The Roof!

I know this isn't a new project since it was done a year ago, but I figured we should cover it here anyway because it was such a big project.

Our roof project started out with us looking to repair a leak over our front door. However, once we talked to enough people we realized that more work needed to be done. We thought about doing one section of the roof, but realized it would be more cost effective to do the whole roof. This ended up working out well because the roof sprung a leak in our bedroom a few days before the roofers showed up. We also decided to upgrade from the tar and gravel roof to a rolled modified bitumen with 2 inches of ISO board underneath. Our old roof had no insulation at all so we were excited about the ISO board.

Here you can see the leaky area above our front door. It was looking pretty bad.

The roofing guys were kind enough to deliver the dumpster a week before the job started. So much for parking in the driveway.

One thing we kept hearing about from people who had their roofs redone was that there is a ton of black dust that comes down from between the tongue and groove. We decided to put plastic along the ceilings in every room to catch all the dust. It was a pain putting it up but it saved us from a ton of cleaning in the end.

Here is the ISO board before it was installed. We ordered inch and a half boards but two inch boards were delivered instead. Yay for extra insulation at no charge to us!

New tongue and groove waiting to be installed.

The first thing the guys did was brush off all the loose gravel.

Then they proceeded to peel up all the tar and tar paper so they could get down to the tongue and groove. It was kinda crazy to see how little material there was on top of the roof.

We were super happy to find out that the roof was in great condition underneath and only needed to be repaired by the front door.

I was curious if this would happen and it did. Someone stepped through the rotted part of the roof. Luckily they weren't hurt but it was pretty funny to see.

Here you can see all the old rotted wood has been removed. Unfortunately part of the beam had to be replaced too. I wasn't super happy with how they fixed it but some caulking and paint covered it right up.

One of the nice things about replacing this section was that we could redo the wiring for the globe light. Originally the wire was coming out of the side of the house and went to a box that the light was mounted to. This always bugged me so we re-routed the wire so everything was above the wood but bellow the roofing materials. You know, like it's suppose to be.

Here are the remnants of the original skylight. Yes it was just a piece of plexiglass that was taped/glued to the top of the roof. Fancy stuff.

I enjoyed watching them use the blow torch to roll the roof down, but I couldn't help but worry they were going to set my house on fire.

As you can see, we went with a white roof to help with our energy bills. Also, it makes the house look cleaner and more modern in my opinion.

Our new skylight.

It is so nice to have a good clean roof for once! Also, we don't have to worry about having piles of gravel around the perimeter of the house anymore.

As you can see, the plastic did it's job and kept all of this crap from falling all over the house.

In the end this was a ton of money and a pain to set up, but I am happy we did it. No more leaks and the house looks a ton better.

M.I.A.

Sorry we haven't been around much lately. Life has been a bit busy, but I promise we will have some new posts for you guys soon.

Happy Halloween!

From the spooky O'Cropolis.

Not much has been going on with the house lately. We decided to take a little break from all the constant work and relax a little. That meant I had time to pull out the Vespa and start riding it again. It's been almost 2 years since I've had it out and now I feel like I need to make up for all that missed time. New projects will be starting soon, so keep an eye out for them.

Ciao!

Well that's new.

Nothing new and exciting has been going on inside the house lately, but things outside have gotten pretty interesting. Over the past few months the sewer lines behind the houses on our street have been replaced. Luckily for us the line didn't go through our backyard, so nothing had to be done back there. However, the line does run next to our house and turns in front of it. I thought we were going to miss all the exciting stuff but apparently not. This is what I saw when I came home yesterday.

Right now this is currently more interesting to me than annoying. Actually, it is quite enjoyable seeing people trying to drive down the street even though it says road closed. However, we will see how well things get cleaned up when they are done. I'll let you know if I get annoyed then. Until then, don't drive down our street!

Look who's on Retro Renovation today!

In case you haven't seen it, Pam did a piece on the wall unit we recently purchased. Go check it out over at Retro Renovation.

The Pantry!

The pantry has been finished for a bit and it turned out really great! I think this is one of the best projects we have done so far. I wanted to wait to take pictures until we were finished painting the kitchen so you could get the full effect. The painting would normally go faster than it has but we are removing all the painted over wallpaper in order to do things right. 2 of the 3 walls in the kitchen are done. I will post another set of pics when we finish. Until then here are some pictures of the finished pantry. We went with color option number 2.

This picture gives a good sense of how little space the panty takes up. We were able to empty out 3 entire kitchen cabinets and put the contents in the pantry. Even with all that stuff in there we have a lot of room to spare!

Now that we have this nice clean looking wall next to pantry we need to find some art to put there.

The Pantry is finished!

However, I have not taken any pics yet because I have one last wall in the kitchen to paint. If there wasn't a bunch of wallpaper to remove we would be done with this by now. I I'll get some pics up as soon as possible. What color do you think we picked? :D

Question

Should our blog have a facebook page? I feel like that would help it to reach more people.

Color Options

The trim has been put on and everything is sanded and ready to go. However, I still can't decide what color to paint/stain the pantry. Here are some painting options we are thinking about. Which one do you like?

Please keep in mind that the walls will be white, the kitchen cabinets are a minty pistachio color and the trim throughout the house is dark gray.

Option 1 - White trim and white doors


Option 2 - White trim and mint doors


Option 3 - White trim and gray doors


Option 4 - Mint trim and white doors


Option 5 - Mint trim and mint doors


Option 6 - Mint trim and gray doors


Option 7 - Gray trim and white doors


Option 8 - Gray trim and mint doors


Our only other option would be painted trim and stained doors. The problem with that is what color to stain the doors. The ceilings are one color, the floors are another color and most of the doors in the house are painted. Also, there is no wood in the kitchen so I worry it may seem out of place. I hate having so many options to choose from.

Susan's gift is almost done.

Back before Christmas I had posted about a gift for Susan. Well we are still working on it, but it is almost done. We've been building a pantry under the planter.

Here is a before shot of the wall.



Once the drywall was removed we had a little bit of wiring to deal with. We initially thought this would be a simple removal but it wasn't. This wire fed every other outlet in the living room. So down to crawl space we went to rewire everything. Removing the wire ended up taking several days and not the 20 minutes we thought it would.



All of the old studs were removed and a new one was placed in the center. This along with the pantry should be good enough to support the brick planter above.



After we built the support for the pantry we relocated the outlet so it would be beneath the pantry and not in it.



New drywall is up and mudded.



After prepping the wall we were able to take measurements and start cutting wood for the pantry. My dad also made a jig and drilled hundreds of holes in the side panels so we would have adjustable shelves.



Pantry cabinets starting to be assembled.







Cabinets are assembled and ready to go in to the wall.



After a lot of adjusting and leveling we got the two cabinets in. However, once we put in a few shelves we realized the wood we were using was way to thin. Luckily we had only cut 3 shelves and hadn't gotten any more wood yet.



We ended up making the new shelves out of 3/4 inch boards with a white vinyl on them. These are much studier than the previous shelves and should clean up nicely in case something leaks. We also put several coats of polyurethane on the cabinets to make those easy to clean up as well. Once the shelves were in we quickly filled them up.



Here you can see how deep the shelves are and some of the many holes made for the adjustable shelves.



Yay for the doors finally going on! It's starting to look like something out of an Eichler which is what I intended.





All that's left building-wise is to put the front trim on.

So the question now is, what color do we do the doors? We plan on painting the trim the same color as the walls which will be white. We are torn between staining the doors and painting them. I know I don't want to paint them the same color as the cabinets because I don't think that will look good. Maybe I am wrong. What do you all think?