Home updates - Deck and patio

Another project we tackled around the house was re-doing our back deck and patio. When I say WE I mean CJ. His uncle UJ helped him with part of it and I helped with staining the wood, but for the most part he did the work himself.

The old deck was in complete disrepair from the time we bought the house. Warped and splintering, not to mention not level. CJ decided to replace most of the boards and while at it, he also added a few feet to it so the outdoor area is now bigger. Finally, we also decided to extend our paver walkway so that now it opens into a paver patio below the deck. This way we have a nice, large seating area on the deck and down below there is a nice spot for CJ's new grill and potentially a table where we can eat if we decide to have a meal outside. We don't have a table or chairs yet, but this is always an option.

We are waiting with completing the staining job until the wood has some time to dry and settle. It came from the store soaking wet and the weather has not been exactly perfect to boot. But this is what it looks like now.

Old deck... plus posts for the addition.

First of many loads of supplies.

 Old boards out, new base put in!

 Girls are inspecting progress...

 Lots of extra space now! The goal is to ultimately have the grill down on the patio.

 This is how much bigger the deck is now.

 Katherine approves...

 And the new patio goes in. This was built in a matter of ONE day! Those guys were good!

 Inspecting the progress...

 

 Et voila!

 And again - Katherine say 'good job!'

Home updates - Master bath

We tackled yet another large reno project recently. Namely we finished off updating our master bathroom. When I say WE I mean the contractor whom we hired... haha... In 2010 when we bought the house, we put in a new kitchen height vanity in our bathroom and added a nice granite countertop, new framed mirror and new light fixtures, faucets and towel bars. Here is the before (as we bought it) and after.

Don't be mislead by how nice the photo is. The sellers had a really good photographer do it. It as a pretty boring and plain, builder grade bathroom.
Here are pictures of the vanity as it was going in back in 2011...

 

 

And the finished product!

The only thing that was left over was updating the shower and bathtub. We had plenty of time in Switzerland to think about what we wanted to do in there. In the end we decided to (1) hired pros to do this and (2) not change the layout too much. Originally we were thinking a freestanding tub and a massive fancy shower. But it would have cost sooo much and we probably wouldn't see much return on investment. So we did the best we could with the existing space and this is how it turned out! We love it!

We took down the shower wall, tiled the shower, added some nice accents and a shampoo niche... And the shower is now all glass. I think it all turned out so cool. I love the granite cap on the shower wall! It ties the vanity area so nice. And the floating corner seat is great for propping your foot when shaving legs haha...
One more last look at the before...

And demo begins...

 

 And it's done!

We only hit one snag in the project. One day water started dripping from the ceiling on the 1st floor right below where the new shower is. Turns out that in the process some pipes came loose and water started getting out of the system. Our contractor had to open the ceiling, fix the leak, and then once everything was aired and dry he closed it all up and it's all good again. Whew!

 

 

We are LOVING our new bathroom! It is so comfortable and luxurious! It's fun using it!

Home updates continued - Windows

Here is another project we did on the house.
Super duper overdue in posting this but oh well.. Better late than never.

This one we actually tackled back in February before Katherine's birthday party. When we bought the house it was all painted bright white inside, had no furniture and of course when we visited, all the lights were on, so it never occurred to us that the living room might be a bit dark.
Well fast forward a good bit of time, we painted our walls a nice tan color, put our stuff in, some of our furniture is dark, and we don't always keep all the lights on. And all of a sudden we realize that even on the sunniest, brightest day there is something missing. Namely daylight!
The way the house was designed is that the entire side wall which faces the neighbors on the left is solid. There is not a single window in the living room on that wall. There are two windows around the fireplace but they are facing north so there is not a time of day when there would be a ton of light flooding through them. They are nice and big, but they are just not enough. At least for our taste.
Now on the other hand, our front dining room is gorgeous and super bright which was making the whole dark cave impression even stronger when you were in the living room on a sunny day.

So then we noticed that there are a few other houses on our street with a very similar design and they actually had windows on that living room wall. I'm sure they were added after the houses were build. Anyways, we decided that we would do that too.
We hired a contractor to cut openings in the wall and install two nice, big windows. And Oh MY GOSH what a HUUUGE difference this made! Our entire great room is now constantly flooded with gorgeous daylight. It is so nice and bright there. And the best thing, the added windows did not compromise the privacy of the space at all. That side of the house faces our neighbors' garage and bonus room (upstairs) so there are no windows staring straight into our windows. Whoever designed our street did a really good job offsetting the floor plans so that privacy is maximized. It's great!
So glad we did this and I am sure that this will add to the resale value of the house somewhere down the road.

Also, if anyone is interested, we would highly recommend the guy who did this project for us. Super quick and professional. We have already hired him to do another project in the house because we were so happy with the work and price.

Here are some pictures from the process...

What it looked like on the outside....

And here is the inside view...

 And a final view from the outside.

We love it!!