no title...

At various times this past weekend. post titles would pop into my head so I will give them all to you and let you pick.

"I have to Mudd and Tape AGAIN!!"

"It's 3am and what woke me up?"

"Can we go get MORE CDX now?"

"No, I don't want to help you carry in another 4'x8' sheet of CDX"

and my personal favorite..

"The cats are cute, but look what they did"

We headed down to the house Friday.... Our plan of attack this weekend was more mudding and taping for me and doing something with the floors for him.

I started right out in the back in one of the bedrooms sanding the mudd that had dried over the week. It was nice and cool in the house so we kept it closed up til it got stuffy and then we opened a window and turned on he attic fan. I love the attic fan. We haven't had the A/C on forever and it stays about 70 degrees all the time.

So let's get to the photos...

Oliver never sits in the backseat...I kept waiting for something to happen...

Yea! The pool is gone...but the hauler never returned to get paid...look at this photo very carefully. It will come up again in this post...

All the wallpaper is now removed from the 2nd bedroom..and I removed all the finish work around the window. And all the wallpaper is gone from the hallway. This guy wallpapered EVERYTHING...we found out why when we removed the baseboards. We found a card with his name that said "Master Wallpapering"...sheesh...

Rich got busy using his sander to see if he could knock off the glue that was stuck to the floor. As long as he kept the sander moving very quickly it took all the hard glue off without melting it.. So off to Mid-Mo Rental to get a big floor sander. After some initial problems...leftover nails that kept ripping up the sanding belts....it was done in no more than 1/2 hour. Only 1/2 day rental...and well worth the time and money. Then we got to go get some CDX.... I love doing that. I get to sit in the truck and ride all the way to town and back and rest. The most we can carry is 7 sheets at one time. More weight wouldn't be good for the truck. Of course then we have to unload it and my hands are still sore. CDX is very jagged on the edges and you really should wear gloves to carry it, but of course that's not how we roll.

Then I get to go back to mudding and taping and Rich started laying the new subfloor. He started in the living room and made his way down the hall to the bedrooms...




Oh...look at this.. This is what we call The SCARY SAW... it was left in the house and it's a pretty good reciprocating saw...if you don't look closely at the cord... You must hold onto the plug very carefully when you plug it in to the wall socket. Rich will replace the cord, but he needed to use it this weekend...



And bright and early Sunday morning...3:30am to be exact...I woke up and then of course at my age you have to go "use the restroom" if you wake up...and for some reason I decided to take a detour to the kitchen and look out the french doors.. to see ... are you ready...

FIRE ON THE DECK

Yes...fire. Apparently those dang cute cats decided to knock over the BBQ pit ... I yelled and started filling up the coffee pot.... I can laugh now at the thought that a coffee pot full of water would put out the fire, but I grabbed the first thing I saw. After one coffee pot full of water didn't quite do it....I looked down and saw the bucket and filled it many..many..many times...
Rich used some kind of flat hoe to knock off the burned wood in case the inside was smoldering and I poured more water over it. Rich went underneath the deck and looked around to make sure the coals hadn't caught anything else, but it was all out. It took us a while to settle down and get back to sleep after that. I kept turning over and saying "would you go check it again?"....and he would...all 3 million times I asked.

This is what we saw the next day...

So this weekend....

new subfloors down in entry, living room, hallway, all bedrooms.
final sanding done in two bedrooms, second coat of mudd in last bedroom and hallway, first coat of mudd and taping in living room and entry way.

I will order cabinets and countertops this week...Lowes has won the bidding process.

Order flooring...

I need to decide whether we are putting carpet or laminate in the bedrooms. I was heading towards carpet..because we only order it...we don't have to lay it.. :-)... although laminate would be nice I don't know if I am physically up to actually laying out 1375 sq ft of it. And will laminate bedroom floors be cold in the winter? Will the dark floors show every...single...piece...of dirt...and white dog hair?

Any thoughts? Pro laminate? Pro carpet?

And get some bids for the vinyl flooring that will go in the laundry room, large long hallway to the sewing room and the sewing room. Any ideas?

I also need to do some thinking on lighting.. The house has some crappy lighting in the kitchen and I don't know anything...so need to do some research..if you have any websites I could sure use some help..

the floor plan...

Thought you might like to see the floor plan.. Red lines are walls we have built, blue lines are walls that have been removed and yellow lines show doorways... The heavy white line shows the front door.. well, the front door we will use.. there is another front door along the same wall right about where the numbers 35.3 are. We aren't quite sure why that door is there.

We take off again tomorrow afternoon. I will continue to mudd and tape the bedroom hallway and into the living room. Hubby will be trying to figure out what to do with the residual glue on the floor left over from removal of those ceramic tiles.

Tonight we went down to get some more corner bead and stopped by Lumber Liquidators to ask a question and found out that the floor we liked "Chilton Woods" is being discontinued. Now we have to decide whether we change the floor to some other color OR pay shipping to have enough boxes to do our 1700 sq feet of space. hm....

And next week I get to go and order the new kitchen. I'm excited...

And I picked up some color swatches from Lowes.. I'll show you what I pick next week. I'm taking them out to hang on the walls and see what color I like as the light changes...

Nancy

A short weekend....

The weekend started out wrong.  Rich drove down Thursday, parked the truck and started working. He mudded and taped some in the master bedroom closet.  I drove down Friday am...later than expected because when I got into my jeep I noticed oil all over the garage floor.  Turns out it wasn't mine...it was from Ryan's car.  He lost all his oil (and I will have to see about that this week) so I had to run and get him oil, bring it back and then leave.  As I was driving out, I got a call from Rich asking me where I was.  He had tried to go into town and his battery was dead.  So first thing we did was run into town and get a new battery, return to the house, install new battery and then go back into town with the truck to get 2x4's and drywall.

I mudded and taped for two days. Rich did some demolition and then started building.  We decided to close up the closet in the entry way.  It has a hot and cold stack running through it so we were going to have to box that in and on the back side of the closet is the kitchen where the fridge sits.  They have a built in fridge, but the box isn't big enough for a regular size fridge.  Theirs was very small..we did ask them to leave it so we had something to use out there.

If you look at the photo above you will see "cubbies".  I don't have a before photo but someone had just put some shelves there and they were only a veggie can deep.  Not much use for anything.  We thought we could open up the fridge space to accommodate a regular size fridge AND have a pantry next to it.  It became clear early on that the pantry would only be about 17 inches wide and 30 inches deep.  So...onto Plan B...which is cubbies.  There will be 4 (I would have liked 3 or 5, but I want to use one shelf for my stand mixer )  The top two shelves will be 12 inches tall and then one shelf 18 inches tall and then another one 12 inches tall... you get the idea..  I asked for the bottom to be boxed in...(right below the words "cubbies:).  I got nothing but grief about that.  He kept telling me "that's wasted space in there"..I kept saying  "I know, but I don't want a shelf on the ground...and no..I don't want to put the trash can under the cubbies".  Ultimately it is my kitchen so it will be boxed in.

At some point during the weekend, Rich decided to get out the crowbar and took the heavy trim off of all the windows ...The most dramatic reveal is in the living room...  The house came with all this {cough, cough} oak woodwork...  It made the inside of the house look like a cabin..not a bad thing, but not OUR thing... behind that oak trim he uncovered 2x4's.  We aren't sure why they were there, but now they are all gone...along with all those vertical blinds...

It bummed us out that the sliding doors on the left side in this photo were broken.   It seems the door latch was broken and they just decided to leave it instead of fixing it. Because we couldn't open the door, we assumed the latch was broken in the "locked" position.  Not true.  Rich fiddled with the lock trying to figure out how to force it open.  We finally realized that someone had put some kind of pliable caulking between the sliding doors.. so they wouldn't open.  A little time with a razor knife and now both doors open...we just need to replace the broken lock..  It really opens up the room to have all that heavy wood out of there.

And this week, our back yard will get a huge change.  We have someone coming to remove the pool. You can barely see it in the above photo.. We tried to give it away...to anyone..I even joined Freecycle in the local town. .It looks really dirty in this photo, but it holds water (we drained it) and they left all the equipment to go with it...but we (I) have decided we don't want it. .  It runs completely under the deck and the edge of the deck is a ladder to the pool.  Very dangerous for the grandchildren.  So a very nice guy will get paid this week to take it apart and haul it away..

RANT- So far into this reno, we have encountered 3 paid workmen.  Our heating and cooling guy is the best. He was prompt, very professional and came in under his own bid.  You can see his name in this post.

We knew we needed someone to haul away trash.  We picked up the local paper and I called one of the nicer ads.  We made an appointment for her to come and give us an estimate on the huge trash pile we already had and told her we would have more trash piles in the future.  She never showed up.  An hour past her appointment time she called to say she was on her way out of town. Never said anything about an emergency, but said she would call when she got back.  She never did.  We never heard her again.

In the same paper there was another smaller ad that said "Odd jobs, call Rich or Tom".  I called, he came and he is just as professional as the HVAC




The same day as the heating guy came, we had a local guy in to give us some estimates on flooring and a whole kitchen.  We talked carpet, vinyl, laminate and more. Oh, and no samples!  We were told that he would get back to us with the estimates the following week.  I called Friday of that week and nope...he was gone to a rodeo and would call us on Monday....Monday came and went.  The whole week went.  It's been two weeks now and no estimates. And no phone call explaining why.  I am pretty sure that he won't get any of our business.  I like to shop local, I like to keep my money in my neighborhood.  This time I have no choice.  I will be calling someone else...

And it was a short weekend as Rich is on his way to Oklahoma so I got to come home...YIPPEE!!  I get to clean out the fridge, vacuum and grocery shop... which is way more fun that mudding and taping...

See ya next week...

Nancy

you CAN teach an old dog new tricks....

This weekend started out late for me.  I attended my first meeting of the St Louis Modern Quilt Guild Saturday so didn't drive out to the house until Saturday afternoon.  By the time I got there, Rich had already finished the electric in the three bedrooms,  torn out 5 doors with door frames and removed crown molding in the master bedroom and down the hallway.  We had a few more pieces of drywall to put up and then he started the mudding and taping.  I have watched him do this before, but never helped.. until now that is.

I used these...

 

and this...

to do this..

As soon as all the regular mudding and taping was done...Rich got started on the corners and ceiling.  I wasn't aware that the ceiling and corners got different treatment.  Apparently they get "corner beads" or something like that.   After sweeping all the floors and washing dishes and putting them away I sat and watched for a minute.  I finally asked "Is there something I can do to help?"   He taught me how to do the corners and ceiling.  How fun was that?  Well, not much.  But I did a good job...he said so.  And then we ran out of joint compound and we got to come home early... in our little town the stores close early on Sunday. 

We still have to do the master closet with the first coat and put another coat on all the other walls and then sand and then we will start priming the walls.  I cannot wait...  I picked up some paint samples and think I have settled on a wall color...

See you all next week,
Nancy

Let's talk cabinets.... (edited AGAIN)

I have spent the last three days looking at kitchen cabinets, countertops and hardware...

What I liked?

Taking in my measurements and watching the software plop cabinets into a space and then getting a 3-D print of my new kitchen.
Looking at colors of countertops and making a decision.
Eating tons of fast food because I am driving from here to there and everywhere.

What I didn't like?

Deciding between 36" cabinets and 42" cabinets.
Deciding between laminate and solid surface countertops
Eating tons of fast food because I am driving from here to there and everywhere.

I went to local cabinet shops and chain stores.  I looked at maple, linen and cherry wood and some that should be renamed "sparkle fairy". 

Last night we sat down and made some decisions...

Right now (and this could change tomorrow)..

We are going with Lowes.
We are going with Shenandoah Winchester Maple Square Linen 36" (or 42") white cabinets and they aren't called Sparkle Fairy
I picked out satin nickle hardware.. (I tried to find a photo, but can't)  The drawer handles are bin pulls and the door handles are called toggle pulls.  
I found a beautiful laminate countertop that is dark gray with lighter gray streaks. Almost looks like marble.
Formica brand counter tops 3690-58 basalt slate.  Can't find a photo of those either. My sister found one - here is the link   after the "movie" choose "Products" and it's in the first row!
 
So. there is less than $100 difference between the 36" cabinets and the 42" cabinets.  42" cabinets it will be.
Counter tops are a great price and I will get a semi circle bump out for a couple of stools.. 
I added a cabinet that will fit a trash can ... not to be confused with a special trash can cabinet that can ONLY be used for a trash can.
Hubby left to go to the house today.. I will go to a new quilt guild meeting in the morning and then go..


And now I would like to think about something else.

Nancy

the past weekend...

Wow. It got nice and chilly this weekend.  It made working a lot nicer...

I went out early Friday morning to meet the heating/cooling guy.  Our son-in-law is related to almost everyone in the county and if he isn't related to them, they are friends of his.  So we had a great recommendation for Lee's Heating and Cooling out of Wainwright.  He had come last weekend and given us an estimate of $620 to check the A/C and fix the heater...which was apparently venting inside the house..not good.  So Friday we got that all fixed to the wonderful tune of LESS THAN THE ESTIMATE.  Yep..for once someone did a great job AND the final bill was less than the estimate.

While he was working on that, I had a local guy come out and give me an estimate on carpet, laminate and vinyl.  Carpet will go into 3 bedrooms, Laminate down hall, both bathrooms (oops, I think I forgot that part), living room, entry hall, kitchen and dining room.  He also measured the laundry room, another long hall and the sewing room for vinyl.  Then he asked if the kitchen was going to stay the same.  Um NO!...so he said "well, we do cabinets also. I could measure and give you an estimate on those."... So I said yes.  Rich came in from work while he was measuring and talking cabinets and gave me a funny look...like..."what is he doing?".  "sshhh..." I said "I've got it covered".    I watched very carefully while he measured and talked cabinets and countertops and where does the stove go and whatever else he needed to ask..(.boy, that guy could talk....)

He left and we got going...

Just some of the nails/screws we had to pull out of the studs...

 That brown door WAS the master bedroom door...it will be removed and replaced..

 yea...master closet

So we changed things up a bit.  We realized that the one wall we thought couldn't come down...could...so that allowed us room to build another master closet and rearrange the doorway to bedroom 3.  That meant building walls and moving electric.  It's kind of fun to build walls.  I was basically the fetch and carry idiot this weekend.  I don't know anything about building walls or rewiring electric, but hubby knows everything.  I was very impressed this weekend.  He took a virtual land mine of electric and fixed it all...

While hubby was doing some electrical work, I used my graph paper, pencil, ruler and measuring tape to do a good drawing of the kitchen.  And because I had paid careful attention I knew exactly what to measure.  It's a small kitchen... but it will be adequate for the two of us.  This week I will go to Lowes and Cabinets-to-Go and get some estimates.  It's about 6 weeks down the road, but I need to start thinking....and planning...and picking colors...

Here are some finished photos of the weekend work...

All walls built, electric moved and most of the drywall is finished...

And we hired our son-in-law to clean out the basement, the two car garage and move some lumber from the screen porch to the basement...  The seller left all her junk for us.  Wasn't that nice?  We now have yet another trash pile to pay to get hauled away...

Hired Help

At one point I looked out the window and he has our daughter and the two grandkids all carrying stuff up to the trash pile..so we ended up paying the grandkids too..

And we had a couple of visitors...  Momma deer and two babies walked from the other side of the pond  and right through the back yard.  I happened to be walking through the kitchen and spotted them.  Had to call hubby to see... he was wishing it was a bit later and Deer season...I'm glad it wasn't.

 We also spotted a ground hog, but I didn't have my camera so no photo...

All in all, we had a great weekend... 


Nancy