Painting & Electrical

It's been a productive weekend so far!  I finally finished up painting the downstairs hallway and stairway.  That's good.  James says it looks old lady-ish but I like it!  

Oooh!  It's so pretty I can hardly contain myself!  The mouldings shall come another day!

This is James slaving away in the basement.  He's stapling wires along beams in the hopes of having a new electrical service one of these days!  

President's Day Weekend - Day 3!

Most of the day was spent plumbing the bathroom sink.  When we demolished the old bathroom, we had to remove all the plumbing.  The sink is also in a new location (the old location is now part of the kitchen!) so many hours were spent running the new pipes.  

James got the sink in!  Now he's working on the toilet!

Here's James cleaning the old wax off the poop pipe!  Ewww!

Look!  A magical little elf is hiding under the sink!

Voila!  It is done!  We have some minor stuff to do - hang a mirror and cabinet, caulk the toilet, finish the baseboard, etc.  All in all, a good day!  We can now use this bathroom!  I also want to point out on what a bargain this bathroom was for us!  We reused the toilet the old owners had in their bathroom (it was purchased in 2006!  Why get a new one?).  I found the vanity and sink on FREECYCLE - so that vanity was FREE!!!!  WOOOHOOOO!!!!  It was pretty much brand new, but someone who just bought a condo conversion wanted a more trendy sink so they were giving this away!  A big score for us!  Even the soap dispenser was practically free thanks to a JC Penney coupon I had!  There is a little bit of Bargain Becky in Becky the Builder!  

President's Day Weekend - Day 2!

James got much work accomplished today.  Here is what he did:

Grouted the bathroom!

This is what is behind the hutch in the dining room.  A big hole in the wall.  There was a built-in cabinet there, but we had to demolish it to make the kitchen bigger.  We hope to rebuild it in the future.  We're running the plumbing through the wall since we can.

And the plumbing is all set up and ready to go tomorrow!

President's Day Weekend - Day 1

James spent today tiling the half bath floor.  Thankfully it was kind of nice outside and most of the snow is melted away, so he was able to cut the tile out there in the driveway.  

Of course he had his little helper with him for a short while.

Ben even came with his slight plumber's crack!

Slaving away!

And it is done!  We're waiting for it to dry so we can grout it tomorrow.  We'll see how much of this bathroom we can finish this weekend!

Painting Away!

All I've been doing is priming ceilings, painting ceilings, priming walls, painting walls, thinking of painting mouldings.  It will never stop.  

Here's the hallway and staircase so far.  It's still the first coat and I have decided that since I need to buy another gallon anyways, I'm going to buy the satin finish and use that as my second coat.  Duh.

Here is our bathroom!  James told me to pick out a yellow.  I went to Lowe's with Ben and Tom.  It is not easy to pick out a color with two toddlers running around.  Plus, staring at the 109 different shades of yellow made me slightly delusional.  So I went to some "Inspiration" display where they had the "trendier" colors.  There is was - Sunbeam!  It was our bathroom color to be (mostly due to the fact that I was very ready to get out of the store).  So now, whenever you use our downstairs bathroom, it will be like rays of sun are shining down at you.  

Again, this is still the first coat and I wasn't ready yet to do the detail near the ceiling.  Maybe tonight once both boys are sleeping.

Let There Be Walls!

Just this morning, this is what our downstairs bathroom looked like:

Four miraculous hours later, this is what it looks like:

There are walls in there!  Like actual walls that we'll be able to paint and stuff.  It's like it's a real room again.  Many thanks to our Irish Plasterer who did superb work once again!  It's honestly amazing how he was able to do this in under 4 hours.  If we tried to do this, it would take 4 days, not look as good and I'm sure either James or myself would have wound up dead.  

If you are on the south shore in Massachusetts and need a plasterer, let me know - this guy is awesome!

Updates Part 2!

Well just shortly after I posted my last post, we got the wire from the basement to the attic in record time!  Wowzers!  By far the easiest wire to run and most challenging!  Irishman called during this to say his client rescheduled his Tuesday appointment - so he's hoping to come over tomorrow to take care of the bathroom!  Yey!  Things are finally going faster than expected here at our happy home!

Updates!

We successfully have about 7 projects going on right now.  ADD I tell you.  Our Irish Plasterer should be coming on Wednesday to put up walls and a ceiling in our downstairs bathroom!  Yippee!  James already got the confirmation that he'll have Saturday, Sunday AND Monday off this coming weekend so we're hoping that I can pump out the painting either Thursday or Friday and James should be able to get the toilet and sink up and going!  Oh my goodness!  Of course, most of our plans never go as planned.  But we'll see!

Here (our bedroom - the one in the front of the house) I took down all the drop down ceiling by myself and am removing the wallpaper (ugh!  I can't believe there was MORE wallpaper in this house!  This room will be more challenging than I thought, but I can do it!  Since it's mostly cosmetics, it's my job.

James' current mission is to snake the electrical snake from the corner of our attic here all the way down to the basement.  This is of course so we can have power to the attic once the new service is up and running.  He's working on this as I type this so I better go help him.  I'm such a nice wifey!

I'm still painting the front hallway and stairway too.  Projects projects everywhere!

Starting The Front Hallway!

It was a successful day in our minds yesterday!  First, James finished up the prep work in the downstairs bathroom so I can call the plasterer guy today and have him come over to put walls up in there!  Woohoo!  I started priming and painting the downstairs entryway and stairs.  

My lovely ceiling paint job!  It's my fouth ceiling I've painted so I should be good at it by now!

I primed in the morning and started painting after dinner.  I did around some mouldings and around the staircase.  I want to do the second coat very soon so we can get the radiator hooked back up. This top picture makes it look very beigey but it's not.  

I'm in sort of a dilemma.  Now I've bought about 12 gallons of paint since we've moved here.  Probably about 20 in my life.  I use a Satin finish to paint walls.  I know this.  So for whatever reason, I asked Dan the paint guy to give me Tagsdale Linen in Flat.  Why?  I don't know.  I didn't even realize I bought Flat until James pointed it out after I started painting.  So I'm not sure if I should just stick with the Flat or maybe buy a Satin to use as my second coat?  We're using this color throughout the entire downstairs entryway, stair case and the upstairs hallways - so we'll def. need a second gallon.  I'll have to think about it.

The Hallway Is Plastered - Onto the Bathroom!

Ou Irish Plasterer friend came and did our hallway the other day.  I am happy but now I have to get to priming and a painting.  Blah.

Now we are onto the Half Bath downstairs.  Irishman plasterer gave us a quote to do the work that we couldn't refuse!  So we're doing some prep work so he can hang the drywall and plaster.  

James removed all the floor.  Well I removed some of the stray tiles (that was fun!).  But he cut out the original hardwoods and some linoleum from the 40s.  We have to lay plywood and cement board for the tile we'll lay down.

I removed the last of the plaster on the walls!  Messy, but worth it!  Now we just have to run one wire (pretty easy), lay the new plywood, and add one more stud so Mr. Irishman can come back and get our bathroom looking good!