Wall Removal, Half Bath Reveal, and Furniture Stripping

The evenings this week were spent finishing the half bathroom. We had to touch up some paint, install the vanity, sink, faucet, and fixtures, and caulk everything. Chris did most of this work and it turned out great! The only thing that is still left to do is to put in the threshold transition piece from the hardwood hall to the tile bath. Here are some of the final pictures of the tiny space (and a before picture for comparison).





I worked third shift a couple nights this weekend and am completely exhausted – I didn’t know that the circles under my eyes could ever get this big! When I finally woke up on Saturday, Chris and I decided to remove a couple of the half walls in the basement that were annoying us. One was the half wall left in the laundry room – it was always frustrating to have to walk around it to get to the washer and dryer. We saved the door to use later but removed the rest of the poorly constructed frame.






After we removed the wall and cleaned up a bit, we were finally able to put the washer on its pedestal (it only took about a year!).



The other half wall that we removed was the “kitchenette” wall in the apartment area. The layout of this area was so odd – they built this wall to form a little hallway to the bathroom when they could have just put the bathroom door on the other wall. We needed to remove this so that I would have some space to start working on the furniture refinishing. The metal cabinets on this wall are actually amazing – so heavy duty and still in great shape. We’ll definitely be reusing them in Chris’ workshop.




The final work this weekend was starting to strip our master bedroom furniture. We have had this furniture sitting in the basement for many, many months while we worked on the more pressing items upstairs. Now that we finally have some space (our basement is just one giant storage area) I was able to start this process.

If you have ever tried to strip furniture, you know that it takes just about forever. It took me all Sunday evening and part of this morning to finish just the footboard for the bed. The worst part is that each “waiting” period is only 15 minutes – not enough time to work on any other task. So instead I’m hanging out in the basement watching episodes of “Psych” on Netflix.

The furniture that we purchased was rather fancy for our style but the price was right ($600) and the furniture was very well made (hooray for dovetail drawers!). So this is when I start kicking myself that the furniture is not “Shaker” style. There are so many intricate details on this furniture that I think I might go crazy by the end!


Maybe if I work on it consistently, I’ll finish the stripping sometime in late February - yikes!