Merry Christmas Everyone!

Merry Christmas! It was a very nice day today, I was running errands in a T-shirt. Pretty good for December 24. I got our first Christmas decoration today from Hobby Lobby for under $4, and it satisfied my need to decorate something. I also set out a red candle I got as a gift from work and felt rather Christmas-y.

Christmas Chloe.

The bathroom has been tiled! Everything but the shower door should be finished by Tuesday. So they say.

This was an interesting little surprise the other night. We set out to clean the kitchen, and I was starting to scrub on the backsplash of the oven under running hot water (it was really quite dirty) and noticed that white flecks were starting to flake off. I thought, great, crappy quality oven. Took a closer look, and it looked like paint. Indeed it was. With more investigation, we found they had spray painted the entire top surface of the oven. Why? We're not really quite sure. The only explanation is that they spray painted the grates because they were gross looking, but then they didn't match the surface, so they just spray painted the whole thing. (Is this really something you expect to do??) Caleb scraping off spray paint:

I didn't take a picture of the 'after', but it really looks a lot better and its really a nice oven.

Getting ready to knock down this wall between the kitchen pantry and the bedroom closet. We are enlarging the bedroom closet and bringing the wall in towards the kitchen. We aren't going to use it as a pantry but a laundry "room". I don't really think it can be called a room, but you get the point.

With the wall knocked down and the hookups for the washer/dryer in place. Now about that washer and dryer...

Merry Christmas!!

All moved in!

Since the last post, we have officially moved in! My parents came last weekend and helped us pack, move and clean the rental house. They were so much help and we needed and appreciated it so much! We were quite busy, so didn't actually get any pictures of their visit, but I do have some of the aftermath.

Now, all of our boxes and most of our furniture is neatly stacked and piled in the dormer of the upstairs. Now, when the floor contractor comes to refinish the floors, the house is ready for him.

There's even a little space to relax since no living room furniture remains downstairs.

The mornings are a little rough when we have to come upstairs to get our clothes, the upstairs isn't exactly heated at this point in the day.

I really just wanted to show this picture because I am only ever here to take pictures of the house when it's dark out.

The bathroom contractor cut the opening for the sink the other day:

He is also putting the dry wall over the upstairs vent for us.

The electrician who did the wiring in the living room came back and we now have a working light in the living room, so Caleb was able to wire up the new light fixture.

Tile for the bathroom. The other night, Caleb and two of his friends came over after rock climbing while I was already sleeping. They moved all of our heavy furniture upstairs (thank you so much!) while I slept through the whole process. It was great. However, the next morning, when Caleb had to be at work at 7:00 a.m., he remembered the tile for the bathroom (bought the previous day) was still in the trunk of our car. He, as quickly as possible, moved all the tile inside (while I was still sleeping, ha ha) before he had to leave for work. This is only about half the amount he moved in. It got his blood moving.

The kitchen houses the rest of our furniture.

Don't you want to come cook in our kitchen???

Here is the most visible progress. The last pictures were of a completely gutted bathroom. They have put up new drywall, installed the new toilet and started work on the shower.

So yes, we are living without a shower. However, our friend Tessa lives a block away and is kindly sharing her shower with us. The shower is ceramic tile made to look like stone, a last minute find that we had been waiting for; our luck struck just in the nick of time.

The doorway that once led to the stairs in the basement is transforming into a linen closet.

The bathroom's slow progress was first due to waiting on the correct shower pan. Now, we are waiting on custom glass doors for the shower. We're not sure how long this could take (sigh)...up to 10 days??? So we're hoping the floor contractor can get in and do his thing while we're waiting, meaning we could then move all our stuff BACK downstairs, and resume living life semi-normally...without a shower.

The good news of the (yester)day, our bathroom contractor referred us to a electrician/plumber who gave us a nice little quote on fixing all electric and plumbing. We believe he'll be starting on Monday. This will be a great relief. The water from our kitchen sink will then come at a faster pace than a trickle and I might not even be scared to ingest it! We probably won't see much progress before Christmas, so Merry Christmas everyone!

You win some, you lose some.

We have had lots of progress lately, as we should since move in date is SUNDAY!

We were so excited to put up ceiling lights in the living room. While most of the wiring is old knob and tube, the wiring in the living room is new. So here is Caleb installing the new light. The excitement is still growing.

And now a break for a picture of Chloe. I know EVERYBODY gets as excited about these as I do. Isn't she cuuuuuuute?!

Anyways, as the story goes, the electrical is a little screwy. We had a grand 'turning on of the lights' flip of the switch, the light flashed and went out. We tried a working 'fixture' (a.k.a. bare bulb) from elsewhere in the house in the living room, and it did not work either. Disappointment ensued.

Not sure if I had taken pictures of the upstairs with all the lovely linoleum (for point of reference, this is the dormer of the house):

The linoleum came up unbelievably easy upstairs. It was a breeze, thank goodness. We were pleasantly surprised. The wood makes the whole upstairs look bigger. Oh also, forgot to include this earlier, we are using a shop light upstairs because I tried to screw in a lightbulb in the other light fixture upstairs and I blew the main light out and now none of the outlets work...and no, flipping the breaker does not make them magically come on.

The floor guy started (and finished) the patching project. It looks very nice. Here, the floors have not all been sanded, only parts, so that's the reason for the various wood colors. The floor guy cannot get in to finish the floors until the bathroom is done, just because of damaging foot traffic on the floor. The floors will have to be finished while we are living there. We are going to attempt to cram everything either in the kitchen or upstairs...hello microwave meals....while the floors are being finished. Caleb is excited, I'm tolerant.

More pink surprise in the bathroom after we took down the mirror!

Cuuuute. Our first picture in the new house.

This was tonight. The bathroom guy gutted the room today and it's creepier than ever, but showing a LOT of potential. Good things.

We have decided, at the suggestion of the bathroom guy to tear out the door to the basement, wall it in and make it a linen closet. There is a crawl space on the side of the house, so we will still have access to the basement. Caleb called to ask me if this was ok. Of course! No uninvited guests sneaking in through the crawl space up the stairs into the bathroom. So, we will have a linen closet, and no surprise bathroom attacks.

These are the stairs leading to the basement.

One Project Finished! Pretty much, almost, well, kinda, maybe...will be!

The columns have been put in! I was starting to believe the 2x4's would remain. We are very pleased with the results. We plan to stain them the same color as the floor as soon as we figure out what color that will be!

"There will be a light switch here!", said Bugs Bunny.

Yay for HVAC! Though not completely set-up at the time of this picture, we were so happy to see progress. The heat is running full blast day and night for about a week in order to dry out the floors enough to refinish them. It's been pretty cold and damp in the house. According to this picture, must have been quite the 'balmy' evening!

Caleb is downstairs and Chloe investigates.

That'll leave a mark...

We're hopeful the flooring guy can patch this...nervous laughter....

Caleb found a guy to work on our wood floors, to both of our great relief. He is starting on Friday to patch in the floors. We were going to attempt doing this all ourselves, and it certainly would have looked like we were doing it ourselves. We were both fine with the idea, but once we started working on it, we saw the reality of our actual time to devote to the floors vs. time it would take to complete a project of this size. It didn't add up. So, for a few more pretty pennies, we will hand the torch to Dan the Man to do our floors. He has some great ideas to make the patches not only look nice, but intentional as well. Another thing we would not have done had we attempted the project ourselves was turn the heat on to dry out the wood. We probably would have started before the house even had heating. I'm not sure what the consequences would have been to this, but am glad somebody else knows! For the next couple of days, we'll be taking it 'easy'. We still need to refinish the bathroom vanity and pick up hardware, faucets, etc., and work on the upstairs a bit more so that we can at least use it for storage for a while. :) Sure beats scraping floors in a 45 degree house!