Presentation Upstairs Basement Porche Kitchen Dining room Upstairs Bathroom
I bought a house in Boise, Idaho, it is small and cute, is a "craftman style bungalow" build in 1912 and is located in the North End (an old neibourhood just north of down boise).
The house was around 1500 ft² when I bought it, but with the work that I have been doing in the basement, it should be much more now (read on to learn more).
Some of the things I like aobut the area is that this is not a "cookie cuter neibourhood", ie: all the houses are different, and the garages are were they bellong, at the back, not at the front. This means that when you drive around, it looks like peoples leave aroud there, not cars!
Anyway... here are 2 pictures of the house, to give you an idea of what I am talking about :-)
on the ground floor, there is (fromt front to back and left to right) along living room (left window and door), 1 bedroom (the right window on the picture), and another room used as the dining room (just behind the bedroom). the picture was taken for the st valentin, a kitchen that spans most of the width of the house except for a bathroom at the left and the laundry room at the right. the kitchen is painted in a nice green that I like, and everyboddy else hates!
The top floor has 2 bed rooms, 1 den, a bahroom and a hall. Because it is under the room, the room are organized as a cross and have have low slanted ceiling :-).
When I bought the house, the main bedroom had a "nice" blue ceiling, to make you think that you were sleeping under the stars, the carpet in the whole upstairs was a shabby 1979 brown wight eggshell yellow walls and ceilings.
Since then, we have repainted everything in a more white ceiling, with identical color walls for the hall, light gray blue for one of the bedroom, light purple gray for the den and pastel apple green with vertical trikes texture for the main bedroom. we have also redone all the lighting and the baseboards ( in real exposed wood).
But most of the work was done in the basement! When I bought the house, the basement was 50% dug, the rest was plain dirt
Over 6 month of work, I dug out (with help everyonce in a while from friends) 6 buckets per weel barrow up the stairs, six bucket per truck load (dumped in a neerby wasteland) this estimated 50 tons of dirt, having to carry every ton at least 5 or four times (once digging it, once putting it in the bucket, once arying it up the stairs in th weelbarrow, once in the weelbarrow to the truck and once out of the truck).
This created a 400 ft² area where I will place a bathroom and a large family room
This gives you an idea of what you can look like afer 2 hours of digging
Anyway, this done, I got someone to come and put some beams (including removal of 2 posts in the middle of the room) for support and do some concrete work for fundation walls and concrete slab.
The next step was to remove some of the internal walls that used to cut the space in a "furnace room" and a storage room, framing the whole room (incuding the vertical 1/2 wood walls) where needed. Install electricity was not too long, but choosing ceiling lamps and similar took quite some time.
Dry walling was the next step. This took a very long time due to all the nooks and cranies, pipes and other stuff like that that I had to deal with. As a bit of information there is only 1 single uncut drywall pannel in the whole room! All the other one have been cut and cut to ridiculously small and complicated shapes...
The next step in the process is the mudding part, strangely enought, I prefered that to the drywalling, but hey, I am strange. the mudding part is where you put a plaster like coumpound on the spaces between the walls, or in the angles and stuff like that, let it dry, sand and repeat until it is nice. the mudding part allows to hide all the holes and similar stuff and is mostly a finishing thing (but that has to be done)...
anyway, here is a couple of pictures and a link to a video of the basement at that stage
As part of the basement, I also wanted to make a bathroom in one of the little 5*6 feet area of the basement.
now, this ment that I would have to do some plumber work (install piping, toilet, sink and shower), but also some watter evacuation work as the sewer line is above the ground level in the basement. so I had to ig a hole in the bathroom (another one) to install a sump (or shit) pump...
the next step was creating the concrete shower pan, framing, drywalling, mudding, tileing 1/2 of the room, with various tiles to be nice, painting and creation of the sink cabinet and instalation of the toilets.
here are some pictures:
Next, everything was taped and we rented a texture gun thingy at home depot and gunned the whole room! that was fun :) but dirty.
I then bought a spray painter (if you decide to go for spray gun, they are great thing, but you MUST use the right paint: low end, slow drying time, else you will have a hell of a bad time. if you get the cheap ass paint, it works nice and well!) and primed the whole area, then I painted the ceiling white and then taped the ceiling off and painted the walls. Removed the tape and did the touch up jobs to finish!
here are some pictures and a video
well, I think that I can now call the basement finished. the carpet is there, the wine rack is finished (and 2/3 loaded, 90 bottle out of 120...). we have used it as a bedroom for the summer (it's nice and chily down there). I made some drawers and placed baseboard and made a hard wood floor using a beautiful but extremly hard wood: Jatoba and even did some nice finish touches here and there such as the rosace inlay (red oak, padock and black walnut) in the middle of the drawer under the knick knack cabniet and the frame around my father painting...
So, I still need to put the hardwood floor in the basement, but I need a break, so I decided to update the house by making a porche in the front!
Here are 2 pictures of before and after of what the house looks like, quite good addition, isn't it?
I still plan to add a swing there, but that will be a little bit later...
just for information, it took me around 3 weeks to make that porche, and around $800...
last spring, I redid the kitchen (and the attached bathroom). The kitchen used to be green with maroon linoleum and with the old furnace chiminey in the middle of one of the wall:
I removed the linoleum and tiled the whole kitchen, painted the old green a abricot sherbert color, repainted all the white trims and ceiling white, made new cabinets and tiles all the cabinet with granite. I removed the chiminey (and if you want to know, yes the rest of the chiminey (above) is still there!), changed the sink and all the hinges/handles. I also added a door to the outside and made a spice rack. I used JAtoba for all the wood in otder to tie it with the basement...
Jaime repainted 1/2 the dining room with a red venitien plaster which looks great (it used to be a little flowery wall paper).
The upstairs bathroom had some issues... 1: it was under the roof which means low ceiling (especially the fact that you had to bend backward to have a leek (as a man) and the fact that you could not stand in the bathtub). 2: it had no light. 3: it had linoleum and 4: it was a yellow color.
so, I started by cutting the roof (and then it started to rain, of course) and created a window there. I tiled everything, made a new vanity and repainted the whole thing. now it looks great!
