cabinet doors & more

Hey guys! It has been a while! Not too much "exciting" has been going on at the house...besides getting all new duct work and air conditioning on the second floor! There was technically air conditioning on the first floor, but it only came up through one source, in the hallway.

Created lots of Marilyn Monroe situations, though I'm not exactly Marilyn Monroe :)

So now we have ducts! And as exciting as that is, who really wants to see a bunch of pictures of shiny new ducts? Hence the reason I haven't updated in a while. But we did something exciting on Friday, and I wanted to share it with you all!

We went to Cabinet Doors & More out in Fordsville! Actually, we went last Saturday, but once I found out that you can customize on the cheap (within reason of course), I just had to go back home and sketch out some ideas. My Dad warned me that it might not all be able to happen.  We returned this past Friday, and guess what?!?! It happened :)

Here are the sketches that David, the owner, sketched for me based off my drawings, which I used to be pretty proud of. Until he whipped out these awesome drawings that put mine to shame! So here is the master bath double vanity and linen closet.

They added legs for a more custom feel, but there is a recessed toe kick behind them. So important if you don't want to dust under the vanity every two weeks. They are also putting in a shorter drawer in between the sinks, in order to maximize storage potential. I loved that idea. These people are good! The linen cabinet is going to the ceiling to try and give it a built in look. I'm excited about all the storage we are going to have! And for a great price.

The next piece was inspired by a trip to Julie's house, a friend of mine from work. She had a tailgate party before a game and offered to give us a our of their beautiful house. Leo loved it! I think it gave him some hope for the future, when our reality is so messy right now! She has the most amazing closet/dressing room. Ours isn't that big, but it still inspired me to create a dresser of sorts to put in the middle of the clothing rods. It will hold purses, belts, and jewelry. 

 It looks so simple on the paper! I can't wait to show you all the real thing! She also inspired me when she told me to think creatively and use every space possible (I told her our space in the closet is tight). If the heating and air guys can make it happen, we are going to inset shelves into the wall across from the clothing rack. That wall backs up to the hall closet, which is where the heating unit and air ducts are stored for the second floor. If they can keep the ducts to the right side of the closet, we can do the inset shelves. If not, no shelves...which would be really disappointing because they would make the perfect spot for my shoes :)

Finally, they are making us a vanity for the downstairs bathroom. We also bought a vessel sink, that is rectangular, to go on top of it. That means they had to make the vanity itself about 5 inches lower, so shorter people (kids in particular) can still reach it. It was no problem for them to do so and they are putting on shaker doors and simple, 6 inch legs. I'm hoping the legs and open space under the vanity will help balance the heaviness of the vessel sink. We will see! They also had to add a "box" under, since the pipes are coming up through the floor, rather than the wall. The box will hide the plumbing.

If you need a vanity, or any kind of cabinet for anything you are redoing in your house, I would definitely recommend Cabinet Doors & More. They are the friendliest people and will work to customize the pieces to your needs. You just have to do the painting and installation. For us and our needs, the drive out to Fordsville is definitely worth it. Plus, they have inexpensive cabinet hardware, and other odds and ends things for making craft projects. They have a Facebook page that has great pictures of their work and products. You should go check it out!

In the future, we are hoping to have them make a cabinet system for the basement to go around Leo's "man cave". Right now we are focused on the essentials and sadly, Leo's man cave having storage cabinets doesn't exactly fit into that category at the moment! But my closet dresser did...hmm... ;)

I hope you all are having a great Labor Day weekend!

-katie

oh, rats!

A couple of Saturday's ago my Dad and I were talking over breakfast about what to do at the house that day. I mean, there's just nothing to do :)

Anyway, the stairs are REALLY squeaky. I mean typical old house squeaky, and then some. It was part of the water damage from the roof.

The hardwood specialist that came over to look at the floors said that he might be able to fix them. But first, we have to take off the drywall under the stairs so that they can be accessed from the basement stairs and repaired. I don't have a super great picture, but this is the door leading to the basement/basement stairs.

So here we are, fast forward to about 1 p.m. and we are ripping out everything.

I mean we are really going for the open concept thing now :) If you blow up the first picture you can see the lovely stud all the way over to the right, it looks super structurally sound! Glad we uncovered it.

So here we are in a pile of dust, drywall, and lord knows what else. And bless my curious heart, I start begging my poor Dad to uncover what used to be the old door from the basement to the outside. He finally gave in. I stand there like a kid in a candy store. I had been hoping to find something cool all day. This was my last hope. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I don't know if I would label it "cool", but we can say interesting.

outside where the old basement door used to be

My Dad takes off the drywall and carries it out. I start looking at the studs and insulation. I see a weed growing in the wall (there is just plywood on the bottom of the outside where the siding doesn't cover it). A weed. Great.  I dig look down at the bottom again, another (dead) weed, so I grab it. Not. A. Dead. Weed.

Screams ensue and gloves go flying off as I run up the stairs and past my understandably confused father who is returning from throwing away the drywall. Then I start jumping up and down and dry heaving like the drama queen I am.

My Dad looks at me like I'm crazy and I scream "Rats!" He calls me crazy. He walks down the stairs and says, "That's not a rat!"

Excuse me. I may be a girly girl, but I know a rat when I see one, albeit mummified. He gets closer. 

"Oh, it is a rat...there's two!"

Thank you, Sherlock. That may be why I used the plural form.

Within seconds he has named them Fred and Ethel. Leave it to my Dad to name two mummified rats right off the bat. After a 1950's sitcom. 

I'm going to warn you that if you don't want to see two mummified rats, STOP scrolling! Though, it may be too late. Sorry.

My Dad got the shovel and put them out on the front porch. Lovely.

It was a little sad. They were facing each other in the wall...like a married couple that wouldn't leave each other. Titanic anyone? The Notebook? Leave it to me to think of a romance from two dead rats in a wall. Of course.

Anyway, I got new gloves, because of course mummified rats carry diseases. I really just couldn't put those things back on. But thank God I had them on...a lot of times I refuse to put them on because the stink, which they really, really do.

And we moved on. We finished that part and then Leo finished the soccer tournament he was at and came over to help my Dad replace a couple of beams that had long ago been eaten on like a buffet by termites. We could tell it was long ago because they had already put another beam next to it to be the support, and you could tell it was aged. But my Dad likes to be thorough. We took the eaten beam off and put another new beam up against the the one they had put there already. It was pretty bad, it just fell apart. We already replaced parts of the floor in the bathroom and kitchen that were rotted from plumbing issues.

I mean, Leo is literally ripping off the beam with his hands at one point. It was just crumbling! Oh, old houses. I'm pretty sure I was getting a few "What did you get me into?" looks that day, but he just kept going

He is being such a trooper! I'm so glad I found someone that will support my dreams, even if it isn't exactly what he was thinking when he bought his first house. But I think he will see the light when we are finished :)

-Katie