Forward!

Much thanks to Joe for sawing off our new window sill to fit the kitchen window. I did much of the chiseling to remove the old ceramic tiles that the previous owners had thrashed, so add that to my life's accomplishments. 

Here are a couple of "before" photos of our windows.

And here's what the living room window looked like after. Not a great photo but gives the general idea. I'll have to get one with a wider view and maybe it will show how much better the house looks with the new windows. 

Joe has been an INCREDIBLE help with propelling us forward with, as he says it, mudding the walls to prep them for painting. He's very skilled at fixing my blobs and reaching the tough spots on the ceiling. 

I was so inspired that I actually primed the main bathroom last week! Unfortunately there were a few spots where the paint bubbled and got soft and I had to tear them out, patch, and repaint.

This inspirational bubbling process repeated itself when I painted with the regular paint. Not sure if this photo does it justice, but gives a general idea of a bubble that I cut open as well as some of the damage from pulling out the paint the remove the loose parts around the bubbles. 

Eventually - and hope you are sitting down for this - I DID finish painting the main bathroom! One room down - woohoo! It's such a small one that you can't really take a picture of any significant portion of it at once, but once again, here's the general idea. The paint color is called "Seriously Sand" (same as we painted our bedroom in Elgin earlier this year), and will be used throughout the house. Of course looking at it on a computer monitor may or may not provide you with an accurate representation of the real color. 

We wanted semi-gloss on the whole bathroom, so the ceiling is the same color but will be a little lighter in most of the other rooms. 

Today I laid the vinyl tiles and will grout them when we go back tomorrow. Yup, first time laying this kind of tile and tomorrow's grouting party will be yet another adventure in learning something new. 

The tiles are called "cool grey" although they probably look more tan here. They really are gray but have a hint of a brownish-tan to them that seems to match the paint pretty well. 

We picked up the vanity, medicine chest, and light fixture, so there's the exciting possibility that after six weeks, we might actually finish remodeling ONE ROOM sometime! Miracles never cease.

Catch-up post

Where does the time go??? I promise we've been working diligently on the house. Here are a few highlights of what we've done. Below you'll see the electricians' vehicles. We now have GFCI outlets everywhere and a few switches moved around for more convenience. It took three guys two full days to get the job done.

Below you can see where I marked on the back of the tub wall where the grab bars were to go and Joe drilled the holes and installed them (on the front, silly!). He (and his family for their support) deserve big kudos for his 5 hours of kind sacrifice AFTER he had put in a full day of work!

Doug and I were too tired to go back to the Nievaard's, so we just crashed where we were. Not exactly what we envisioned as our exciting first night at the new house, but it worked. We kind of had what we needed at least... 

We were able to contact a metal recycler to pick up our old tub for free. Good-bye, old beat-up tub, we won't miss you!

We're excited that Joe was able to come back on Saturday afternoon and get the last panel installed. It looks great! Thanks again, Joe.

We tested our oven the other day with a frozen pizza for dinner, improvising scissors for the pizza cutter. The pizza was delish!

Milestone: On Saturday we got ONE ROOM primed for painting! It's my office. Unfortunately, it will likely be several more days before we can finish the job by adding the room's real color/final coat.

Snow! Just kidding, it's plaster dust. This is a depiction of what I've mostly been doing for the last few weeks. Apply spackle, let it dry, sand some of it off. It's super-fun. I wish I could just do this every day forever. (Actually it already seems like that's the case.)

Check! Check! and Check!

Before (at back of house):

After:

And a BIG hanks to Joe and Nate for fixing the fire-hazard problems in the garage wall attached to the house. Please note that this work could only be done by a couple of really TALL people, so we're grateful for these two willing souls. Now we're safe! 

The Guys also replaced much of the plumbing in the tub. Except Joe had to take a blow torch to it to get the old stuff loose enough to remove. 

 It's in! 

 They placed the tub enclosure walls and adjusted the fit but didn't fully install as there are still a couple of things to be done to prep the walls. Or something. 

 The amazing workers!

Yes, and the Treasures just keep on coming. Doug found this in the shed...