It's Spring Already! Time for Nesting...

I can't believe it has been nearly four months since we celebrated New Year 2012 and our 21st wedding anniversary. Time has certainly flown by for us for several reasons: First, we have been eyeball deep in several home improvement projects. Second, we are looking forward to Erin and Renai surrendering their ex-pat status for a while and taking on San Diego. The plan is that they will be staying with us while they settle in and decide where to plant some roots, albeit shallow ones. It is a well known fact that we are a family of rolling stones, and we wouldn't want it any other way.

So our grand remodeling adventure started after the New Year on the main floor of the house. The current digs is a three-story attached town home close to downtown and the beaches. We opted for a "lock-and-leave" this time around as you never know where or when we might show up somewhere else. The five year plan is to make this a rental down the road, although it could happen much sooner.

The townhouse is only 7 years old, but was previously bought new and owned by an older single gentleman in his 80s we'll call Tom. When we took the first look at it last October with the realtor, Tom refused to leave the property during the showing because he was afraid people would steal from him. Seriously, there was nothing he had that anyone would want to steal, but I guess value is in the eye of the beholder. Despite that it was terribly dirty, and no real improvements had been previously made since the builder pulled up stakes (aka a blank slate), we liked it and bought it, much to Tom's chagrin.The property had been on the market for quite awhile, and though he had received several offers, Tom had refused all of them. I don't know if he really wanted to sell, but he did. To make a long story longer, when we moved into the place a few days before Christmas, Scott just couldn't seem to mentally get Tom out of the house. The essence of Tom was everywhere, and it just didn't yet feel like "home".

Before we started the work...


Grab your hammer!
Nothing makes us feel more at home than a little (or a lot) demolition! The rule at the Summerills' is "it ain't a project unless someone bleeds!" So far, we had several bona fide projects. We've gone through half a box of Band-aids and several bruises.

We started with the kitchen, because, hey, who doesn't like eating out! We remove the tile floor, backsplash and counter tops and tile around the fireplace. The tile counter tops were seriously heavy to carry down a flight of stairs to the dumpster,especially for two old farts, but happily they are now resting comfortably in the local landfill. We also removed the pony wall for the bar height counter and cut that down to counter top level. That took some doing since the construction of the walls are with metal studs--a first for us. Scott did a banging job on his first try!

Here is the kitchen looking pretty raw:



Here you can see the tile counter tops, but the floor is history:



We laid cork flooring on the entire second floor next, and we have to say, Love it! I have been wanting to do cork for awhile now, and it was a fabulous choice. We like it so much, we purchased more to do the foyer on the first floor. It's Eco-friendly, easy to maintain and beautiful! Even better, we found a smokin' hot deal. (Love those bargains!)




The main part of the second level is the living room and dining room. It seemed a bit like a bowling alley, so we decided to do a pop out for architectural interest. We framed it with 1x3 studs and then sheetrock so I could add a three-D relief pattern.

Here is Scott framing the wall.





Now I am adding the Eco-friendly (bamboo pulp)3-D wall panels, called wall flats.



Here is a close up look at the wall flats. They can be permanently attached using mastic or contact cement, or temporarily attached using two-sided tape. Ours are permanent. Once the mastic dries, they are solid. These will be primed, the seams filled, primed again and painted a glossy white.

We are working on one of the third floor bedroom/baths now, and getting the kitchen backsplash installed. More on these project in the next post.

Meanwhile, Erin and Renai are in Paris missing all the remodeling fun...Next stop, Amsterdam. Poor kids!