Blog der Familie Brown » home improvement

New Fireplace Surround

jeremy — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:39:33 +0000

Another long-time resident of our to-do list got checked off!

The previous owners removed the fireplace cover and replaced it with a free-standing screen. This was suboptimal: cold air flowed into the living room, and smoke didn’t exit as readily as you’d want. we picked up a new cover and this is the inaugural fire. It looks cleaner, takes up less space, and when the fire’s more or less done, you can shut the doors, and you don’t end up with all the draft coming in overnight.

The Fireplace

Tile done!

jeremy — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:03:59 +0000

Jobs always end up taking longer than you would have first estimated. I had originally hoped to finish laying tile and grouting during the past week, but that did not happen. Instead, I finished things up this afternoon. I’ll be able to get the toilet out of the bath tub(!?) tomorrow when the grout is sufficiently cured and after I put the trim up. At least the downstairs bathroom is completely done.

Linoleum

jeremy — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:49:50 +0000

I’ve been to Turkey. I’ve seen Ephesus and other cities in ruins. I’ve had miniature goats try to push me over in these ruins. In those cities, I’ve seen a lot of tile that’s older than any civilization. I’ve walked on that tile, and it’s seen many other pairs of feet, lots of rain, the odd hoof, and sun. It still looked good.

I was thinking about this a lot today, as I removed the linoleum from the downstairs bathroom floor. Heck, it doesn’t look all that great new. I know removing real tile isn’t just a walk in the park either, but removing linoleum and the sticky gooey adhesive is just plain awful. I started it with a heat gun and 6″ putty knife, graduated to a 44″ scraper, and then I turned to adhesive remover and the 44″ scraper. That seems to be the best trick. Now it’s going fast!

Ugh. Linoleum.

Project

jeremy — Sun, 17 May 2009 03:39:21 +0000

So while the university was closed due to the flood, I spent some time watching the DIY channel. One of our bathrooms was out of commission due to plugged drains and removed fixtures, so Rebecca and I figured we’d start doing some remodeling. It started with us thinking “Heck, why not retile the bathroom while we’ve got the toilet out?” and morphed into us thinking “Why don’t we put that jetted tub in that we’ve been talking about.” We settled on the latter, but in order to do that, we need to knock a wall out, and to do that, we need to move the master bedroom.

So we started on the master bedroom project. We had a large room with a bunch of vintage wood paneling, carpet, and a closet with large shelves and two sliding doors. We framed in a walk-in closet, and a partition wall and door opening, plastered over the paneling to match the rest of the house, hung two doors, and painted.

It’s almost done. Only have to figure out what to do with the trim and put the outlet plates back on the walls. (This is what we’ve been busy doing instead of posting stuff on the blog…)