Building for yard

Hi everyone.

This one has nothing to do with the inside of the house....well, not technically anyway. We had a building built in our back yard, but we got mostly the basics except for we asked for the walls to be taller. I wanted a barn style roof on the building, but that would have added another $1,000 to the price, and lets just be honest here....I am what my daddy used to call a tightwad. If it were really something important to the building, like making it stronger or making it last longer, I would have been all in, but just because I liked it better was not worth it. We also decided to pay $100 extra for the double door, that way we could get large items in and out of there easier. But if you notice,  there are no windows on the building and the inside of it was just 4 walls when they were done with building it.

The reason we decided to not put windows in were that they were $200 for each one they had to put in, and we had 2 brand new windows that we had purchased on Craigslist (Craigslist will become your best friend when doing big projects on a budget) for $45 a piece some time back. We were going to use them in our old garage, but ended up moving before we could do that renovation. We can put those in at a later date sometime. We did want to utilize the space inside the building though, so Brian and I spent two days out there in the freezing cold building a loft and shelves on one end. It only cost us $380 to do that. If the company had built the loft alone, with no extra shelves it would have been $500 more. See the savings of a little hard work and freezing your butt off???

Now most everything is to one side and up off the floor so you can walk in and see everything without having to step over it all. We are sooooo happy with this investment.  We had purchased a newer suburban a few months back, and had our old one for sale, so when it sold the week before the building was built, that paid for it all but $200.

The company that we hired, had it built in 2 days from the ground up and they are a local family run company. The man and his two sons came out and did all the work. I like buying local and helping the small business out, sometimes it is not always cheaper, but in this case they were WAY cheaper than the larger companies and especially like the buildings you see outside of a Home Depot that you can have built. I am talking $2,000-$5,000 cheaper. We are super pleased with this building and the quality.

My husband and I talked about it for a few months on whether or not to build it ourselves, but with the time it would have taken us to do this, and the urgency of the need, we decided with all the money we had saved so far on our remodel we would spend the $3,400 for the building. We couldn't begin the process of building the new additions after the first of the year without this building to hold all of our "crap" as Brian likes to call it.

Here are a few pictures of it going up and all the way finished with our additions of the loft and shelves that we built.

From the start of it going up....

The finished product....

The shelves that we added and the loft. You will be amazed how much this holds....

It holds so much stuff...We emptied out half of a really large 2 car garage into this space and some in the other areas that you will see, like furniture that cant go on the shelves.

This is the middle and other end of the building....still loads of room for storage in there.

LOVING IT!!!

Pretty cool I think :-)

I just wanted to add something here that I couldn't add in another place for some of you to see. It is really cool to me to see all the places that my blog is being viewed. I cant wait to see this continue to grow.  Thanks to everyone out there who is following our progress here on this journey. I really hope all of you that have been stopping by to see our progress will continue to do so.  This blog is making it even more fun for me as we tread through all the projects we have going on here in our house.

This is from early this morning, it doesn't show all the views, but it does show the recent ones.

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Our Family's Dream Home  ·  Stats  ›  Audience

Nov 29, 2014 8:00 AM – Dec 6, 2014 7:00 AM

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chalk board and bead board

Guess what??? Two more things to post tonight...I didn't think we would get anymore done this week. Our 7 year old has been in doctor offices and the hospital the last 2 days. But I did get the chalk board paint on the 2 panels of my pantry door. I am going to love having my pantry to write on. I know, I sound like a kid, but oh well it is really country and cute to me.

Note, the blue you see is the painters tape and the chalkboard paint was wet in this picture so it will not have that shine to it once it dried. The only things missing now are the cabinet doors to be ready and the trim around that door. Then the kitchen will be complete!!!! You have no idea what a wonderful feeling to be able to say that. We have been living with it all in a mess for many months now, so to have it this close to complete is such a sweet feeling.

Brian surprised me yesterday while I was at the hospital with Brylee, and when we got home he had started on the walls in the hall way. We had purchased bead board to go below the chair rail months ago. When we got it home, we quickly found out that the existing chair rail and baseboard was not going to work with all the bead board that we had purchased. This is one of those times when I said before there will be things that you budget for and the budget just doesn't work. There are always going to be unexpected expenses no matter how hard to you try to stick to a budget. So, we had to decide if we were going to send it all back and just paint below the chair rail, or if we were going to spend the extra $300 or so to replace the chair rail and baseboards. Well, as you can see, we went with it. We had to cut some other things that we wanted, but got the walls the way we had planned.

We purchased the chair rail that has been notched out for the bead board and it was really narrow, so we purchased another decorative trim piece to place underneath it and it looks great to me. We wanted real wood, not the pressed wood stuff, so it is unfinished, but that is okay, we had to paint the other trim and the bead board anyway, because it just comes primed.

This is a picture of the wall with the old chair rail and base board removed.

Here you can see the bead board is up and the new chair rail has a notch on the back to fit over the bead board.

In these two pictures you can see the two separate pieces that we chose for the chair rail.

These are two pictures from the master bath where the bead board and chair rail are complete. This shows what the finished product looks like. I think the small rope trim adds a nice touch to it. I look forward to having the rest of the areas finished off with this. In the end it will be in the two upstairs bathrooms, hallway and the dining room. Stay tuned to my page to see more finished projects.

Below are links to the YouTube page for a video on how to install this product. 

http://youtu.be/qk_COOetMHk

http://youtu.be/QF5C1z6M2o0

Hardwood floors

Well, the hardwood floors were something we knew would be done the day we looked at buying this house. The only problem was the cost and time. Even when you get things on sale, it can still have a steep cost. This house was a foreclosure without really any updates since the late 70's when it was built. Therefore, the carpet in the downstairs den, and hall was from 1978. It was NASTY! The carpet on the upper stair treads and upstairs flooring was from 1993. It was over 20 years old. So, we did the worst areas first. We got new carpet for all 3 bedrooms, and the downstairs den and hall/landing area. There was no way we were going to be sleeping in rooms with that nasty carpet, and the downstairs was on concrete so we knew we needed carpet there too. This was done a week before we moved our things into the house. Everything else we just had to live with until we could save up some money and find something that one we could afford without going into debt, and two, something we both liked a lot. We had been looking and had found something that we were saving toward since March of this year, that flooring was going to cost us $4,700 without installation.  But when we were in Home Depot one evening, we came across a large pallet of flooring, one really light and the other medium in color. It was hand-scrapped like we wanted, and it was actual hardwood flooring, not a laminate, (we are not fans of laminate). We both really liked this flooring, so we came home that Friday night and remeasured the areas that we would need the flooring and went back that next morning to get it.  I had been saving since March and this was August. I had saved $3,500 so far for the floors that we both wanted.
Now get ready for this.....the floors that were on clearance we were told because they were not going to sale this one any longer or it was a special order that didn't get purchased. Either way, we got all the flooring we needed for less than $2,500. Yep....I hit the jackpot that day!!! I was now in the black, not the red. We had over a $1,000 saved and so we put that toward other things that we wanted for the house. We were on a roll. Now to just get a few other things done before the new hardwood floors went in. We saved a little more and paid someone to come install flooring for the kitchen, and 2 upstairs bathrooms. We got the same flooring for all three (as this makes it cheaper). I got a really good quality flooring and it was about $1,395 for all three rooms. We could not do the carpet or the vinyl as we didn't have all the tools to do this with, plus if we make a mistake on the material we have to go back and replace it all. That wasn't a chance we were willing to take.

Anyway, I wanted those vinyl floors done before my hardwood was put in so they wouldn't be dragging things across them.

Here are the tools you will need for this job....

Hammer
measuring tape
pry bar
brad gun
small air compressor
jamb saw (to cut out door casings)
miter saw (to cut boards the length you need)
table saw (to cut links)

After all the carpet was pulled up in sections that we could easily carry out, and all the padding gone, we had to take up all the nail strips around the edge of the rooms, pull up all the staples, hammer down all the small nails and remove the rest. The sub floors had to be clean before the process could begin.

When we put this flooring down, we decided to buy a few rolls of vapor barrier to put on the sub floor before the new hardwood was put in place. The floors can be glued together, or nailed into place. We chose to glue the planks together as well as nail the perimeter and random pieces throughout for extra security. There are a few quick YouTube video clips showing steps in the installation of the floors, and their are photos below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AntWy65Xrc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0-ZCIm39wM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyA1tE1Quh4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kIAKkOBT1Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wao1LEjsvDg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3DH5-6akA4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ebpxgeHexk


Getting so much accomplished on this house is so exciting to us. We were sitting here at the table tonight talking about how much we love this house and how much we are enjoying this process. Granted, it is nerve racking at times, and there are days when you just want to say "screw it" (usually when you have been working too much on something, you are tired, and messing things up). That's when it is time to walk away for a few days and then come back to it with a fresh start. One rule to always remember in this and every job. Measure twice and cut once. It will save you money and a big headache.

I will tell you that it is not the hardest thing to do by any means, but the job of hardwood floors is rough on the knees and back. Be ready to take some Aleve when you are doing this job.

Bye -Bye nasty carpets!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 Cleaning the sub floors up good before starting on the new.

 The new floors go in....you don't want your seams to be together. The floors should have the "no rhyme or reason" to them. They should all be offset.

Here is the hallway finished (minus the door thresh holds and trim)

                                                                         

                                                                      This is the dining room floor all complete!!!

This is a picture from this past week of my upstairs living room floors. They are beautiful...especially with the Christmas tree lights reflecting on them.

Pantry lights...on and off

Hi guys! Just as I promised, here is an update....YAY!

I know that a lot of you have asked to see the pantry finished, but it is not 100% complete yet. It still needs some trim around the door, and the door as still got to be painted with my chalkboard paint.  BUT, the lights are functioning when we open and close the door now.

Here is the link for a short video on YouTube for the lights.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxyHSWuCD_g&feature=youtu.be


My husband is a genius in my book. Sometimes I wonder if there is anything that he can't do or think up. This literally cost us the lights of $19.99 and about $5-10 in parts. These are the things that I leave solely up to him, because I would have electrocuted myself a dozen times doing this one. But I am going to give you some instruction on how he did this (per his words). Remember you can always contact me for more detailed information if you are trying something at your own house. I really don't mind. That is what this blog is for....to help people see that things can be done as inexpensive as possible and still be really nicely done.

On this actual project Brian purchased a micro-switch, a length of electrical wire with a plug, and wire connectors all of which is less that $10. He cut the existing plug off the LED rope lights between the plug and large fat section of the wire it is the large white section you see in the picture. The white wire in the original wire connect it to the new wire in the new plug that was purchased. Use a wire connector. At this point you want to heat shrink it (heat shrink is a protective cover for wiring. Slide it over the connection that you made. Heat it and it shrinks down over the bare wire) Take the other wire from your new plug, connect it to the micro-switch, take the black wire from your existing wires and connect it to the other terminal on the new switch. Locate where you want the switch on the door casing, mark it on the door stop, cut that piece of door stop out and hold the switch into the section that you have cut out and close the door. Adjust the switch so that it is a proper distance for the door. You don't want it too close or two far away. Mount it then and plug the lights back in. At this point you should have a set of controlled lights that when you open and close your doors they come on and off.

There is a diagram below of this as well to help you better understand these directions.

 This above is the plug that was cut off of the original cord. The picture below is the fat large piece that is mentioned above that is the circuit board.

                                The picture below is the diagram to show how to wire this together again with the new parts.

Updates coming! I promise!!!

Hi everyone! I know it is slow getting the updates on here, and I am sorry about that, but they are coming. It is a lot of work for us to do and it just being "us" my husband and I mostly. Working full time, having 4 kids to work in the schedules, school, and holidays it is a slow process, but I promise some big updates are coming this week. We will be posting about the hardwood floors, hopefully an update on the lighting in the pantry and some other goodies. Please make sure to check back Friday and the weekend for all the updates as they are posted.

Thanks for all your patients, and just remember, good things are worth the wait. :-)