Wood Floors This Week, YES!!!

October 29, 2012

So I finally have some news and pictures for the remodel.  This week is wood floor week, and I am so happy.  Mainly because I think that once the wood floors are in and sanded, I can begin to clean the house.  Still feeling as dirty as I did over a month ago.  I am finding it hard to believe that it has been almost three months now.

The wood for the floors was delivered last week and has been getting acquainted with us as it rests in the front room awaiting installation.

Our painter, and mudder, Josh was able to get everything painted last week.  This is the living room with the mud room in green.  

This looking back into the kitchen...

From the kitchen towards the living room...

Meanwhile, David has been pulling up the floor in the kids' bathroom.  It had several layers of linoleum, just like the kitchen!  What surprised us is that below that, some of the floorboards were missing!  Good thing the kids didn't fall through...   He is spraying insulation in there to help with the sound of water rushing through the house.  Then we will have hardwood floors installed in here as well.  I can't wait!

Josh also did the ceilings and matched them to our old ceilings in the other parts of the house.  I love the texturing he did as it all matches really well and fits perfectly with the age of the house.  It also reminds me of many of the places where we were in Italy...

I spent an entire day working on etching the window that goes between the mud room and living room.  I decided to hand draw it so that it would look more natural.  Here is a closeup of the window..  I am really pleased with how it turned out, which is usually not the case when I am trying something new...

Below you can see where the window is in relation to the mud room.  I stood in the living room looking towards the kitchen when I took this...

So this week will end with new wood floors...  I can't wait!  It may go into a bit of next week, but once they are in and sanded and finished, I will take pics and post again.  Oh this is a happy week!

~Mary

Some Progress is Being Made...

October 15, 2012

This is the original date I thought we would be done with the kitchen...  oh well, not to be so...  I have been feeling useless as I haven't been able to do much with my back acting up, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and do something to make me feel productive.  (cleaning the dust every ten minutes does NOT make you feel productive)

Some of you may remember that we painted the world map in the living room a few years ago.  Well, it took forever, and when it was done, I swore I would never do it again.  The only problem is that I was never pleased with the final product because I didn't like the colors.  So I told David that since we were doing the remodel, I wanted to paint over it.  He would have none of that because he really likes having a world map in the living room.  Well, I don't like the colors, so I said I was going to repaint it. (What was I thinking???)

Here is what the map used to look like... (very 1970's, don't you think?)

So, the kids and I started to repaint the map.  Meanwhile, David was working on installing the underfloor heating and then insulating it.  It was a bit precarious walking around in there and standing on movable boards in order to paint the map...

David's handiwork...

Sometimes I get a little too focused and just want to finish things so I end up working late into the night...

Below the basic colors have been painted, but there is oh so much more to do to make it look antique...

First, I wanted to make the wall around it look kind of like suede...

Then I finished the antique look over the entire map. Here is the finished product...

While I was busy with the map, David finished the underfloor heating and began spray insulation in the ceiling above the kitchen.

Since David finished that, they can sheet rock the ceiling today, YES!

The drywall has been put up between the kitchen and music room, so you can see how the space lays out a bit better now.  The archway leads into the kitchen.  The orange foam you see behind the ladder I will explain in the next picture...

These are where the pipes from the kids' bathroom come down the wall and into the basement below.  When we changed from the old cast iron pipes to the pvc pipes, the noise of the water coming through the pipes became unbearable.  So we are trying to sound insulate it.  So far, this has not worked very well.  We are going to have to put up both sound barrier sheet rock as well as a vinyl sound barrier and hope that will take care of the problem.  I will have to keep you posted on that one...

Here is the view from the kitchen towards the music room.  The venting you see are the ducts leading up to the kids' bedrooms.  The railing in the foreground will be the raised bar in front of the stove.

So at least this week it looks like things are moving along a bit.  I keep hanging on to the fact that I am going to love this when it is all finished...
~Mary

Two Months In...

October 5, 2012

Things are moving along... It has been much slower than I anticipated, as now it has been two months.  I seem to be dealing with it much better though.  No break downs recently, so I am guessing that it a good sign!

We now have a new archway that connects the kitchen to the living room.  I am so pleased at how open it is now!  I never realized we had that much space to work with until all the walls and the closet were out of the way.  You can see the frig is residing in the living room at the moment.  The wall between the kitchen and music room is framed in, but I am glad it is not finished as it lets light in from the front of the house as we have no electricity for lights in the kitchen.

I spent a few days stripping some of the cabinets from the kitchen that we will be recycling and using in our mud room.  It was HARD work, and I NEVER want to do it again!  There were so many layers of paint that I had to repeat the process four times!  Then I had to sand the rest off.  I still can't get the paint out of the ridges.  Ugh.  I may just have to repaint them which is such a shame as the wood underneath is really nice.

It has been a crazy busy week this week.  David has been installing the underfloor heating.  He finished the kitchen, music room, and dining room as he had access to it from the basement.  However, the space below the living room floor was just too small, so we ended up having to tear up the entire floor.  We have found some interesting things down there.  There are bed frames, monopoly money, colorful spools of thread... you name it, we have found it.  Here is David tearing up the floorboards...

This is what the underfloor heating looks like from the basement under the kitchen...

Like I said, busy week.  Electricians are here... They are incredibly nice... Justin and Sean from AMPED electric, great name for an electrical company...  Justin went and brought all of the workers coffee from the Loose Caboose the other day.  Who ever heard of your electrician buying everyone coffee???  We keep a refrigerator full of water, gatorade, and sodas for all the workers, so I think it was nice for them to get something a little different.  What a nice surprise...   We are looking forward to all of the electrical work being finished, but not these guys being gone... Hopefully it can be done by next week and we can begin drywalling...

We have had an amazing HVAC guy too.  Wade came in and did some really complicated work in the basement so that we could maintain as much headroom as possible and still get the ducting we need.  It looks so much nicer over in the corner than it did in the middle of the basement.  The white tubes hanging down are from David's hydronic underfloor heating... they need to be connected to the Baxi unit.  I think that is happening in two weeks.  Wade, the HVAC guy was amazing in that he got our heater working in time for the temperature drop.  It actually snowed overnight!  It was 23 degrees this morning and it was so nice to have heat...

 More of Wade's fine work...

Last, but certainly not least, I have been experimenting with glass etching.  We are recycling one of our windows that wasn't going to be used, and are putting it in the wall between the mud room and living room to let more light in.  I am thinking of etching a leaf design on it.  I practiced on this window from the basement.  I still can't decide whether or not I want to do it.  I welcome any comments...

Until next time, that's how it is going with the remodel!

~Mary