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A Quick Curbly House Update: How We Spent Our Summer Vacation

by on Aug 3, 2013

Things have been cah-ray-zhee at the Curbly House these past several weeks. Sheetrock rocked us, taking a lot longer than expected due to a delivery truck that arrived to our house and then broke, twice … delaying the start to this step by 5 days. After all was said and hung, our master mudder Marco had to spend additional time working with all the seams, delaying the process by another 5 days. But the results were stunning:

Then came flooring, which of course had its own special delays. We were not able to find any floor boards to match our 100+ year old 1 1/4″ birch floors that run throughout the house, so we ended up having to tear up the dining room floor to create a more subtle transition between the birch and the new maple floor boards. This was not a cost or expense we planned on… open floor plan be damned! The good news is that they look gorgeous (and they haven’t even been refinished yet).

Sawhorse with tools next to a spackled wall.

Tile was laid in our mudroom and downstairs half-bath:

A stone floor in an entrance way.

Then more tile was laid in our upstairs master bathroom:

Window cutouts in room with unfinished sheet rock walls.

A white tile wall, with nothing else.

This bathroom is almost ready for fixtures to start going in. And that’s a good thing, ’cause these Kohler boxes in our garage are starting to get lonely:

A cardboard box is sitting in room with paneled walls.

Next, trim was put up around all the windows, baseboards, and crown molding was matched. Again, this was not a cost we planned for, and there were delays as the millwork was created; but ultimately, we think we made the right choice in matching all of the trim in the new part of the house to the original trim in the old part of the house. It makes me giddy because the transitions between rooms are seamless.

Unpainted wood spandrel above a window in an unpainted room.

With all the delays we’ve encountered, we’re quite behind on our renovation schedule, which definitely keeps us up at night. Two months ago we temporarily moved out of the house after having a very real awakening about the problems the lack of a kitchen and running water were creating for our family. This was probably the wisest and most unexpected choice we made. We are comfortably staying in a house a few blocks away. We planned on being in this house for 6-8 weeks tops, and are currently on week 10, with what looks like another 4-5 to go. The good news is, we’re comfortable and the house is clean and quiet, making us less neurotic. 

Because we’re behind schedule, the Curbly House is filled with cabinetry, bathroom fixtures, and a million boxes just waiting to be unwrapped and installed. Our living room is currently a cardboard-maze of boxes, and we’re considering turning it into a carnival attraction. 

Summer packaged boxes in a room

Last weekend, we began painting with primer and enameling the trim. 

An empty white room with the windows taped off.

The grand finale took place earlier this week when my favorite part of the renovation process occurred: the installation of our Aristokraft cabinets! I am doing cartwheels. Remember when we were wavering on door styles and colors? We ended choosing the Winstead in maple, painted white

A kitchen has white cabinets and counters.

Remodeling a kitchen in a home.

(Many thanks to our awesome kitchen designer, Jeannine, from Gerhards, for all her help getting the cabinetry figured out).

With all of this work happening on the inside, Bruno and I have been working on a front porch makeover that has quite figuratively slayed us. The amount of patience and painting and sanding, and re-sanding, and so much more sanding, and squirrel carcasses, has been much more than we anticipated.

I made far too many trips to my local Sherwin-Williams store trying to figure out how to get paint into those deep stucco pockets. Fortunately, the folks there were patient with me.

The good new is that after 5 weeks of work (we originally planned on this being a 2-week project …), the porch is done and ready to be decorated. Here are a few shots I took this morning. 

A door has a window with nine panes and an antique doorknob.(Still needs some glass scraping!)

An empty room with a bare wooden floor.

Enclosed porch with wooden windows next to pink curtain.

Considering that the porch looked like this when we moved in, we’ve come a long way:

Boxes of storage items next to a box of sports equipment in a utility room.

We have three different grays going on, and fresh white trim, which is working for us. We’re planning on painting the house’s exterior someday, and the porch was our color test. What do you think? 

(Colors, for those who keep track, are: SW  7017 Dorian Gray on the stucco, SW  7018 Dovetail on the plaster and posts, SW  7019 Gauntlet Gray as an accent color, SW  7516 Kestrel White on the trim, and SW  6213 Halcyon Green for the door.)

Thanks for all your support, feedback, and patience through all of our radio silence. We’ll be back soon with another update. In the meantime, you can follow all of our progress photos on Instagram!

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