The Smoke House Rehab (Part 2)

It’s been a LONG weekend of rehabbing the Smoke House, but we are finally making some great progress!  Rustin & Elizabeth helped us ALOT on Friday and Saturday, and then Steve and I worked by ourselves on Sunday.  We were able to clean most of the kitchen, rip out all the carpets, and clean all the bathrooms.  (Steve generously assigned the bathroom cleaning project to me).  The bedrooms, hallway, and living room are ready to have their baseboards cleaned, and then all that’s left is to paint and put down new carpeting.  We’re still contemplating if we want to leave the vinyl floors in the bathroom or replace them with tile.  The vinyl doesn’t look too bad, but we’ll probably end up replacing it with tile so that it matches the entryway and kitchen.  Might as well make everything the same, right?

The kitchen has been an adventure.  Elizabeth and I spent the entire day on Saturday cleaning the cabinets and counters.  And what a task that was!  But the difference is amazing!!  Just look for yourself!

They look like brand new cabinets!  And when we add the new hardware, the transformation will be complete.

Here’s a before and after of the drawers in the kitchen.  I’m still surprised at how clean we were able to get them.  Bleach mixed in water is clearly our friend!

The fridge still needs to be cleaned out, and let me tell you, I am NOT looking forward to it.  And yes, I know it’ll be me that has the lovely task of cleaning this beast because there is no way Steve will come near it.  Did I mention that he found a vial of blood in the freezer?  Yah, talk about gagging!

Here’s another look at the nasty cabinets.

Here’s a nice butt shot of Steve scraping the carpet staples off the sub-floor in the master bedroom.

Here’s that awesome shot again of the clean freezer and dirty fridge.  The whole outside of the fridge is clean now.  I just have the dreaded inside left to do.

Here’s the hallway leading from the entryway to the bedrooms and guest bathroom.  The sub-floor is now completely cleared of all the carpet debris and thoroughly vacuumed, as are all the bedrooms.  I didn’t take any pictures today with all the blue carpet cushion stuff gone and all the rooms vacuumed, so just pretend that it is. 🙂

Bedroom #1

Bedroom #2

Master Bedroom.  Those wooden carpet tacking strips are gone now.

Living room.  All the trash and wooden strips are gone, and it’s ready to be painted!  We’re going to sand down the fireplace and paint it white.  It used to be white, but now has a yellow tinge from all the cigarette smoke.  Pretty much every wooden surface in the house has a yellow tinge.

I can’t believe how far we’ve progressed after only 3 days!  Here’s what we have left to do:

• Wash baseboards and crown molding and paint white
• Paint walls
• Sand and paint fireplace
• Finish cleaning kitchen
• Rip up vinyl floors in kitchen and bathrooms and replace with tile
• Install hardwood floors in living room and hallway
• Install new carpet in bedrooms
• Hire an HVAC guy to come and assess the AC/Heater and clean out all the ducts
• Hire tree removal service to cut down 2 VERY large evergreen trees in the backyard that serve no purpose.
• Redo the front porch (it’s sinking)
• Replace all hardware and light fixtures
• Mow yard and clean up the landscaping
• Pressure wash all the siding on the outside of the house
• Pressure wash deck, and seal

It seems like a long list, but really I think we’re in the home stretch.  We’ll probably only be working on it for a few more weekends.  At least I hope!  If any of you have done remodeling or rehabbing projects and have any tips or advice, we’d really appreciate it!