Dog House Final Photos

A little under two years ago we packed up our house, watched everything get loaded into a moving truck on a cold and rainy night and loaded the pups into the car to start the twenty hour drive to Alabama. It's a giant leap to go from talking about a countertop installation that happened almost 4 years ago to talking about the finished product, but I want to bring the project full circle and share the final pics of the house that we love so much.

Without any further delay, here are the last pics taken of the Dog House (with some official before pics for comparison)!...

Entry Before

After

Living Room Before

After

Living Room Before

After

Living Room Before

After

Entry Hall Before

After

Dining/Kitchen Before

After

Former Closet/Current Half Bath Before

After

Former Kitchen/Current Dining Before

After

Bedroom 1 Before

After

Bedroom 1 Before

After

Bedroom 2 Before

After (Wall between bedrooms removed, photo from a different angle)

Bedroom 2 Before

After

Full Bathroom Before

After (Didn't have the after looking in the same direction)

Before (Couldn't find any good pics before deck construction started!)

After

Even after working on the house for four years there was a big final push at the end to get everything finished and put the house on the market.  Hopefully the new owners enjoy living there as much as we did. We miss Boston and the Dog House, but are enjoying all of the new adventures down South! 
Closing out and signing off...later everyone!

One Month in Photos.

Backtracking.

Candlepin.

Inexpensive Furniture.

Mr. Lizard. One of many.

Favorite place in the world.

Door reconstruction.

Tiling. Still.

Brimfield.

Hoping next month is just as much fun...maybe with a smidge more house work thrown in. :)

Day of Doors.

Ok, I lied, not all of this happened in one day. But, they did all get installed the same day, so it felt very instantaneous.
You might remember these from almost one year ago. Yikes. Well, sometime mid-winter our carpenter drug them away to his home shop to work on them during his free time. He patched, sanded, primed and dutched the old mortise hole and installed the new hardware. Then he constructed the frame and brand new mahogany landing (which I am in love with and you can barely see below) and hung the doors then installed weatherstripping. All I could think was "I really like those doors" and "man I'm glad I didn't have to do all that". True diy spirit huh? The glass should go in soon along with the rest of the interior and exterior trim. Then I will share more "finished pics". We will paint the outside of the doors and the surround when it gets warmer out.





Just to be clear the doors are fully operational. With hardware installed. I just don't have current pics. Cause I'm lame.

While all that business was going on in the front, this party was happening in the back. Like a mullet. Get it? Ha. I'm hilarious.
Our old back door was completely shot from this whole renovation and we were having to screw it shut at night to secure the house. Yeah. That's bad. And while it wasn't a terrible door, it was metal and in decent condition, it needed to be re-framed and hung and we knew we wanted something that let more light into the addition in the long run. Enter sliding glass patio door. We found a used Pella sliding door at one of our favorite local resources that was in great condition. So, after about a week of "thinking things over" and going back to the Resource Center to take a second, third, fourth look we decided to do it. While it was already a great price, we noticed that it had actually been in the Resource Center since November of last year, so we decided to make a lower offer. The sales guy told us to come back the next day and talk to the "boss lady". Ooohhhh, that sounded scary. But we did. She was tough, but she accepted our offer "as long as we picked it up the next day". Yes ma'am. She didn't seem like the type you mess with.
So anyway, I really can ramble about a good deal, can't I?
The back opening looked like this for a few days. Nothing more appealing than moving into a house with a tarp covering an opening. Don't worry, the door was installed before move in. I know you were worried.

P reframed the opening all by himself. He also uncovered the super frightening addition foundation that literally made me cringe. Check out that skilled brickwork. Did a child build that?

Sometime mid afternoon I left to go let the puppies out of the rental apartment, and when I came home, this is what I saw! I love when that happens.

Upstairs didn't get left out of the door action either. See, the same day that we picked up the Pella door we also scored some free doors from P's boss. They renovated their amazing house in the South End a few years back and took out all the old solid wood four panel doors to be replaced with new, more contemporary single panel ones. We had discussed either mis-matching all of our doors with nice salvaged ones and restoring and painting them the same to tie them together (only one of the existing doors in our house was worth salvaging, sadly) or trying to hunt down a set of salvaged matching style doors (which seemed unlikely). One day at work, P was talking to his boss about how it was hard to find a set of four panel doors at the salvage place that were the right size for our doors. And then, boom, we were invited to come look through "the door graveyard" in their basement and take as many doors as we needed. Nice huh?
So that's what we did. I love the idea of reusing over buying new...which is why we go to the salvage place almost every weekend...and I suppose why I'm taking an upholstery class too. So we will scrape, sand, patch and paint these and call them new.
S is for "salvage". I like to make myself look intelligent in front of P's bosses and ask questions like "What's up with the red S?". Yep. They pretty much think I'm a genius.

Ugh. I just found more pics of the mahogany landing before it was installed. I'll share later. This is what happens when you get this behind on sharing stuff!

We've Moved!

Again. Back in the Dog House. With no working shower, but let's not dwell on that. At least that gym membership is going to get some action in the next couple of days...

Unloaded the last few things at two o'clock this morning. It's probably best that we went ahead and confirmed any suspicions our neighbors might have had about whether or not we are totally nuts.

Yep. Pictures as soon as I regain full (who am I kidding, 60%) of my brain function.

Oooooooohh Ahhhhhhhhhh.

No, this picture wasn't taken when it was raining outside. That's condensation on the inside of the window! Because the brand new plaster on our walls is radiating heat and it refuses to warm up outside in Boston. But that's another story. This post is all. about. the. plaster.

Everyone was right. A skim coat of plaster over blue board really does look better than drywall. At first I was all "whatever, silly peeps, a wall's a wall". And when people would scoff and say things like "drywall? that's only for commercial buildings", I would roll my eyes at how silly they were. And while I still think they are silly, I totally see what all the stink is about. It's biuuuuuuutifullllll. (That's beautiful for those of you who can't read my crazy talk).

Smooth and shiny.

Before the board and plaster went in we were thinking we had gone totally overboard on the recessed light action downstairs. But now I think it looks just right.

Future home for three pendant lights hanging over the kitchen island. (And by future, I mean tomorrow! The lights go in tomorrow, not the island, unfortunately).

Curved transition. On Monday the boarders were all like "you want a curve there???" and I was like, "ummm, yeah, yeah I do, biatch". No, I didn't really say that.

Back bedroom.

Future bathroom vanity location. Whenever it finally gets built...

Bay window.

And downstairs. Again. Hmmmmm, are those entry doors I see on those saw horses??? Man, I'm getting really good at this foreshadowing thing.