Our Plan

Hooray! We are finally new home owners. It only took 2 months and three days. The three days were due to the "bank" (no names mentioned ??WF??) not having the paper work completed on time.

The several agonizing weeks before closing, the 30+ days of send us this document and send us that document and we need another copy of this was the perfect time to formulate our renovation plan. We decided that before we move in, we needed to complete a few vital projects.

The Goneaway Renovation:
Time Frame : 2 months  (October and November)
Budget : $20000

1.     Gut the kitchen / Dinning room / Living room and create a great room. I always liked that term. It will be great once we are finished.

2.     Remove Popcorn from ceilings. We both agreed that we hate popcorn ceiling more than anything else. Never did quite understand the point. They are not nice looking and they are evil on balloons.

3.     Paint entire interior of house. It is all white now. Time to add some color.

Kristin thought that the exterior (ie siding and natural stone veneer) should have been added to the list, but was cut due to the economy and budgetary constraints. :)

The Kitchen Design

Once it was decided that the kitchen was to be gutted and redone, I set to designing the new space. I tried doing this on many different software packages (autocad, Punch!....). The best by far to ease and speed was the Lowes virtual room designer.

 This app is free from lowes on their web site http://www.lowes.com/cd_virtual+room+designer_189310537_

The results were great

We decided to go for an open concept with the kitchen looking into the living room. I think it will be very useful for entertaining and watching TV while I cook.

Its all about the Tools

     Any self respecting man needs to have some power tools. What better time to aquire some than a full house remodel!!!!! Our realtor Terri has a friend who happens to work for BD/DeWalt. It just so happens that the plant was having their factory sale. So Kristin attended in my stead (I had to work ). I had her call me when she got there to direct her in what to purchase. Nothing like shopping for tools over the phone. We were able to get a bunch of great items for some great prices.

We walked /drove out of there with a new:

Compressor (D55146)



DW368 Heavey Duty 7 1/4" Lightweight Circular Saw



DW745 Table Saw



D51257K 16 Gauge Finish Nailer

 

DW7440RS Rolling Saw Stand

A pretty good haul if I do say so myself :)

Appliance Shopping

     Yes, I know we don't even own the house yet, but we are being optimistic. Besides, you never know how long it takes some things to order in or how long it will take to decide what it is that we want. The first thing on our list was a new refridgerator. The house will not be coming with one and even if it did, I am sure it would not fit in with our renovation plans. Kristin has always liked and wanted Stainless Steel even though they scratch and dent very easily. I have to admit that I to am also a lover of SS. We first checked out all the standard big box stores and found the style we liked, a stainless steel french door fridge. After seeing the cost on these wonderful appliances, we decided to see what was to be had at the Sears outlet. Lucky for us, they were having a sale on their stainless steel refridgerators. We found exactly what we were looking for at a fraction of the MSRP with very minor scratches. Most of the scratches were on the sides which would be covered with the wood of the cabinets anyway.

     So our new Refridgerator is to be a Kenmore Elite trio