What a crazy, busy weekend. It was filled with birthday parties and bike riding and home improvement. Lots of home improvement.
On Monday, we were having the house appraised for the purpose of refinancing. When I scheduled the appraisal appointment, the appraiser asked about what improvments we had done to the house. I told him about the roof, the siding, the master bedroom floors, the master bath, the new window, the new mail box and then, the flip-flop of the kitchen and dining room…which “are not finished.”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
Well, I told him that the kitchen is fully functional. We have a new range, a new dishwasher, new cabinets “and so on…”
“Do you have counters?”
“Yes. Sort of.”
“Floors?”
“Yes, sort of.”
We have them, they are just not what we will have forever. The floors are concrete subfloors and the counters are Craigslist hand-me-downs which are simply resting on top of the cabinets until we have all of the cabinets installed. And that is not going to be anytime soon.
And on it went from there.
The man politely told me that we did not stand a chance of getting the refi to go through if it appears like we were in mid-renovation. The renovation, which is far from being done, needed to look “done enough.”
So while I cleaned the marker off the wall, put the furniture back where it was supposed go (i.e. moving the boy’s night stands next to the beds – where I quickly remembered why I moved them away before – they make great launching pads) and so on, HH got to work on making the house look done enough.
He started on this wall.
This space will eventually be a washer and dryer/laundry area in my dining room.
What? (That is my mother speaking in my head.)
Yes, I plan to have my laundry room in my dining room.
Currently, my washer and dryer are in the garage, too far from the bedrooms in the house and not the happiest place to be in the middle of winter or summer.
I would like something like this .
I can see using my future dining room table as an impromptu folding station which would be light-years better than hauling up basket after basket of unfolded laundry to the master bedroom and folding at the foot of my bed.
However, we are not planning to make this improvement any time soon. And while I can live with the exposed plumbing, the home appraiser probably would not look too kindly on my wall ala swiss cheese.
Off to the store to buy bead-board. HH installed it right over top – no patching or taping or mudding.
With just a few finish nails, we can pull it right off when we are ready to build in the new cabinet.
Sorry for the grumpy kid in the shot. Splash was mad that his Dad was not available to play.
Next, we struggled with the counter top. Since the future counter would be way deeper and heavier than what would be needed now, we needed a cheap alternative.
We read that Jax Bargain Plywood was going out of business and so we drove by on Saturday after a dune buggy party on the westside of town – more to come on that later. 🙂
The shelves were picked clean except for one little lonely door with no hope for a home. It was too light and too small for a standard door …in other words, perfect for us. And, it was $5. Really, $5.35 with FL sales tax. Yay!
First, HH cut it to size. Next, I hot glued some of the scraps to the ends to act as trim. Last, HH used a few L-brackets to keep it supported on top of the wall.
From the photo, you can see how the kitchen looked when the appraiser came by. We added a huge area rug, balanced the toe kicks in front of the cabinets so that they looked finished and strategically placed items around the kitchen to distract anyone from looking too closely at the finished product.
We are cautiously optimistic about the results.
And exhausted.
I'm The Boss Of Me 