Baseboards and Hall Bath Headway

This weekend we made more headway in several rooms getting us closer and closer to really OBVIOUS changes and finishes. Saturday we mudded and patched the kitchen and it's ready for texturing. We are trying to get it ready for this coming weekend when Grandad Larry (Mike's dad) will be coming up to install our cabinets.

John and I worked on installing baseboards in the living and dining rooms, hallway, and bedrooms. John cut the pieces and, using the new amazing nail gun, installed them. I worked on caulking and patching the nail holes, getting them ready for paint. We still need to cut and install all the crown molding, but that's a whole 'nother weekend down the road.




Mike worked on mudding the kitchen and got all the drywall up in the hall bathroom. It's looking more and more like an actual bathroom each day.

Bathroom, almost ready for tile! REAL walls!

Jacks bedroom, everyone says it's really bright, but I think it'll look great once all his furnishings are in. For the record, it is brighter in person.

Carpeting is picked out and will be installed this week in the bedrooms. Then Jack's room and the guest room will be DONE at that point! Wow, two rooms D-O-N-E. Who cares if it's just a couple bedrooms, they'll need no more work and we can start moving stuff into them ASAP! We're thinking that the guest room will be a general storage room (filled floor to ceiling) and Jack's room will be both. I'm hoping that it can somewhat resemble a nursery so that he can use the room while we work if need be. I still need to finish painting the master bedroom, just spent Jacks nap time cutting it in and hope to finish it this week, LOVING the dark chocolate color...photos coming soon. The living and dining room still needs it's final paint coat of the right color, and again, I'm hoping to finish that this week.

Info about our living situation. Our Realtor and family member, Kathy Jensen and her hubby are moving into our rental. They have been nice enough to let us stay in the rental until they can move in mid month....YEAH for not being homeless. And to make matters more awesome, our WONDERFUL landlords, the Monticellos (THANK YOU Sharon) are letting us stay past our lease. We have a couple weeks (give or take a few days) to get the house closer to being habitable, or it's off to the in-laws house for us! Wish us luck and check back soon! Oh, and one more thing!!!! We've hit the one month mark since we started working on our first house, many more months of work in the joyous years to come.

Weeknight Work

It has been all go, go, go so I've only had time to give you little captions of what's going on with the photos. Weeknights are a different story, we've come up with a plan that, by default, gives me more time at home. For any of you who don't know, we have a one year old son, Jack. John and I decided that Cathy (my awesome mother in law) shouldn't take the place of Jack's normal bedtime routine at his house, although I know Jack wouldn't mind. Therefore, weeknights I stop working at the house early, pick Jack up from his amazing Granny B's house, and bring him home for his bedtime routine. I mean, he already gets up at 5:30am every morning for the day...and if his schedule is off, it means even earlier.

So tonight John got to the house after work (HARD manual labor might I add) and starts "work" on his house at 4:30pm. By this point he's been up for almost 12 hrs...working. So, needless to say, he inherited his parents work ethic (insanity).

Earlier this afternoon I finished the popcorn ceilings and did a little trimming in the yard to avoid continuing to look like an eye sore. When John got to the house I dropped Jack at Granny's and headed over to discuss electrical. This brings us to a MAJOR pain...the previous renter was an electrician and custom installed switches and lights to his personal choosing, aka EVERYWHERE. There are roughly 20 switches in the living room/ dining room area! Needless to say, we are having a friend come over and repair, move, rewire and make sense of the chaos. Apparently, the attic looks like a spaghetti factory exploded up there. The top photo is of the wall in the living room we're removing, we had to leave it like this until our bomb squad, I mean electrician could come and get all the wires taken care of so we can take it out completely.

This wall will be gone tomorrow, hopefully, once Jake removes all the wiring.

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Tonight John started taking down half of the wall in the living room that shares with the kitchen (see above photo). We wanted to open up part of the kitchen to overlook the main living area.

This phot gives you a good idea how the kitchen will look with the wall turned into a 1/2 wall bar area. Can't wait! This might be the BEST change yet to come.

Here are the wires that went to 7!!! switches, Jake is moving them tomorrow.

Another shot of the wall that'll be turned into a half wall bar.

Tomorrow a family friend, John Scott is coming over to install our new shower hardware and valves, then we can get the walls on, and then we can start tiling....and then, and then, there's SO MUCH more to do :)

25 days until move in day!

Day 2:Opperation Beat the Storm

Day 2 was full of "hurry to beat the impending storm"....yeah, an actual storm, like rain and wind and such, hurry because our house was missing almost an entire side. This is how our house was left yesterday (well, they drilled up the old siding just to keep out visitors overnight) so hurry they did. Prepare yourself for TONS of photos.

My day started off with a trip to Home Depot (one of MANY to come) with a new toilet on top of my cart...as you can see I was barely able to see where I was going :) It was just under eye level.

By the time we got back Mike and my dad had the new floor boards in place and the wall was about to be re built.

Here comes our sparklie new cast iron tub.

A trip to the attic was made by John and my Dad to retrofit the beams in order to take out a wall in the living room. This was as far as I got...a little scary looking up there.

Blurry me taking down wall paper. Sorry, those geese are going.

Cathy working away...as usual. Notice all the wall paper on the floor.

John starting to remove the living room entry wall...turned out to be built with WAY TOO many nails and hidden inside the walls were enough beer cans and hard alcohol bottles for a big party.

Papering the exterior wall, getting it ready for the siding. Notice our smaller sized window frames...an attempt to keep the bathrooms well lit and ventilated while preventing water damage in the future.

John installs the windows.

LOVE our front yard tree, John thinks it drops too many leaves.

My dad smiling at a job well done.

Jack enjoys the craft room/office space we got ready for him to use as a play area. It only lasted for 20 mins until Granny wore him in the Ergo.

Finished (unpainted) siding! They did it...good thing the car port was there because it was storming for a few hours at this point.

Jack enjoying watching his mommy and Granny continue taking the wall paper down in the kitchen.

Awww, love him!

NO geese or little pink flowers!

Hall bath from the inside, finished for today :)

Master bath at the end of the day.

John starts mudding the ceilings and patching tomorrow after WORK (he's a manimal). Check back for more progress.

Day One Part 2

These are the photos to show progress made in day 1...A LOT was done! I just keep in mind the saying, "It's got to get worse before it gets better" and that it did!

I laid the carpet tiles in the craft room/office which is now Jack's (our one year old son's) play space on "clean project" days...days without dust, fumes etc.

Entry linoleum removed (Cathy did this...she's a machine!)

Good bye popcorn ceilings!

Good bye bathroom walls...here's the master bathroom. We removed both large windows and re framed the hall bath completely!

Removed the closet wall and vanity to make one large walk-in closet space.

No more popcorn in the master :) I have to admit, removing it was actually fun, yeah...I'm weird, but I loved it.

Replacing the floor boards in hall bath.

Drum roll, please....our bathrooms....from our side yard!


This was day one! An eventful day, MUCH more work to be done. Check back tomorrow for day 2.

Night One

As soon as those papers were signed and we were given the green light, John and I headed over to tear out those cootie infested carpets. This is how the living room looks now.

Mean while, John got to work on removing all the previous finishes and started demo on the hall bath.


On the agenda for tomorrow: popcorn ceiling removal and finish DEMO both baths.