The Reno Continues...

So who else, besides me, can't believe that it's the end of April?  If you're like me, wrapping your head around the passage of time has become slightly difficult.  Just thinking of what's coming these next months makes me hope and pray we get everything done with this house!

The bathroom renovation, though slow, has been interesting.  Jared has been continually working on the demo of the room, which probably would be done by now, but for the water damage that has plagued this house.

The damage as seen here was mostly to be expected, albeit not pleasant to find.  As Jared continued his demo of the bathroom, he found that the damage seemed tamer than it was.

However, the rest of the walls are perfectly fine, if done slightly strange.  Structurally, the interior walls are fine, and other than some plumbing, are pretty much good to go.

Something I forgot to mention: with the help of one of his work buddies, Jared managed to get the massive, heavy tub out without damaging anything!  This monster was made out of cast iron, so it took a lot of work to get it out.

This is as far as they got the tub, and it will probably stay there until we can find a new home for it.

After the removal of the tub, Jared wasted no time getting rid of the old flooring.  Under two layers of stick-on laminate tiles, the old hardwood floor looked pretty sad.  The future holds a lovely tiled floor for this space.

Even though we exposed the window, Jared determined that the whole wall needed help, so he took out the window in anticipation of refitting it at a later date.  It was a better plan than keeping it in and risking it falling out.  On the plus side, the sweet gum tree in the backyard looks great!

Unfortunately, the more Jared poked around at the rotted wood, the worse it seemed to be.  Also, though he was fairly confident in his ability to do the main repairs he assumed would be necessary for this bathroom, Jared knew he wasn't really sure about repairing this kind of damage.

And though the sub floor seemed to be only significantly rotted at the base of the window, what was found underneath the floor was worse than we had anticipated...

Jared opened up the space and found the support beam on top of the cinderblock foundation rotting away too.  This was a problem we discovered on the front of the house, and luckily, that was one thing that Pete managed to fix correctly.  Though Jared may be skilled enough in carpentry to do the main things, this was something we hoped we wouldn't encounter, as he's not qualified to deal with something of this magnitude.  When it comes to the structural integrity of the house, this project is not something we can half-fix.

He's been working on this wall a few times, but the siding has posed a problem.  Being asbestos siding, Jared hasn't really wanted to mess with it very much.  However, in his efforts to work on the exterior wall, he's had to remove a few pieces of the siding to avoid breaking them, and even then, some of them have been cracked.

Luckily, Jared managed to find a tarp to put up, as the spring weather has a tendency to be wet.  Hopefully we can start making some progress on rebuilding, so we don't have to have an opening much longer.  This week's forecast is looking rather stormy!  For now, Jared's biggest hang up has been figuring out what to do.  Feeling lost, it's been difficult to know how to proceed with the damage seeming a little overwhelming for a one-man job.  But Jared being the resourceful guy that he is talked to the guys at the local hardware store and got some numbers for some people who could help give advice, if nothing else.  The other evening, one of the suggested guys came over and discussed things with Jared, so he seems to be a bit more confident at tackling this big project.

Remember this beauty?  We have made some progress in this department.  Jared made an appointment at a sandblasting company to have the exterior done.  We'll have to paint it ourselves, but that's a simple matter of buying the correct spray paint (which we did today).  We also found a nifty little kit at Lowe's that refinishes minor imperfections and stains on the interior.  With some elbow grease, this thing will be good as new!





The next few months will be crazy, to say the least.  Jared has plenty to do in the bathroom (renovation related...you know what I mean), we're going to work on getting the claw-foot looking nice, and then we've got our summer trip home coming up in June.  After we return from visiting home, Jared suspects he'll have a lot of free time because his workplace has scheduled block leave.  Since we won't be taking block leave, and because need for staff members at the Academy will be low, he's hoping to have plenty of time to work on the house.  After this summer, it's full steam ahead on getting this house finished before we move!  Hopefully no unforeseen hiccups throw off any of our already stretched plans.

The State of Things

Hello, everyone!

When last we met, I was proclaiming my upcoming hiatus from the blogging world, looking forward to the Christmas season with a sense of home.  I am perfectly aware that my hiatus took a turn down Procrastination street and settled on a nice corner cafe drinking coffee and watching the Christmas decor go up, then down, and finally the new year rolled around.  During this time away from my blog, I had hoped to have so many fulfilled projects to post about that I would returning from my stint away triumphant.  However, as things like this tend to go, that is not the case, though I do have some news about the house.

Let's backtrack a little, shall we?  Just days after Thanksgiving, Jared and I had to prepare once more for the floor crew to come back.  After only about a week of having a real living space, we packed up our new couch and put everything away.

It was with a lot of trepidation that I allowed the floor crew back into my house.  The first time around, they didn't sand the floor enough to get down to the bare wood, used the wrong stain color in the front room and dining room, applied the stain so horribly, and then sealed it all with such lack of care that the streakiness made the floor impossible to keep clean.  Round one was a devastating failure, and I was NOT about to go through that again.  However, after much discussion with Glenn, he agreed that the least he could do was supervise the new(ish) crew as well as demand that the crew's supervisor attended every session they did on the floor.  Though it took a bit of complicated communicating, the guys rented the floor sander they should have used the first time, and in no time, the wood was getting stripped down to it's raw state.

This heavy duty sander was NO MATCH for the pathetic belt sander they used the first time.  It was loud, and it shook the whole house, but it got the job done.

Ullr was none too pleased about being cooped up in the bedroom again (I wasn't thrilled either) but he made the best of it!

With the sanding done, I got more and more nervous about them staining and sealing the floors.  Taking comfort in the knowledge that Glenn and the crew's supervisor would be there, I tried to relax as they proceeded.

Luckily, the staining went without a hitch.  They used the right color, applied it the right way, and then we just had to wait for it to dry.









Of course it just wouldn't be right if they didn't sort of get it wrong again.  The crew came back and sealed the floor, but even though they used the correct technique, something just didn't seem right about the texture.  We had Glenn look at it, and we all came to the conclusion that they just needed another layer of sealant, but that also involved a light sanding.  Through all the hiccups and problems, we FINALLY had proper floors literally one week before Christmas.

Jared and I enjoyed our Christmas; being able to put up our decorations was a great way to finally feel like the house was ours.  Even though we had lots of plans to get stuff done over the break, very little, if none of it happened.  I, for one, was just content to lounge on a comfy surface for once, and not having a couch for five months will do things to you.  Mostly I just felt that things were finally going back to normal, so I was NOT about to rock the boat.

So here we are.  It's the end of January and Jared and I have plateaued.  Partially due to finances, and partially due to lack of motivation, we haven't done much since putting our Christmas decor away.

Jared's next big project will be this horrid bathroom, but until the money genie grants us our wish, we'll just have to deal with it like this.  Jared is eternally confident in his ability to tear it down, but putting it back together could be a challenge, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it goes well.

The spare room has become somewhat of a catch-all, that desperately needs to be organized.

But at the heart of this giant project is still my home.  It might be missing some paint, trim, and style in a few rooms, but when I walk around these rooms, I know it's mine.









Perhaps this new post will spur us on to make progress with our house.  This weekend, however, Jared and I are going down to Jekyll Island to celebrate our third year anniversary!  After that, though, it's high time for me to roll up my sleeves and get some stuff done around this house.

Sarah

The Clock is Ticking!

We are down to the last little wire before my mother-in-law comes to visit.  And yet, we are still not done with nearly as much as we had hoped!  Of course, it would just be too easy if, for once, things went smoothly.  After the Rabbits finished and cleared out, the state of the floors was something that Jared and I were quite unhappy with.  Unfortunately for Glenn, since his carpenters didn't take care of things, it came back to bite him.  Because of the damage to the floors, Glenn decided to pay for them to be refinished in the rooms that had the most damage.  So his floor crew came in last week to do just that.  However, even they couldn't get it right!

The main issue with the floor crew was that they spoke very, very little English.  They asked me what color I wanted the floor to be, and I told them the color that was already there.  I wasn't really interested in going in a different direction with the floor color.  What was there was fine.  Clearly, they did not know how to pick a stain color, because dark mahogany was NOT what was there originally.  After they stained the front two rooms, Jared and I tried to tell them that the color was wrong, and we ended up having to go pick up a half pint of the right color to show them what it should have been.

The picture quality isn't the best, but in person, the difference is astounding.  The crew purchased the right stain color a little too late, and finished the family room staining around Thursday afternoon. However, in the midst of it all, the crew didn't understand that they needed to re do the front rooms.  It might sound ridiculous, but I don't see a point in "suffering" through badly stained floors when the whole point of the refinishing was to make them look better than before.  Also, I'm a believer in voicing an opinion when something isn't right.  Just because it would create more work for the crew to re do the front rooms doesn't mean that they shouldn't have to do it.  They messed up, they should fix it.  The problem came Friday, when instead of redoing the front rooms, they "sealed" over everything.  The crew, without a care in the world, "sealed" the floors in less than an hour and then left me stuck in the bedroom for five hours.  I say "sealed" because I'm fairly certain that based on the texture of the wood as it currently is is not really proper.  So Jared and I are NOT happy with the results.  The floors look streaky and the finish is rough.  Even though they were scratched and dirty before, at least the floors weren't water soluble.  After expressing the problem, yet again, to Glenn, he has determined that he will have them fixed...after Thanksgiving.

We had discussed getting the floors done properly this week, but the time frame kept getting smaller and smaller, so after the holiday, they'll be redone.

Now, on to things that are within my control...

With the Rabbits out, Jared and I are on our own with the rest of the projects around the house.  The family room needed a lot of love before it started to look decent, but Jared spent a few evenings painting the new ceiling, and now it looks fab.

This last Saturday, Jared had Jack come over to fix a few things.  Unfortunately, the main bathroom had an extremely leaky tub faucet, and without any actual water shut off valves, they had to hack into the wall to cap off the lines.  I'm not too bent out of shape about it, considering we have a working shower in the other bathroom.  It just means that shower schedules while the family is here will be a little interesting.  The rest of the bathroom works fine, although it's a little ugly, so for now, we're just going to pull the shower curtain over it.

Also on Jack's to-do list was covering the holes in the living room.  The hole in the ceiling is no more!

Other than a few more coats of joint compound and tape, this room is pretty much paint ready.  I will not miss the ugly mustard yellow paint...

My weekend was spent making the family room pretty.  As we move through the house with our renovations, I'm never sad to see the paint color go.

The new light yellow is so refreshing after the baby poop brown that used to occupy every single wall in this house.

The color is called "Barcelona White."  We had to pick a color that would coordinate with the couch we have picked out for this room, and that proved to be tricky.  We haven't purchased the couch yet, simply because we didn't have anywhere to put it before now, but that is on the list of things to do for this week.

The far wall we painted in "Gravity" as an accent wall to bring out some different tones in the couch.  The picture isn't the best, but it does look super fab!

And Jared stretched his electrician's wings and installed our new ceiling fan all by himself.  Although, he managed to get the entire thing assembled and ready to go without connecting the wires in the very top...haha.

This room is not without a future...The bathtub on the other side of this wall seems to have some serious issues, but we'll have to address them at a later date.  The main thing is, it's not leaking now, so it should be fine for the time being.  However, the old sheetrock and patch has left this wall looking like a wrinkled old man, even though you can't see it in this picture.  We'll have to tackle that eventually.






And lastly, I was informed yesterday that Tobe, Jared's mom, is coming in on Friday, not Saturday as was originally planned.  As happy as I am to have family visit, I'm seriously about to go whirlwind crazy on this house to get it sort of ready.  We still don't have the rest of our counters in the kitchen, which could prove interesting when I'm cooking.  The living room needs to be painted, but I have to wait on the joints to be done and feathered out.  The master bath needs to be painted too.  All I need to do there is pick out a color, and that is proving to be difficult!  We've got to rearrange the house, too.  The cat room is getting turned in to our guest room, and Ullr's old room is being turned into the cat room.  Ullr doesn't really need a room anymore, as he's got the yard.  When this next week is over, I'm going to take a long nap and just chill for awhile.  Until then, I've got PLENTY of stuff to do!