Entries Tagged as 'Home Ownership, yay!'
Over the weekend we (finally!) finished up our new built-ins. I think they look pretty good for a couple of amateurs:
I don't know how much we spent on them, but I guarantee you it was way less than what we would have paid to have them installed professionally. The cabinets are pre-fab, and were about $100 each (~$600), and the rest of it is from 3 sheets of plywood (~$150). Add another hundred dollars or so for paint and supplies. Then, oh, I don't know… 7,000 hours of work. Also a big thank you to DadR who gave some most-excellent guidance and even helped us make a few cuts and assemble the shelves.
Now I can be lazy in my free time again.
We decided to build some built-in cabinets and shelving in our family room. We're using pre-fab unfinished kitchen (wall) cabinets, because their shallowness works well with our available space (see: window sill), and then we'll be building shelving from scratch on either end of the wall, above the cabinets, to frame in the TV-area.
Before:
And although we're far from done, here's what we've accomplished in a weekend. Click the collage for the full photo set.
Also… this?
Not as easy as it looks!
Recently we decided to paint our stairwell.
That was a
great idea. </scarcasm>
It was a lot of hard work but it turned out really well. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if we had a proper ladder. We borrowed a 6 foot ladder from some neighbors, but that was about a foot too short, and we borrowed a 15 foot extension ladder from one of Megan's coworkers, and that ended up being about 5 feet too long — it wouldn't even fit in the stairwell fully collapsed.
I spent hours and hours standing on a couple of boards stretched out between our stairs and the 6 foot ladder standing at the bottom of the stairs; staring up at the walls and ceiling surrounding me. My neck still cramps up when I look up.
I was worried that the color was too dark and would just make that poorly lit area of the house feel even darker and gloomier. But I trusted in the wife, and she was right. It's a nice rich tone, and the bright white doors really stand out and break it up nicely.
Next up, we're replacing that lame-o builder's grade light fixture in the 3rd picture, then on to bigger better things like a new storm door for the front door, and a new screen door for the back. We're turning our house into a wind tunnel.
