Weekend without the Hubby = Productive

This weekend, Luke was out of town for a hunting trip. I kept super busy to try and stave off the loneliness. Thus, this weekend was quite productive, singing, dancing, cleaning and painting at all hours of the night.

We got our washer installed and man, oh man is it pretty! It plays me a song to start and to let me know it has finished. Kitty loves sitting on top of it while it's running; he spins his head in circles watching the clothes go round and round. After not having clean clothes for about a month, it was quite a treat to do some laundry!

Saturday I hit the jackpot at 2 garage sales. It is truly amazing what you can find at garage sales. I live for them. My mom (who was given the bug from her dad) taught me how to find the good stuff and passed along the love for treasure hunting. The trick is to know where to go, what to look for and have a positive attitude.

The major accomplishment for the weekend was that the kitchen cabinets no longer look like grandma's. After much debate over getting new cabinets (WAY too expensive), getting new doors (also a ding on the savings) or painting, we decided to paint. It may be temporary for now but I think they look pretty good for price.

I started by scrubbing them all (years of home cooking caked on... ewww). Then a good coat of Grey Gripper and 2 coats of Chocolate Swirl.

UP NEXT:
New microwave and stove range, installing the closet doors and finishing the bathroom in the basement. Countdown to Housewarming in 13 days! AHH!

It's just a little geometry...

This weekend was a productive one. We spent much of Saturday shopping and the evening was devoted to trim and baseboards. The pre-cut door trim kits made the door frames quite easy. For the baseboards, we went with a contractors pack at Home Depot that worked out great.

The project was a lot of detail work, 45 degree angles and downward driven nails. For some reason, I seem to always get stuck with my dear friend, Mr. Hammer. Once again, Luke thought he had a sailor for a wife as my fingers took some abuse. Luke was a pro at the cuts though and quickly we made short work of the baseboards. After that was all finished, we started decorating and that was really fun. Its really starting to come together!

I spent Sunday morning cleaning. Yes, our first real clean. The bathrooms and our bedroom no longer have paint chips, wood chunks, screws, boxes, gunk, you name it... What a beautiful feeling a clean room can give you.

On a side note, you can now tell that Fall weather has hit. Our cats have resorted to eagerly waiting for us to sit down (a rare occasion so far) so they can fight over cuddle time on laps or, as you can see below, pawing our faces until we let them in under the covers.

UP NEXT:

Painting the kitchen (walls and cabinets). I'm sooo over painting by now so if anyone is interested in helping!?!?

So when is the fun part?

Another weekend gone and still didn't get to everything we wanted to do. We did manage to: hookup the dishwasher, hang the hall lights, reattach the handrails, scrub more bar tile, hem and iron the drapes, unpack the closets, put new drawpulls on the bathroom cabinets, move the office and couch to the basement, put the 2nd coat of paint on the banisters, paint the bathroom and nook ceilings, hang some pictures, find matching pillows for the bedroom, do the dishes, go to a housewarming party, work, take out the hideous brass fixtures in the guest bathroom, and paint the nook. Needless to say, it might be a quiet Monday night.

Here's some pictures of the bathroom and nook...
NOOK BEFORE:

NOOK AFTER:

GUEST BATHROOM BEFORE:

GUEST BATHROOM AFTER:

Floors Galore - a 500 piece puzzle

This weekend was one full of puzzles, strenous labor, teamwork, precision tinkering and pain. 4 days in the making and the floors are in and look AMAZING (if I do say so myself).

Thursday:

Luke and I ripped all the carpet out of the room. It was full of dirt, drywall mud and who knows what else. While not exactly difficult, carpet is just bulky and heavy to remove. The pad also kind of grossed me out thinking of the years of spills.

The tile in the entry way also had to be removed and that was no picnic either. Between prying sheets of tile off plywood and the damn Pergo removal, my pent up aggression is now at bay.

Friday:
After realizing that real hardwood floors didn't fit into our budget and to be honest, looked like WAY more work than we were willing to put in, we agreed on click-and-lock laminate floors from IKEA. The laminate is pretty much exactly what you expect from Ikea. It looks really great and while not the best quality, it gets the job done for a fraction of the price. The tool kit also was along these same lines.

Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning were all devoted to ripping this damn Pergo out. Piece by piece (and I don't mean square piece but each 1 inch strip), had to be individually removed using a hammer and crowbar. My ears were ringing, my back aching and I definitely lost track of the number of times I hit my hand with the hammer, but it was worth it and we worked for it.

Saturday:
Uncle Blaine, Luke's Dad and Luke and I started on the floors about 4PM on Saturday. By 11PM, we were more than half way done. We read the ambigous paragraph of directions from IKEA (complete with odd cartoons and had watched a few YouTube videos on how to install. It all looks easier than it is.

Starting was the hardest part. Since it's a floating floor (no glue or nails), you have to be careful about keeping the whole thing parallel to the wall and not going cock-eyed. The spacers ended up being more of a pain than a help and the click-and-lock wasn't as easy as it sounds (until you learn the secret trick - about halfway into laying the floors). Eventually, we got a system going of 1-2 people measuring and cutting, 2 people installing and Cheryl laying the underlayment.

Sunday:

Luke and I woke up to inspect our work and realized that we needed to apply the secret technique to the planks that we started with. So we spent an hour redo-ing a few lines and then moved on to the demolition room. After finally removing all the Pergo from the dining nook, we were ready to resume laying the laminate into the next room. 3 times was about par for the day on the number of times everyone hit their head on the low-hanging light fixtures. Luke's brother also came over and was a big help finishing some of the difficult cuts in the entryway/closet.

After all the floors were finished in the late afternoon, my Mom helped us move all the furniture back in.

Now, it finally starts to look like home!

UP NEXT:
Baseboards, dishwasher/dryer hook-up, and trim - how hard can that be?



Bohemoth is in!

Horray! Our besties Chad and Kassi came over last night to help us move the bohemoth armoire. We had 1 inch of clearance fitting into our bedroom but it was much smoother than I suspected. THANK YOU so much for the help friends!

On a side note... it looks as though we have become a gathering place for the neighborhood cats. This one was hanging out on our grill one morning. Looks like Ellie might have a boyfriend!

Tired Kitty!

Luke and I have been going non-stop since we got the house. While it's just amazing what we've accomplished, we are definitely feeling the burn. This weekend, we thought we'd take it easy and redo the tile in the bar. Our notions about how relaxing tiling would be, missed the mark a bit.

A couple weeks ago, Luke and his dad ripped out the dated tile that was in the bar. I thankfully wasn't involved in the project as it looked tedious. Once everything was off, Luke and I found some great new tile

We purposely bought sheets with small tiles so that we wouldn't have to worry about cutting tile. Everything fit in quite well and the laying of the tile wasn't too bad at all. Sunday we put in the grout. As we were about to start wiping the excess grout off the tile, we had to go pick up some kitchen appliances and that took much longer than expected. We didn't actually make it back to the project until 9:00pm at night. That was a big mistake.

The hours of drying meant that the grout had already dried on top of the tile and the "smart" small tiles meant that we have to scrap every single tile to get the grout off. So until about midnight last night, we scraped as many tiles as possible. We still have about 1/3 to do to finish but the hard work is paying off. We love the look!

The rest of the weekend involved more unpacking, some garage saleing and a severe uptick in my hatred of hanging doors and installing door knobs.

COMING UP NEXT WEEK:
Laminate hardwood floors on the main level... a whole new world.

3 Weeks in...

Week 3 of owning the house and we are finally living in it now.

Moving the kitties was just about the funniest experience. They are complete indoor cats. So when we put them in the car, Ellie meowed and was curious, standing on the window button and opening it (near accident, I tell you). Everest, no joke, burrito'd himself in the blanket we brought and hid in there the whole way. Once we got to the house, Ellie came alive. She was poking around everything and seems to like the place. Everest has been a big scaredy cat. He hides under the bed until you call him out but slowly he's getting used to it.

We were in the guest bedroom for the first few nights until we got carpet. Carpet was an interesting process. Again, in my naivety, I budgeted based on what I thought it would cost. I cleverly forgot to include pad and stairs in my head and so the REALLY great deal we got on carpet was still about double what I thought we were going to pay. You live and learn.

Anyway, the carpet was installed Friday/Saturday. One trip to the emergency room and a flat tire on the highway made for a rough install for the guys but they were really great. The carpet smell is glorious as people said it would be. The place doesn't smell like granny anymore! Also the bedroom picture turned it really brown but that's not really the color, the picture of the stairs is much more accurate.

Saturday and Sunday for Luke and I consisted of garage saleing, more painting (will it ever end?), drapes, fixtures and moving. Moving was just as painful as expected. The crux of the move occured in trying to move the 600 pound armoire. The thing is a beautiful 7 foot solid piece of wood. The dolly was crying mercy the whole way as we managed (after some choice phrases and grunts), to get it on the trailer. It now rests still on the dolly sideways in our garage. We simply can't move this thing alone. It is supposed to go upstairs in our master so we are going to need at least 4 strapping lads to help move this upstairs. Volunteers need only inquire. :)

My dad also spent the weekend putting in new electrical outlets and covers, which I love... so clean, no more shocking myself...

Finally, here is the closet chandelier that Luke suprised me with!

Treehouse Green and Whispering Wheat

After some tag-team priming, an entire Taco Bell Fresco party pack, 2 home improvement stores and a few hours of painting, the main room walls have color!

 I love the name of paint colors. Our house consists of:

• Island Palm - how exotic
• Chocolate Swirl - had me craving brownies the whole time I was painting this one
• Artisan - could be called Baked Pumpkin
• Whispering Wheat - subtle
• Treehouse Green - took us forever to pick the green but then a few weeks ago we walked into Ace and there is was!

Drywall... lesson learned

Praise and jubilation... we are DONE with drywall! It looks just amazing. Another THANK YOU to Dale, Blaine, Kevin and Troy for all your work on this beast... As much work as it was, it was so worth it.

Troy came over yesterday and helped match the texture (stomp) which also turned out quite nicely. He made it look so easy!

Plan is to prime and paint the walls tonight and then... dun dun dun... HARDWOOD FLOORS!!! We must be suckers... Carpet will hopefully be installed by next weekend and tile in the bar will be a side project if we get bored (yeah, right!).



Other side notes of the weekend:

Thank you Ryan for painting doors and bathroom trim. Thank you Mom and Graz for painting the basement (not too many holidays) and Thank you Kassi for making us a home-cooked meal (soooo appreciated).

Weekend of Labor - Part II

Guest Bedroom

Unfortunately the picture of the original walls didn't turn out. So I want you to imagine light baby blue wallpaper and hideous bright blue drapes with white flowers. Excellent.

The wallpaper came down like a dream with some help from Kassi and Chad. After removing the glue layer, we washed the walls with TSP. Luke and his Dad textured the walls and then we primed them. Not glamorous but time consuming. I now appreciate walls in a new and unexpected way.

We decided to go with a pretty neutral color since we have so much going on elsewhere. Teresa painted the walls beautifully and I'm really excited to get some furniture in here soon!

Master Bedroom:

Whew! This room has been so much work. See earlier post for the lovely wallpaper photos but once we got all that off, we cleaned, textured and primed the room. The walls were thirsty for paint and so we needed 2 cans of Behr Paint and Primer in one (after already having put a layer of regular primer on). The color is somewhere between blue and green and changes in the light.

Master Bath:

I hate white walls... I'd rather any color than no color. The bathroom was half wallpaper and half white, even worse.

The look of horror when my aunt saw the color we wanted to paint the bathroom was pretty priceless. Called Chocolate Swirl, it went on like you were painting brownie mix. Kassi however mentioned that if you scuffed the brush it looked like something else :). Now that the paint is on, I just love it so much. It's bold and sexy.

ONE LAST FUNNY
I decided to paint the front door last night. No problem, I've got it under control. Paint looked great and I went to put the doorknob back on. I'm a smart and independent woman, I can do this. Only until I tried to close the door did I realize that I'm also blonde and shouldn't try and rush things at 11:00 at night.

See if you can spot my 2 big mistakes...



A weekend of Labor - Part I

We've officially owned this house for 1 week now! The former owner would probably not recognize it at this point.

This Labor Day weekend was jam-packed with remodeling carnage. A special THANK YOU goes out to Dale, Blaine, Kevin, Kassi, Teresa, Cheryl, Laura and Erica for all your hard work. Let's take a look at all the wonderful progress:

Bar Room/TV Room

This was the "Bar Room" or the "TV Room". (Having 4 floors is quickly becoming hard when referring to which floor we are talking about so Luke and I are going for the obvious.) Half the wall was covered in wood paneling (my favorite) so I covered it all in primer (that's the grey/blue coat below). I was nervous to paint the wood paneling but the half wall sort of looked like wainscoting so I thought it might be worth trying.

Per usual, as I painted I fell in love, then hated the color and then liked it again. Something about finishing off the edges makes the color really look nice and finished. Although the colors are pretty dark, for a TV room, we think it quite fits. A light tan suede sectional has our name all over it somewhere out there.

Main Room

Don't you just LOVE the wood paneling? Seriously 1960's... what were you thinking?!?! When I requested we put up new drywall, I had no idea what we were getting into. I thought maybe a few days and then we could texture and paint... no big deal. So naive... so not in touch with reality.

On Saturday morning, Luke, Dale, Blaine and I broke out the crow bars and started ripping this crap off the walls. While satisfying, it of course took time and then we had to pull all the hundreds of nails out of the wall. Before we could start hanging drywall, we put in some new insulation to make the rooms more noise resistant and keep the heat in a bit better.

The boys seemed to have it under control once we started hanging drywall, so I went to work on the Master bedroom painting. From what I could tell, hanging drywall is a puzzle in reverse. You have 4x8 puzzle pieces and get to decide where you put them but the catch is you have to cut your own design. The fireplace in particular was tricky with the rocks at funny angles but a fancy saw and some ingenuity, no problem. Great job guys!

Just having plain white drywalled walls makes the room look younger, cleaner, a million times better! On Sunday, my Dad came over and taped the walls and filled in screw holes. We will resume "mudding" and "floating out the walls" all week after work.

 

Master bedroom/bathroom, halls and guest bedroom to come in Part II!