I’m tired of the remodel project

I am sooooo going to go get a real job when we’re done with this remodel. I am getting really tired of all this! Plus, we’re going to need another income to pay for all the mistakes and redo’s.

Remember the tile saga? We couldn’t decide on tile, but finally we found someone who carried our original tile, yay! We knew it would be a different dye lot, but we thought – hoped – it would be fairly close. We were planning to make a patterned threshold between the two dye lots, so they didn’t bump right up against each other.  But it turns out the new tile is significantly different from the old tile.

This is supposedly the same tile! Obviously, it’s not.

I thought the two different kinds of tile looked fine together, but John really didn’t like the new tile. You can’t see it in this photo, but the new tile has a yellowish cast that he doesn’t like. So we’re back to square one with tile. Looks like we need to pick out new tile, and maybe take up the original kitchen tile as well.

Here they are, taking back up the new tile before it hardens.

We think the unopened boxes of tile we’ve already purchased can be returned. If not, I have a rental with low quality laminate flooring that is separating at the seams, and I’ll just have them install the tile there.

Meanwhile, we decided to take out the half wall at the bottom of the staircase.

Here’s how it looks with the wall gone:

And with the bottom stairs expanded:

This was very simple to do, and it gives it a much more open feel. Here it is looking down the staircase.

But now we have a carpet problem. We didn’t like the carpet, but we were going to delay replacing it until later, because it’s all though the whole upstairs and will cost a lot. But now we need to replace it.

We’ve decided that since we have to replace the carpet anyway, we might as well spend a few more thousand and get hardwood instead of new carpet, and then we’ll never have to replace it again. (This type of thinking is how remodels run away with you). All we did was take out a little wall at the base of the stairs, and now we’re putting in hardwood in the entire upstairs.

Of course we’re going to have to pick out the kind and color of hardwood. I’m thinking John and I aren’t very good at picking out colors of things. As usual, he wants darker and more dramatic, and I want lighter and more basic. Wish us luck!

Speaking of colors, we have decided that we are going to repaint the exterior. I had wanted really light, he had wanted darker. We went with dark, but now we both think it’s too dark. So we’re going to try to find a color somewhere in between.