Before and After

This is what the front of our house looked like when we moved in way back in October of 1998. This photo is from March of 2000. This next photo was taken this week and shows the changes we’ve made. I’ll be posting the different sides of the house and how they looked before and what we’ve done over the last fifteen years to update this old house.

Same door, new windows, and new siding. The planter is filled with new plants, too. I’ll be showing the process of Dear working around the house little by little to make more improvements over the years.

This part of our front walk used to lead to a porch that we enclosed to make a family room instead.

This was what the front walk and porch looked like before we enclosed the area.

The other side of the porch before we enclosed it.

This is what it looks like today.

The process of enclosing the porch/deck.

When we first moved we had signed a one year lease to rent and a month after we moved in the owner said he had to put the home on the market to sell it. We were tired of moving (long story) so we made an offer to buy the property and the rest is history.

I’m beginning to feel the “squeeze” of things I need to organize in my brain for the upcoming wedding and hosting some out of town family here at this old house. Posting and visiting might be a little random. I will be participating less in weekly memes until Julyish!

We are cooling down today in the Seattle area. That makes it nicer to work outside. My relaxing time these days is sitting with my feet up watching Women’s World Cup Soccer games. Watching soccer is my “happy place”.

Mister B.

M is for Mister B., the marvelous man I’m married to.

Joining in with ABC Wednesday that was begun by Mrs. Nesbitt and is carried on by the ABC team!

My Dear is quite the man. Not only is he a professional in the workplace, giving out medical information but he’s the most handy of men in the home.

He’s outstanding in his field.

Dear with our oldest son.

Here is a photo series of one of his latest home projects. It’s taken months to get close to the end of this project but other projects and weather took precedence during this time period.

Before he started on the siding on this end of the house we decided to take down this tree that was serving as a ladder for varmints to get onto our roof.

He replaced the attic window.

With this old house there is always another project ready to start. The back side of the house will be the final side to get horizontal siding. We are hoping to get that done by July. The tar paper is up and ready for the first half of that project to start.

I will leave you with my Bible Verse Card for the letter M!

Hope you all had a wonderful Easter and Passover. We had a marvelous celebration. Have a good week!

Walkway – Before & After

Since our yard project was completed for now I’m sharing the before and after views before I share our great overnight getaway.

We had an unusual string of dry mild days in February and the beginning of March that gave us lots of time to work on some projects in our yard.

Before

First Phase…

Phase two in process…

Walkway done and now onto the extension and step down from the deck.

Before…

Digging, digging, chipping away at large tree root, digging some more and hauling off the dirt and grass…

Defeated the tree roots and moved on…

We are now getting to the end of this part of our project.

Chose a new planter box and planted some plants in the cement blocks.

Another before shot…

We are pleased with the results from all our hard labor over several weekends and evenings.

We still have a few more ideas for tweaking some things but for now we enjoyed a weekend without any labor. During our overnight away we probably put back on the weight we dropped working on this project. Looking forward to this first full week of Spring. What’s on your agenda?

Phase One Planter Project…

Over President’s Weekend Dear and I worked on phase one of our sprucing up the yard project. I promised before and after photos and here they are.

I decided on the Primroses in the Cinder Block because the property our home sits on used to be called Primrose Acres.

Phase Two will include digging out these stones and leveling out the pathway beside this planter and putting in a flat walkway using pavers. Our plan for the pavers will help support the planter wall and we will be able to take out the temporary supports you can see along this section.

The walkway will extend to the existing deck and we will add a step next to this section of the deck which will make stepping up and down easier.

We are enjoying the fresh clean look. We hope to get started on Phase Two this coming weekend. It will be another Ibuprofen weekend around this old house!

Pulls and Knobs

These first few photos are before shots of our pulls and knobs. I had to look in my archives to find the before photos. I was a bad blogger and I forgot to take close ups of the before shots. These pulls were nice and functional but they had too much detail on the surface that allowed crumbs and flying flour and sugar to gather in the nooks and crannies.

We decided to go with these cup pulls and knobs to match the metal on the pulls. No more nooks and crannies for food to get stuck in…

Our first project of the New Year is complete. Do you have any projects you are going to tackle this year?

Finally the Bathroom Revealed!

To say that there was much agony over this latest renovation in our home is an understatement. We are happy to be done with the company we chose and happy to be finishing up some final touches ourselves. I won’t even mention the name of the company because I don’t want to give them any advertising. You will see a wonderful transformation without experiencing the pain of getting there. So enjoy the before and after…

Of course I realized that I didn’t take the best before photos, especially of the bathtub enclosure. Oh well, you will still see major transformations. The sink before was on the right of the cabinet. The window was a slider from side to side.

The tub enclosure before was one piece with a average depth on the tub. The new enclosure is Porcelain tile and goes to the ceiling and wraps around the deeper larger tub. The new tub is wider and longer and deeper.

Our new window is a more energy efficient one and opens up and down instead of side to side. It’ is also larger and allows more light into the room.

We decided since we are getting older to add two safety bars to help with getting up out of the bathtub or stepping out of the higher tub.

We chose, purchased and installed the Mirror, Sconces and wall art ourselves. Dear installed the new window and all the can lights and heater unit in the ceiling. He also did the painting.

When we were at Windsor Castle in England we bought one hand towel to use in our new bathroom as one of our souvenirs. Our new bathroom has a great Spa feeling to it worthy of this queen.

We used to have a wider cabinet in this area of the bathroom but because we chose a longer and wider tub we ended up with this narrower cabinet. We are happy for the choice we made to go with the wider tub and to move the door into the bathroom over four inches.

We switched to a center sink which gives a good amount of space on either side of the sink. The counter top is a quartz composite with the under mount sink. All the fixtures are brushed nickel.

We like our flooring choice and our pulls and deep tub. I still haven’t had a chance to have a bubble bath in the tub yet but hopefully I’ll get around to that soon. The floor is not tile but a composite material that is warmer to bare feet.

We are very happy with the choices we made on the materials for our new bathroom. Now I need to find someone who might need all my old towels that are not the right colors for the new bathroom. I suppose I could cut them up and use them for cleaning rags.

I bought the mirror, the brushed nickel trash can, and the waffled shower curtain at HomeGoods. The sconces are from Lowe’s, the brushed nickel soap dispenser is from Target. The wire bird art is from Hobby Lobby and the Bird print is from Fred Meyer. The towels are from Costco.

The job began the Monday after we returned from England, July 21st and we just signed off with the company on September 24th. It was suppose to take 12 days. We did get them to reduce the final payment.

Now we are moving forward and enjoying the finished product that Dear has fixed up to our satisfaction. We’ve had busy days here at this old house and we are thankful for each new day afforded us. We are looking forward to more finished projects. Dear and I worked hard in our yard today mowing and weed-wacking and getting rid of the first round of fallen leaves. We look up at the huge maple tree in our neighbors yard still full of leaves and know our leaf raking days aren’t over in a long shot. What’s up in your corner of the world?

Laboring…

Embracing the good ole American way by laboring on Labor Day Weekend. Happy Labor Day to the U.S. of A. and to our Canadian neighbors!

The beginning of the project on this side of the house involved cutting down a great old juniper tree that was being used as a ladder for racoons to get on our roof. This is probably the best photo I could find of the vertical siding that Dear has slowly been changing out for horizontal siding.

This was the beginning of the siding project.

This is a photo of I took on Sunday after church, the day after the work began on the siding. Katie, Andrew and I said goodbye to Dear and we went to a World Concern Food Truck event to raise money to feed the hungry around the world. We promised Dear we’d bring him home a treat from one of the food trucks.

We arrived at the Crista Campus in Shoreline, Washington for the food truck event. Now we had to choose which truck to order from.

Katie and Andrew chose the Cheese Wizard and had some gourmet cheese sandwiches that they raved about.

I had the Cod tacos from another truck. I didn’t take a photo of the crepe we shared for dessert with fresh strawberries and lemon curd.

For Dear I chose a Shawarhma sandwich wrapped in pita bread. When we got home Dear had made a lot of progress.

This was the stopping point for Sunday. Dear will continue laboring on Monday. The area above the large header board and flashing will be filled with shingles, like the shingles you can almost see on the peak above the large window.

Are you laboring, camping, or just taking it easy this last long weekend of summer?

Gathering Moments ~ Hidden August

For my August Gathering Moments – a month in photos post I decided to share what didn’t make it on the blog already. Linking with Cheryl at Thinking About Home on Saturday.

Glimpses of the unfinished bathroom. We hope this project will be completed soon.

We purchased some new patio furniture that does not involve cushions. I also wanted some chairs that rock and roll. We are pleased with these pieces.

It’s been a nice relaxing time for Dear and I to watch more of Inspector Morse after visiting Oxford in July. We put the dvd’s on hold at the library and as they slowly become available we watch them. I’ve also been reading the Louise Penny Inspector Gamache series and just finished How the Light Gets In…so riveting. Now I’m splurging and ordering the new book that was just published this week because there are already too many holds on it at the library. In the meantime I checked out Surprised By Oxford from the library. It’s a Memoir written by Carolyn Weber. Here’s one of many praises for the book , “Carolyn Weber’s brilliantly written account of her conversion to Christianity at Oxford will inspire her fellow believers and provide intriguing food for thought for sceptics. It is honest, entertaining, and refreshingly free of superficial cant. I warmly commend it. Don N. Johnson, Senior Pastor, Montecito Covenant Church.

Katie and Andrew had fun dressing up to attend Katie’s 10 year high school reunion. They enjoyed their time in downtown Seattle last Friday.

I forgot to take a before before photo (yes, I did mean to say before twice) of this part of the house but then I found an obscure photo from the winter. Dear took the vertical siding off this part of the house and will be replacing it with the horizontal siding you see on the other side of the chimney. He’s out there working right now while I type away. This might be interesting to Vee’s John who is the master of siding.

We had to move a few of the rounds of wood from the part of our yard closest to the street when we realized someone was helping themselves to our wood. To make sure most of the wood didn’t go to a thief we invited the boy scouts to take what was left to split and use for a fund raiser. Look at that early sign of fall appearing on our dried out summer lawn. The last of the purple in the yard is still hanging on.

The new siding project will be taking most of our time this weekend. I am thinking of stealing Dear away from that project to go to a Food Truck event at World Concern here in the Seattle area for lunch on Sunday after church. Our Daughter In law works at World Concern.

What’s better than spending a Sunday afternoon enjoying delicious food from Seattle’s favorite food trucks? Knowing that you’re helping feed hungry families at the same time! Worldwide, hunger kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined, but with your help, World Concern makes a lasting impact in the lives of the poor in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Haiti.
On Sunday, August 31 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., 10 of Seattle’s top food trucks will rally to fight global hunger at World Concern’s 3rd annual Mobile Food Fight for Hunger in Shoreline.

The very best thing about August is how it has brought our families together. The State of Washington is now the home of all our children. We have received the beautiful photos of my brother’s family bringing their new son home from the Ukraine. Mandy and Andrew arrived in Dallas this afternoon to the waiting arms of my brother (papa as Andrew lovingly calls him) and Big sister Hope. Oh what a happy day!

Progress!

Dear always enjoys a good project and I was happy to see him smiling throughout the day on Saturday and Sunday. Our bathroom renovation is moving along with the first order of business being a new window. When we moved into this old house we decided to replace all the windows. All the rest of the windows in this house had been replaced maybe 10 or more years ago. The new bathroom window has been sitting in the garage for all those years waiting for it’s debut!

Hard to tell with the perspective of this photo but I’m leaning out the opening and taking a shot looking down to the ground. There’s a bit of a drop off in the slope of our yard going from the front to the back of our home. This main floor bathroom is at the back of the house 1 story up! We have a basement that is below a portion of our main floor.

The framing for the new window was completed on Saturday but we’d have to wait until Dear got some help other than mine to set the new window in on Sunday. Josh and Laura were able to stop by on Sunday just long enough for Josh to help Dear set the window in and level it before it was secured permanently.

The old and the new side by side. The old window had a side slide and the new bigger window moved over from the tub and moved a bit higher opens up and down.

Huge sigh of relief that this all got taken care of on the weekend and there was no rain to worry about. Next step is signing the contract with the company we are going with, having them come out to measure and then ordering all the new items for the bathroom. Dear is really looking forward to demolishing the tub surround. We’ll have to keep him from tearing out the toilet and sink since we have an event here on Thursday evening! Our company will get to enjoy our rustic bathroom!

Hope your weekend went well. I’ve got to run to the big box home and garden store to get some supplies for Dear today and get some branches cut up for the yard waste pick up. What’s on your agenda?

And So It Begins…

The fun has started on our main floor bathroom. Dear will be doing all the stripping of the old materials ahead of the bath renovators coming in later in July. We have to start ahead of time because we are weekend warriors. We have one more group event at our home that we will need the toilet for this Thursday so the major demo work won’t be until next weekend. Today that old window is coming out and hopefully by Sunday afternoon the new window will be in. The new window is being moved over to the next stud so we have room for a wider bathtub and surround. The window project will involve some outdoor siding work also.

For now the tub is being used for trash!

Once the project is over I will share the before and after photos!

I’ll manage to fit in some soccer watching today, too. World Cup is starting this Thursday and I’m getting excited. Do you watch soccer at your house? I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but I happen to really enjoy the sport.

What are you up to this weekend?

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Category Archives: Before and After