Goodbye Carpet, Hello Vanity

This weekend marked the beginning of our master suite renovation, and it turned out to be a very successful weekend in the world of demolition. We actually almost completed the demo process, but more about that will follow later this week...

First things first, we ripped out the nasty carpet that probably housed more germs than I would care to think. In fact, you could actually see where the previous owner's couch sat. It was forever marked by a dark stain in the shape of a sectional. So, it was high time for this carpet to be removed. All in all, it was a very easy process. The carpet and the padding pulled up very quickly and easily only to uncover the subfloor was not plywood as it should be, but rather it was MDF, which is apparently not a good thing. So, surprise number one - we also get to replace the subflooring.

Goodbye Carpet...

Of course Reggie did not want to miss out on any of the action...

After only about an hour, we had all the carpet and the padding pulled up and in trash bags, and it seems like this whole renovation thing isn't that hard.

The weather this weekend was great, and it seemed a shame to spend the entire weekend indoors tearing down walls, so we set out on a hunt to find a piece of furniture that we could repurpose as a double vanity for our bathroom. After stopping by a friend's house for some inspiration (she recently finished a very large and beautiful restoration, so we thought we might steal some ideas), we headed to some local antique shops to see what we could find. We went from Cleveland to Commerce to Jefferson to Gainesville to eBay, and decided that we really liked the first piece we saw. It was perfect - the right price, the right style, and even after adding two sinks will still have plenty of storage. And considering it was so much cheaper than anything we saw all day, we knew we should probably act fast. So, today, we drove back up to Cleveland to purchase it, and here it sits in our garage waiting to be installed. For some reason, the lady who was selling it, didn't bring the drawers with her, so she dropped them off today (after we bought it). We felt like we had been to Cleveland our fair share this weekend, so we decided we'd go back another day to pick up the drawers. We are so excited about this piece, and think it will work perfectly in our new bathroom!

Hello vanity...

Stay tuned as the walls (ugly wood paneling) come down...

The Blog Begins...

We wanted an easy way for everyone to keep up with our progress as we begin our renovation to turn our currently unused den into our master suite, complete with bedroom, bathroom and closet. For the two years we have lived in our house, we have only used our den as an all purpose storage area and of course the perfect puppy play area. But, the time has come to add a third bedroom to our house and to start to transform our 1930s ranch into our dream home.

The first step of the process included cleaning out the room, which managed to become piled high with give away boxes and all that "stuff" we just didn't know what to do with. After we sorted through everything and made our keep, give away, and throw away piles, we got to moving everything to its new location, and ended up with this:

A completely empty room ready for some demo! Keep scrolling for more pictures from all angles. This angle shows the current door to outside, which will be taken out and the wall will run flush.

This angle shows the built-in bookcases that will be torn out:

One more angle:

Next step, tear out the carpet...