Lately...

Lately things with the house have been moving a little slower than both Jared and I would like.  It's unfortunate that some people lack a decent work ethic when their work, or lack thereof, is keeping us from having a finished home.  In the last few weeks, very little has been done.  Though Pete is still on the job, he shows up quite late and spends half his time scraping paint off the trim work and a good majority of the rest of his time smoking.  Jared and I have had a lot of conversations with our general contractor about it, and after much poking and prodding, the decision was made to bring in an auxiliary crew.

Despite Pete's dismal attitude about not finishing everything himself, I'm glad that we've arranged this new crew coming in.  It is difficult to know how to treat the guy working on my house when he has been here for so long we feel like we know him well.  Yet even if we were the best of friends, his work ethic would cause problems, and Jared and I have struggled to know how to deal with the situation.  In the end, we came to the conclusion that we have a voice, and we have a right to have certain expectations met when the house we are living in is not being completed in a timely manner.

Well, I've said my piece.  Hopefully the new crew will help speed things along; I'd hate to have an unfinished house when Thanksgiving rolls around.  At this point, though, it wouldn't completely surprise me!

Here's some pictures of what's been done since I last posted.

The iron posts on our front stoop have not been taken care of in who knows how long.  When we had the home inspection, it was recommended that we refinish them to prevent further deterioration of the metal.  I decided to try and tackle that on my own...  Oops!

Green...It's not supposed to be green.

Even more green!  I did some research online about how to refinish this kind of metal.  The directions were fairly straight forward, and I thought I could handle the task.  I'm not really sure now what I was thinking.

In refinishing old metal railings, you need some kind of abrasive.  Jared got me this heavy duty metal brush to use.  I went to work by trying to scrape the surface down to the bare metal.  This turned out to be extremely difficult, tedious, and time consuming work.  Though possible, it took a very long time to make it down to the bare metal.

The shiny bit under the rust color is just about what the rest of it should look like after finishing.  This is just about as far as I got during one afternoon.  I think in future I might see if I can find a power sander to use.  Once down to bare metal, you can paint it to prevent rusting.  Since there's no telling how old these railings are, it's no surprise they're not in the best shape.

It's not the best picture, but the rust spots on this section are so bad there would be no point in taking a wire brush to it as the marks go quite far into the surface.  So until I get a more appropriate tool to use, this project is going to get put on the back burner.

Moving inside, my laundry room is very close to being functional.  The water is plumbed and live, but there's no power in the receptacles yet.

There's also still a hole in the floor.  That's been there since Jared pulled out the old furnace before we even moved in.  It is suspected that this could be where the kitten came in from, although when the door has been left open, they've tried to come in that way.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, Jared and I found a kitten meowing underneath my dresser in our bedroom at three in the morning.  I can honestly say that was one of the strangest happenings of my life.

After all the patching was done Jared took it upon himself to start sanding the room so we could paint.

That's a lot of sanding!  He got it done, though, and then moved on to paint the ceiling.  At this point, I had to keep reminding myself of what it looked like before when it was just a giant hole in my house.  It's amazing the difference some paint can make.

After vacuuming a lot of dust, we also discovered that Ullr does NOT like the vacuum.

"Am I safe over here?"  Probably not.

It might be subtle, but a painted ceiling is a noticeable difference to my eyes in this room.  It starting to feel like we're getting close to being finished.

Why waste any time?  The next day we started on the walls.  I've been fighting a cold all week and tried to stay put yesterday, but I got bored after awhile, so I decided to help paint.

It didn't take long with both Jared and I working.  We got the first coat on yesterday.  It might seem like a dark color, but with the light cabinets, floor, and soon-to-be arriving countertops, we needed something to bring some balance.

I also think it goes beautifully with the cabinets.

Once we get the countertops in, we'll be so very close to having a real kitchen.  We could put the appliances in, but we don't have a water heater yet, so the dishwasher would still be unusable.

We are making our way to a finished kitchen.  Sorry for the finger in the corner.







Hopefully with the new crew coming in tomorrow, we can push through the last bit.

Things that still need to be done:

• The fence needs to be finished
• The laundry room needs to be wired with electricity and given a proper floor
• Steps from the new back door need to be installed
• The main entry door next to the kitchen door needs to get changed to a window
• Master bath hasn't even been started yet
• New water heater and laundry facilities need to be installed
• Minor cosmetic fixes in bedrooms to be fixed.

Clearly there's still plenty of things to be done, the biggest one being the master bathroom.  With only one person working, and a rather unmotivated one at that, this could take forever.  However, I'm maintaining my sanity while waiting by hoping that the new crew will be speedy and neat.  Now I just need to get over this nasty cold so I can keep working on things I DO have control over.