Living room update

It's been two weeks since my first post about our living room project. Did I mention that it started out with us just planning on painting? Here's a pictorial update.




We decided while we were at it we would take out the outdated "can" lights in front of the fireplace and put new LED recessed lighting at all four corners of the recessed ceiling. And while we are at it why not knock out the corners and make the octagon a rectangle like every contractor since 1980 has done.




I've been told by a reliable Facebook friend that duct tape is up to code to be used in place of wire nuts. Regardless, I went the UL approved route.




A lot of drywall work causes a lot of dust.




We have 90 degree corners!




Oh yeah, we decided while we're at it we wanted this wall longer so we brought the opening in about a foot. Why not?




Look, our garage received a delivery of cabinets!




My finished masonry project. I had to measure in for the cabinets and cut bricks to build up the top two rows and then did a mortar smear application on all bricks except for the top layer on the hearth. It's now much lighter after drying.




Top cabinets mounted, bottoms just sat in place. Still have to frame in above the fireplace and drywall it.




All cabinets installed, templates for the countertops made, outlet and conduit for TV installed. Now I can try to find someone to cut some countertops for me. And start the fun process of installing baseboards and crown molding.
Someday we'll be finished.
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Last year I had intentions of getting back into this blog and we see how that worked out.
Lets give it a other shot.
It works out well that we are also in another home improvement project (granted the way it looks and feels right now the "improvement" part is up for debate).
We are working on our front living room. If you look back to the beginning of the blog you will see it as it was right after we removed the paneling, but I have yet to find any pics with the paneling intact.
Here it is from two years ago showing the room pretty much as it was when we began two weeks ago.




We decided that we really needed to paint and touch up some rough spots in the wall.
This is what happened next.




Unfortunately it got a lot worse than this but thanks to my lovely wife's help picking up we kept it to a mild disaster at any given point.
We decided the fireplace needed updating, the cabinets needed replacing, the corners in the raised ceiling needed to be squared off, one wall needed to be expanded, four outlets moved, two more installed, and the two recessed lights needed to be replaced with four new LED ones.
Hard to picture now, but it will come out very roughly like this:




We will smear the remaining brick, and install a capstone on the hearth.
As it is tonight all drywall is in and the second coat of compound is on. (So is the dust). I have several rounds of sanding and feathering out more compound, and then the texture process.
Then, finally, the paint.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone4

Location:It's been a year, so it's time for a project and another shot at this blogging