Starting A New House Renovation & Ending In Disaster

We had some renters move out a few weeks ago, a wonderful couple who've been there 7 years. The 1963 ranch they were in hadn't been updated in at least a decade, though, so John and I are tackling a whole house refresh and renovation.

Because the renters had big dogs, all of the trim looked like this:

It's sticky, so won't vacuum up. An easy way to clean fuzzy trim like this is to grab a cheap plastic broom, wet the bristles in the sink, and scrub. Saves time and your back.

Here's the trim after cleaning:

And then after painting:

Ahhh. See, if I have to paint trim, I want it to be super dirty so I get this kind of result. 

(Wall paint is still to come. Always paint the trim first!)

I never knew a fridge could have this many nooks and crannies, y'all. I had to use a toothbrush. I kept quitting and coming back, so this was a 3-day clean. Oof.


Here's a look at the kitchen:

We installed these IKEA cabinets 10 years ago, and let me sing their praises for a sec, because dang. This kitchen has taken some serious abuse - grease splatters and spills galore - but after a quick wipe down the cabinets look brand new. The renters didn't use drawer liners or contact paper, but every stain wiped off like nothing. Just... wow. We've always loved IKEA cabinetry (and have installed it in at least half a dozen kitchens), but it's nice to see it holding up to the Rental test.

See how the side of the fridge is scuffed up? That's after scrubbing, so what's left are permanent marks.

This was so fun to do. The epoxy paint is thin but pools beautifully to fill dings and scratches, and it has a tiny brush so you can dab it only where needed. Some of the darker scuffs needed two coats, but it dries in minutes, so still doable in one go. (I used this Rustoleum paint.)

Aren't Before and Afters fun? Let's do another one. 

 

Here's the petri dish of a front door:

This is the original wooden front door - it weighs a ton - and the glass screen door in front was trapping all the Florida moisture inside, which made it and the trim perpetually mildewy. Yech.

After a thorough bleaching and scrub down, John sprayed on fresh new paint, and look how pretty:

We also removed the old screen door to prevent the mildew from coming back, which makes the house look so much better from the curb. Just have to finish patching and painting that trim.

Oh hey, and if you like that black door...

Then how about a whole house of them?

Yep, we're going BOLD with this reno, y'all. We're switching from the warm beige and brushed silver accents to a cooler gray with black accents. We... may regret it? But honestly the white doors were half black with scuffs and dirt anyway, and I really think this will look amazing with the wall paint we chose. (Technically the doors are an off-black, more charcoal, which isn't quite as cold and stark as true black.)

Also how do you like John's murder room setup in the garage, eh? This is one of the extremely rare circumstances where we recommend a paint sprayer. (The only other time is for painting cabinetry.) John plastic'd off all the walls and floor, then drilled paint sticks into the top of each door to hold them away from the walls while they dry. Totally worth the hassle of the sprayer for the speed and perfect finish; no brush strokes or drips, yessss.

I intended to replace this chandelier, but John got to looking at it, and you know how we love a challenge...

 So I scrubbed off the dust, John fixed the arms, and we took it home and strung it up on a 2X4 stretched between 2 ladders:

This set up is perfect for painting lights; really lets you get into all the hard to reach areas.

And LOOK how beautiful this finish turned out:

We used this Rustoleum Painter's Touch 2X in flat black, only $4 at Home Depot. It seriously looks like a baked-on powder coat. Color me impressed!

One more:

Both bathrooms don't have exhaust fans (another item on John's to-do list) so all the fixtures are pretty rusty.

Gobsmacked how much rust came off with a scratchy scrubbing pad! I could almost re-install this as-is, but we're going with all black accents, so...

OoooOOOOOooh. Shaxay.

After all these successes it's high time we get to the big disaster, though, don't you think? Here comes the lead-up:

Dumping the water after only half of one room:

AAAAAAAAAAA

Thankfully there's only carpet in 2 bedrooms and the rest of the house is tile, because sweet mercy.

Here's the Before in one of those rooms:

And the same room After:


Not too bad!

But back to the disaster.

Because I went over the carpets several times to get the stains out, they were pretty soaked from cleaning. So to help them dry out, we left the A/C cranked over night.

The next day - which was yesterday - I was back in the house painting still MORE trim, when I noticed something odd in the largest bedroom.

::insert ominous foreshadowing here::

There were small splatters of water on the floor, almost like I'd walked through a puddle and had dripped in a few spots. Except I hadn't.

I mentioned the oddity to John, who immediately - and as it turned out, correctly - jumped to the worst possible conclusion. He hastily toweled off the wet spots on the floor, and as I walked across the area again, we watched those same small puddles reappear over the cracks in the laminate floor:

Ruh-roh.

Yep, our floor was leaking UP.

That's bad, y'all. Real bad. Disaster bad.

Within two minutes we found the source of our calamity: the A/C unit - housed in a closet right outside the master bedroom door, and perhaps driven to its limit by being cranked overnight - had suffered some sort of blockage and overflowed the drip pan. The water then flooded out into the master bedroom and closet, under the floorboards.

The good new is this particular flooring is plastic water-proof laminate, so it's not destroyed. In fact we bought it for exactly this reason, though at the time we were safeguarding against dog pee, not flooding air conditioners, ha.

The other good news is the laminate is installed over the original Terrazzo, which is also waterproof. So nothing structural other than a little trim has gotten wet or runs any risk of mold.

That's where the good news ends, though, because we still have a broken A/C and John had to spend last night ripping up & toweling off a whole lot of flooring:

Womp Womp. Our to-do list on this reno keeps getting longer, y'all. Good thing we like projects. 

 

::weak smile::

Once the floor and laminate is completely dry (we have a giant de-humidifier going) John will be re-installing the floor. We numbered all the laminate pieces with blue tape as he pulled them up, so that should go relatively quick:

Air conditioning repair, on the other hand, is one of the few things we *don't* try to do ourselves, so we have someone coming out tomorrow. Fingers crossed it's a quick fix and not too painful, since it's 95 degrees here and we want to get back to work!

We still have loads to do: ceilings, closets, replacing a toilet or two, all new bath fixtures, and on and on. We're saving painting the walls for last, because that's the most fun. :) I can't wait to show y'all how it turns out, though I'm slightly terrified. Gosh I hope it looks good. These grays and blacks are outside my comfort zone, and we're really depending on them to cool the floor tile throughout the house to a better neutral! (It looks sickly pink now, but once we paint the walls and switch to cooler light bulbs, it should look much better.)

Which reminds me:

Have we tested different grout cleaners and geeked out over the winner? Yes, yes we have.

Stay tuned!

*****

P.S. Speaking of winners, let's announce a whole BUNCH. First, from my last post's art roundup:

The winner of the Droid print set is Amanda (with the blog Amidala)
The winner of the Tiki print set is Hayley

And the winner of the Potter print set is Lu L.

Congrats, you three, and please e-mail me your mailing address so I can ship those out!

And finally, last month's Squeeegineer winners are Sara S. & Laura K.! Congrats, you two, and please check your inboxes for a message from John so you can choose your prizes.