Carpet Installed and Open House Plans

This week, my sister and I made our way over to Cokeville on Wednesday and Thursday to see what we could accomplish. We managed to touch-up paint and hang a couple of bathroom mirrors, which was nice and easy...

And we managed to clean the kitchen and refrigerator and install the under-cabinet lights, which we love, love, love....

I'll be honest, installing the under-cabinet lighting kind of freaked me out. It involved cutting permanent holes into gorgeous, brand new cabinets. After reading the instructions and thinking about how to get it done, what I really wanted to do was just forget the whole idea and letting the homeowners tackle this one, if they even wanted to!? But I new that whoever got this house would  probably never get around to it, and we had had our electrician run a special switch for our lighting outlet, so I knew deep down that we really should just do it and get it done. So after enquiring with my bff google and watching a few tutorials on the HGTV website, I gathered my courage, and went for it. And I am so glad I did. It turned out great and wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be. Whoever gets this house is going to love them...I sure would!

And while we slaved away in the kitchen on Thursday morning, carpet was being installed. Happy day! And it looks amazing. It is amazing how carpet can completely transform a place. It finally looks like a home someone could actually live in.


Our open house is scheduled for next weekend - Friday, January 6, & Saturday, January 7. It's scheduled to be advertised in all the local/surrounding area papers and everything, so it's official...come hell or highwater!? If you are in a 2-3 hour radius from Cokeville (and anyone in Northern Utah/Western Wyoming/Southern Idaho is) and have been at all curious, you are not going to want to miss this. The weather should be great for a drive next weekend, and the local restaurant, Blondies, serves the best mushroom-swiss burger I've ever had. So go ahead and plan on it...

Kitchen Cabinets and Odds and Ends

I am five days past my usual update post, but it's the Christmas season, and things have been busy, and I'd rather sip hot chocolate and eat treats from the neighbors than deal with pictures and blogging. But it's a slow night in the McComber household, so here am I am with photos to prove that we actually did some work last weekend, and that we really are getting close to being done...

I spent Friday and Saturday in Cokeville and we accomplished the following:

Installed the air registers, installed closet rods, rehung the doors (since we had to take them off for painting), installed doorknobs on all the doors, installed the stair banister, installed bathroom hardware (tp holders, towel rods, towel rings), washed windows, and tried to clean up a bit. And while we did that our electrician got to work installing all the light fixtures. And our plumber was suppose to come sometime last week or this week and install toilets and sinks. Electricity and running water...happy day!

And below is a sneak peak of the new kitchen cabinets. I really like them and I really like the layout. I thought the peninsula might be too much and take up too much room, but I think it's the perfect size. We are missing the cabinet that goes above the fridge, as it was too wide and we had to return it and pick up a smaller one in Logan. And the toe-kick area needs some finishing work. But we have our handy man, Bill, working on all those items, so they'll be done soon, if they aren't already.

Our carpet is scheduled to be installed next week, on December 28 and 29, and we can't wait. And we have a tentative date for our open house, January 6 and 7 (barring any major disasters or snowstorms). Mark your calendars! So between now and then, our finish list looks like this:

• Touch-up painting
• Pick-up and install the stove and dishwasher (ordered from Lowes)
• Pick-up and install the back door (special ordered from HD)
• Hang bathroom mirrors
• Install door stops
• Clean, Clean, Clean!

This list looks like heaven...short and sweet and completely doable. We really are SO close to being finished!

Paint!

This last week my mom worked her tail off priming everything and painting the ceilings, trim, and bedrooms white. She was planning on finishing up with the paint sprayer on Friday, and we would be painting the living areas (living room, dining rooms, kitchen, bathrooms, and upstairs hallway) our chosen wall color with rollers and brushes. I left for Cokeville early Saturday morning, and with a view like this greeting me at the top of Logan Canyon, I was sure that it was going to be a great day of finishing up ALL the painting!

Well, I arrived in Cokeville at 9am and was quickly informed that we were out of caulk, and we were out of white paint...and the five bedrooms definitely needed a second coat of paint sprayed on. And there were lots of places that still needed caulked, or a second application of caulk. Since I had JUST come from Logan, where I could easily have stopped to pick by BOTH materials before coming over that morning, I was a little infuriated that I hadn't been called to pick those things up. I hate wasting time, and coming all that way without those much needed materials drove me a little bit crazy!? Especially since without those materials, we couldn't finish the painting portion of this project, which was my goal for the day. Maddening!

Then, as we were taping off all the trim in order to apply our creme-colored paint, I finally realized that our electrician had installed all the outlets and light switches, even though we hadn't painted yet!? My mom had told me the week before that our electrician wanted to install the outlets and light switches before we were done painting. I was skeptical and asked one of the contractors in our neighborhood about it, who said that was a TERRIBLE idea, and "don't let him do that!" So, with his advice we agreed that the electrician shouldn't install those items until we were done painting. Especially since we were painting with a paint sprayer, and overspray would get ALL over the brand new fixtures, not matter how good we tried to cover them. Well, my mom never called the eletrician to tell him our wishes, so, of course he installed them all when he was here last Sunday. I was livid!

One, my mom should have communicated with the electrician; and two, that electrician was just being lazy and trying to take shortcuts and get his job done faster. Not that he's EVER been in a hurry!? When I talked to our contractor neighbor, he looked at me crazy when I even mentioned the electrician installing the outlets first  It's just not how it's done. And for good reason. Just as I predicted, we had overspray ALL over the new outlets and light fixtures, even though my mom did her best to cover them.  Now we have to either replace them, or we have to waste our time scrubbing paint off. SO maddening!

It's hard to see the white-on-white paint job, but you get the idea with the white on black. The light switch on the bottom right missed getting taped altogether. It's completely covered and will definitely need replaced...

The good news? Our handyman, Bill, installed our front door and put our stair railing together, and both look amazing! Oh, how I love him!

So, we resolved that my mom would just have to make a trip to Logan and finish the painting and caulking next week, without my help. We were able to finish the wall color, except for touch-ups, which we can do next week/weekend. I arrived at 9am, and was on the road by 6:15pm. I would have loved to stay a few hours longer and make my Saturday really worth it, but what can ya do!? I hate being 2 hours away from Lowes! No matter how prepared you think you are, and how much extra you think you're getting, it's never enough!?

So, here are some pictures of the finished painting product. We are really loving how it is coming together. And we really love that it's just coming together, period! We really are SO close to being done!

Here are some shots of the rooms without the lovely blue tape outline. The lighting is a little weird, but you get the idea...

And there you have it. This next week our handyman, Bill, will be installing our kitchen cabinets and countertops, and vanities, and maybe we'll have a backdoor in by then too, if we're lucky, which is a whole other story I almost forgot about...

When Bill installed the front door earlier this week, he was going to install the back door as well, but our special ordered back door was too tall to fit in the space!? I had special ordered it to be shorter than a normal door, but it arrived 1 inch higher than what I had specified, and was the height of a normal-sized door. And since the backdoor goes right up to ceiling of that back porch area, that extra inch was a huge problem, which was why we special ordered it in the first place. So, I had to spend an afternoon on the phone with Home Depot, figuring out what happened and ordering a new door. This new door should definitely be shorter, as the cost was considerably more...$330 for a shortened door vs. $230 for the stock door we were apparently given. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I am not at all impressed by Home Depot. The good news is that since the door we "special ordered" wasn't really special ordered, we can return it and get our money back.

Have I mentioned that I can't wait to be done with this house? Because I can't.

Trim, Floors, and Taping

This was an awesome weekend. The work was fun, the company was great, and we were SO productive. I feel like we might get done with this place eventually after all!?

We picked up some more trim during the week, so first things first, we finished trimming out the windows...

Then we finished trimming out the closet doors (on both sides, mind you), and installed closet shelving in all of the bedroom closets, as well as pantry shelves in the kitchen pantry downstairs.

We picked up more flooring during the week, so we finished laying flooring in the back porch laundry room and mud room/sun room. We also installed the floor-edging pieces (below/top picture)...which ended up being no small feat!? It's funny how the things you think will be easy end up being hard and time consuming, such as those stupid little floor-edging pieces (we had 7 edges to figure out and install!?)...

 And then the things you think will be hard, end up being easy, such as taping and plastic-ing all the windows and tubs, which was actually remarkably easy... 

It was a long, hard weekend of working, but it felt good when we were done. We worked on Saturday from 7:30am to 9:50pm, with only one short break that included a PB&J at about 4pm. We were both completely beat by the time we finally stopped, and I know I am still recovering!? But we got SO much done, so it was totally worth the very long day of manual labor.

This week my mom is planning on finishing up all the caulking. She practically caulked the entire house single-handedly this last week, so I'm sure she'll have no trouble finishing up the trim we added this weekend. Then, if we can get our handy-man, Bill, to come over to install the front and back exterior doors and the stair banister upstairs, our next task will be painting! All the floors and windows are taped, and we're ready to go with our fancy paint sprayer and buckets upon buckets of paint. Next weekend, hopefully we'll have a painted house for your viewing pleasure. We're getting there...

Floors, Doors, and Trim

We had so much to do this weekend! We were planning on finishing flooring (easy!), hanging doors (which I had never done before and was kind of freaked out about) and putting up trim (which I have very little experience in and was kind of freaked out about). Needless to say, I was extremely anxious about how everything would turn out, and I was extremely anxious to get it all over with! It was a long week...

I arrived in Cokeville on Wednesday afternoon. We spend that afternoon and evening laying the flooring in the kitchen and dining areas. It was easy enough, but we ended up not having enough flooring left to even start the laundry room or mud room in the back porch area, so those had to be left undone, which kind of sucked. We were seven boxes short!? The good news is, that even though we had originally special ordered our laminate flooring (which took weeks to come in), Lowe's actually had some in stock when we called and enquired about ordering more...hallelujah!  So, we will be able to finish the flooring completely this next weekend...phew!!

On Thursday, Thanksgiving day, we hung doors, from 9am to 4:45pm. Lucky for us, my cousin Tami's handy husband, Casey, was kind enough to spend his entire Thanksgiving afternoon helping us. My mom and I would hang the door with the help of the quick door hanger hardware, and then Casey would come after us to shim and screw the door into the jam. He was a lifesaver and I will love him forever for helping us out as much as he did! :)

Nearly every door in that house had to be cut down to size, which meant we had to unhinge the door, cut down the jam, cut off the door, separate the cut-off  paneling from the bottom piece of the door, and then glue the bottom piece of the door back inside the shortened door, clamp it in place, wait for it to dry, then re-hinge it and hang it in the jam. It was quite the process?! And while not too terribly difficult, it was a bit tedious and time consuming. But the doors are hung, and they open and close like a dream, and they look amazing!! I love them!

Since we felt so accomplished with hanging 10 doors on Thanksgiving day, we took Thanksgiving evening off. We closed up shop at 4:45pm, just in time to make ourselves presentable for dinner at the Teichert's at 5:15pm. Thanksgiving dinner was amazing, and even though I wasn't spending it with my husband or little boy (they stayed back in Logan since I would be working non-stop anyway), I was still with family and it still felt like home. 

On Friday we started on the trim downstairs. We were able to trim out everything except one window (which was covered in peices of sheetrock and boards that needed to be hauled away), and the back porch laundry room and mud room (since we hadn't layed flooring back there, we couldn't put in the floor board trim). We also sent my dad to Montpelier (the nearest civilization 30 miles away) not once, but TWICE...once for some finish nails, and again for a new saw blade. He was not very impressed with our lack of foresight, but he helped us out nonetheless. When cutting miter cuts, the saw was SO hard to use. Once we got the new blade it cut our miters like butter! There is nothing like a new, sharp blade...it truly makes all the difference!

On Saturday we started in on trimming out the upstairs and worked a 12 hour day, from 7am to 7pm. We got every entry doorway trimmed out, and nearly all the floor boards down, but we ended up running out of 3.5 inch boards, which meant none of our eight windows could be finished, nor could three of our closet doorways. Then we ran out of finishing nails (again!?), and then we ran out of the 6 inch boards, and then we just plain ran out of time. So pretty much, we ran out of everything this weekend...flooring, nails, trim, and time. We did everything we could to get as far as we could and use what we could, but it isn't all finished yet. However, next weekend we will be able to finish things in no time flat.

So, next weekend the plan is to finish the flooring in the back porch. Finish all the trim. Hang shelves in the closets and kitchen pantry. Caulk and putty all the trim. Tape for painting. And if we're really lucky, maybe we can start priming. It'll definitely be another busy weekend.

So, I'm sure you're dying to see some pictures...behold, we have doors and trim! I am loving how things are turning out in this place...

 (Below...beadboard and trim in the bathroom)

And because it's Thanksgiving week, here are just a few things I've been really thankful for the past three months during this renovation adventure.

• I am thankful for my amazing husband Eric, who has never complained once about me being gone every, single, weekend, and having to be the sole childcare provider for our little boy while I'm away. Being a single parent three days out of the week can't be fun or easy, but Eric has never complained and has never been anything but supportive.
• I am thankful for my mom, and that she knows how to do everything and isn't afraid to learn how to do something new. I'm also thankful that she owns every single power tool known to mankind. They have all come in very handy and one point or another!
• I am thankful for my dad, and that he is our un-official garbage man. The dump is gross, especially in the cold, wet wintertime, but he happily hauls our garbage away, week after week. I am also thankful that he is our un-official chef. He always has something hot and ready to eat for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, whenever we walk in the door. He is too good to be true sometimes!
• I am thankful for this journey. While at this point in time no amount of time or money could convince me to do another renovation of this magnitude, I have learned SO much. I have learned new skills, new things about houses, new ways of doing things. I feel pretty much invincible about renovating houses at this point. I figure if we can fix up this 100-year-old dump of a house, I'm pretty sure we could fix up anything worth salvaging. And that's a nice feeling. While I am constantly reminded of why I happily paid someone else good money to build my house last year, it's good to know that if I ever need to draw upon my reno' skills someday, I certainly can.
• I am thankful for my wonderful life. Being away from home each weekend is hard, and I don't like it...at all. But being away makes me realize how much I love and adore my little family, and my house, and my friends, and this little city of Logan, and my amazing life. The drive home every Saturday night has never been more exciting...I can never get home fast enough! I have it so good!

Fighting, Mudding, and Flooring

This week started out pretty rough but then ended out pretty awesome.

The rough part was the ginormous phone/text fight my mom and I got into on Tuesday. It was pretty bad. And while I'm sure you're dying to know all the nitty gritty details of he said/she said (I know I would be!?), that would be pretty unfair, as I am obviously biased as to how things went down. But lets just say that we both released a lot of pent up feelings, my mom finally learned how to text (hooray!), and I almost got fired...yes, by my mom.

By the next day, when my mom came to Logan to pick up flooring from Lowes, we had both cooled off and all was forgiven and right in the world, AND I still had a job. I realized I needed make an effort to be nicer and more respectful of my mom's feelings and opinions, and my mom said she would be willing to try my sequence of finishing things...hard floor, then trim, then paint, which was so nice of her. And I love her for it. I love how in our family we can argue one day, and then forgive each other the next. Sometimes you just need to clear the air, you know!? No need to disown (or fire!?) one another for it...right!? We know we love each other, even if we disagree sometimes. And this weekend, things could honestly not have been better between my mom and I. We had the best time working together.    

So, last weekend sheetrock was hung, which totally made the house feel brand spankin' new. It was love at first sight when I saw it on Thursday afternoon...

And this weekend the sheetrockers from Hall Sheetrocking came back to tape, mud, and texture. They completely rocked our world. With the power of 4 guys and some fancy, fast-drying mud these guys were able to tape, mud, and texture the entire house in a mere 2 days. Pretty awesome.  I'm pretty sure our electrician and plumber could take a few lessons from these guys.

The bill for sheetrocking this entire house came to $5,000.00 in labor, and $2,200 in materials (sheetrock and mud)...totalling $7,200.00. Worth every penny, I'm pretty sure.

And while the sheetrockers did their thing, my mom and I installed the upstairs tub surround, and layed laminate flooring in the 2.5 bathrooms...which we immediately covered with protective butcher paper, of course...  

The color is pretty dark. Darker than I remember it being at the store, but I totally love it. It will provide a great contrast to the whiteness of the bathrooms and the tan-ness of the hickory vanities that we purchased for each of the full bathrooms. We weren't able to put flooring in the kitchen/dining area, as the sheetrockers were everywhere all the time and we would have totally been in their way. So by noon on Saturday we had done all we could, and were done for the weekend.

On Saturday morning we had our sheetrockers, our plumber, and our electrician there...all hard at work. It was fabulous. The plumber was going to try to finish up completely on Saturday. We're still not sure when our electrician will be done, but he is at least done enough to be out of our way, and our one working outlet is suitable enough. As long as he finishes up sometime in the next three weeks so we can install and test light fixtures and such, I'll be happy.

Next week we will be finishing the flooring in the kitchen/dining room, installing 12 doors, trimming everything out (windows, doors, closet shelving, baseboards. etc), and caulking everything that we trim. It should be a great week for us, as we will be able to work on the house for four days instead of two. I'll be there Wednesday afternoon through Saturday, only taking a break on Thursday for Thanksgiving for dinner at the Teicherts. Happy Thanksgiving to us...we'll be working all day!?

And here is what a pile of $1000.00 worth of trim looks like...  

Wish us luck!

Dissent Among the Troops

My dad called me this morning to inform me that there was dissent amoung the Cokeville crew about the order of finishing things up. Namely, why on earth we would lay the hard flooring before painting!? That is absurd!? Well, this will be THIRD time explaining the reasoning to my mom, but since of most of you are first timers, I'll explain myself once again.

When we built our house last falll, our house was built by Visionary Homes in a mere 60 days, from foundation to finish....without a single hitch...it was amazing! And since Visionary Homes builds hundreds of houses each year, I figure there is probably a good reason they do things the way they do. And after seeing their process first-hand, it makes perfect sense to me. So after building last year and seeing the process, I see no reason to do it any other way. Especially since this house we're working on is literally new construction from here on out.  

Visionary Homes had us lay hard flooring after the sheetrock was up, but BEFORE painting or trim. You lay the hard floor and cover it with a heavy-duty butcher paper, leaving it completely protected. After the hard flooring is in they put up the trim, which is the obvious next step (hard floor first, trim second). Once the trim is completely caulked and finished, THEN they call in the painting crew. They paint the trim first (with a sprayer), then tape off and cover the trim with plastic and paint the walls (with a sprayer).

The 3 big advantages I see to copying a professional-painter's process is: 1-paint sprayers are much more efficient that brushes and rollers; 2- trim needs to be sprayed, not rolled, in order to get a professional-looking finish; and 3: you finish one job completely, then move on to the next. It's much more efficient than painting the walls, then painting the trim pieces individually with a roller (I don't care what mom thinks, that will take forever and the finish will be amateur), putting up the trim, then caulking and fixing the nail pops, then painting all the trim again AGAIN (aka touching up). It is possible and plausible to finish one job at a time. Efficiency is key.

Yes, taping trim off in order to paint the walls does take time, but it's not hard labor, or terribly expensive, and it will be worth it when we can finish the job in half the time by using a paint sprayer instead of rollers (and we should definitely rent a paint sprayer for a job this big). 

So, moral of the story is this...we can and we should lay the hard flooring this weekend, BEFORE painting. There is no reason not to. The hard flooring will be safe and protected beneath some thick butcher paper. We can drip paint all we want, with no harm done. And whether I can convince my mom to paint the trim and the walls at the same time with a paint sprayer or not, at least the flooring issue will be out of the way.

This weekend the sheetrockers will be finishing up the mudding/texturing, so we can't paint, we can't put up cabinets, we can't install light fixtures or doors...but we CAN install our laminate flooring (with a little coordination of working around our mudders this weekend). This is not a novel idea I cooked up in my head...I stole it from Visionary Homes, a leading construction company in Cache Valley. There is a reason they build hundreds of houses a year with very happy customers, and it's probably because they know what they're doing. I would love the mudders to be completely done before doing the flooring, but honestly, what's a little mud dripped on butcher paper? There will be absolutely no harm done in overlapping a bit.

So, Mom, have I convinced you yet with my THIRD explanation? Or is Visionary Homes crazy?

Sheetrock

So, I hate to tell you this, but I have no evidence of anything that happened this weekend. Eric's brother was in town for the weekend from back east so I stayed in Logan and skipped my weekly trip to Cokeville, and my mom spent the weekend in Idaho/Utah visiting the grandkids. So, no pictures. However, in our absence my dad kept us updated on the progress as sheetrock was hung throughout the entire house by some amazing sheetrockers. We have new walls and ceilings and I'm pretty sure it doesn't look like a bomb shelter anymore. I'm SO excited to see it next weekend! A mudding/taping crew will be back next weekend to finish the taping and texturing, and then we should be able to trim things out and paint over Thanksgiving weekend...can you say exciting!? I can't wait.

The roofing was finished up this week, as should be the plumbing. I'm not sure where we are with the electric, but he has got to be close. And at this point he can take till December for all I care. Now that the electric is done enough for sheetrock to be up we can paint and install cabinets and fixtures and get things done...however, it would certainly be handy to have light in the house sometime soon so that we can work after 5pm when it gets dark!? :)

Next weekend the plan is to install the hard flooring in the kitchen, dining room, and bathrooms, while the sheetrock crew finishes up the mudding and texturing. We picked out a hardwood-looking laminate that should look gorgeous in that place. I can't wait to see on the floor and show you next week! I thought my mom and I were going to have a war on our hands picking out a laminate that we agreed upon. Mom loved the hand-scraped laminate, which I thought looked too plastic-ey. I loved the darker, smoother laminates which mom thought were too boring and would show too much dust. And then after an entire weekend of looking we finally came across one that we both loved...it's not handscraped, but has a mixture of light and dark walnut colors with wide planks and beveled edges. It should be nice...we'll see how it looks next week!

And here is the finish timeline...it's going to be crazy busy, and the goal is a bit lofty, but the goal is now to be done by Christmas. We shall see?!

November
Week 1	Roofing/Electrical/Plumbing
Week 2	Sheetrocking
Week 3	Hard Flooring/Mud and Texture
Week 4	Trim/Closet Shelves/Priming/Thanksgiving
December
Week 1	Painting/Cabinets/Doors
Week 2	Fixtures/Touch up/Carpet
Week 3	Fixtures/Touch up
Week 4	Christmas

A New Roof!

Well, as problems tend to do, the whole electrical, roofing, sheetrocking fiasco totally worked itself out this past week. And thank goodness! Last week at this time I was giving myself an ulcer with worry. This week I feel like I haven't a care in the world in comparison. Phew! I hate ulcers...and I hate waking up in the middle of the night worrying and fretting for hours about things completely out of my control.

First thing Monday morning I called the roofers to see what their plans were for coming out that week. They said they actually had moved us back a week, which about gave me a heart attack. But when I explained to them that we were suppose to sheetrock this weekend and there were holes in the roof that would cause major problems if not taken care, especially because there was a winter snow storm forecasted for the weekend, they made some adjustments to their schedule for us. Bless their hearts! They ended up re-roofing our place on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Mountain Peak Roofing...oh how I love them!

There are still some shingles to be applied on the lower roof areas, but no biggie...they'll be back to finish it this next week. They removed all four layers of the old shingles and shakes and completely redid the sheathing underneath. It is waterproof, and pretty, and new, and comes complete with a fancy 50-year warranty...all for a mere $11,500.

Now, that amount certainly sounds obscene at first glance, but after getting a roofing quote out of Rock Springs for $15,000, and after being told by Bonnie's daughter that they were quoted over $20,000 last year for a new roof, we thought this was quite the bargain. A lot of money, indeed, but completely necessary and completely worth it.

And lest we forget how bad it looked at the beginning, below is a nice visual of how far we've come on the outside since the middle of September.

Not bad, I'd say!? While the roofers were up on the roof, getting up close and personal with the attic, they let us know that it looked like the corners of the attic were missing some insulation, so on Saturday my mom and I climbed up in the attic and added more insulation. It was mostly my mom, but I showed up just in time to climb up and hardly help at all. :) I can confidently say that this house is now insulated like a thermos. Every wall, corner, nook, and cranny has been inspected and well insulated. And the attic was not nearly as scary as I had imagined it. Just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill attic...

So, the roofing is nearly done, and the electrical has actually come a long way in the past week. He's gotten done everything we need to in order for us to be able to sheetrock next week! Hallelujah! We still don't have lights or full power, but we do have heat and one lonely extension cord with power, which we're happy to work with.

The best news of the week was in regards to the sheetrockers. I had to book them about a month ago, so I really didn't want to ask them to reschedule for us, although that definitely would have been the best option if it was at all possible. So we were beyond lucky when it was our sheetrockers idea to move us back a week, and come next weekend. We definitely weren't sure that the electrician would be done with everything before this weekend, and we weren't really sure we could trust the roofers to show up, so it was such a relief! Now everything is done and ready, and we can confidently say that next weekend we will be completely ready for sheetrocking. And I can't wait...it will FINALLY start to feel like a nice, new house instead of a bomb shelter.

It's been a good week...and now I can go back to sleeping again at night.

Frustration...It's Electric

When we hired our electrician back in September, his goal was to be done by the end of October...which is this weekend...or the first weekend in November at the very latest. He said it wouldn't be a problem and he kept telling us he was still on track. Well, this weekend he informed us that he still had at least three, maybe FOUR weeks of work left. Especially since his real job was moving from a four-day work week to a five-day work week and he would only be able to work on the house on Saturday and Sundays, instead of  Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. And there was no way he would be done with enough to have everything sheetrocked next weekend. The upstairs was done, but the downstairs is not even close. And he has no sense of urgency about it. Awesome.

We've been waiting on the electrician ALL month long in order to do sheetrock, and since the sheetrockers have been scheduled for the past month to come NEXT weekend, which was the weekend he said he'd definitely be done, I about flipped. I didn't flip at the electrician, though in retrospect maybe I should have!? But I was/am SO annoyed. I asked him about hiring someone to help him so he could get it done in the next two weeks, and he had the nerve to tell me that while it was possible, hiring someone to help him would cost extra for us!? I didn't dismiss the idea of extra compensation right away, as we're willing to do almost anything at this point to just get the electric finished already and get this lazy electrian out of our lives!?

We contracted with this guy to do all of electrical work for $9,000, so paying him the full amount, PLUS paying another guy to do what this first guy won't have to do because his hired guy is doing it, is absurd. Completely absurd. Right?? Longer story short, this guy just doesn't impressed me at all. And I really don't like his work ethic...haven't from day one. If it looked like he was working his tail off and doing everything possible to finish on time, I might not be so bugged. But that has not been the case, at all. And while he appears to have done a fine job on what he's gotten done with the electrical so far, it really boils my blood that he has no respect for the timeline we agreed to. But, I guess that's the world of contractors, eh!? It's seriously a wonder that any of them stay in business!? Grrrr.

However, a contractor I do love?? Billy King. He installed our windows this past week, and they look amazing!

And a contractor, I HOPE to love? Our roofer. They should be here this next week. I'm crossing my fingers and praying real hard that next weekend I'll have pretty little picture of a brand new roof for you.

This weekend I painted a few ceilings white in the rooms that had ceilings. Then we tried out our new paint color in the bathroom and dining nook. I don't exactly love it, but it's not like there's much to hate about tan, but it just doesn't do much for me. Or it might have been that I was just in a terribly bad mood whilst painting, so I have something against it!? What do you think of the color? At this point I would be ready and willing to change it, before we paint the entire place a color that is totally blah.

This weekend we also installed new panes of glass on the back porch add-on that had been broken out. These three windows were previously covered with plastic, so we think this is a nice improvement.

This last week my grandpa has been working on sealing the foundation with cement. It's a rock foundation, and the original layer of cement that used to be covering the giant rocks had started to crumble. So we removed the crumbling layer and my grandpa put on a new layer. It looks SO much better and is much more functional.

And over the weekend grannie went above and beyond by scraping off all the disgusting black carpet pad that had been glued to the floor. It definitely needed to be done, and it was not a job I was looking forward to!?  She got it all up, and it looks so much better. We can now lay new carpet in good conscience.

And as for a few hiccups...in the upstairs bathroom there use to by vinyl halfway up the wall. We removed the vinyl, but it left this horrible black glue that we just cannot get off. We have tried everything and it is here to stay. So we were planning to cover it up with bead board. We got the beadboard last week so we could put it up this weekend, however, our 4ft beadboard is about 6 inches too short...blast! Now we're just hoping we can texture over the black goo and walls, and still use the 4ft beadboard.

When we had Bill King order the windows, the right window was going to be in the bathroom. Since my mom recently moved the wall over, now both windows are in the bedroom, which makes the foggy bathroom glass a problem. A bit of a woops on our part, but nothing a new $150 window can't fix though. Money down the drain...

And this is a sad sight for me....

Remember when removing the chimney was under consideration? Well my mom and grandpa started demo-ing right away, dismantling the perfectly functional book shelf (below), and leaving a lovely hole in the wall (above). I think we'll just be sheetrocking the hole closed, but I'm really going to miss this bookshelf. I thought it was such a nice feature.

And that's about it for this week. I'm getting really bored of looking at this ugly, old, disaster of a house, so I really can't wait for sheetrock next weekend! And a new roof! I am SO ready to get out of the disaster house phase.

Kitchen Design

This last weekend was an off weekend. My sister needed some help with a few things in Boise, so my mom and I took the weekend off to go help, and visit, and PLAY with her. We're really hoping the electrical was worked on this weekend, since nothing else was accomplished. But to give you something to look at, let me show you our recently purchased kitchen...to be installed soon! 

Let me preface this post by you that we are working with a pretty small kitchen with fairly limited design options. That being said, I do think we've come up with the best design possible for this space. Or I should say Home Depot came up with the best design for this space. I can not rave about Temina at the Home Depot enough...she rocked my world and effortlessly designed what will be a really sweet kitchen.

First, I feel that I need to explain why we eliminated the only window in the kitchen. At first we weren't sure how much leeway would have in moving the plumbing and electrical, and if the stove couldn't be moved, we needed to be able to put a fan/microwave combo above the stove. And even when we found out we could adjust plumbing and electrical, we couldn't think of a better way to position the appliances so that we could functionally fit in a fridge, stove, microwave/fan, sink, and dishwasher. So my mom made the decision to close up the window so we could install the microwave/fan above the stove. It really was the only way. We will try to make up for no window with some fancy under cabinet lighting. And the huge window from the dining room should allow plenty of natural light in into the kitchen during the day.  

We debated back and forth about whether to include a peninsula or just leave it in an L shape. A normal-sized peninsula would take up a lot of space, and no matter how Temina designed it, there was no room for a bank of pull drawers for silverware, cooking utensils, or kitchen towels. While we like countertops, pull drawers are kind of essential to have too. So we decided that an L-shaped kitchen would be sufficient for an average homemaker. However, we Oberg women like to cook and we really value our counterspace, (and think that everyone else should too!?), so the more we thought about it, the more we really wanted a peninsula to work. I took our demands to Temina and she factored in a smaller-sized peninsula with no bar overhand, and walah, we could fit in everything we had ever dreamed of.  

The before...

And the anticipated after...here is an the aerial view...

 The view from the living room...

Closer View...

View from the dining nook...we played with the idea of covering up a pipe in the corner with an appliance garage, but decided that would take up way too much counterspace, so that idea was X'd. The appliance garage to the left of the sink will not be included. And we may actually be able to just get rid of the pipe altogether...we shall see. 

And there you have it. Our future kitchen, which will be made up of beautiful, ceiling-high hickory cabinets. What do you think? Will it do??

And what do you think...should we add cabinet hardware to the cabinets, or let the new owner decide on whether they would like cabinet hardware and what style? If I were the buyer I would want to choose and install my own hardware after purchasing the house, but my mom would rather someone else make those decisions for her and have it already included in the house. She has a good point. So, what do you think?? Take the poll at the top or leave a comment! Cabinet hardware? Or no cabinet hardware?

Chimney Decision, Electricity, and More Subfloors

First things first...we have decided that we are NOT going to be taking out the chimney. Which means I can stop having nightmares at night about chimney removal. I figured that if my mom and grandpa were so set on taking it out, I'd better do some research on how to get it done. The more research I did on-line, the more I was sure that this was not a job we wanted to tackle, nor did we have the skills to tackle it. It would require tools we don't have, skills we don't have, lots of manual labor we don't have, lots of dirt and soot, and time, time, time. After my grandpa slept on the idea for a night, he decided, as I did, that we probably didn't want to pick a fight with a chimney if we didn't have to (which we don't). He then convinced my mom. I had no sway with my mom, but my grandpa did!? Oh, how I love him! So, the perfectly good chimney is staying. And while the house won't be getting 20 square feet larger, I'm pretty sure no one will even notice.

Would you like to climb on that scary, steep roof and remove even the top of that chimney, let alone 2.5 stories of it?? Yeah, me neither!

This week has been very productive. First, we have a new water line. The old one's shut-off valve was broken at the street, meaning that water to the house couldn't be turned off...ever!? So the city came in and fixed things up. Now we have a new shut-off valve, clean new pipes, and normal water pressure...all for a bill of around $500 plus some landscaping work.

The electrician, Sam, has been hard at work the past two weekends. The upstairs is almost completely done being rewired and it is SOOO exciting! I never thought yellow wire could invoke such happiness in me, but it sure does. And boy is Sam a trooper, as re-wiring a remodel looks to be incredibly messy, dirty and complicated...but I guess that's why he's getting paid the big bucks to figure it all out!?

Also, my grandpa made a really good suggestion to remove a nook in the bathroom to make the master bedroom bigger. The bathroom used to have a small little nook that claimed the window on the right below. We removed that small nook and built a new wall (which includes a door into the bathroom) and walah, we have master that feels so much bigger and brighter. The bathroom now has no window, which was sad for me as I love having natural light everwhere, but most bathrooms don't have windows anyway so I don't think it will be a deal breaker for anyone.

Here are some pretty terrible pictures of the master bedroom...the left side of the room and the new right side of the room. It's still a pretty small room for a master, but now it could conceivably fit a king bed if needed without filling up the ENTIRE room.

This weekend I was only in Cokeville on Friday night and Saturday, so it felt like a slow weekend as far as work getting done, but we still managed to be quite productive. On Friday evening I put the third coat of epoxy in the downstairs bathroom's tub enclosure. It now officially looks amazing!? And it only cost us $150 in epoxy paint. That price sounds a little steep to me for just a little paint, but it sure beat removing all that tile and starting over. Totally worth it! Here is the before and after for your veiwing pleasure... 

On Saturday morning my mom and I continued our subflooring venture. We laid subfloor in the back porch  area...

And in the laundry room area...

And in the downstairs bathroom...

And in the half-bath off the kitchen...

And my grannie scraped, sanded, and caulked ALL these window sills so that we can prime and paint them. Oh how I love her!

And that was about it for this weekend. The windows have arrived and should start to be put it any day, and the roofer should be arriving any week now!? We did have a change of contractors with our plumber, but we are back on track and the plumbing should be done by the end of October. And Sam, our electrician, said that he would be done by the first week in November. And this last week I ordered our kitchen cabinets...pictures of the kitchen design coming soon! Things are rolling right along.

And now to end, I will leave you with a picture of the completely completed paint job.

Before...

And after...