Our house looks like a construction site!
Who’s idea was it to take on two home improvement projects at once?! Whoa, baby. But, we’ve made some serious progress in the last 24 hours.
Yesterday afternoon, Mal and I finally decided on a vanity. We went with a smaller one (than we currently have in our bathroom) since we think it’ll make the space look bigger. Hopefully, it doesn’t look like a weirdly small vanity once it’s installed.
We also bought plenty of painting supplies. Mal now wants to paint our living roomāĀ¦ like, ah, next week.
After buying everything we needed, our friend Rob arrived at our house with his tile saw. Man with a tile saw.
We were all hungry for dinner, so before we started our projects, we ate some pizza.
I also cracked a beer. Priming walls requires beer.
Once the guys had food in their stomachs, the bathroom demolition began.
So long sink!
Check out the date on the bottom of the sink: 10-11-78. No wonder it never got cleanāāit’s almost 34 years old!
Goodbye vanity!
Eww, but check out the Scooby-Doo Band-Aid stuck on the tub.
The family who lived in the house before us had two little boys; I bet one of them lost it.
And, finally, the toilet was removed. Later, two-toned super ugly toilet!
While the guys were demo-ing the bathroom, I prepared the kitchen to be primed.
When I moved the stove away from the wall, I discovered that at our kitchen was once painted a light purple. Cool!
The three of us ended up working well into the night and finally called it quits at midnight.
Another full day ahead!
Question of the Day
Have you ever discovered something neat/interesting about your house? What was it?
61 Comments
How funny to find some random things like that “hidden” in your home! I think it’s neat to learn about the history behind different homes and buildings.
How cute! The family that lived in my parents house before them, the kiddo’s put their hands in the cement on the front porch before it dried. š
Have a fun day!! š
That’s so cute!
Oh my… that Band-Aid… haha
My husband & I just moved into a new construction home, so no fun surprises (that I’m aware of!). We’ll have to leave some behind when we move in like… 30 years! š
Jesus, that is an old sink!
My parent’s have been in their house for about 25 years now – Once they do eventually move out, I’d be curious to see what little momentos from my brother and I growing up gets left around.
My husband found an empty liquor bottle in the attic of his old house. The label said for medicinal use! I guess it was from prohibition!
Cool!!
When my landlord redid part of my bathroom this spring they had to take down the huge mirror. Behind it was some lovely antique wallpaper…such an old design I don’t even know how to explain it. Our house is super old so its probably from the late 1800s or early 1900s. Crazy!
your sink was installed 10 years before I was even born haha that’s so crazy! Now sure if we found anything in my house, but my Aunt who lives upstate towards Canada found a tunnel in her basement (they think it was part of the under ground railroad) which is pretty cool š
I love doing home projects!!! It never fails, you do one project and it spreads to others. I think of Home Depot as a fine department store!! I love it!!!
When we moved into our 100 yr old farmhouse, we were doing a demo and replacing the mantle and behind it, there was a note from the people like lived there 30 years ago. It had pics of the house then and a little note from them saying they hoped we enjoyed the house as much as they did. It was dated in 1981. It was REALLY cool and we plan on doing that if we move from here.
Aww, that is really cool!
I’m so excited to see it when it’s all done! I love how handy Mal is – you’ve got a keeper there! š
You guys are sure busy! Good luck with the rest of your home improvement projects!!
I can’t believe you started after dinner. I’m pretty sure after pizza and beer, I’d be like “cool, let’s wait til morning!” š
But it looks like you guys made some great headway. I can’t wait to see the finished product. I’m hoping my next apartment I’ll be able to paint and make it seem a bit more homey and like my space versus just another rental space.
Fun! House projects are so tedious but so worth it when they’re done.
We just moved into our new house, and it was only 3 years old. So there really wasn’t anything to find. But I love that you found a Band Aid! That’s hilarious!!
Have a great day, Tina. Good luck with your house projects!
what color was the final decision for the kitchen?
Voyage! š
I think it’s really cool when redoing houses and finding older decorations (i.e. wall paper, hard wood floors, etc. But that is super gross about the Scooby Doo Bandaid. I wonder how long that had been there. Ugh!
LOL we have the same vanity! In our house, I found a previous homeowner’s name and date carved into the underside of one of the kitchen drawers. It appears as though he made the cabinets by hand. Pretty cool.
Growing up, when my family and I moved into a new house, my mom was unpacking stuff in the laundry room and found… a gun! It was just hanging out in a cabinet. We called the police and they came and took it, but it was kinda creepy!
I’m SO jealous! I’ve been wanting to paint a few rooms in my home but haven’t gotten around to it. I can’t wait to see the final product!
I love painting! You will be so happy when it is all over because it will look amazing š
First of all, ewwwww pores! I hate seeing porous things on anything–especially concrete, stones, sinks! lol. I get goosebumps. And that’s so funny about the bandaid. I sometimes wonder what other people might have found in my previous homes from things I left as a kid. š
“Check out the date on the bottom of the sink: 10-11-78. No wonder it never got cleanāāit’s almost 34 years old!”
That’s my birth date!! Luckily I still clean up pretty well. So far as I can tell, anyway.
Haha! So cool it’s your bday! š
Fabulous! I bet everything will look just amazing! Best of luck with all of the to dos. We haven’t discovered anything too exciting because we built our house!
That sounds like so much work!
My family just moved into a previously foreclosed home (we moved in last October), and when we got here, the house was a wreck! The person who last owned it had some serious anger issues, because they kicked a hole in a bedroom door, ruined the door hinges leading to the balcony, and broke a mirror in the bathroom downstairs.. Don’t even get me started on how much cat and dog poop there was in the back yard and front lawn!
We had to do so much painting, remodeling, and cleaning (the bathrooms and kitchen were SO GROSS), but it was all totally worth it in the end. Now we’ve got a pretty house, and I try to block the whole experience from my mind. š
Wow! Can’t wait to see it all once it is finished!!
Oh so much fun… we are about to put in tile in our kitchen.. GOODBYE linoleum! Not looking forward to the whole construction thing though.
That’s some serious demolition! I hope you get it all done and have fun!
I am wanting to paint my kitchen your old color. It’s an off white now. It will be my first dark wall painting. Thoughts? Did you like the other color when ya bought your house? I’m nervous!
I didn’t really like any of the colors when we moved in. Our house is small, so all of the dark shades made it look even smaller. It’s a nice color though! How big is your kitchen?
Wow, what a project! I can’t wait to see the bathroom and kitchen once they’re done.
In my house, every wall had old wall paper. As I was stripping some of it away this winter, I found a heart care drywall with J&L carved into the drywall. It was so cute!
Awww, that is cute! š
Haha…your tiles were like outs except we had retro blue & green with a matching green toilet, I kinda liked it in a weird way! We actually found a empty drink can called “ping” in the framing of the walls, must of been from around 1975…it’s amazing what u find when u renovate!
I agree that priming requires beer. Lol, my husband would say that about any household job, though. We found some not so wanted wallpaper under a crappy coat of paint our half bath. Had to update that – the right way, which is also the hard way! Taking off old wallpaper is not the most fun thing to do.
When we tore up the carpets we found army men and cheerios under the it! Weird!! Oh and a trillion staples holding the carpet down!
Back in the seventies, we helped our neighbors across the street remove wall paper in their bedroom. Underneath were some pretty interesting psychedelic rainbows and artwork.
That’s awesome!
You’re a brave girl doing so many projects at once. At least you are getting the all out of the way in one shabang!
When my friend’s family re-did the kitchen in their late 1800’s / early 1900’s farmhouse, they found a bunch of old newspapers stuffed in between the plaster and lathe for insulation! It was really neat to see all of the old headlines and whatnot.
The funniest thing I’ve seen was on one of those remodel shows on HGTV — they tore down a wall in a sun room and a whole section was crammed full of pine cones! Apparently squirrels had been coming in there for years and storing their pine cones! Haha
I just purchase my home last weekend. I am moving slowly since my lease is not up until the end of August. I have been over to my house everyday since last weekend. I have found all kinds of crawl spaces in my house that I can use for storage and “hiding places”!
DIY’s are hard work and time consuming but definitely worth the self-satisfaction and $$ you save in the end!
Good luck with the rest š
Whoah, that is one seriously cheesy looking pizza! My house is very old (and I think possibly historic?), but the one thing I’ve always found cool about it is the fact that we have bamboo growing in our backyard. I live in NYC suburbs, btw. What the heck is bamboo doing in my backyard??
@Julia H. @ Going Gulia: Do you live in Eastchester/Scarsdale by chance? I’m in Larchmont and I always see bamboo when I am in those areas!
@Katherine: Nope, I actually live in Staten Island. Interesting that bamboo shows up in other random NY places, though!
My parents are the original owners of their house, so I’ve never really discovered anything amazing like that. But I probably still have Scooby Doo bandaids lying around somewhere š
we lived in one of our houses for 10 years before we noticed the spice cabinet next to the stove was not a raised panel door….but all the rest were!
Our house flooded in Katrina so it’s an interesting mix of new and old. The front of the house, the attic, and the window frames are all original (around 1920). But everything else is new: floors, walls, molding. It was original built to be a double shotgun, and now it’s a single, but we’ve still got two front doors!
Wow, what hard workers you two are! The colors look great, and I’m sure the vanity will be just the right size.
My dad remodeled my house when I was little and he insisted on getting an extra tall toilet. Apparently he thought that it added a little class to our downstairs bathroom!
My boyfriend and I bought our first home just last October. It was built in 1971 and owned by an elderly couple (all of our neighbors are 65 and older). Well, when we got our new washer and dryer for our dolphin tiled laundry room, we had to put in the vent duct hose ourselves, so as I was running it through the ever so awesomely cut hole they had in the wall, I found at least 4 empty vodka bottles hidden in between the walls. Our satellite guy found one in our roof when installing our dish too…
When my Mom bought the house she lives in around 2001 we discovered some pretty cool artwork in the unfinished basement. I guess the family before was full of talented people who decided using the cement walls in the basement was a good place to practice their painting skills.Kind of tacky if anyone was to go down there, but since we used it for laundry and storage it ended up being a pretty cool and colorful mural to look at from time to time! How exciting to be doing all of that to your bathroom, once its all done you’re going to feel so nice and clean in the new room you created.
When my parent’s moved into their current house years ago, they put some paneling on the walls downstairs. Before they installed it, my brother and I wrote and drew ALL over the walls. Whoever owns the house next (and decides to remove the now outdated paneling) will be in for quite a treat haha.
I bought my house in 1980, it was built in the 1950’s. I married my husband in 1994. We decided to remodel our bathroom which contained the original fixtures. My husband took down the original bathroom mirror and you can imagine our surprise when we saw his exact birhdate: day/month/year stenciled by the manfacture on the back. Of course we could not throw the mirror away as it seemed like real karma. We are selling our house and taking the mirror with us. We still wonder what the letters XA after the date stand for. My husbands initals are not XA/
@Claire: I felt I should fix some spelling errors.
I bought my house in 1980, it was built in the 1950āĀ²s. I married my husband in 1994. We decided to remodel our bathroom which contained the original fixtures. My husband took down the original bathroom mirror and you can imagine our surprise when we saw his exact birhdate: day/month/year stenciled by the manfacture on the back. Of course we could not throw the mirror away as it seemed like real karma. We are selling our house and taking the mirror with us. We still wonder what the letters XA after the date stand for. My husbands initals are not XA/