Blog3 Comments on Spring One Room Challenge | Great Oak Reno | Demo Drama

BLOG, DIY, DEMO, HOME PROJECTS, INSPO, RENOVATION

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3

*This blog post may contain gifted, discounted, sponsored product or affiliate links. As always all the opinions below are my own and I work with products and brands that I believe in!

These beauties are going into 4 of the main areas of our home.
Image credit REVEL WOODS showing Kachina Engineered Hardwoods- from the American Skyways Collection, Exclusively sold eDesign Tribe Designers https://www.revelwoods.com/

Don’t let the gorgeous image above fool you… Week 3 of the One Room Challenge, as you may have guessed from the title was all about smashing our house! Demolition was fun and cathartic at first then turned a bit dramatic in the past 2 days. Turns out our 64-year-old home is filled with secrets & some not-so-pleasant ones at that.

If you have been following along on my Insta @greatoakahven you will already know some of this. Our first speed bump is the floor level from the kitchen which is to the soon-to-be-opened up to the dining room and living room (see image below for highlighted problem areas). Our kitchen is about 1/2″ to 3/4″ higher up than the living and dining room since the kitchen floor has radiant heating and we are pretty sure that the old floor wasn’t taken up, so the prior reno placed the new floor over the existing raising the level up much higher. I know a 1/2″ to 3/4″ doesn’t sound like much but it’s so important since that 1/2″ to 3/4″ thickening of the subfloor to bring the Living room and Dining Room up to the kitchen level will actually lead to covering the sliding doors in those rooms (also highlighted) Solution… we raise the doors up slightly. We have 3 slider doors on this level that will be raised.

The highlighted areas is where the demo drama began.

Upon further investigation, we also discovered last that we have a similar issue in the Family Room as well, where we are also replacing the floors with our gorgeous Revel Woods Kachina Floors. With the subfloor, we are about 1/4″ – 1/2″ over the sliding door in the Family Room… So that slider is coming up too. Wahoo. Luckily we do not need to replace these sliders which we are so thankful for since that would have killed any contingency we have and extended out the timeline significantly. On a positive note… we do not have the raise the level of the Office! It’s on the same level as the Family Room but for some reason, the door is higher up in that room and so our gorgeous floors actually fit in here perfectly so we do not need to raise this slider door! Yay!

DEMO

The other big piece of demo drama is the leak we found last night! Wahoo (this is sarcasm, it’s STRESSFUL AF). So a little background on our shower… the tile has been cracked in our shower since we purchased the home and we had it sealed as a temporary fix until we could take on the renovation. It was unclear how long the epoxy sealant would last… 2-3 years was the estimate and we are going into 3.5 years in the home so we are a bit overdue. There has also been a slow drip in our bathroom ever since we moved in. (I am sure many of you are thinking, why the heck did you people buy this house after hearing about our terrifying bathroom, well the truth is this house is completely one-of-a-kind and they just don’t build them like this anymore, we know we can make it into something really special we just have to get through the scary stuff). The slow drip turned into a fast drip and since the guys removed the shower divide to the bathroom floor over the weekend and some of the shower floor the shower started dripping down through the cantilevered ceiling. As an aside- we do not know why both showers in our house were placed in the cantilevered portions of our home… It’s strange to be sure for many obvious & technical reasons I’m not going to go into right now. The good news is, we are moving the shower over into my old closet, which is a “safer space” for the shower. There’s almost zero chance of the shower pan & tile cracking again, barring an earthquake or something really strange! (Knock on wood). (More details on this in Instagram stories if you’re interested in seeing the leak in action).

This is all in the cantilevered part of our house
drama- shower was leaking
This is why we had puddles outside- the black parts will be replaced this is from years of water seeping through damaged tile
A big thank you goes out to Ryan, Chase, Brian, Henry, & Sean! Thanks for all your help smashing our house ! <3

Our GC was over this AM taking a look at the leak and water damage. He quickly resolved it with a little digging and a run to Home Depot! I love that my house is unique and filled with surprises… but I am ready for some good ones…. Here’s hoping we find less of the crazy and more of the cool (like the hidden hearth that confirmed that our fireplace used to be double-sided, the mint-painted reused support boards that were used in our master bath, and the plumbing panel at the foot of the bed that was found under the carpet where the jacuzzi used to be).

BEFORE | DEMO | DESIGN

BEFORE

DEMO

DESIGN

*All of these plans were a collaboration with talented architect Allie Agliata, I so enjoyed working with you!

So, friends, I think it is safe to say that I am soooooo over demo and ready to move into my parents house for a month. Next week I will be chatting about less stressful/ more beautiful things so stay tuned! I am stoked to share more with you soon! If you want to hear more about our reno process and see more design inspo you can always follow me on INSTAGRAM and/or PINTEREST. And don’t forget to check out all the other amazing One Room Challenge Projects HERE.

Bring it on week 4!