Slow progress lately

The last few days have been a little slow. I was so hopeful for a four day weekend to really churn out some progress. Not so. The type of wood flooring we need no longer comes in 2 1/2 inch wide planks. I was told by a representative at the flooring company we went to that we would either have to have it custom made (eek!) or have someone cut the wood down and re-create the groove. Oh my. Things are becoming more complicated. :) That said, I did not pick up a bundle of wood as I thought I was going to the other day.

We have much of the tar up at this point and are still planning our mode of attack for refinishing the floor. More updates on that soon.

Move in date is getting closer, much to our glee and dismay...we're crossing our fingers for everything to be finished. HVAC will be done on Tuesday. It was originally going to be done on Tuesday or Wednesday of last week, but due to delays (I'm not concerned with the details...just delays), could not be finished. It has gotten quite chilly the past few nights we have been working over there.

Today, I am off to conquer the bathroom vanity situation. We have already bought a can of paint, but now I'm second-guessing my choice after reading confusing, conflicting forum after forum. I'm headed to Sherwin Williams to ask some pertinent questions. Wish me luck!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Before you start feeling sorry for us, just remember, we had many options to go other places for Thanksgiving dinner, but we decided to work on the house since it was Caleb and I's only day off together this weekend. And we accomplished a lot. Most of the afternoon was spent getting the floors ready for stripping. We started the day with a trip to Kroger to pick up our delightful BBQ chicken Thanksgiving meal. Notice the elaborate table setting.

Cheers!

Our dumpster that we thought would be too big but is actually almost full.

Chloe stand!

Waiting for Caleb to get in from outside.

Caleb and his stripper gloves.

Since I couldn't do much of anything while he was working with the floors, I tackled the stairs and pulled all the staples.

While stripping the floor didn't seem to affect the color very much, we did get a lot more of the tar off the floors. Before:

After:

I'm off to find a case of wood to patch in the floors today!

We hate tar paper

This is a rare sight of Chloe. Usually, she's quite busy running around, sniffing things, eating things she shouldn't, etc. But sometimes she wears herself out doing that and sleeps awhile.

This is the dresser we are using for our bathroom vanity. I REEEEALLY wanted it, and Caleb let me have it. We got it off of Craigslist.

Another ingenious idea: Paint a beautiful brown border around the bedroom and it will save you the cost of a rug?

This is the hallway. Not very sure what we're going to do about this yet....

We think it's sub-floorig underneath this layer of what was left of the linoleum after we pulled it up.

This was the easy part: the edges of the rooms came up like a dream.

This middle of the floors...not so much. We didn't take many pictures of this, because we were quite mad.

Where the walls were:

I like this picture because it makes our ceilings look vaulted.

Caleb cut off the edges of the wood to make room for the wood we are patching in.

Ouch.

The middle sections where the linoleum wouldn't come up very easy left large spaces of tar still stuck to the floor. Which figures, as it has probably been there for 50 years. We tried many methods to get it up. A couple being boiling water poured directly on, poured on towels over the tar and the method we finally ended up with. We pointed our shop lights directly at the tar (but not too long otherwise it would get sticky and gross), and then it seemed to come up a little easier. I worked on the tar for probably an hour and a half until all my man-strength gave out. Then Caleb took over and probably worked on it for another 4 1/2 hours until we FINALLY got the big chunks up. Little pieces still remain....ugh!

Caleb making good use of his new Dremel.

This is a lovely new sight in our living room (?). Not sure what to call this room yet. It was the living room with the original floor plan. We had to have another vent put in to the upstairs to make heating/cooling the upstairs even worth it. This was the best place to run the vent. We'll drywall around it, or maybe just put Christmas lights around it.

Tar paper..grrrrr.

The shop light trick:

Upstairs Pictures

Here are the upstairs pictures:

The part on the right is the dormer of the house:

The dormer:

Ingenious idea: paint flower stems on all the cracks of the mirror :)

I still need to get a picture of the entire floor with its wealth of linoleum patterns, but here's a start:

End of An Era

Ok, so this post goes back in time a little, but we wanted to show the popcorn ceiling removal because it was a glorious event.

Lots of progress

We finally have our computer back so that we can show you the progress on the house. It's a shame because we've gotten a lot done, so instead of anticipation, I'll just you hit you all with it in one shot. Unfortunately, I can't get to the popcorn ceiling removal photos right now, so I'll post those later. That was a monumental day. Anyways, here goes...

The first crack at the wall....ah dry wall, if only the rest of the wall were the same.

I just like these because Chloe's shadow looks like a halloween dog.

And there ends the easy part...

We's gettin' paid, tho. Cold, hard cash found behind the baseboards, sealed in by paint.

Our good friend David came over to help bash in walls.

Rubble, Rubble

The first look at the chimney. We weren't disappointed!

This actually looks like what some of the other houses on the market looked like when we saw them before buying this one.

That chunk missing from the teal plaster was my desperate attempt at seeing if the opening to the fireplace still existed. However, the plaster was relentless, and I gave up.

A new day, restored energy:

Many many trash can loads of plaster went out to the dumpster. So heavy!

Ta da!!!! Found the opening! I was beyond excited.

Our action shot...probably cooler in real life.

From the looks of these pictures, it appears I don't do much. But I do. I promise. To prove it...me in all my glory:

We found a wood carrier in our dumpster that a nice neighbor must have placed there for us. We use it as a shovel to pick up the plaster chunks.

Caleb works on the final section of wall before the pros take over.

The professionals came and took down all the support beams and put in a beam on the ceiling and 4 supports.

Under the nice carpet...is nice linoleum! Tonight we are working on getting the rest of the carpet out of the house (goodbye gross smelling house!) and picking away at the linoleum. It's old, so it breaks into little pieces, so it may take a while.