Just right!

Our washer and dryer were installed on the 9th and, as hoped, they fit nicely into their designated space. Just a small garden-variety set for a couple of elderly people that don't have to do a lot of laundry.  Most of the furnace register is exposed, so that's a welcome touch. I'm glad again that Nate reversed the door for us as it would have been very much in the way I think. 

The dryer has a great "Steam Refresh" setting which functions through a water hose hooked to the back. You just drop in your wrinkly clothes, it sprays some water on them, and steams out the wrinkles in maybe 10 minutes. Yup, definitely high mucky-muck over here. 

This morning we were thrilled to pick up our main Christmas gift: a piano! The best/only place we could fit it was in my office - oh, poor me! It's a digital piano - Yamaha Arius 184. It's beautiful and sounds great! Now if I could just find my Christmas music books...

Speaking of Christmas, I should show you that I did make a small attempt to decorate a little, at least in the living room, with several Nativities on top of the entertainment center and a few other cherished things here and there. (Not the best photo with the sun shining through the blinds. Oh well.)

 Even a small tree (same one we used last year), flanked by an abominable snowman nutcracker, and the little ceramic candy cane house some may remember. 

Close-ups of a few when the lights are on. I love these things!!!

Dear Washer and Dryer: We have a spot for you now!

The laundry room tile is grouted and done! What a massive relief that is and delighted that it only took a little more than two hours to complete which hopefully means we're getting a little more proficient at it... 

Here's how we get the job done: Doug keeps me supplies with fresh buckets of water + I the rest = a great team. Today he was into singing a funny little ditty called "Please Don't Send Me Fruitcake" again and again, so we didn't lack for entertainment. There is a recording of it sung by the Von Trapp Children (yes, from The Sound of Music story) if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32hcbDod0yg

By the way, he'll get his wish because I'm not sending him any fruitcake but I am planning on baking it and sharing only with the few family members that actually do like it.

We're in!

A BIG thanks to Nate, Joe, and Jon for helping us get moved into our house the day before Thanksgiving! The lucky Nievaards finally got their garage, basement, and Emily's office space back. They were fabulous landlords!

                                 

The truck is all loaded up.

And now for the unloading. 

 We had a cute bonus helper!

 Guess who drove the 20-foot moving van? You guessed it: ME! We were so blessed to have a good-weather day and very light traffic so it turned out to be much more stress-free than expected.

Here's what we looked like sitting in our new living room the first night of officially living in our house. Comfy and cozy!

After unloading our stuff, Joe and Jon installed a plywood floor in the laundry room to serve as a nice base for the vinyl tiling. You can catch a glimpse of it below. Also that the room painting is finished (but no baseboards yet). 

The boys screwed the plywood onto the old flooring but ran out of screws, so Little Miss Nail Gun Expert added a few more screws and then finished it off with the nail gun at Nate's suggestion. This is now my latest favorite tool! So fun to shoot nails into stuff.  

The boys had sawed the crawl space trap door for us, but I spent another hour cleaning up the lines and corners with a utility knife and square to make it easier to tile. 

Today I worked non-stop from 8:30am-5:30pm except for a brief lunch break installing the vinyl tile. More than 80 tiles all-told. In one section I had laid a couple of tiles just a hair off, which sent the whole row into a frustrating, crooked mess. Doug suggested I try prying them off and adjust as it takes a while for the adhesive to, well, adhere. So that little activity probably burned up about an hour of time but at least let me get it to the point where I could live with it. 

The area that was most challenging though was the trap door. I laid each tile across the seam gap and then cut out the seam pieces using my trusty utility knife and square again. We wanted the tile pattern to just continue across the door and I think it turned out pretty well!

Of course my knees and hips are thrashed tonight, but hopefully a good night's rest will provide sufficient recovery so we can insert the grout tomorrow. It's imperative that it dry as hard as possible before our WASHER AND DRYER arrive on Monday. Yay!

Almost there!

These lighting fixtures don't look like anything in these photos, but I think they look great in person. The first one is in my office. Adjustable lights I can point at whatever I'm working on in there. Hopefully.

This is the ceiling fan/light in the bedroom, spinning away. Should give us many years of great service.

I finished prepping and sanding the laundry room today and applied a coat of primer. We bought a little power palm sander and it was SO much easier to do the work. Too bad we didn't pick it up three months ago!

Tomorrow: We move in! We're so excited. Well, I'm also kind of scared to be driving a 20-foot moving truck for forty miles in city traffic, but hey, I can do hard things. 

Benched, lit, and gifted

A bench! We wanted a spot for people to sit and take off their shoes by the front door, so we ordered this cute little bench for the task. 

Here's what it looks like with a jolly person sitting on it. 

We picked up three more light fixtures on Saturday and installed them. The three-light one below can be adjusted a bit to point in different directions and graces the dining room. 

The kitchen light is a 48-inch fixture that puts out a lot a light - just what we wanted!

And the hall. Getting there!

Today was like Christmas - look at these lovely gifts! No, wait, actually we had utilized all of our saved-up Christmas wrap when we boxed up our belongings. 

Now I can eat Cheetos again!

 And cut our pizza properly!

Now it's countdown time to Wednesday and the transfer of furniture, etc., from the Nievaard home to ours.  

Blinds!

Let's start with the kitchen painting. It's done! Here you see what we had to do to prep it to protect from paint splatters. This was taken after Nate put on a primer coat throughout. Thanks, Nate! You can't see it too well here, but if you look at the door to the laundry room (top photo) you'll find that he also reversed the door swing for us. A big job! We wanted it to open that direction so we can put a washer and dryer on the right in there (where the pipes also happen to be...) and not whack them every time we want to go in there and do a load of laundry. 

 I'm not going to miss the big blotches of plaster on these walls that we've been working on for weeks, that's for sure. I'll have to grab a couple of photos of the walls after I finished the two coats of semi-gloss and add them here for good measure.

On Wednesday, The Blindman crew came and installed all of the blinds in about 30 minutes. I wasn't there, but Doug described the two workers as a well-oiled machine. Below is the living room with a very wide set of blinds that is pretty heavy so we probably won't be raising them too much.

Here's (an approximation of) what the kitchen blinds look like on either side of the back door. Yup, they do look like blinds all right. We chose a style that doesn't have any holes in, which make for better privacy, and the slats are just suspended in the strings so they can be removed and cleaned. 

This is Doug's man-cave sporting the new blinds plus he's moving right along with making it cozy. I love that he put the giant Bic pen he made in the corner! 

Carpet!

Here are the steps to installing carpet as I observed yesterday when the guy came with ours. FYI there was just one installer who arrived at about 9am and finished up at about 9pm. He was a really large guy weighing maybe around 400 lbs, and he just carried these massive rolls of pad and carpet on his back. There was a tremendous amount of ups and downs, kneeling, etc., and he just kept at it. 

Step 1. Hammer down the tack strips along all of the edges. Side note: I didn't get a photo of it specifically, but I mixed together a beige sample and some black paint until it matched the entryway tile and painted it along the two side edges of the wooden slab under the tile so it wouldn't be so obvious it wasn't ceramic tile on top.

Step 2. Bring in the carpet pad. Measure, cut, tape seams, staple down.

Like so. 

Step 3. Measure and cut pieces. He did this on the road in front of our house. Not sure how they would do it on a busy street or in the rain or after a snowfall, etc. 

He ran into a snag of some kind when he created the long seam in the living room and was stuck in that spot for about an hour but eventually got it and moved on. 

I left at around 6pm so didn't see him finish the work but Doug stayed. Below is what it looked like when I returned this morning, which doesn't show much except vacuum lines, but we're loving the color and it feels great under your feet. The entryway worked out well. 

Blue masking tape is still all over because I left it there after I applied the "final" coat to the living room, hall, and bedroom trim figuring there might be a little touch-up work on the baseboards after the installation. Note to self: Next time do NOT spend time painting the baseboards before the carpet is installed because the carpet will scratched against it and require major touch-ups.

In this case, there were several chunks knocked out and lots of vertical lines presumably from the carpet stretcher, plus a few square corners that aren't really square anymore. I put some plaster on the worst spots and they've drying tonight. 

So how will I paint the baseboards without touching the carpet? Hmm. Doug said he put masking tape on the basement carpet in our old house to do this, so am going to try that rather than be moving around a drop cloth or cardboard that would be likely to smear paint where I don't want it. 

I spent the afternoon today masking throughout and hope to finish up this project tomorrow. Fingers crossed! 

It's exciting to finally be at this point in the remodeling process! While the contractor installed the carpet yesterday, I emptied a some kitchen boxes and organized the cupboards. It's actually starting to look like someone might live there...soon. 

They nailed it!

The grout in the entryway is done! It only took an hour, so Doug and I must be getting more efficient/proficient at this. I'll paint the sides of the board another day so they blend in with the tile and carpet.

Joe and Nate and Doug worked at the house on Saturday to get the rest of the baseboard in in the areas that will be carpeted. Below are samples of their wonderful work. They truly nailed it! There were some odd angles and other surprises, as there always are in EVERY project, but it looks great. For example, check out the multitude of cuts that had to be made to get in and around the closets.