Goodbye little flood!
Back on April 1st our main floor bathroom flooded. The toilet never stopped running and it flooded over the bowl for 2.5 hours before we noticed. We have FINALLY completed all the renovations and have our home back in full working order and are SO excited about it!
That was a LONG three and a half months! Most days, getting the kids to school and working non-stop. until I picked them up. Just 7 hours a day painting, ripping out floors, prepping and so many more projects. It was a LOT but like everything, we did it! It's done and we're so happy with how it all ended up turning out.
Insurance was a bit of a hassle to get it all started. They had our affected floors and walls ripped out that same day. We decided to take the buy out and do the jobs ourselves because they refused to let us rip out the carpet (that was unaffected but needing to be replaced regardless) even though we obviously would pay the extra cost of it. We also wanted to change our current flooring and not do the same yellow hardwood that we've had since we bought our place. They also said no to that, so we took the buyout and decided to do it all ourselves. We were definietly able to make the money stretch farther and really did a whole ton more on our main level and even our upstairs bathrooms that deserpately needed some TLC and in the end we had not a dime left over.
Because everything happened so fast I didn't actually get very good "before" photos but good enough!
This was the bathroom that caused all the problems...
We LOVE our new bathroom so much. Everything changed and Im not mad about it!
This wall paper was funny. I looked and looked and looked to do a wallpaper feature wall in the bathroom. I found a few I liked but then they werent the right ones, or they couldn't ship to Canada.. so finally I found the one I wanted... but it wasn't the one I chose. Brian convinced me to order samples. I didn't think it was necessary but I am so glad he made us do it because in person... I didn't really like the one I chose and ended up going with my least favourite that looked so good in person! Funny how that happened. Also.. leave it to Brian to keep things funny.. he got the samples and ordered an extra just to get some giggles.. it worked...
The sweet toilet flushed culprit... although, look how beautiful and fresh our home is now.. so, in the end.. Thanks Bud! Love you!
The floors in the hallway started swelling pretty quick and were taken out the next day.
This little flood was such a slippery slope. Because it affected the floor and the walls and the baseboard... everything needed to be changed but you couldn't just do the same exact paint colour and only paint the affected spots because our paint colour is old and faded so it would look different. Same with the baseboards and the floor. Everything needed to be changed and once we started it was hard to know when to stop. It was a very slippery slope!
All of the trim and chair rail needed to be re-painted and just when I thought I had finished it, I woke up the next morning to a yellow tinge trim and chair rail on the entire main level. It was an awful feeling. Turns out, paint cans shouldn't spoil BUT this one did. Even though I had the store shake it, somewhere along the way the paint cans of extra trim paint stored in our basement went bad.. so I had to go buy new cans and do the whole thing over again... it was very deflated but also so necessary.
For years I had wanted to paint our stair rails white but I knew it would be such a hassle job that Ive avoided it for years but since the whole house was in shambles and the paint was out.. I painted that too (see... slippery slope)....
Looking back, I am glad we did everything we did. We didn't cut corners, we did two coats on literally everything. We protected our subfloor perfectly even if it meant it took 30% longer to get the old flooring out.
We calculated all our dump runs and combined we took about two thousand pounds to the dump. When we ripped out the carpets we also realized all the pee from the dogs that used to live here before we bought our home.. this was GROSSSSSSS... like, barfing worthy. We cleaned it, disinfected it and primed over the subfloor to make it fresh again. The living room carpet had about 1000 stapled randomly nailed EVERYWHERE. I swear a happy teenager installed that carpet when the house was built! We changed all the main floor light fixtures, installed 8 pot lights in the living room, two in the kitchen, and two in the pantry/laundry room area. So many jobs took longer than we thought they would and as we got closer to the end I was running out of steam but just look at how beautiful it all turned out!
And while we waited for the flooring to be delivered and the house still had all the paint supplies everywhere... I thought.. why not just do a quick fix to our master bathroom and the kids bathroom up stairs.... This was actually a satisfying job because it went pretty quick when compaired to every other project!
Our kids bathroom needed to be freshened up real bad! Before...
After...
And our Master bathroom was also GROSS. Thankfully no one ever uses it so we stalled out forever on helping it out but I did it at the same time as the kids bathroom and am SO glad that I did because it is so fresh, smells so good and so much brighter! I love it!! Something we should have done a long time ago. Before...
And after....
And just to keep the projects going, we organized the pantry too because.. wow.. It was struggling!!
After...
I realize its summer and this pantry (and the house) will stay clean for approximately 3 minutes but it does feel nice that everything has a place and renovations are DONE! So so exciting to be able to fill our days with friends and regular cleaning and have people over again. Such a relief!! Thank you Carter for flooding the house and forcing us to update it!
That was a LONG three and a half months! Most days, getting the kids to school and working non-stop. until I picked them up. Just 7 hours a day painting, ripping out floors, prepping and so many more projects. It was a LOT but like everything, we did it! It's done and we're so happy with how it all ended up turning out.
Insurance was a bit of a hassle to get it all started. They had our affected floors and walls ripped out that same day. We decided to take the buy out and do the jobs ourselves because they refused to let us rip out the carpet (that was unaffected but needing to be replaced regardless) even though we obviously would pay the extra cost of it. We also wanted to change our current flooring and not do the same yellow hardwood that we've had since we bought our place. They also said no to that, so we took the buyout and decided to do it all ourselves. We were definietly able to make the money stretch farther and really did a whole ton more on our main level and even our upstairs bathrooms that deserpately needed some TLC and in the end we had not a dime left over.
Because everything happened so fast I didn't actually get very good "before" photos but good enough!
This was the bathroom that caused all the problems...
For years I had wanted to paint our stair rails white but I knew it would be such a hassle job that Ive avoided it for years but since the whole house was in shambles and the paint was out.. I painted that too (see... slippery slope)....
Looking back, I am glad we did everything we did. We didn't cut corners, we did two coats on literally everything. We protected our subfloor perfectly even if it meant it took 30% longer to get the old flooring out.
We calculated all our dump runs and combined we took about two thousand pounds to the dump. When we ripped out the carpets we also realized all the pee from the dogs that used to live here before we bought our home.. this was GROSSSSSSS... like, barfing worthy. We cleaned it, disinfected it and primed over the subfloor to make it fresh again. The living room carpet had about 1000 stapled randomly nailed EVERYWHERE. I swear a happy teenager installed that carpet when the house was built! We changed all the main floor light fixtures, installed 8 pot lights in the living room, two in the kitchen, and two in the pantry/laundry room area. So many jobs took longer than we thought they would and as we got closer to the end I was running out of steam but just look at how beautiful it all turned out!
Our kids bathroom needed to be freshened up real bad! Before...