Demo Part I

 Let the fun begin! The giant dumpster and materials arrived on Monday,  June 5th.  We have been waiting for so long we were excited to finally see some action. 

 We began to start thinking of things we could put into the dumpster.  A chance to get rid of random junk! 

 All this wood is going into our house.  Where? How? Who cares? We were excited. And look at those long beautiful beams! 

June 7, official demo day.  Unfortunately, we didn't get to be there for the first sledge hammer hit.  Work started early in the morning.  We showed up around 4pm and couldn't believe our eyes.  In just a few hours, walls had come down and framing had been put up! 

Master Bathroom

This is Brian standing awkwardly in the master bath before demo was completed.

And now, Brian has disappeared!

It looks like our house was robbed, but we paid people to do this to our bathroom.

One day later...

This is the master bathroom beyond the wall.

We found an interesting shade of pink, eek! 

You are staring at the master bath throne room.  Take it all in!

They still hadn't taken out the original throne yet.  On the left window will be the new shower.

Playroom/ Guest Suite

This is the play room and the door to the new guest room and guest bath room, prior to demo.

We decided to add a third bathroom in the guest room, making it now a guest suite.  Sounds fancy, right? The Mueller Motel will open for business soon! 

The new guest bathroom is the other side of the wall and beyond that wall is the master bath. 

It's interesting seeing through all of the walls.

    

Here is the playroom again that will have an additional closet.  Where I'm standing, that will be a door to the guest suite. Nice pose right? 

The play room! It will have pocket doors  that will lead into the room. 

Closet/ Girls' Bathroom 

This is a closet that is getting the door moved. It was random huge closet.  We decided to make it smaller allowing for the girls to have a bigger bathroom. 

This is the girls' bathroom.  We will be giving them double sinks.  Which somehow is already needed at age 4 and 2.  Lord help us during the teen years!! 

Kitchen/ Living/ Dinning Room

The kitchen with the wall opened up.

The dining room with the wall opened up. New beams installed and walls gone!  So much more spacious and open!

Brian in the kitchen.  I don't know why he's just standing there? This is the view coming in from the back door.  Will he be there regularly cooking for us? 

Here is a look at the random things found during a remodel. 

They took out the appliances during the demo and put them in the garage for us.  We are putting in new appliances. We were pretty proud of ourselves. We picked out everything in one day. Thanks to Buela for watching the girls.  Little did we know that appliances was the quickest and easiest thing to pick out. 

 All the items from the bathrooms. Out with the old and so pumped to put in the new. 

All the lumber ready to go in the house. So thankful for this covered space to store our lumber! 

We honestly couldn't believe how much work was done in such little time.  We are learning so much that goes into a house.  We will never look at a house the same! Stay tuned for more updates. 

Underground Work

While waiting for engineer drawing and permits, we started with a little plumbing work on part of the house. 

When we bought the house, we found that the pipes to the kitchen and hall bathroom were original...

Meaning installed in 1960.  

They were 57 years old!  

We had a test done and they still worked but when the inspector put the camera down the pipes, they were very corroded.  They were cast iron pipes and are only expected to have a 50 year life expectancy.  Everything put in now is this new fancy PVC pipe that doesn't corrode!

So decision time...

Do we replace the pipes now, while we're not in the house? 

-or- 

Do we wait until we're in the house and hope they don't leak?

Because they were at the end of their life expectancy and knowing they have the possibility leaking and causing further damage and inconvenience, we opted to replace them.

The other reason is that our family (ok, just Teagan and Brian) can clog toilets every day, so the idea of old pipes corroding and easily clogging didn't make for a pretty mental picture. 

So to replace them, we would have to get to them, under our concrete patio in the backyard and under the house to where they connect to the bathroom.

Here are some of the guys starting to dig one of the many holes.

The same hole, after a few more hours.

This is some of the old corroded cast iron pipe they pulled out.  

(Notice the new fancy access pipe on the upper left!)

Continuing from that access pipe and going under the foundation of the house, you can see that we now have all new PVC under the bathroom!

Now after the cast iron pipe came out from under the house, it was connected to concrete pipe that basically had some signs of beginning to crack.

The guys posed while we were taking pictures.

Now back to work! Keep digging!

Here's the trench all dug up.  Below is the same trench but with shiny new PVC pipe laid in the base.

So now the bathroom is all set but we still wanted to replace the kitchen pipes.

The could have gone under the foundation for this as well but they had a much less expensive solution of rerouting the drain to the outside of the house.

Here is the new pipe coming out of the side of the house right where the kitchen sink is located.

Here's the new trench and new pipe extending down the side of the house to meet the previously laid bathroom drain pipe.

To get under the concrete, they could have made a long line, but instead just made holes every few feet.  The holes in the concrete are under those boards.  The board are so we wouldn't fall in.

The girls thought they were cool and liked to run over them.

So now we have new PVC drain pipes!

Maui inspected their work, she approved! 

              

Next step is waiting for the engineering drawings and city permits to come in so we can start demo.

We're getting excited!

Unexpected Fixer Upper

After a year of living in Houston and learning the lay of the land, we finally purchased our first home!   

This will be our 6th home and 3rd purchased house, and will probably not be our last.  We spent a few months looking around for a home.  Living "in the loop" (or close to it) we have come to find out is very different from purchasing any of our other homes.  You either 1) buy big, 2) buy land and build new, or  3) buy old and renovate.  We choose to buy old and renovate.  This will be our first experience with remodeling a home.  We are very excited and nervous.   My goal is keep up with the blog and show our progress. 

What made us buy this house?  Honestly, the lot is amazing.  It's over 16,000 square feet!  The girls and Maui will have so much room to play.  Wait, let's add Brian into that mix.  The trampoline has already been purchased.  Are you surprised?  I'm not! 

When we first looked at the house we initially were just thinking of updating the kitchen and master bathroom.  After looking around, we realized we want to do so much more.  We are basically taking down walls to update the layout, updating kitchen and bathrooms, adding new flooring, and adding a new guest bathroom.  One day, we'll update the backyard too.  

We contacted a contractor who, so far, has been great to work with! She has been great at gathering the team of experts to help design our newest home. 

These are our the preliminary plans.  Our biggest challenge, thus far, has been the master bathroom.  Who knew the master bathroom could have so many possibilities? Plan A didn't work, so we went for another plan. 

 I love that everyone thinks I should have my own 10ft counter space! 

This is our current master bathroom that will be completely gutted and redone!! 

In hopes to save time and money while we wait for permits we have started doing some demo work. 

This house was filled with TONS of track lighting.  Almost every room in the house had extra lighting.  Brian has begun taking it all down.  I started removing the laminate floors, only to discover   old linoleum floors covering the entire house.  Don't worry guys, we have been wearing masks! But this is a big demo, which we will leave mostly to the pros. 

As this is the first post, here are a few obligatory 'BEFORE' pictures...

Office (future dining room)

 

Entry (can't wait to see those walls come down)

Kitchen (which will be a total gut job) 

 Living Room (soon to be opened up to kitchen)

*Are you noticing the insane amount of lighting?!?*

 

Game Room (future guest suite with bathroom)

Girls Bathroom (they will appreciate their own sinks and more counter space)

Our master bedroom view (we actually want to keep this)

 Hallway to the bedrooms (going to open this up a bit)

Teagan's Room (again with that lighting??)

Keira's Room