Landscaping and Paint

I've been working like a mad lady the last few days.  James believes I recently became addicted to Speed, but I haven't. 

I started our "landscaping".  The following picture shows 5 hours worth of work.  It's really hard to move grass.  But now, James just needs to level the ground and throw down a walkway.

I've also been painting stuff.  I have more painting to do and touch ups around the house.  But I got the bathroom mouldings painted, half of the door and the dining room done.

This is a bad picture - but the mouldings are done.  Now I can finally throw up a blind and a curtain.

The built-in area is done!  Now I just have to clean it and have James install the pulls.  I scored some on clearance a while back - they are just longing to be put to good use!

Woodwork is Done!

Our woodworking brothers came over and did a bunch of stuff.  They finished off our cabinet tops, sides and some mouldings on the floor.  They finished the mouldings in the bathroom.  They finished the dining room built-in with the original wood from the original built-in.  They finished in 4 hours and did a great job - but now we just have to get back in the home improvement spirit to caulk and paint!

Built-In Before

Built-In After

Bathroom Window Before

Bathroom Window After

Cabinets Before

Cabinets After

Cabinets Before

Cabinets After

I was so very happy with their work - fast and good!  If anyone around here needs woodwork done - give me a call and I'll give you these brothers number to you.  They were outstanding!

Waiting & Woodwork

So, yeah, the siding for our house is behind on the shipping front.  Or maybe that's just what the contractor told me to stall coming back.  Either way, I don't really care - because once it's done, we'll have to worry about tackling that front yard.  Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to have a better looking front yard than the disaster that is out there now, but I really don't want to do any of the work to get to that point.  The siding should be in June 1st and they'll be over after that. 

In my spare time, I've been scraping the lead paint off the ceiling of the porch.  We're not in too much of a rush to finish it, but it will be nice when it's done inside.

On the flip side, we're excited that the wood guys are coming Saturday.  They are going to finish up our kitchen cabinets, our half bath moulding and some mouldings in the dining room.  Hopefully that will make a big difference and after some painting - it will be safe to say that everything on the first floor besides the front hall way will be "done".  And yeah, we're getting rid of the blue in the kitchen because it just isn't for us.  We're going to try a light brown.  We'll see how that turns out.

Unemployment = Progress!

Now that James has had a few days off, he's back into the swing of things with home improvements!  We're gearing up to have our plasterer guy come next week to plaster around the built-in.  Then we can finish that up.  But we are sticking small.  We have lots of little things to do - and a lot of projects that are "almost done". 

Today's "big" progress was James finished putting in the baseboard in the downstairs bathroom.  I guess he's adding a little more moulding to it - but since he had to go to class tonight, he finished up for the day. 

Ooooh....

Ahhh....

The toilet seems to be leaking now too.  Always something.  I guess James noticed it a little while ago - but just thought it was Ben peeing on the side of the toilet.  It is not though.  He'll have to look at that this week.  It's not a lot, but still something...

He is also attempting to add the last of our classy backsplash...

Good-bye unfinished area above the sink!  You won't be missed.  Updates tomorrow since we have tons of time to work 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!

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!

Boring Stuff - but Time Consuming

I spent a lot of today repairing holes and cracks in the kitchen. Which means tomorrow, I will be sanding away.

James finished putting up all the drywall going into the downstairs bathroom. Now we have to prep that for paint. We're getting there...slowly.

A Hammer and A Pry Bar

This is my doing. I like damaging things.

The Bathroom Ceiling

The entire house has 8 1/2 ft ceilings - for some reason, they made the ceiling in the bathroom about 6 1/2 ft. We cut a big hole in it today to wire up more of the upstairs. Surprisingly, the "real" ceiling underneath this fake drop down ceiling is in pretty decent shape. Unfortunatly, James removed the heat lamp - I enjoyed hanging out in there with the big, red flood light on.

Home Inspection Day!

Today we had our home inspection. It was a marvelous event. I showed up late because I didn't want to be bothered with the basement stuff and outside stuff. I did go to get a better feel for this place we just purchased and take some pictures - pictures of what it really looks like and not just the fancy schmancy ones they put up to sell the place!

Here is Ben at the foot of the stairs. The carpet here is a pinkish color. It is such a fluffy, fun carpet.

This is the front room or living room. Pretty standard.

This is James in the kitchen from the front entry way. We love the wood paneling look and wall paper. The kitchen is my favorite room. We think it was remodeled in 1983.

James and Mr. Inspector noting some plumbing discrepancies. Look at all the chemicals they have!

The "dining room" which they use as a living room. This is a pretty big room. I want to use it as a living room too but the husband does not agree with me.

The back entry way and pantry of sorts. Look at all the stuff they have! It's like they are packing away for the blizzard or something. I love it.

Front bedroom. Not the biggest bedroom but we'll probably use this as our bedroom. I think it's current use is a knitting room. There are a lot of sewing things in there. And a very bright overhead florescent light. We'll have to change that.

Ben being like his mother - nosy. This is the master bedroom but will probably be the boys' room.

Another view of the big bedroom.

The third bedroom. This will look huge once all the stuff is out!

Another view of bedroom #3.

And yet another view!! And I thought my mother had lots of stuff!

Upstairs bathroom that was redone recently. It's nice. I like it.

Me being stupid in the new house.

Walk way to new attic...and more stuff.

Another view of the attic...and more stuff.

Ben is still being nosy.

James and Miss Real Estate Agent looking at the AC - which is staying! WooHoo!!!!

I love wall paper!!

Downstairs bathroom - circa 1983.

For some reason, I love this bathroom.