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.