The foyer remodel that almost brought on early labor

Are you new here? I am on tour with my house. My husband and I have been remodeling our home very slowly over the past 3 (almost 4) years, and we are finally done. Considering the amount of time this project has taken, it seems only fitting to record it, thus this house tour was started. You can see day 1 here. So glad you have stopped by and I hope you leave with some inspiration!

This post is one mainly of pictures. They tell a better story than I can. Below you will see where the foyer started. It was extremely dated, however, when we first bought the house I saw it as a blank canvas, something that wouldn't take much work to update. This was probably the biggest misconception of our remodeling process. This foyer was a bear!

And here is why. The gigantic window above the door had to come out. It dated the house unbelievably from the outside, and put us on display from the inside. We lived in the upstairs guest bedroom for 3 years before we were able to remodel our downstairs master bedroom....and I cannot tell you how many people must have gotten an unexpected show from the street in front of our house. There were so many times one us would be walking from the shower to our closet and forget that we were on display due to the window. It had go...therefore the entire exterior wall had to be cut out and re framed for a smaller, less revealing window. We also replaced these doors with ebay bought doors. We paid less than cost for them, and they are solid, beautiful doors. My cute carpenter started searching ebay long before we were ready to replace the doors, hunting for a deal, and he found one.

Next, please notice that the old stairs dropped you off at the bottom about 1 1/2 feet from the wall in front of you... an awkward design that had to be fixed once the new, bigger doors went in. And then there was that unfortunate detail of the 70's contemporary looking TILE on the floor in the foyer. The tile was installed over a 4 inch concrete base that had to be busted out with a jack hammer, and then a new sub floor put in.

Are you overwhelmed yet? I am having panic attacks just thinking back over the nightmare that this project turned into. I regret to inform you that I have no photographic evidence of my husband on his 2nd jack hammer (he burned up the first) busting up the floors, and me six months pregnant with baby #3 hauling out the tile and concrete demolition. We backed a pick up truck right to the front door and launched the construction demolition into the back of the truck. It took 3 trips to the dump because the back of the truck was dragging so low. I wish I was making this stuff up...it was a sight to see and it took us an entire weekend to get that floor busted up and hauled away.

Next we ripped out the stairs, but then hired someone to come in a replace them. Stair work is an interesting kind of science and my cute carpenter is good, but he wisely handed over the installation to someone else. We were without stairs to the second level of our home for several days, we used a ladder...remember, still pregnant! We also had to widen the walkway upstairs that led to the playroom because it was too narrow (remember that playroom at the end of the hall didn't use to be there, so we had to create a walkway to get to it). We also needed to fix the length of the stairs so that there was more room at the bottom. The new front doors could only open halfway with the old design.

In progress...

And just because he didn't have enough to do already, the cute carpenter tore out the door opening from the foyer to the family room so that he could design an arched opening that modeled the arched front doors. I was quite pleased with what he created, he never ceases to amaze me with the stuff he comes up with.

He and I worked together to layout the new hardwood floors and then he started on the trim up the staircase. What a difference trim makes, and the man is good with installing some trim work!

How cool is that?!?! All the cute carpenter's work!

A monogram should be in every room.

And this picture is here just because of the cuteness level...the dude is so appropriately labeled here.

If you want to see the whole tour click MY HOUSE TOUR over in the left column to see all the posts. Okay, I'm tired. How about on Monday we look at an undertaking that was less overwhelming...like updating a bathroom with just a little bit of paint. Alright, maybe it took a little more than just paint, but it was nothing like jackhammering tile while pregnant.

Have a blessed (snow filled) weekend, see you on Monday!