Replacing steel windows

First things first...move the ghetto dryer vent to an actual wall. This was a piece of cake. Drill through 12 inches of block and put the dryer vent right through. Maybe it wasn't quite that easy. One bloody finger later...right through.

 Our very first window...America's Best Choice slider

 This is Chris cutting the steel window out and he will be leaving the steel frame all the way around. This will leave something to attach the new window to...along with framing the inside with wood. He took the day off from work and since I was unavailable for the assistant job he had a very generous helper (with lots of window instillation experience) for the day.

The new window looks great. Now the frame around the outside is the eye sore...don't even pay attention to the dead ivy on the right side of the picture. Yes, the outside of the house has been neglected but one day we will get to around to that.

He added a wood frame around the outer edges of the window.

 Last, Chris used his table saw to cut the wood molding to go around the outside of the window. I just set it up there for the picture...it's not actually attached, but soon it will be! He ordered 4 more windows for the rest of the downstairs...then we will tackle the BIG windows upstairs.

Build mirror from old pallet

I saw a mirror while out shopping for a mothers day gift that I thought my mother would love, but I didn't love the price. They had it priced at $100! So, I thought I could just build her one. Since I had a handy man at home I was sure we could do it. I already had some old wood from pallets we had broken down to build a potting bench. We had a long piece of wood on each side that we glued and screwed each piece of wood to. Since I was in charge of this project, there was very little measuring going on. This drove Chris crazy.

 By the time we made it to this point we had built the frame for a mirror that I didnt have. I ended up using a door mirror which didn't fit but it was really close. We trimmed a little off the two inner edges of the frame and it fit perfectly.  I bought a glass cutter and cut the length of the glass to fit.

Chris got his handy dandy table saw out and cut 2 pieces of wood to hold the mirror in place. It looks near professional...better than the one I saw in the store.

side view

I added the hanger on the back and we were done

Total cost was $9.00! That was for the glass cutter and the hanger...everything else we already had. The one on the left is mine and the one on the right was my inspiration. 

New Interior Doors

Our door project consisted of 10 new blank doors. We had to measure and cut all doors to fit in our not so straight openings.

After cutting the door to size we took it to the opening to make sure it fit. Holding it there we marked the hinge position and the notching began. We used a chisel and mallet and very slowly we started whittling the side of the door. This was a very slow and tedious process! 30 notches later...we were done!

We had a drill attachment for the 2 holes in the door.

Sanding indoors is not recommended! After cleaning the mess, we decided this was the only one we would be doing this way. For the other doors we actually removed the door molding, took it outside, sanded, primed, and painted it. A lot of work but it made a big difference.

                                                                                                                                                                     this is where we removed the molding and took it outside to be sanded. 

left side is not sanded...right side is sanded...you have to enlarge the pic to see the difference

This was our assembly line for door painting. Each door had to be painted twice on each side...then they were finally ready to install. Since we removed the old doors and got rid of them before we were actually finished with the new ones, we had sheets hanging as our doors...even the bathroom...the kids didn't appreciate that too much :)

                                    

                                    

                                                  

We are finally finished! This seemed like such a long process...probably because it was, but it was all worth it

Crown Molding

This was our setup for painting all the molding. We painted, measured, cut, installed, caulked all cracks and nail holes, then painted again. All of this we did to 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. I am not really sure how long the whole process took, but I do know it was too long. 

                                          This is Peytons room before we moved in...NASTY

                                          After:

                                          Carters room before:

                          After:

               For some reason I don't have a before of Justins room but it wasn't any better than the others.

Our next BIG project

 This is currently how the front of  the sad house currently looks.

These are my attempts at changing the windows and exterior colors. We think we are going to go with the white windows and I guess the exterior color will come later. We will be installing the windows ourselves so we have a while to make that decision.