Monday, January 28, 2013
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Kitchen Plan
When my architect designed the kitchen I asked for a breakfast nook. Because I think it's very true to the period and style of the house and believe me who has time to eat in the dining room everyday. We are fortunate to have some space in the backyard here. We wanna take advantage of that green grass real estate we have. We wanna sit right there at the window and stare right at that little green patch all day long! lol!
Here is prolly the best feature of my house. Out the kitchen windows.
This is my attempt to design my own kitchen. I looked all the store bought cabinet sizes as my guild line. I took measurements of my kitchen and drew this in Adobe Illustrator. I know it's not the best choice for designing a kitchen. But at least for me to enjoy a comfort of being able to see it all laid out.
I didn't have any breakfast nook in my design because we didn't think that we could afford to build new framing for the window. We didn't wanna ruin the sidings. Look what we've done now with all the crazy additional going on, there's no way to avoid all these.
We add french doors in to the same window cutout we already have. We thought this would make the room look more open. We use a bar counter for seatings. Seems to be a decent decision at the time.
Now with this design we get the nook that we always wanted and we also get a door to the back yard. It's not as big as the french doors but that's fine. The catch is now we have to spend more to cut out that new opening to fit the window and door. I've learnt that at one point if you want something to be done right, you would have to pay the price. --Another hole in my pocket.
Here is prolly the best feature of my house. Out the kitchen windows.
This is my attempt to design my own kitchen. I looked all the store bought cabinet sizes as my guild line. I took measurements of my kitchen and drew this in Adobe Illustrator. I know it's not the best choice for designing a kitchen. But at least for me to enjoy a comfort of being able to see it all laid out.
We add french doors in to the same window cutout we already have. We thought this would make the room look more open. We use a bar counter for seatings. Seems to be a decent decision at the time.
We also wanna keep this old ironing board. It's kinda useful and easy to put away. YA lot of people would turn this in to spice rack. You would see this in a lot of old homes.
Ok then I showed this to my architect. He was looking at me like...this woman is crazy. hahahaha He said oh now you already done my job. hahaha But of cause he went back and came up with even better design for us. I couldn't be happier.
Now with this design we get the nook that we always wanted and we also get a door to the back yard. It's not as big as the french doors but that's fine. The catch is now we have to spend more to cut out that new opening to fit the window and door. I've learnt that at one point if you want something to be done right, you would have to pay the price. --Another hole in my pocket.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Renovation week 13
I started to get sick of my house exterior image. It looks the same! Feels like there's not much going on for the structure. That's because right now the focus shifted to electrical and all these moving parts inside the house.
There are many new developments going on for my kitchen. All the walls are removed. The workers are putting in new framing for new windows. I was told that all the studs inside the walls are too small they have to add some thickness to those. You can see all these lighter color wood on all the studs. With old homes, you never know what kind of crazy sh*t goes inside the walls.
Another crazy things we found under what seems to be a really nice wall behind my bathroom. Great example of modern day plumbing! This is a vent that coming out from bathroom sink. This explains why I used to smell toothpaste in this room in the morning. You can see the old galvanize pipe and PVC pipes are just jury-rigged together.
OK Time for good news, may I introduce Brand New Electrical Panel! We can now operate 20th century appliances. It's so nice and low profile. All the wires are hidden inside the wall. Genius! That's something I never thought possible. When I looked at my old panel, I often thought why is this so annoying to look at. I personally have issues with messy wires, especially those wires behind my computers, but that's a different story.
Exterior view of the panel
Behind the panel
Let me refresh your memory. This is my old electrical panel. Look at those crazy wires going everywhere!! So ugly!!
Ceiling appreciation
We have some ceiling appreciation going on here. Since my house is so tiny, I wanna make sure that we take advantage of every square inch of this master bedroom addition. I think having a vaulted ceiling is one way to make the room appears larger than it is. And I am a fan of beam ceilings.
I have learnt that even though the ceiling looks like it's exposed but it's not. There are electrical, vents and things under that ceiling. Then they apply faux beams on top of that. That's the reason why this costs more than regular ceiling. Don't like the sound of that!
This is the look of the ceiling that I'm going for in my master bedroom. Except my roof is lower pitch.
I have learnt that even though the ceiling looks like it's exposed but it's not. There are electrical, vents and things under that ceiling. Then they apply faux beams on top of that. That's the reason why this costs more than regular ceiling. Don't like the sound of that!
This is the look of the ceiling that I'm going for in my master bedroom. Except my roof is lower pitch.
This is just a plain ceiling no beam. This is my backup plan if I ran out of money to buy beams:)
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Friday, December 7, 2012
Monday, December 3, 2012
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