All the Floor Plans I Developed over the Last Year

I’m going to start building a house having someone else build a house to my specification and on my behalf next month. I’m not sure why I became committed to this future, but it kind of happened about a year ago — I started looking for building lots and, more to the point, coming up

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Kitchen: Before and After Photos

Weird Dining Area That Became the Kitchen The Kitchen That Became the Mud Room Reverse Angle of Kitchen and Mud Room View from the Side Door Entry Now you know. bkd

Kitchen Renovation: It’s Mostly Finished Now

With the kitchen part of the kitchen “functional” by the end of 2018, most of the remaining effort happened in the mud/laundry/whatever room that used to be the kitchen. One awesome thing I got to do in there was tear down the old soffit that used to be on top of the wall cabinets that

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Kitchen Renovation Month 4: Toward a Functioning New Kitchen

When I left town at the end of July, that coincided with the drywaller’s schedule. In other words, I timed it so I could be out of the house during what I imagined was going to be a neverending indoor dust cloud. So when I got back from the northwest road trip, I was met

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Kitchen Renovation Month 3: New Window, New Wires

Next up in the project was getting the new window installed. That corner of the house was super-dark, and with the kitchen going in there, it needed a window. I actually tried calling several professionals to see if I could find someone to do this part for me, but no one wanted to :(. I

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Kitchen Renovation: Months 1 and 2

The house I’m living in was originally built in 1949. At some point, maybe the early-60s, they added on to the back of the house, but rather than adding a room that the house actually (desperately) needed — a master bedroom let’s say — they used the extra space to create the house’s third different

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Upstairs Remodeling Plans (?)

This house where I live was built in 1949, then added on to in… I dunno. Let’s say 1960 or something. It was also surface-renovated about 10 years ago by people who were well-meaning and on a budget. As a result, I have a house that (a) is small, (b) is dark, (c) has three

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Painting My Ridiculous Living Room Ceiling

So this is done now and thanks to Mark in Norman 2 for shaming me into DIYing it. I have this weird inverted layer cake of a ceiling in my living room. It’s definitely memorable, but also definitely too high to reach entirely with a ladder. Here’s what I was able to do it using

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DIY: Fixing the Center Dash Bezel on My Truck

I recently became intimate with a lot of plastic. And all the dust hidden inside the dashboard. And sometimes little plastic tabs probably aren’t the best solution, even though they are the solution that was chosen for you 11 years ago or whatever and you don’t really get much of a choice about it. My

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The Basement Before and After

I’ll do a separate post about the long, arduous process. There was a lot involved. The basement deserves two posts. At least two posts. Here’s one. The main difference being that I turned the lights on. And that there were lights that could be turned on. And a ceiling. The before photo does a poor

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