Day 25

I didn't think anything was going to happen today, since the painter is going to paint the trim in his shop, rather than here.  But, this afternoon they came to start hanging the interior doors.

The doors are not yet painted, they will be the same color as the ceiling.  But since the ceiling is pretty close to white, the doors make a huge difference and its really starting to look closer to finished.  The really exciting stuff is starting to happen.  Those things that make it look like a finished product.  I do so hope that I don't *actually* pee my pants when its all officially done.

I didn't slough off for yet another day, I really did paint the ceiling.  Can't you tell?  lol...

Day 24

In the midst of painting the ceiling today.

Now the ceiling and walls are done.

No, I didn't do anything in the kitchen today either.

Day 23

We have paint on the walls!  I haven't decided if I like the color or not.  I definitely don't hate it, but I'm not sure I love it.  I have such a hard time with colors.  I went too light on the walls upstairs, so went darker down here, but it might be too yellow.  It doesn't matter, I need to get all the furniture in and live with it for awhile before I decide to change anything.  I usually end up painting at least one room in my houses every year, and now I have a lot more rooms to choose from, lol.  Good thing I like to paint.

Nothing happened in the kitchen today because painting that is my job and I called in...uninterested.  I've got until Tuesday.

Day 22

The walls got textured today.  It only shows up at all because the thickest parts of the mud are still wet.

Day 21

The second coat of mud went up on the drywall today, not very exciting for pictures, but progress nonetheless.  I believe the walls are getting textured tomorrow, then paint on Wednesday.

Day 20

The mud was still too wet to do anything more with the drywall today, but the rest of the windows got installed.  Yay!

Day 19

The remains of that glass block are there on the floor.  The new window is so much nicer.

Drywall is all mudded in, now we hope it dries by tomorrow so they can do the second coat before sanding it all smooth.  We now have steps going up into the root cellar.  That cube up there is hiding the vent piping for the hot water heater, which couldn't be moved.  It looked really weird to have a cube just hanging there, though I did want to paint it like the Borg cube.  We opted to add that wall to the right of the root cellar, and put in some shelving under the cube.

Here is how that door that was widened, then shrunk back down a bit, turned out.  I'm very happy with it.

This is my sewing area.  I can fit an 8 foot table over there under the window, and will put some open shelves in that area beside the closet.

Oh, I just want to puke every time I look at the outside of this house.  What on earth ever possessed the former owners to pick such a gaudy color??  Ugh.  Anyway, the point here is supposed to be all of those new windows upstairs.  

Here is the end of the house with a new and old window up there.  The plan is to get rid of that ugly wood shingle siding up there when we paint the house.

Day 18

Today was a very big day.  The drywall went up and the new windows started going in.

We added the middle window in the kitchen.  It really brightens it up in there.

The basement feels totally different now.  For the first time, you can't see all the way to the end when you walk in the room.  Now its starting to feel like a real house down there.  This will be the TV room, with the master bedroom through that doorway.

This is the office.  I hate glass block.  Guess what's happening tomorrow?

Day 17

We had our plumbing inspection today.  More framing got done.  We had some extra insulation from building our chicken coop, so they put that up in the ceiling in the master bedroom for us.  Hopefully it will help cut down on the noise from upstairs.  The drywall got loaded in and there sure is a lot of it.  Got the news yesterday that our windows have come in a couple of weeks early.  They aren't for the basement, we are replacing all of the upstairs windows because the existing ones are so awful.  They are old, rickety aluminum frames, and not double-paned.  They are a single window with a storm window a couple of inches away, so if I want to open them up, I have to open two rickety, wonky windows that don't slide well.  I was gone all day long today, and didn't get a chance to take pictures before it got dark.

I think the worst part of the whole process so far is not having a kitchen sink.  I can deal with the refrigerator and temporary table as a kitchen, and the whole mess that goes along with that, but trying to do dishes in the bathroom sink *really* stinks.  It helps to see visible progress every day though.

Day 16

Today the electrical work got finished up and inspected.  We passed, woohoo!  More plumbing stuff happened.  The furnace and air conditioning got finished, just in time to not need the a/c any more this year, lol.  I wouldn't want to run it right now anyway with all the construction dust in the air.  So, major stuff happened but nothing good for pictures.

Day 15

The plumbers came today, even though its Saturday.  I think we're having an inspection on Monday, and stuff had to be done.

The master bathroom sink is ready.

And the shower got set today.  The stupid concrete slab slopes 3/4 of an inch along the length of the shower, so they had to pour 80 pounds of concrete under there to level it out.

This is the doorway that got framed yesterday.  It will be SO much nicer not to look in the messy coat room.

Day 14

More wiring work today.  Lots more.  I wasn't surprised in the least to hear the electrician say that 1 job in 10 turns into the mess from hell, and mine is one of the ones, lol.  The kind you can't predict until you start tearing into it.  Today he opened up a box and said 'Wow, what on earth were they trying to do?  There is no way an electrician did this'.  Great...I'm trying not to think about the rest of the house that isn't being redone.

That doorway that I changed my mind about got framed down to the right size, but I didn't feel like going down to take a picture.

Day 13

A lot more went on with electrical wiring and plumbing, but not stuff that is easy to see in pictures.

Installed the 6 new can lights and 2 pendants in the kitchen.  Took out the 2 old cans that were in the wrong place now.

Got rid of the old plumbing for the sink and added the gas connection for the new stove.

Added the plumbing for the new sink.  Lots of other plumbing stuff went on today, but I don't know what it was, lol.

We did make lots of decisions today.  Now that we can see the walls and size of the spaces, we opted to scratch 3 of the can lights in the basement that we had planned.  We hadn't made up our mind about lighting in the master bedroom, so we did that.  We're going with 4 sconces on the walls and 1 in the hallway.  We still haven't decided about a ceiling fan in our bedroom, so we opted to wire for it and decide later, after we live in the space for awhile.  Decided to go with a fluorescent fixture in the master closet, rather than incandescent.  Decided to go ahead and pay extra to fix that sloping floor in the basement so we can have laminate instead of carpet in the main sitting area.  And here's the one decision I felt just a little bad about -

I stood where the couch is going to be and realized that if we look right, we'll be looking right into the coat closet (left of the stairs).  I don't want to see that, so we're going to make that doorway smaller.  On the plus side, its a LOT easier to make it smaller than bigger.

Lots of wiring went on again today, which is very hard to show.  The basement wiring was all wrong too, so it had to all be redone.  The Jacuzzi tub upstairs was wired wrong, so that had to be fixed too.  

This photo is looking into the master bedroom, you can kind of see the ceiling and how its framed to drop down halfway across the room.  It has to in order to enclose the plumbing, but its going to look too choppy like that, so we decided to drop the whole ceiling down.  It won't be as tall but will make me happier in the end.  The drywall guys will be happier too.

Day 12

Aw, the psych ward door is finally gone.  At least I'll always have pictures.

Installing a heavy-duty lintel so the house doesn't fall down through that new, extra-wide doorway.

Doorway is done.  I wish my kids cleaned up after themselves half as well as these guys do!

A bunch of plumbing stuff happened today.  This is the drain from the laundry room upstairs.  It now runs through the wall like its supposed to, rather than stuck out in the middle of the room.  This will be a little sink and fridge cabinet so we can make coffee without having to go upstairs.

Moved the plumbing around for the new bathrooms.

This will be the new master shower.  Yes, I know its fiberglas, and not some gorgeous tile, and people think we're weird for choosing this.  But, I've had enough mildewed grout (Florida = steamy pits of hell) to last a lifetime.  Easy to clean is so much more important than looks at this point.

Day 11

Remodeling is such an adventure, you never know what you'll find once its too late to turn back, lol.  The wiring in the kitchen turned out to be even wonkier than we first thought, so the whole thing is getting rewired now.  Sheesh.  I'd really like to smack whoever thought making such a mess of it was a good idea.  All that drywall wasn't originally supposed to come off like that, but its going to be easier to replace the big 4-foot sections rather than patch a bunch of smaller areas.

Wires running through the new bar, and that hideous light is gone!

The nasty tile at the top of the stairs is gone.

The carpet is gone.  That ugly wallpaper will go at some point, but not as part of this job.

The door to the basement will be opened up.

The one support column that wouldn't fit into a wall is getting covered.

This is our bedroom ceiling.  The soffitt covering the plumbing is up.

WooHoo!  Our new A/C compressor is in.  Being from Florida, I've never seen one this tiny, lol.  It looks like a toy.

Day 10

A lot happened in the basement today, but not stuff that can be seen well in pictures.  The electrician spent a lot of time tracing stuff, fixing stuff that made no sense, etc.  The HVAC guy is up there running tubing that will go out to the new A/C compressor (yay!).  I don't really know what else he's doing down there, but I'm glad he's doing it, lol.

  

Whoops, forgot to lighten this picture up.  Anyway, I'm working on hacking some of these bushes out so the compressor can go here.  Those lower windows are proving pretty handy for  getting stuff into the basement.  Passing it through there beats the heck out of hauling everything around the corner and down the stairs.

Meanwhile, back up in the kitchen, the drywall came down here.  This is where the stove was, and where the new sink will be.  It does tend to give you pause when the electrician comes in, takes one look, and says Wow.  

This is what he's looking at.  Really, would it have take SO much longer to do the job right, rather than slap wires together with what looked like an entire roll of tape??  We've been finding stuff like this everywhere since we moved in.  Things that make you say either Hmmm, or What on EARTH were they thinking?!?

Here's another of those things.  Its hard to see here, but apparently they got a new fridge at some point that didn't quite fit, so they cut the wall out.  They didn't even do it straight, it came to a V at the bottom.  

Now it will be a straight wall, and come out far enough to cover the new cabinet-depth refrigerator.  It kills me to pay more money for less space in a cabinet depth fridge.  But, since we have so little floor space in the kitchen I'm choosing to look at it as paying for more floor space, not less fridge space.

Framed out for the new window over the sink.  You can see where they used to have a vent for the stove, but that was covered by the drywall.  I still can't imagine having no venting for the stove.  Maybe they never burned stuff like I do...

The new bar wall is framed.  I think the awful fluorescent light box is coming down on Monday.  We'll be adding more can lights in the ceiling, and the two that are there will be replaced by pendant lights.  We still have to shop for those.

Day 9

It was a pretty big day today.  Downstairs the new furnace went in.  The old one was 28 years so it was time...

We lost the kitchen today!!  I was SO excited!  But not fast enough with the camera because John had the countertops and the bar cabinets out of there SO fast.

That big circle was a lazy susan.  We'll have 2 of those in the new kitchen.  These cabinets were built in place, so it wasn't pretty taking them apart.  If you look closely, you can see that all of the insides were really ugly plywood.  Guess that's why the previous owners covered everything with contact paper (which was also ugly)

And...there goes the flooring.  All of the tile and the layer of subfloor under it.  

This is what is left at the end of the day.  The stove is going to friends tomorrow.  The trash can and buckets are covering heating vent holes.  Apparently there was an old, unused register inside the cabinet.

Sophie checking out the changes.  That yellow hideousness is the original linoleum floor, and was the footprint of the original kitchen.  This house was built in 1964.  Wow, what a tiny kitchen!

There are LOTS of nails sticking up everywhere, so the plastic is staying up for now.  At some point all those nails have to come out or get pounded in before the new floor can go in.

And here's the sink, sitting outside.  How trailer trash is that??  Its there because I asked them to save it for me.  I'm thinking of using it for a garden/potting area sink at some point.  Or we can use it in the barn, when we build one.  Oh, so many projects...