, etc. Just think of your grandma's house. There was even carpet in the bathroom which is gross and I don't understand why anyone would do that.  Old people lived here so there was no dishwasher. There was also not a back door because the owners took it out to put in a propane fake fireplace a few years ago.
      Overall the remodel went good but it did not go without hitches (and maybe a little cussing). One of the things that took the longest to do was to remove wallpaper from every room. We had never done that before and it was not fun.  We discovered that the previous owners did not prime the drywall before putting on the wallpaper (fyi, you should never do that).  Some of the wallpaper did come down ok but a lot of it took lots of steam, water, and scraping.  We discovered that every wallpaper comes off differently.  We are now experts if anyone needs advice.  We discovered the cabinets were custom built so changing the tops was not as easy as I hoped because it was not standard sized.  We also discovered the best way for removing linoleum from concrete, which involves boiling water. It sucked pretty bad living in the house while remodeling but luckily it did not take terribly long. It drove me crazy living in a complete dirty mess for that time, I am happy it is over.  One thing I discovered though.  I think if I had the money I would flip houses for a living.  I really enjoy remodeling a house (just not living in it while I do it) and I think I am good at it.
     We are happy with how it turned out. I hope we continue to be happy with it for years to come. It is amazing to see the before and after pictures (which I will be posting in the following posts). For this post I will put up some pictures from during the remodel.

First piece of wood paneling to come off the wall. 

First piece of wallpaper to come off.  The first room the wallpaper came off super easy so we thought it was not going to be too bad but we were very very wrong

Wall after removing paneling and wallpaper.

Adding a back door with my dad.  It went pretty fast because he had done it before. 

Altering the 80's hang down cabinets into hanging shelves.  It was a crazy idea I had. 

Laying vinyl tile in the kitchen.

Painting cabinets.  We did not plan to do this but after altering the upper hanging cabinets we felt like it really need to be done.  And we are super happy we did it even though painting cabinets sucks big time.