Good Bye Wall

The past 2 1/2 weeks we've been busy at work but I haven't taken many pictures. Paul and Will came over to help us last week and we finished taking down the wall in the kitchen. There is now a toilet in our kitchen.

After removing the shower, we discovered that some of the subflooring is rotting away from water damage. So since we have everything up, we're going to patch good portion of that. The bathroom was "updated" in 1979 so that's 27 years of water corrosion. Yuck. At least we caught it now while the place is destroyed and before it got really bad.

We've been removing parts of the kitchen floor in preparation for our cabinets to be delivered on May 7th. There are about 4 or 5 floors to cut through in the kitchen and it's like a rainbow of decades when removing it. We're going to try to restore the hardwoods in the kitchen...but we're not sure if it will look good since there is this tar glue from the 40s on them. Since the hardwoods are about 3/4" thick, we have a lot of room for sanding. If not, we'll just get some cheapo tiles or laminate to hold us over.

This weekend's goal is to finish the basement stairs (almost there) and to finish cutting out the floor we need to move. We'll probably also have to fix that subfloor. I don't think there is enough hours in a weekend to do this, but we'll see.

Still Doing the Stairs!

This weekend was a lazier one. Saturday, James had his last class until the middle of September! Yey! I don't know what we're going to do with ourselves having Daddy home 2 days in a row EVERY week! I guess we'll finally get our kitchen done - that's what we're going to do!

James continued prepping the stairs. He just added some support to new places since we're changing the layout of the stairs. We have all the parts and hopefully, cross the fingers, should finish up the stairs this coming weekend. I actually made plans with some mother friends so I can get out of the house with Ben and Tom Saturday morning so James can actually do work without me bothering him.

In other home improvement news, we're getting our dumpster today! Yey! I'm so excited. Now I can put the garbage that has been accumulating in our backyard in the dumpster and the neighbors won't call us trash anymore!

Back to Work!

The fun and excitement of Ben's birthday has ended...well at least when it comes to our free time. Ben is busy playing with all his new toys.

Today, we cut out our front closet to make it the entrance to the basement. This way, we'll be able to board up the current door to the basement so we can (cross the fingers) have room to put the 11 cabinets we ordered!!

We Ordered Cabinets!

We are cooperating with George W's request of going out and spending money to avoid a recession and get the economy booming! We finally bought our cabinets today! Surprisingly, we did not go with the cheapest ones possible (many people believe I am cheap - but I say I'm frugal). We like them. We have to live with them for most likely the rest of our lives, so we said "hey! Let's get something we like!" We'll get them in 5 weeks which will give us time to build a new staircase, tear down a wall, move the sink, move the oven, and maybe paint? We'll try to sleep somewhere in between all these projects too.

I'm a True Desperate Housewife

Moving into this house that needs work has seriously cut into my internet time, my tv time, and of course, my bon bon eating time. What is a housewife to do?

Well today, I just could not stand the carpet in the dining room anymore. So it's gone. Here are some pictures. I've removed all the staples and the carpet gripper board. I cut my knuckle, but I have to say, it was all worth it.

James has no idea I did this. We said that we were going to pull up the carpets last - that is, after everything else was done (mostly painting). Well this carpet has apparently been down since 1980. It was time to get rid of it. I feel happy.

We Have a Ceiling!

James and Uncle Paul put up our dining room ceiling today! We didn't finish it off, but it's so much better already.

More Wires

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

A Hammer and A Pry Bar

This is my doing. I like damaging things.

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!)

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.

Good-Bye Fake Decorative Wall

We took off the fake wall in the kitchen today. We also took down half the ceiling to start wiring up the upstairs.

Thursday Night Demolition!

We got the kids to bed and we should have gone to bed ourselves, but instead, James decided to destroy the kitchen a little and I destroyed the downstairs bathroom.

Underneath the beautiful brick backsplash, we discoved more wallpaper. This one was a beauty.

I discoved a little mold behind the shower which was a pleasant aroma.

Boring

I've been scraping away wallpaper paste in the dining room. A lot of work without much to show for it.

Getting There...

We spent President's Day Weekend wiring up the dining room, living room and hallway. Uncle Paul came over and helped with some of it and helped by watching the kids. Ben loves his uncles and Tom does too!

I've started taking down the wallpaper that was found after tearing down the dropdown ceiling. It's not that bad and I'm not going to put too much effort into this since moulding is just going to cover it anyways. As you can see, our downstairs is a scattered mess. It's a fun mess though.

Our Home without the Lattice!

I finally got out and took a picture of our place without the lattice!

A Trip to Lowe's...AGAIN!

We go to home improvement stores all the time. Ben is sick of it. We need to figure out how to rearrange our kitchen before we do any major purchase...but it's hard! I think we've decided to take out the downstairs shower completely and just make it a half bath. Time to demo it! Well soon...not quite yet.

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.

Ripping Apart the Kitchen

Pulling off the wood paneling and peeling more wallpaper!

The Drop Down Ceiling is Gone!

Since we're wild and crazy, we spent our Saturday night ripping down our dining room ceiling. We're not too happy with the original ceiling so we'll throw up some drywall after the electrical is updated. It did add about a foot to the room though by removing it.