The House Chronicles, Part II

We now have the house. It's official. 

(Well, actually, it was official about three weeks ago, but I've been very busy).

So, now begins the fun part: renovation! 

We've done several things so far. First, we had to replace the toilet.

New toilet (water saving): 

Old toilet: 

From there, we worked some on the walls in the basement, checking electrical, cleaning the gutters, replacing this-and-that. But we'll get to all that in detail later, because I'm going to focus on the room we got mostly finished, which is...

The Kitchen!

As you will recall, the kitchen looked like this: 

Not bad, but a little older, and it needed some good cleaning. We had to replace the spray nozzle, and there was no appliances, save an old dishwasher, which is now in the garage. Sorry dishwasher. 

So, first thing first: cleaning. 

It was hard to get good pictures of it, but we scrubbed the floor two or three times--once with a cleaning solution, once with baking sode (which is an awesome cleaner), and once with vinegar. I can't quite recall, but I think Mom also did a once-over with bleach. 

This house was built in 1929 and occupied by its last residence since 1959. The floor needed a thorough clean. 

So we went from this: 

 to this: 

Not perfect--there will always be discoloration. But it's a noticeable change, and that shows we got a lot of the deep-seated dirt. 

Then, we moved in the fridge and oven, and I spent a day deep-cleaning the cabinets:

Oven fit perfectly, too--it was my grandma's, and we didn't measure, so that was a pleasant surprise. 

And after much anticipation, we were ready to paint! This was the only room we were able to get ready enough for that--all of the other rooms were either too low-priority or had too many larger projects. It is one of the most exciting parts, though, so we were eager to get at least one place done. 

We picked out our colors: 

And began preparing everything to be painted. 

Now, being an art major, I'm a little particular about a few things. For instance, I don't really want to have paint all over our handles and hinges because that ends up looking sloppy and obvious. So, we took them off.

That was a pain and a half, but I stand by my choice. Those things were nasty. Washed them all today, actually. 

Now, while we were working on that, we had a pipe come through the wall a little bit. Dad was trying to remove and replace a random, useless pipe (which he will later use as a vent in the bathroom we're putting in downstairs):

So we plastered it.  

PROBLEM SOLVED. 

Next step: cover with drop cloths and paint everything. 

Which is exactly what we did. Ceiling, insides and outsides of cupboards--everything. 

And oh, did it pay off. Everything looks cleaner and newer--a fresh coat of paint can transform a space. Once again, I'm not sure the camera really caught enough, but here it is (sans cupboard doors--still need to put those back on):

Final comparison:

That's encouraging. 

Keep posted for more (and more interesting) projects!