Temporary Sign Off

Operation Sweaty House may be taking a vacation for a while unless the Husband updates this site (not expected). Wife is packing up and leaving for a while but will return in a few weeks or a few months.

We have so much to do on the house so expect lots of projects next year. Those should include a complete Kitchen renovation, a powder room redo, a guest bath update and a master bath overhaul. Wow! That is a lot of pesos at Home Depot.

Reupholstered Chair

I bought this at an auction housea couple of weeks ago. It was black with old ugly peach fabric. To match the browns in the living room, I painted the chair an Espresso color and reupholstered with a tan and black Damask fabric.

Early Christmas

I know it is early but I may only have 1 month until Christmas! Also, a pic of our "work in progress" living room with new leather couch, my antique trunk, and my pretty turkish tea set. Still to come is a chair I just bought but need to reupholster, a mirror above the couch, a bookcase, and all of my pictures.

Halloween

Some of my cupcakes for Halloween...and some of our outside decorations. We also had spooky music and a ghost girl that scared all of the little kids. They were so afraid to come up the steps! Hahahah.....wait till you see the house next year. Bwahahahahahaha.

Fait-il chaud ici, ou c'est juste vous?

That means, "Is it hot in here or is it just you?" I am in LOVE with this fainting sofa. We just bought a nice brown leather sofa and I just bought an antique chair (seat needs upholsertering). I am thinking of the leather sofa in the middle, the fainting (small, like a loveseat on the right and the chair on the left. I can make the chair match this fainting sofa. I think it will really balance out all the brown. I think I am getting this....

My New Coffee Table!

I FINALLY finished my antique trunk. The TOP pics are new, the last one is what it looked like when I bought it. I bought it early this year but just haven't finished it. It was covered in burlap so I had to scrape and scrape to get to the old pine. The metal needed some major sanding since it was rusting. To treat the rust, I sprayed the metal with Rustoleum in a pewter color. I stained the pine in a red oak color, then put a polyurethane sealer on top. Taping the metal to spray it was a PITA!

I WANT THIS!!!

for Halloween decorations! Do you think our HOA will approve?

Dining with new curtains & floors

And just 3 months ago this room had blah beige everything with a horrible 70s chandelier! We will eventually get a new, larger dining room table and we need accessories, but, it looks a lot better! The curtains and rod from Bed Bath & Beyond...on clearance, of course:) We still need to put up baseboards but hey, we aren't done yet!

The Basement

This has been our family room while we deconstruct the main level. We are pretty much done with the basement bathroom. We just need to add the baseboards and add a towel holder. This is Gabriel's bathroom and he picked out the gorgeous euro vanity. He really has good tastes. But, hello, we knew that when he married me! Also, the coffee table in the basement is new- from IKEA. The basement, eventually, will be painted a warm khaki.

Installed our floors!

We are all sore from this Sweaty weekend. But, it is coming together! The hardwood is bamboo solid plank. Nice and green friendly!

Starting on the floors was my wonderful, talented husband, his trophy wife, and our friend Kyle. We started Saturday morning at 9am and got to the third row like 5 hours later. We worked all day and then all day Sunday. We still have a little left to go in the hall closet and the powder room. The hardest part is prep and getting started.

The Prep process done BEFORE Saturday:
-Pulled out the baseboards
-Pulled up the carpet the week before
-Pulled up 439,201 staples from the subfloor during the week

The installation
-Rented a 50 Powered pneumatic nail floor gun
-Used 1 1/4 inch nails
-Had Mitre saw, borrowed table saw, and other materials
-Lay down 15lb felt paper
-Face Nailed the first row
-Once we could use the pneumatic gun, it went super fast until..
we got to the stair area. That took around 4 hours to get the cuts right.

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The Details

Gabriel changed out all of the plugs and face plates. I placed some planks up against the wall to get a glimpse of how the floors will look....

From blah, no life to COLOR!

We spent Saturday painting the main level, finally! It only took me 1,021 paint choices to settle on Ralph Lauren Pale Gray We are so very happy with it. It finally feels like home! Note all of our bamboo flooring in the living room yet to be installed. We painted the ceilings and trim Ultra Pure White- see how it pops against the gray? Of course, we have to install the floors in a few weeks, get furniture, drapes, etc.

Lights, Throne, Action!

Technically, you could do some bidness here, but please don't.....you can't wash your hands yet! Our cool lights (from Lowes) were partially picked by Gabriel and I picked the glass for it. I love the glass! Can you tell that we have one mini CFL on the right and a regular on the left? hhehe. We will fix that soon. Thought we had enough lights. We had to pop out 2 tiles around the toilet last week because the cuts weren't close enough to the hole. But, now, it is perfect.
Still to do:
Caulk the toilet
Go this week to purchase Euro vanity
Already bought the faucet!
Buy a mirror from Ikea
Do the baseboards (probably last thing)

My Dream Kitchens...ahhhh

I love white cabinets, white subway tile backsplash with a dark countertop. This dream is next year.....

New entry way light

Chosen exclusively by Gabriel. This was purchased from Lowes.

Grouting done

We purchased a marble threshold at Lowes and cut it ourselves with our new vroom vroom wet saw. I just have to caulk it now.

Still to do:
Add toilet
Add baseboards
Buy vanity
Buy light fixture

Ceiling Before and Afters

The ceiling has been scraped, peeled, sucked, tucked, skimmed, plucked, sanded, patted, primed and painted,....and painted again. The ceiling's owners endured swollen hands, shin bruises, wrist defects and other permanent disorders. If you would like to contribute to the cost to treat the physical damage, please call 1-800-don't call me to help you on your ceiling.

Cold Stone

The basement bathroom is coming along... this past weekend we painted it Saffron by Restoration Hardware. We had to get it color match for a satin paint. We went out and purchased tile, a wet saw for the tiles, and paint. Then, set the tile. The tile is a porcelain from Home Depot.

Still to do: Grout Trim the baseboards

Can't see the line,, can you Russ?

We have a wall! I didn't realize how challenging hanging drywall would be. Mudding and taping wasn't too bad, however. I had to work extra hard on 2 parts where I missed up cutting. oops. but, ya can't see it! hahaha. We just primed the whole area this past weekend. The pics are mud & tape, primed on the outside, primed on the inside of the half bath.

This week coming up:
Painting it- Saffron by Restoration Hardware

Our master that needs accessories

Paint is Silver Sage by Restoration Hardware. We painted the ceiling and all of the doors white, since they were blah beige. We replaced the hardware on the doors but still need to order the door handles. Still to do: accessories! I need window treatments, bed pillows, and silver frames for our wedding pix. Later in the year I will add a chandelier over the bed.

CEILING almost done...

Jeez, that thing has taken forever! We patched some sections that weren't perfect today. Tomorrow we get to prime! This week we will paint the living room and dining room ceiling.

Front and back of our house.

The Glass Ceiling

Oh boy, this project hurts. The living room ceiling had an 80s Stomp Effect. As soon as we bought it I knew I wanted to scrape that off for a nice smooth ceiling. But if I had known the pain it would have caused, I would have left it! Gabriel scraped the entire ceiling first. Then, we went over the ceiling with a joint compound to even it out. Today, I just started lightly sanding it. I only got through about 30% and I am in pain! When he scraped it, he hurt his wrist. Now, my right hand is a little swollen and achy. This isn't sweat equity, this is more like pain equity! Hopefully we will be able to prime the ceiling this weekend.

To Do in Living room:
Prime, paint ceiling
Paint walls (Pale Silver by Restoration Hardware)
Paint dining walls, same color
INSTALL BAMBOO FLOORS, YEA!!!

An easy refinish

The old owners left a patio table that I refinished. The rest of their "stuff" went to the dumpster:) I cleaned, took apart (gabriel) , sanded, then spray painted the table satin black. Then, I found comfy matching black chairs at our community yard sale. Wala, my new patio table! Oh, I have to post our new BBQ pit. Gabriel has made me sooooo happy with that thing. We are eating very well now, thank you.

To Do in the yard:
Oh jeez. Remove all of the mulch, replace with seed for grass, get an umbrella for the table. I would like to tear out the deck and lay stone but......that is way down the line.

And then there was light (modern lights!)

As much as we loved the 80s lighting in the dining and kitchen, we decided to upgrade to a nice, simple chandelier and fixture. Both are Portfolio from Lowes. Gabriel (my lighting expert) installed these himself. I just held them up and was manual labor. Seriously, a ceiling fan in the kitchen? yiked.

To Do:

oh man, where do I start.

Paint
Replace stove, Microwave,
Dishwasher,
upgrade countertops,
New tile floor

The Shitter was full! -Christmas Vacation

The first major project of the house was to repipe the entire house. Our townhome had polybutylane pipes (really bad stuff). However, two weeks before the scheduled project, we had a leak! Gabriel came home to find a slow leak had drenched the drywall in and around the basement bathroom. We had to tear out one entire wall to the half bath and a bit of the ceiling. Well, since we were doing that, I decided to tear out the LOVELY sticky tile floor. The pic of the done bath was before the leak. It will look much nicer when done!

To DO: Put up new drywall, mud, tape
Tile in a new floor
Replace vanity, toilet