One Step Closer, One step Back

After taking Thursday off and taking Friday to make a BIG Home Depot run and meet with a Kitchen designer for an estimate Saturday felt like a "GET SOMETHING BIG DONE TODAY" kind of day. Well, we actually got a lot done yesterday, it just might not look like it to the untrained eye (because we're experts over here, ahahaha). Here's a wrap up in photos. The guys were there for a few hours before Jack and I got to the house, I don't like Jack having to spend too much time at the house in it's present state. They were patching all the holes with new drywall. John and I took 2 more FULL truck loads to the dump (see above photo).

My dad took out the swamp cooler in the dining room and patched the hole.

John saying, "It's noon, time for a beer".

My Dad knows to bring his own choice beer!

A couple of the dozens of patches of the day!

My yummy Travertine flooring for the hall bath, splurge!

John Scott finished the plumbing for both bathrooms and even raised the shower heads a foot.

Our BIG living space ( I am SO in love with the way it's coming along).

Jack enjoying his first man cave. Note: he will only tolerate being in here if I'm with him and that only lasts for about 15 mins. Which brings me to the HARDEST part of this renovation: having a 13 month old during the process! We feel guilty for having him there at all, and don't want to torture Granny with too much babysitting, so it's a challenge.

Mike's patch job on where we took out the wall in the living room, looks great!

Now this is where we get to the "One step back" part. We gutted the master bath even more. Silly me was hoping that we were done with the "taking stuff out of the house" phase and entering the "moving stuff into the house" phase. Good news is we are almost there. More good news, if we didn't do this we would be facing some MAJOR dry rot down the road, so I'm glad we removed the entire floor, sister-ed a bunch of the floor frame and replaced the floor boards.

John removing the floor using my NEW favorite tool, the saw saw (reciprocal saw).

Here John is mixing chemicals to poor onto the wood in order to dry it out and patch.

I swear I don't just stand around and take photos. I insulated our hall bathroom, darn itchy fiberglass. I had so much fun though, I LOVE getting in there!

My finished insulation.


As visual progress becomes less and less obvious we're all maintaining a positive attitude, we can see the fruits of our labor each day and make sure to focus on that. Today We hope to get the interior first coat of mudding the walls and ceilings done, and make more progress on the hall bathroom.

In MORE exciting news, I HAVE to give a shout out to Kathy Jensen, our Realtor and family member :) She presented us with an additional check of $4000 is credits she worked and worked and worked on getting us. She's a very talented Realtor and we cannot say enough great things about her. Thank you, thank you, thank you!