Monday, September 22, 2008

House Update

Update: I've changed out the blurry photos for normal ones.

I had Wed., Thurs., Friday off so let me see if I can remember everything that has happened. I blogged on Wed. night so lets start off on Thursday.

Pretty much all day we worked on the bathroom.
We pulled the window out right away (too much wood on it for a by a shower).


And did some more demo.



We initially just thought we'd extend the wall up from where that weird little cove was but then we decided to take the wall out to the next stud. This way we can slide the curtain the full width of the shower and just maybe open it up a little more.
So we took it out.

That is where the wall will be now.

About this time the plumber showed up and put a nice new shower in for us.

He also fixed our leaking pipe and our leaking sink. We are ready to go now!

During the process of tearing stuff out we of course ran across some old insulation.

I freaked out about this because it was so weird looking. Could it be asbestos? I put on a mask and when we uncovered a little more of it we found a label. Balsam-wool.

Hmmm. What's that? What did I do? Of course I googled it.
I found another wonderful blog that talked about it and found out that it is not asbestos. Thank goodness. Gotta love the blogging world. Real information from real people. Here is all the information they learned about it.

Balsam-Wool: Wood pulp - Not asbestos.

After toxic mold in the basement, wondering if the paint chipping in the basement could be lead based, carbon monoxide poisoning (I'll explain later) and asbestos, what else in the world of toxic household items could we come across?

We also had a visit from the Dish man. Yay! We have tv :) We have so many fewer channels than we used to have but oh well, less shows for me to be addicted to I guess.

And the furnace man came to visit. We were just going to have him service it or whatever they do but he said that he could tell it had been under water and there was a crack in it (could leak carbon monoxide) and that it would cost just as much to fix as to buy a new one. So we're also buying a new furnace. Luckily I have a friend who can help us out. It's pretty darn old and the duct cleaning guy said it had a weird filter on it that you can't buy any more anyway.


I also got the rest of this landing torn out.

This was in good shape but we're putting new flooring in these two attached rooms so we're gonna put the matching stuff in here.

Friday Adam went into work so I moved the kitchen stuff and our clothes from the apartment over to the house. I pretty much spent most of the day putting stuff away and organizing the kitchen. I still have some work to do but I'm so happy most of it's in one place again and I can cook.

I also brought Missy to the new house. Poor kitty. She was so scared. Of course she does her little hunter walk/crawl low to the ground and checks things out.

But then she decided she was scared so she went back in her box and hid for a while.

She normally HATES this box by the way.
Then she hid in the pantry cabinet for a while.

Then moved to another cabinet for a couple of hours.

When I finally kicked her out of there she went and hid in the closet for the rest of the day. She finally came out when Adam got home and did some exploring.
I'm happy to report that she now loves her new home and the fact that there is so much trouble to get into once again. She has two spots that I know are going to be her favorite. She can sit on the ledge in the front of the house and watch the world go by and she can lay by the patio door and look out.

With the bathroom being torn out we are going to have to use the downstairs shower. As I've stated before, the basement has issues and is scary. So I went down to spray it with some cleaner. It was at this time that I ..... dropped our camera. :( I put a chip in the lens. Now, I've been wanting a new SLR for some time but it sure would have been nice to wait a little bit since we've spent some money this month on the house and it would have been nice to have the new one before de-commissioning the old one. So going forward all pics are blurry but I took some anyway so you can kinda see the progress. I apologize.
Here's the scary shower.

I just got some stuff sprayed on it but didn't get it scrubbed out yet.

By the end of the day we also had a new window at the house ready to be installed. It's a vinyl double hung with obscured glass that we got for free. Can't beat that. A got the hole cut to size and a new frame built by the end of the night after he got home from work and that is where we stopped for the night.

Saturday I had another wedding cake to make. Of course since I broke my camera I had to take pics on my sisters camera and don't have them yet. I'll get some posted later.

We did get the bed moved right away in the morning and later that night Adam and his dad moved some of the other furniture over from the apartment.
We have our bedroom set up and got to stay in the house on Sat! This is the smallest bedroom but it actually fits everything nicely with quite a bit of room to spare!
King size bed, two nightstands and a dresser (with huge tv on top).


A got new insulation in, the new window in

the framing for the new wall up

and his computer hooked up so he can do some work from home.

Yesterday morning we had a visitor bright and early. A lady who said she was the last person to live in the house and that when she moved out there was a foot of water in the basement. Well that explains the furnace. But a foot of water? There are two drains down there that are working just fine for us. This poor house just needs someone to care about it and fix problems as they arise.

We spent a lot of time on the basement yesterday. I'd no longer classify it as scary. We cleaned out the laundry corner and dried it out. We swept the floors and got a lot of the paint chips out. I scrubbed the shower and sink. They actually cleaned up really nice and we got to use the shower last night and it was just fine.
Before:

After:


Sink Before (you can kinda see it here :) )

After:


Adam also installed some more lighting.

We got the couch moved in. Wow, it's amazing how much you miss a couch when you don't have one. It was a big feat but with the help of a neighbor and taking off a couple of doors we got it in!

I also got the rest of the bathroom stuff organized into the bathroom upstairs so we can use the sink and get ready in there. This is how we're living. Stuff in Sterlite drawers :)


I can say that the house is officially functional for us for now and we are happily living in our new home.

We finally got the backyard mowed down a little.


I'm going to try to borrow a camera tonight so I can retake these pics so you don't have to see everything through beer goggles :)

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