My goals for this week...

I feel the need to write down what I hope we accomplish in this next week, because I know I'll forget something along the way. I have the makings of a very nasty cold starting, but hopefully it doesn't slow me down too much.

Sunday:
bag up some pine needles
pack a few more boxes
measure the two bedrooms downstairs

Monday:
buy carpet for at least the craft room
call and set up for plumber to come in

Tuesday & Wednesday:
finish painting Dalton's room

Thursday:
rest? maybe pack up a few boxes

Friday:
sweep and mop the living room

Saturday:
polyurethane the living room floor

I think I have quite the little list going. Hopefully most of it gets done. :) Our move-in date is set for October 27, and I think we'll meet it with time to spare. :)

Dalton's room--progress

Today we started on Dalton's room. My good friend Tammy came over to help me, and we decided to do his room (instead of the water heater or outside work). So, after a trip to Home Depot, we got started.

Here's some photos of his room before we got started. The walls are lavender (it doesn't show up too well in the photos I think), and there were quite a few hooks in each of the walls.



We got the hooks out of the wall and the holes filled in (done almost entirely by the wonderful Tammy).

And got started on the painting. The ceiling was the lavender color also, so we started on that and painted it white.

While Tammy was tackling the ceiling, I took the closet. You can see the lovely pink color it use to be.



I need to get a step ladder to finish the closet, and it'll need at least one more coat of white on it, but it's mostly done. You can see the blue color I picked for his room (he wanted a blue room, so he got it). I still need to do the trim on the closet, windows, and doors, and touch up around the edges. I still have to do parts close to the ceiling (after the paint dries a bit)





I decided to paint the wood insert on the door, and I think I might have Dalton do a hand print (or two) on it in white.



Overall, I think it's coming along very nicely. I'll finish it up later this week. I am very pleased with how it's turning out so far--I just really need to get a step ladder to get the top sections (we stood on a cooler today, but that wasn't the most sturdy).

David got the driveway cleared out to where he can fit his car in, but I forgot to get photos of it. I'll get some later on this week. We've also been moving quite a bit of stuff over to the house and storing it in the basement and upstairs section, so hopefully when we move in we won't have too much to cart.

I did have one injury today (typical Michelle moment)...I went to stand on the cooler while it was in the kitchen to see if it would support my weight, and I hit my head on the oven vent hood. Needless to say, I have quite a sore head at the moment, but I'll survive. :)

Goodbye toilet!!

I tackled the toilet and actually won!! It only took me about two hours to get the old one out and the new one in. It would have taken me even less time if I hadn't had two bolts give me a huge problem (one of the bolts on the tank I could not get out, so the toilet came out as one piece...the bolt holding the toilet to the floor just needed some TLC to get out). I came very close to just taking the hammer to the toilet, but I'm glad I didn't resort to that. :) Here's the toilet that was in there originally--there is a huge crack in the tank and the toilet refuses to even attempt to flush.

After much wrestling, it's finally out!!

I look forward to remodeling the bathroom (whenever that ends up being) and getting the floor all one color. Maybe I can pick up a few of these tiles and cut them to fit back there, because it just looks bad. At least it's not a place most people look, right? :)

I had one mistake that David fixed for me after we turned the water on. I didn't get the intake line threaded correctly, so he fixed it. I must give many many thanks to my brother Dave for giving us his old tool set--there's no way I would have gotten this thing installed without it (love ya bro!!).

And the finished product:

We still need to caulk around the bottom, but I think it'll do just fine. It flushes fine and doesn't leak, so I'm happy with it. It really wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. And thanks to everyone who gave me the tip to heat the wax seal with a hairdryer--that worked great!!

As I was taking a little break, what do I see outside?

A bunny!! I have seen so much wildlife at this house it is just amazing. Now, I know a rabbit isn't anything major, but it's something. It's just the little things that make me happy. :)

At least no more running down the street to UDF or home to use the potty. This DIY stuff is pretty fun (so far...hee hee).

Sunday, September 30, 2007

I figure I should start with my disappointment first. Yesterday I mentioned how the extra room's carpet didn't come up correctly....well, here's the damage. Not the best pictures, but you can see that the floor looks horrible. It looks like I might have to just pull up the tack strips, lay down new padding and new carpets. I'll still look into how to get that all up, but I figure the wood is destroyed. *sigh* I know I shouldn't complain--the whole living room could have been like this, and I'm very thankful it wasn't. At least this is the extra room (well, my craft and exercise room), so it's not too big of a deal if it looks like crap for a while. :)



In other news, we got all the tack strips up from the living room and the hallway. It was actually pretty easy with the WonderBar thingy that I borrowed from my daddy. That little tool ROCKS!! I did have one little casualty while pulling up the strips--I cracked a piece of molding by the front door. No biggie--I'll superglue it back into place. :) The box in this picture is holding almost all of the tack strips. That will be a joy trying to throw away....

Dalton and I left the house around 5, and he was passed out on the couch at the apartment watching Cars by 6. Poor guy just wore himself out. He took a pretty nasty tumble outside the house (Mom heard his knee crack as it hit the ground), but a walk up to UDF for ice cream with his Nana cured that. :) He was a big helper again today--just look at the lovely decoration he put up on our front door (with the help of Nana):

It'll make a nice Christmas decoration. :)

Today, David came home early from work and got the other two door locks changed, and he also got most of the staples out of the floor in the living room (I think he left a few stubborn ones for me to try). We also loaded up the car with boxes and he took that load over.

I believe our plan for tomorrow is to price/buy appliances, and check out how bad the water leaks are. I hope we get the rest of the staples out of the floor, get that vacuumed up pretty good so I can mop it on Tuesday, and maybe get the polyurethane (I know I spelled that one wrong....) coat on it by the end of the week.

The rest of the story-day one

Dalton was such a good helper to us when we were working outside. All of the bushes/trees/hedges needed trimmed up, so I tackled that in the morning. Dalton piled all the trimmings up for us, and then even tried to help sweep! The walkway to our front door (which is the door on the right of the house) was so overgrown it wasn't possible to use the front door, so we got all of that trimmed away. The bushes look horrible, but we'll see what they look like in the spring.








The side and back area of the house is very unique. We have a wooden sitting area on the side of the house that leads down steps (passing a little fish pond), past a bench, to a larger sitting area with a fireplace (at least I believe that is what it is). The trees and bushes along the way got a nice little trimming yesterday. This bench was unusable before we started.
The concrete sitting area behind the house is buried underneath about six inches of pine needles. I started to rake those up a bit to see how far back the sitting area extends. It's going to be a great place for entertaining friends when it's all done. We have some trees that need to be pulled up back there, but I don't think they will be too bad. My biggest thing right now back there is figuring out how to get rid of all the pine needles.















This last photo is where the Caprice is going to be parked, once we get it trimmed out a bit more. The car fits, but the sides will get scratched by all the branches.















The Kitchen Door
Who knew a door could cause us so much trouble?? Our little drill wasn't powerful enough to drill the new holes, so we would use it for a minute (until the battery drained), then have to let it sit for at least 30 minutes before trying again. After a few hours, that got very old. Luckily, Dad let us use one of his drills, and the door was drilled within minutes. We had to remove both of the strikeplates (I think that's what they are called) to get the door to close properly. The door was so messed up we had to put a gold plate on it to cover up the holes (the holes were already there), and that made the door not want to close with the strikeplates in place. We'll figure out a way to get it back on there once we're all settled in.








Last, but not least, playtime!


Just some shots of Dalton playing at the house. He absolutely loves that swing, so I guess we'll have to replace it with one that we all can sit on.

Having some fun at the apartment with the handcart:

First day--carpets

I'm feeling very tired (the day is finally catching up to me), so this day's posts will be spread out today and tomorrow. I figure I'll start with the biggest accomplishment of today--tearing up the carpet. My friend Lara came to help me rip out the carpet, and I think we did an awesome job. We got the living room/dining room done, and the extra room (but I didn't get any pictures of that). The extra room's padding is stuck to the floor, so no idea of how I'll get that up. I think that room we'll have to put some carpet back down and not worry about having the hardwood floors. I'll try to remember to get some photos of it tomorrow.

The pad that was under the carpet in the living room was so old it's just crumbled. Most of it turned into dust (I'm so glad we had the masks on. Lara had a cool mask (and it didn't scare Dalton!). We ended up with 12 bags filled with the padding, and all the carpet is living in the basement for a while. So here we are before we got started, pictures of the dust from the pad, the floor cleaned up, David removing the carpet, and my starting of removing the tackstrips (I don't know how to put the descriptions next to the photos in this blog, so sorry for the list. If you know how to do it, would you please let me know? Thanks!!). :)

Our first day--before pics

I was so excited this morning that I couldn't sleep past 5. I just wanted to get out to the house and start working on it. I got out to the house about seven to start measuring for the new door hardware and appliances. The agenda for today was pulling up the carpet in the living room/dining room, trimming some of the yard back, and installing the new door locks.

Some before pictures:

This is the front of the house before we started trimming the hedges back. The two inside pictures are of the living room/dining room area. The carpet is a shag green color. In the last picture, the doors in the center lead into the kitchen (with its orange countertops and white/black brick walls, but that will be another post).