Ahhh. Decor

My new mantle. I'm going to have fun decorating this.

I finished sanding the drywall in the bathroom on Monday night so I was finally able to clean up and do some organizing.
Bathtub at the beginning of the night:

Bathtub at the end of the night:


Here is our bathroom at the moment:


Last night we got to go see Adams sister run in one of her cross country meets. She won! I think she's now 6 out of 7 for gold medals in her cross country career. It's different than I thought a cross country meet would be. You don't see them run the whole thing but at this one there were points where she'd pop out somewhere and you could see her. I guess this was a small one and I can't imagine what state would be like with 100 people at the starting line. I didn't know we were going to go so I didn't have my camera. Darn!

We got our amoire moved into the bedroom last night so we officially have all our clothing in one room (except for the stuff still out in the garage and the stuff still waiting to be washed....yes, I'm not done with wash yet). Notice our nice shower curtain we are using for a curtain? Pretty sweet.


Adams dad came over to help with the flooring last night and they made some progress until it was too late to run the saw and air compressor.


I organized and organized some more. I think I have our closet pretty well done. I'm sure I'll make changes but for now it's functional.

More flooring

My dad worked on finishing the flooring in the master bedroom


and the guys started work on the living room. This is where it currently is:

Bathroom Continued

The tile is finished! Here is a pic. It needs another wipe down so it won't look just like this but you can kind of get an idea. I went with darker grout. Picking grout is harder than you'd think.



Now all we need to do i seal it, caulk and put on the shower hardware. Then we can use it!

We have gotten a coat of mud on the drywall so I sanded last night and put the second layer on.



Adam has been working on the flooring in the east bedroom. He's 1/2 way there.

I have to say that I really like this flooring. It's Solid hardwood Hickory. I'm getting excited for it to be done!

I also saw this last night. I dont' know how I've missed it so far. Guess it's just been too much of a mess. This is under where the vanity sat.


Now this is kind of sad. They are divorced but obviously in love when they updated this bathroom together. I know their son who is also named Jeff. I think the date says 94?? What do you think?

I think since the bathroom is so small and the tile is dark we should paint with a color that is "white" but has a tinge of brown in it. Any opinions?
This color is Almond Cream from Behr.

Progress

Ladies and Gents, we have made some progress! Thanks to everyone who came to help we got some major projects close to being finished.

Friday my dad came down in the afternoon and they got the living room particle board pulled up, the closet flooring started and one of the big pine trees in the back yard cut down. (Pictures of backyard further down)

Saturday started off bright and early when a friend of one of Adams friends showed up to start tiling. Yes! Adam and Dad pulled the vanity out of the bathroom to get the rest of the drywall pulled out and the bathroom ready to be re-assembled. The rest of my family came also and my brother-in-law started in on the drywall in the bathroom.
Bathroom progress pics:








Early on in the morning Adam and dad cut down another tree on the outside of the fence that was growing into it.


My sister painted the bedroom we are sleeping in.

My mom and I worked on the backyard all day.
We cleaned up all the rocks/"landscaping" that was up against the house. This seems simple enough but it really is a big job. We found a TON of spiders living in there and some GINORMOUS ones too.
When we first moved in:

Saturday morning:

Now:


We also raked the rest of the yard. There had to have been at least 3 years of pine needles back there. We found plastic bags with cones in them that someone had picked up and never thrown away buried beneath at least an inch of dirt, needles and more cones.
When we first got the house:


With big pine tree cut down:

This makes the yard feel much bigger. We might leave the other one and see if it fills back in next year.

Just some of the stuff we raked up:

Now:


This corner of the yard we also cleaned up some.
When we got the house:

Now:

The tree seen in the before pic here also got cut down last week.


My dad tore into the closet that had mold in it from the leaking roof. We thought we were just going to have to tear down some drywall and put up new stuff. I should know better than that. Here is what we found:


This used to be an outside wall so some of these boards had to come down. and the 2x4's were all wet and crumbly and you can see more mold on the drywall behind it. That drywall is in the stairwell going downstairs so it shouldn't be too big of a deal to take down.


My nieces kept themselves quite busy.

Aren't they cute?

The flooring in the big closet finally got finished too so I can organize!


We got the wallpaper border off of the living room.


Saturday night we went to a friends house to watch the football game.
Here's Vanessa. She has a Canon Rebel. We played with our camera's a little.


Here's her fiance Nick, coaching the other Nick on the values of family.
"If you really are family you'll drink this HUGE shot I just poured for you"


Sunday morning Adam and I finished some more drywalling. The bathroom is finally enclosed again!



We had an issue with the drain backing up in the basement a little so we rented a rotoRooter thing and Adam and his dad put it to work. (No, he's not going to the bathroom)

Looks like the tree out fronts roots got into the pipe.

We took care of that though!

We had a visit from Trey. He ate some licorice, okayed the tile work

and did some laundry.


And that's where we are. Still nothing DONE but a lot more progress than we had at the beginning of the weekend.

Slow Night

Last night we didn't do much. I pulled up the tack strips in one of the bedrooms and did lots of more laundry.

Adam and his dad cut down a smaller tree outside and worked a little on the big pine ones.

There is a bad smell coming from our dishwasher. I don't know why. It smelled fine when we first got into the house and you'd think that if it was going to smell that is when it'd do it. So we also took apart the dishwasher last night but I'm not sure that we found/solved the problem. Ugh. One more new thing to buy??

I have a few new ideas for the bathroom to save space. One would be to get a vanity and do my hair and makeup not in the bathroom so that I don't have to have storage for all that stuff in the bathroom. Isn't this one pretty?

$500! Yikes. I think Adam would be building that instead of buying it.

We also could use one of these for hanging towels and storing towels. It's called a train rack. I didn't know that until today.


I think this might be a very good option for hanging a hand towel and wash cloth and keeping a few extra towels in the bathroom.

I think that we may just put up hooks in our new little cubby that will be created by moving the wall over to the next stud instead of a towel bar. I kinda like the idea of them hanging back there.

My new camera should be ready and waiting for me when I get home. Why oh why do I have to sit here til 5? :(

Bathroom Demo

Last night we demo'd the rest of the bathroom. We left the sink and toilet in place until the last possible moment :)




There is some more insulation in this wall because the house was added onto and this used to be an exterior wall. We might leave it. Maybe not though. Right below the light was this medicine cabinet.

Adam remembers it as being the same one that was there when he was little.
The other day I realized that the light above it wasn't turning on with the other one. I searched to find another switch and didn't see anything. Then I stumbled across this:

Pretty nifty. The switch part of it was covered up when the med. cabinet was closed.
We tore out the cabinet and drywall - you can see where it was:

to find that the 2x4's that were framing in the med. cabinet weren't attached to ANYTHING. Nothing. I just pulled them out. The screws from the med. cabinet were holding the 2x4's in place I guess and the drywall was holding the med. cabinet in place. Really odd thing #9087 found in bathroom :)
I think we'll keep the light. There is a lot of oak in the house and it matches to it's just fine.

We also got some of the particle board pulled up in the living room.

This is actually really tough because it just kinda crumbles and you can't get many big pieces out at a time.

We also came home to a note on the door from the gas company saying they did some stuff and turned off the gas. We found they moved the meter. It was pretty much half buried before.

Looks nice.

And we got lots of laundry done and folded.
1 ton left to go...