After some much needed downtime after tax season, I headed home to tackle the kitchen cabinets for the Rough Ranch as well as the primary bath at our own house (more on that later). This house wasn’t looking too sporty when we first stepped inside, and then it progressively got worse. If you haven’t seen the before tour, be sure to check it out on my YouTube Channel
Much of the subfloor and many joists have been replaced due to water damage, which we suspect was from the water heater. When a house sits vacant for a year, things can really go downhill.
The back room was not in good shape. We needed to decide whether to rip it off, or fix it. Fixing it involved jacking it up to reinforce the structure. Oh, and apparently a lot of dirt shoveling thanks to my brother-in-law and nephew.
We decided to go for it and save the room. It really does add a lot of living space to the house. It now has new windows and a slider and has new siding.
You may also notice that the concrete out back is gone. The concrete was visibly sloping into the house, which is not a good idea for water flow. This will enable us to property grade the area in the back and around the addition.
The pool area has also been cleaned out and is being filled in.
Bathroom Layouts
Another big change has been in the bathrooms. The primary bath had been the incredibly small. Given the needed clearance for the door, it could accomodate only a very small vanity. I kept imagining myself trying to just curl or dry my hair on that little vanity and my curling iron and dryer constantly falling on the floor.. We brainstormed a lot of potential solutions to improve space: changing the door swing, building a custom vanity that would narrow close to the door but still allow for more counter space, stealing some space from the closet behind the bathroom, and/or reworking the main hall bath to give more room for the primary bath. Once all of the walls were pulled out, we decided to go forward with modifying both the hall bath and the closet.
Previously, the hall bath had a very large vanity, and the tub was set back behind the closet (to the left of the door) which housed the water heater. The water heater closet was much deeper than it needed to be, so once that was made more shallow, we could bring the tub forward.
These pictures are taken from the hall bath doorway. You can see where the primary bath sits behind it.
A shorter vanity and moving the toilet closer allowed us to increase the width of the primary bath behind it. The primary bath now has room for a full 48″ vanity and a 5′ shower.
The new tub and shower pan are both in place.
Kitchen
In the kitchen, all the cabinets and soffit have been removed. I’ve been working on the new base cabinets at my house, and the wall cabinets have been ordered.
On the Homefront
Meanwhile, at my own house, I’ve been a bit busy working on our primary bath reno. Last week I decided to start shower demo myself. Here’s where I started. I’ll be sure to share more of that soon.
[…] improve the overall function of the house, we actually made this room smaller. To see what we did, check out this post here. It still feels very roomy though, with plenty of floor room remaining to add in a linen cabinet or […]