House remodel is done!

Danny and I are happy to have a new home here in SLC. We bought this duplex on a tree lined street in the Sugarhouse area of Salt Lake. It's a lot different than our house in Idaho; smaller rooms, smaller yard and less room in the kitchen. But we are thrilled to have a "brand new house" in SLC, close to Taylor's school, Danny's work and all our family & friends in Utah. We are counting our many blessings.

The home was built in 1947 and needed a substantial amount of work. These houses have a lot of charm and are in great neighborhoods,but they are old and everything is original, so it's outdated.

This is a long post, mostly for our memory, so we can remember how this whole project looked before and after.

Here's what we did:

-Fix the broken water main in the front yard by repairing the pipe under the front yard.

-Replace the broken furnace, add new air ducts and added an Air Conditioner.

-Replace the kitchen and one bathroom and added a bathroom in the basement.

-Rip out cat hair infested carpet and refinish the beautiful hard wood floors, and extended the floors into the kitchen.

-Replace all the doors, baseboards and windows.

-Taped, mudded, texture the walls/ceiling and painted the whole house.

-Redid all the electrical work including getting a service upgrade from Rocky Mt. Power.

-Replace all the plumbing in the house, which included jackhammering a 10 foot trench in the basement to move the plumbing for the bathroom downstairs.

-Frame, sheetrock, insulate, carpet, trim, tile, vanity etc.. in the basement.
-Buy all new appliances and including a new W/D. I love having brand new, clean appliances!

-Spend endless hours at night, and every Saturday working at the house.

-Going to the dump several times and shopping at Home Depot for sheetrock, nails, screws, wire, tools, stain, lumber, light fixtures, insulation, door knobs, trim, caulk, carpet, paint, sinks, fixtures, green board, light bulbs, tape, rollers, mud, vent covers, spackle, cement and more endless supplies. Luckily Home Depot has "car carts" for the kids, (which Isaac loves to drive) and they sell snacks!

Here are a few pictures of the process, we are still settling in, so the house is not quite decorated yet. I decided to start the post at the end of the finished project rather than at the beginning. The pictures are scary of the "before" remodel, and they don't even do it justice at how BAD it really looked!

Here is our kitchen, we just finished installing the cabinet doors last night! Danny built the cabinets and I LOVE how well they turned out. He is so great at all of these tasks. He is definately a very multi-talented husband, one of the many reasons I love him !
I got a hutch to store small kitchen appliances etc.. because the kitchen has less cabinets than our house before. I love it, it fits into our house perfectly!

Taylor and Emily's room, complete with loads of toys and the snake "Mr. King". They were thrilled to have their stuff back and to sleep in their bunkbeds.


Our bedroom, I didn't get a picture of Isaac's room, it's too dark, I have black out shades on his windows to help him sleep better.


The living room

Messy laundry room, but so nice to have a large room to put stuff. We have plans for better storage, just haven't had time for that yet.

We added a bathroom downstairs, I guess this is the "kids" bathroom, it's so much bigger than the one upstairs.

Upstairs bathroom, with nice new shower, tile floor, vanity etc....

This is the vanity in the downstairs bathroom.

Now to the before and the pics. during the remodel.

Here is the basement being framed.

I forgot to take pictures while we were insulating. That is a miserable, itchy process and I am SO glad it's over.
The tools to help that got this project done.

Here is a pic. of the upstairs bathroom after we removed each and every tile from the shower and floor by hand. This took all day because the tiles were put in with chicken wire, and covered in cement. It was amazingly strong tile, but so ugly and gross. We could not get the cast iron bath tub out of the bathroom, it was too big and awkward. So Danny used his new reciprocating saw ( it was his Christmas Present from me!) and cut the tub in half! It was a crazy day, but we were so happy to get the old, leaky heavy tub out of the bathroom. He is so resourceful and knowledgeable in these situations. So here is the tub sitting in the snow outside waiting to go to "The Dump".

We redid all of the electrical in the house, thanks to John for all his help, skills and knowledge. This was intersting to me, to see how they run wire through the ceiling,walls and attic and it all comes here to bring electricity to the house.

Here is the bathroom again, waiting to get the shower installed, and sheetrock put in.

Here is the basement in the sheetrock/mudding/taping stage. We are really happy with how the basement turned out. It was hard to figure out how to arrange the rooms and where to put the bathroom etc.. But we came up with a good, livable floor plan that utilizes all the square footage in the basement.

Here is the basement before we replaced started doing anything.

Here is the basement before we started doing anything.

Here is the kitchen before the demolition began. It was a whole day of cutting, sawing and ripping this kitchen out from the floor up! We took a HUGE dump trailer to the dump full of just kitchen appliances, sink, laminate flooring cabinets and more stuff after this day.

I love the difference in the kitchen!

There are still a few little things to finish, but most of the hard stuff is done! It feels so good to be living here and have a little free time again. We feel guilty in the evening if we aren't busy working on project. The kids love being here so far, it will be a perferct place for us to live.

We had tons of help from so many people; Mom, Dad, John, Marcus, Derek, Brett, Natalie, Taylor, my cousin Dillon, Alan, Vic, Jeremy, Caleb, John H., Tyler, Emily and even Isaac. We appreciate all the help and time spent working for us, we could not have done this without all your help.

THANKS SO MUCH!!!

Now we just have to work on the outside of the house and tackle the yardwork- I guess there is always something to work on!