Porch and Other Updates!

We haven't really done anything too major to the house recently.  Just a lot of little odds and ends.  We finally put blinds and a curtain up in our downstairs bathroom!  Woohoo!  It only took us 2 1/2 years - so apologies to any of our neighbors who enjoyed peeping at us in the past.

The dining room built-in is completely done with handles attached.  I just have to concentrate on keeping it clean now!

James finished up some oddball stuff in the kitchen.  We tried some paint samples because the blue isn't working for us.  We thought having a brown in there might do the trick, but after a couple random "browns" on the wall - we have decided that we don't like it.  Since we have almost a full gallon of our green paint from the dining room, we're thinking we'll just go ahead and paint it the same color as the dining room since we love that color so much.  Our motto:  You can never have too much green in a house!

The outside of the house is killing us.  Just because we really have zero idea what to do with it.  We have random bushes and trees all over.  We'll probably just kill them all off.  We did manage to put up our mailbox and house numbers!  Woohoo!

We also threw down a rock walkway for now.  We're not sure what we're going to do with it permanently, but this will do for now (it will probably still be like this 20 years from now knowing us....)

We have thrown down a bunch a grass seed a while ago to get the front yard looking good - but our front yard was always very shaddy due to a neighbor's tree.  But Whoa!  This past Tuesday, our neighbors had their huge, dying tree cut down!  Now we have sun in our front yard all day long!  Now maybe our grass seed will grow with some more dedication to watering it.

We had an electrician come in and throw in the outside light and a bunch of outlets in the porch.  He did this Saturday.  The electrical inspector is suppose to come Thursday or Friday and if we get the okay from him, the electrician can finish up the job.  We think we're just going to go ahead and sheet rock it.  We've been going back and forth about putting up wood walls/dry wall - but dry wall just seems easier.

That is it for now!  Maybe with Tommy's birthday party coming up, we'll get remotivated to do some stuff.  Parties always motivate me to do stuff on the house.  I don't know why.

We Have A New Electrical Service!

Well the day finally came on Friday to get a new electrical service! Most of it is done - the electrician was going to come back today to fix up some stuff - but I think he's holding off since we have some guys installing new gutters today. Gutter installer guys are pretty crazy.

Here's a friendly reminder of how we lived for the past year. We had 1 outlet in the kitchen (and it was hanging by a cord, resting on the radiator. Nice, huh?) Other rooms had either 1 or 2 outlets. Now, every room has 5 outlets and the kitchen has a whopping 8. I'm tempted to find 16 things to plug in the kitchen - but I honestly don't think we have 16 things that plug in.

Here's James' fancy wiring job. Dave the electrician thought he did a great job and told me if James is ever looking for work to have him call him. Many a hours were spent running these wires. I'm sure if you added up all the numbers of hours James spent on electric work it would be a good couple weeks, if not a month or two, of time spent on it.

Here's our new panel. Wow. Fancy. It has 40 slots in it. We currently have 22 filled. I asked James why needed such a big one. He said if we ever have plans like getting an addition, a hot tub or adding power to the shed we'd need extra slots. I like his future plans!

Wow! Lights!

I'm actually really happy with how the kitchen looks. We used these small recessed lights (they were on clearance at Lowe's) - James was mad at his position of them after he installed them. I thought they wouldn't provide enough light. But now that we actually have the means to turn them on, they actually look really nice. Unfortunately, they are so bright, I'm going to actually have to keep the kitchen clean now. Oh man!

Upstairs Lights & Getting Our Bedroom Done!

James got to work yesterday to put lights in our upstairs hallway!  We are suppose to get our new service the next "good weather" Sunday.  Our electrician friend came by last week to see what was up and was surprised at how much we had done - but he didn't go upstairs since Tom was sleeping.  He probably thought every thing was done upstairs too - but oops.   It's not.  So now it's crunch time...

James running the electrical wire - he's such an expert at it now!

Voila!  Lights!  Nothing fancy but we ain't fancy people.

I'm getting to our bedroom!!!  I have to just wash off the rest of the wallpaper goo on the walls.  I primed the ceiling last night and we're going to paint it with *sigh* textured paint!  If you saw it, you would know why!  If you want to see extreme ceiling action - click on the picture and it will become all big - and you can see why we can't just paint it!  All the other bedrooms have textured paint to their ceilings so we figured "why not!"  

I bought the paint for our bedroom too.  Once again, James got sick of talking to me about different shades of this and that.  So he told me to just go to Lowe's and pick a color.  I respond "Are you sure?  Are you really sure??"  His answer, "yes."  So I went out on a limb and picked Carolina Inn Crossroads Gold.  Whoa!  That's a mouthful.  It's kind of a deep goldish yellow.  I thought it would be good to match virtually any bedding we may throw on the bed (because every knows how interior decorating is my specialty!).  I guess a more practical person would say "Becky, if you want something that will match everything, why don't you just paint it white?"  Well for some odd reason, we have a fear of white.

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!  

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!

The Snow Is Making Us Work!

We are getting a lot of snow here in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts so James and I are hard at work to get this house done!

Here, James sanded down the window ledge and installed it. I'm repairing a few dings and it should be ready to prime and paint here soon!

I finally ironed on the edges of the countertops!  I'll have to trim them and sand them down.  

Of course a day of work wouldn't be complete without more electrical work!  We're hoping to finish up all the outlets in the kitchen today.  There are 4 more we have to do.  For those of you who do not know how this is done, here's a quick summary.  We cut the hole for the future outlet or switch.  We have a 64 inch drill bit (I think it's 64 inches) and we drill a hole through all the supports or whatnot from the basement to the hole.  Then we jam this wire thing through the hole hoping to get it from the basement out of the hole we cut.  Then we attach the electrical wire to it and pull it so the wire comes on through.  It sounds simple, but it's not and it takes forever.  

After we are done with the kitchen, we will have all the feeds done - except for the attic.  Running a wire from the bottom corner of the basement to the top of the attic is not going to be fun.  We'll have to run it behind the walls of the living room, our bedroom and up to the attic.  We'll have to be extremely caffeinated for that one.

Electrical and NO MORE WALLPAPER!

James had Sunday off from work so he got busy running more electrical wires.  It takes a good couple hours to run just a couple wires but it's getting there.  He also stapled a bunch of wires in the basement that he's been meaning to do.

James busy with his work.

A couple days ago, I finally finished taking down all the wallpaper!  I successfully did the living room, dining room, kitchen and front hallway all by myself!  It only took me almost a year, but I did it!

Since James is working so much overtime, we think we're going to hire our Irish plasterer guy to fix up the front hallway.  Apparently that single door there into the living room was actually once a big doorway.  I think it would look better opened up again but we're not going to do that.  Too much work.  I told James that I could plaster up the hallway but I don't think he has faith in my plastering abilities.  I don't blame him.  I don't have faith in my non-existent plastering abilities either.  Oh, and I added pictures of random holes in the walls and ceilings that need fixing too.  

WooHoo! James Had a Day Off!

James had today off!  It felt like a 2 week vacation!  Now that the hustle and bustle of the holidays are over, we are ready to take charge of our home again!  We can get this done!

Ben is helping Daddy wire up some electrical switches!

You can't tell in this picture, but half of this wall is in perfect condition and ready for primer and paint.  The other half is not.  I've been slaving away trying to get the walls in as perfect condition as possible.  It's time consuming and there isn't much to show for it!

This was our surprise home improvement of the day!  I had a $10 off $50 purchase coupon for Lowe's that expired today.  I honestly think of these coupons as cash, because we actually need things at Lowe's.  Lots of things.  So we dashed on over because I knew I was going to buy a gallon of paint, but what to spend $30 on?  Well we found great cabinet pulls on clearance!  So we snatched those up.  Unfortunately, we both calculated a total of 16 pulls needed, but after installing about 10 at home, we realized we are 2 short.  And since there were only 16 left of this particular kind, we can't go back to our Lowe's.  So I'll be searching area Lowe's the next few days.  If I can't find them, I'll be recruiting friends and family in other parts of the country to look for this particular pull for us!  Sometimes it's hard for us to do basic things like count, but James got all the pulls installed in about 20 minutes!  Way to go James!

A Light in the Boys Room!

We spent Veteran's Day in the boys room. James wired up all the outlets and installed this beautiful light fan. The same one will be in the spare room and our room someday.

Back To Electrical

We got back to electrical...or I should say James did. I cooked and cleaned and tended to the children.

Here's James wiring up the outdoor light.

We have a hallway light again! Too bad it doesn't work yet.

Oh So Exciting - Light Fixtures

We put a light fixture in the dining room! I also painted it - even though we didn't re-build the built in yet. We probably won't get to that for another year or 2. I just did like like living in white. It's too boring.

The living room has an overhead light now! Counting down the days until we get our new electrical service!

James is so proud of his $10 clearance outdoor light fixture. He took down the old one before I had time to snap a picture. It was pretty much a piece of rusty old metal with a jelly jar attached. Oh, and a yellow light bulb.

James is always extremely safe when doing home improvements. He's installing flood lights for the driveway. We stepped it up and got sensors so we can catch hooligans trying to break into our cars. He also put a light outback so we can be outside at night without the fear of a rabid raccoon attacking us.

Ouch! My Eye!

We were doing what we do best on Saturday nights - run Romex wire to power up our house one of these days. As we were cleaning up, James was rolling up the wire and it hit me straight in the eye. It was devistating and painful - much more painful than child birth! Luckily, I only have a slight scratch on my cornea and my sight will be restored in a couple days. Safety Becky says "Remember to always use eye protection!" I was hoping the doctor would give me one of those pirate eye patches, but she did not. Darn!

Because of my unexpected accident, we did not accomplish as much as we hoped for on Sunday but that is okay. James' back also started to kill him on Sunday evening so I let him dope himself up on back medicine and laydown with a heating pad. We're getting old and we're not even 30 yet!

A Romantic Saturday Night...

We made Ben go without a nap today. What does this mean? From 2pm-6pm, he is s a very cranky soul. Then he falls asleep magically at 7 with his brother and we can do work! Our Friday and Saturday nights have been consisting of working on the house. We like to run wire for the new electrical service. Of course, we're still in the kitchen and we're just about done - which means we can put up the new ceiling in 2 or 3 weeks! Whoopie!

Work Has Been Coming Along!

***Pictures to Come!***

This was a very productive weekend for James! I kept the kids occupied and James was able to run a lot of the electrical for the kitchen, wall up the old basement door, and build a new wall! It's taking on a whole new look and for once, we've started to feel like we actually are accomplishing something instead of just making a mess and destroying everything.

With a couple family events coming up, we're pushing back some of our goal dates of things. I mean, our lives cannot be all home improvement! I try to remind James that we'll be here for most likely the next 50 years, so what's the rush in finishing? As long as he's done before the boys start little league, I'll be happy! I want to be able to enjoy Ben and Tom's baseball games without worry about when we'll be able to get a stove in our kitchen (by the way, the lack of stove/oven has not phased us at all! I love the crockpot and our oversized toaster oven! ).

More Wires

James and Paul ran more wires today. That is the story of my life.

Still More!

I had the urge to buy stuff, so James let me go spend some of tax refund on sconces and overheads. They are now sitting in our basement until the time comes when we can actually install them. I like spending money.

We've been running wire during all of our free time - which isn't much. We've got the hallway done this weekend and the overhead lights in the living and dining room.



I started priming the Living Room and the Boys' Room. I have no method to my madness. I still have to finish it up - painting with 2 kids is virtually impossible. Who takes 5 days to prime a room? I do. For now, both Ben and Tom have made their beds in the hallway upstairs. They would go into the spare room, but all of their furniture is camped out there until I finish the prime job. James says I can't paint until the electrical is up and running which means I probably won't be able to paint until 2010. We'll be living in primer white for a while.



We also have to seriously think about buying our kitchen cabinets and knocking out more stuff. It's like this vicious circle we cannot conquer. We can't wire up the kitchen unless we have things positioned. We can't position things until we move the basement stairs. So we have to build new stairs. This will be great!

Also, we found some corrosion on a pipe in the upstairs bathroom when we ripped down the kitchen ceiling. So since the ceiling's down, we're going to have James' plumber friend replace the corroded pipe and see what else he might have for us.

The Kitchen Ceiling Is Gone!

Where did it go you ask? Why in the backyard! More electrical has been updated but you can't really get pictures of wire running behind the wall. I'm hoping to get motivated to prime the living room and dining room within the next couple days. Can I really paint walls while Ben is awake? I'm not going to take that chance!

A Weekend of Work

James got a lot of work done this past weekend. The kitchen ceiling is completely done and more electrical is run. We have about half of the electrical done so we're getting there.

(Pictures to come!)

Starting the Electrical

We cut the Knob and Tube and have started cutting the boxes for the new electrical service! The only things we lost by cutting the Knob and Tube are the front porch light, entry light and the light in the upstairs hallway. It makes walking up the stairs at night adventurous - and another reason to hurry this project up!

This is what knob and tube looks like! Dangerous!

We have the living room complete and hope to do the dining room and one bedroom next weekend. We're kind of in a crunch about the kitchen because we're not sure where everything is going to end up there. Suggestions are greatly appreciated.