Happy New Year!

There are 3 guys busy with nail guns, drills and saws running around trying to make this place mostly ready for my annual New Years Day Hangover Brunch. We've been moving furniture in so there will be places to sit. The kitchen is functional. However, the boxes will still be packed. As my husband so lovingly said to me last night: Well, honey, 6 months ago we just wanted to be IN this house.
Perspective.

I spent the morning giving the dog a bath (always needed before we have company) and cleaning windows. If you've been reading from the beginning, you know that's a big job:





I'm only 1/2 way done. My arm needed a break.

There's been quite a bit of progress this week. The bedrooms have trim, the dining room has trim, the garbage disposal is in working order (though the sink is backing up - plumber just pulled in! YAY!), bathroom vanities are up, Scott's medicine cabinet is up, outlets are tested and re-worked to be wired properly, some of our rooms and closets have doors once again and we can almost park a car in the garage since we've moved so much in to the house. Enough words....pictures!

My bathroom vanity (sink coming today, I think):


Scott's medicine cabinet and (now) working sink:


New entry way light is up....let me remind you of the old one first:


And, the new one:


And, finally....my bathtub is bubbling and all lit up. As of today I have a bathroom door as well. I'll be in that puppy ASAP!


We are SO excited to invite people in to our home tomorrow. We may not have paint on the walls and our stuff might be in boxes.....but that just gives everyone something to look forward to next year!

Photo updates

I struggle with posting photos as the items are finished and waiting to post all the photos of the room once complete. Not sure which is best....for tonight, an array of photos from the past few days....

Better photo of my tub. I really cannot WAIT to be in this thing. I have bath bombs ready to GO!:


Up close photo of the tile in my bath. Isn't it pretty?


It's a little bit ridiculous how happy I am with this cabinet. I seriously LOVE putting my dishes away. And look, there's room for food processor and kitchenaid mixer on that bottom shelf. Maybe even a slower cooker too! Oh, yeah!:


The original sink added in to Scott's updated bathroom:


The floating, bamboo vanity, hand made by Scott's pal:


It's quite hard to get a photo of a shower door. It's a sliding door but it slides on that poll at the top, between the two wheels.


It's constantly feeling more like a home and less like a construction zone. I tend to hang out in the kitchen since it's the most "done" area. It makes me feel happy.

Bamboo Floor Beginings

Today at 7am the floor crew arrived. By 9am 1/2 of the living room was done. Amazing.

Here's what it looked like when we bought it:


The dining room during the demo:


And, the process today:
After 2 hours:


After about 4 hours:


And at the end of the day, looking from living room into dining room:


and from dining room into living room:


That's Morning Star Stranded Bamboo. It doesn't scratch up like the softer, not stranded bamboo. It's BEAUTIFUL if I do say so my self!

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.

We still have 1 bathroom intact

There wasn't much work done over the weekend. Our GC was busy and we hit an electrics snafu. Old house = old wiring = what does this switch operate? It's a current waiting game. Hope we can get the electrician out here Wednesday. He's a busy dude. Anyway, other than scrubbing the blue sink and pulling nails out of the wood where the ceiling used to be and another IKEA trip, we had a bit of a house break.

Which leads me to tell you about the bathroom we currently have....the only room in the WHOLE house which hasn't been touched (other than cleaned). Now, mind you, it needs some new tile and a new floor but in order for us to have a place to live, we had to leave one bathroom use-able. And, other than the squishy floor near the tub and the horrid vanity, it's darn glorious, with all original fixtures.

Check out this incredible shower head from 1959. I *LOVE* taking a shower because of this shower head:


I don't know if this angle gives you the best view of the shape of the spout, but it's darn cool!


You've seen the shots of our 1/2 moon Crane sinks, well, how about these awesome knobs on top of it? I mean, come on!


Yes, that's a gigantic medicine cabinet! So much storage!


Original lighting fixture:


Exhaust fan:


And, of course, most of you have seen the pictures of our Honeywell Tap-Lites. This one has a cracked plate. I've not been successful in finding additional plates for these and I need several (singles, doubles and triples). If you come across them, let me know!