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