Fireplace and 'Fridge

The best news ever! We have a refrigerator in our house!!! It's been 7 LONG weeks but it's finally in there. Not in the kitchen, mind you, but in the house. Look at it....Isn't it pretty?



Two of 3 hanging cabinets are now on the wall:



They are in the corner, to the left of the sink and right of the cook top.

On to the fireplace. I must say, this wasn't in the original plan. In fact, I've been troubled about this since it was mentioned as an option. However, Scott really didn't want to give on this project, so, what's done is done and I know it'll be great. Here's the story:

As we attempted to pull up on the tack strips throughout the house we realized the strips by the fire place were actually UNDER the stone. Scott began to dig around and said "This is not the original stone. There is brick under here." We knew we wanted to replace that terrible country mantle some how anyway, so, he decided the big pink stone had to go. I struggled with this because, even though we found brick under the big pink stone, the big pink stone felt original and I didn't feel good about removing it. Like I said, Scott was adamant. This weekend the stone came down.

As it was the date of purchase (doesn't look pink, but it was. Lite pink):


Mid demo session:


And with the stone gone:


I asked if we could just keep the red brick but there are too many problems with it. Sad. He has some samples for me to look at.

Moving on.....we also now have dry wall in both the "his" and "hers" bathrooms. Big improvement!! I think we'll finish up with the kitchen cabinets in the next few days. I might even, gasp!, unpack a few kitchen boxes. I wonder what I'll find.

Moving the Cabinets In

That's right! We started putting the cabinets in their place. Look!









After 2 months without a refrigerator, I think there's a pretty good chance there will be one in the house when I return home from work on Monday.

Let me also take this opportunity to plug our awesome GC, Ryan, and his business: http://www.pageconstructionservices.com/Home.html

He takes pictures of the really bad stuff like this:

and writes captions like this: Previous owners took out a toilet, but just bolted a piece of wood down and hid it beneath carpet!

AND

Cut wire in the wall behind drywall - is it live? Yes!

DRY WALL!!! (&more)

I've been trying to get here for 4 or 5 days. Apologies for the delay. I'm just going to jump head first into the pictures because there is a lot to show. Going in order....

Our custom made bathroom cabinets are in! Scott's friend made them for us from bamboo. Sorry for the crappy photo. It was night time and it's my iphone...blah blah blah. This is just sitting on the floor in the dining room. Can't wait to show it to you hanging on the wall!




Let there be LIGHT! Ryan shouted "progress" as all the recessed lighting was finished and working.


Let's do reminder shots of the kitchen/family room progress -
The day we purchased it:


A few days later:


Several days later:



A few days ago "we" (yes, there is a mouse in my pocket) added insulation:


Yesterday drywall started going up:


Dang they are fast!


Look at that kitchen!


YAYAYAYYAYAY!!!


I've been out of town this weekend while all of this is going on but Ryan and Scott have been documenting. I can't WAIT to get home Monday and see the progress. There's more mudding of the walls to be done and two bathrooms to drywall yet.
From what I know the outside of the house is being touched up with paint this weekend and the framing in my bathroom (previously the 80's bathroom) is being repaired since the ceiling framing was not properly installed (shocker).

Also, something I shared on facebook but want to document here...I put a time capsule together based on the idea from Baz and his awesome blog. The time capsule includes: Section A of the Indianapolis Star on 10/13/2010, 6 pictures (3 of the house, 2 of our wedding and 1 of our dog, Pippet), a letter detailing what we've been doing to the house and talking about our plans for the future there, 2 coins minted 2010, 1 stamp, a receipt from my lunch at Panera Bread on 10/14/2010, a Naptown Roller Girls sticker and a Sun King Brewing patch.



Here's a shot of it in the wall before drywalling (it's in the wall where the bar will be):


OH!! And, good news: The bamboo came in for our flooring!

That's that for today. We'll be rocking and rolling from here on out.

Mostly just little things...

Mostly we've just had little things of great importance being done in order to prep for the drywall to go up next week (YAY!!!) Ryan (our GC) and Scott replaced a rotten support beam while I was at hot yoga class (hehehe). Big job. Much needed. Scott finished ripping out the drywall in the 80's bathroom. Ryan scooted around on his belly in the crawl space dragging cables and fixing duct work. I need to down load the pictures from his camera of our crawl space. The way the duct work looks will astound you. It's something else that just needs to be overhauled but it will have to wait. The plumber came around to move the toilet flange, set pipes in the proper position....and other little things I just don't know about. Oh! Someone removed the toilet flange from the front bathroom (the space we discovered used to be a bathroom - see previous post).

Just a few pictures to share. Scott began ripping out (the last?) the rest of the dry wall in the family room. It's hard to tell from the picture but, we discovered the windows in that room actually go all the way to the floor just as the windows in the big room.

This is what the windows look like on the outside:


This is what Scott found as he ripped away:


So, we can get rid of that weird siding and go BACK to the original design of FULL windows! I couldn't figure out why that damn siding was there. I'll be glad to see that go.

This is our dining room fixture which was added today. It came out of Scott's childhood home. He's carried it around with him all these years. We just need to replace a few bulbs.



I feel as though I need to start thinking paint colors. Send some ideas for the bedrooms!

Bathroom to a "library" to an entertainment closet (& a bit about a window)

Today we went from this bay window:



To putting this window in:

(everyone is so happy!)

Here's the final look:



You may wonder why we went from a bay window to a flat window. The old bay window, though you can't tell from the picture as it's too far away, had SO many problems. There was so much caulk and weather stripping and rotted wood from leaking...though beautiful, bay windows are a bitch. We don't want to deal with it. So, done. Nice, big, regular window.

Now, on to one of the mysteries of the house. This is what we found when we looked at the home:


That's the view IN to the weird entertainment closet. The previous owners put a TV on that shelf and watched it through a hole cut in the wall. See:


Those little squares under the opening would open to unveil the speakers. In the "closet" you'll see shelving units for the DVD player and cable box and for DVDs even. It all seemed strange.

Our realtor, Joe Shoemaker, sent us the pictures from when the house sold back around 2002ish. Those owners used the space as a semi-library, as such:



During our demo, we've discovered this room used to a bathroom. I suppose when the original owners added on the bathroom and walk-in closet, they turned this 1/2 bath on this end of the house into their little library. Here's a group of pictures showing us getting to the bottom of this corner of our "family room". By the way, we are putting a counter and some shelving there and turning it into a bar type area.

Speaker doors and tv shelf gone:


Drywall gone:


Another view through the door. Leaning against the edge is the flooring we took up to get to the sub-floor.


And the nice hole in the floor after we took out the rotted sub-floor. That pipe in the floor is the old toilet's plumbing. It's dark, but if you look close, you can see it.


So, that's where we are with that area of the space. We aren't big drinkers but having that will be nice when we have company. It will give us reason to have people over more often. We haven't totally designed the area but it'll likely be a counter top with a small wine/beer fridge below and some shelves for liquor and glasses above. This room is right off the kitchen so I imagine it will be the most crowded area when we have company. Everyone always migrates to the kitchen area in most every home.

Oh, and, the best news of all....We now have HEAT!