Painted Walls

In case you're wondering. No, the house isn't finished. My mom spent Thanksgiving week with us and helped get our walls finished. We now have a painted living room, hallway, and bedrooms. We textured and painted every ceiling and the kitchen floor is completely grouted, too. The boxes of flooring are now in the living room waiting for us to finish unpacking them, Unless the magic gnomes show up tonight and put them down for us Mom will be coming up after Christmas to help us do it. We haven't put up a Christmas tree in the house because of the flooring issue and that's put a little damper on the season. I will probably put it up in the kitchen just so I can have it up. And yes I will post pictures. I'm trying to come up with an interesting picture to put on our Christmas cards. Something with a paint roller.

Our first snow!

Our neighbors. Aren't they cute? Tim keeps trying to pet them.

Rhonda, our friend from church, helped us paint part of our living room before mom came up, but unfortunately, we had not done a very good job of mudding so mom had to fix it. We had a great time with Rhonda at least even if the evidence has been painted over.

See what I mean about mom fixing my poor mudding techniques.

Guest room before.

Guest Room After. (Yes, I know I should have made the bed before I took the picture.)

Master bedroom.

Below are three pictures of the same wall in the living room.

After we painted it and then mom arrived and fixed more of my goofs.

Now.

Mom in action! She's grouting the rest of the kitchen floor.

Our really cool light fixture over the sink. There is a matching one over the dining room table. Or at least it will be when we get a table.

Boxes of flooring that still need to be unpacked so it can acclimate to the temperature and humidity of the house.

We have to make three more stacks like this. Now if we can just figure out where to put those stacks in the house. Lily says "Hi!"

We have a roof!

Work had stalled after my mom went back to Savannah after Labor Day, but Tim's parents came up this past weekend and got us jump started. We know have a new roof, clean vinyl siding, fall decorations, and a few primed rooms. I have discovered that I hate sanding sheetrock mud. I don't mind applying the mud, but sanding it is annoying! After we get the rooms all mudded and sanded then our friends from church are coming over to help us paint. I refuse to have white walls. I spent ten years in apartments that didn't allow paint on the walls so I will have color on these walls even if Tim thinks it's silly. After the painting is completed then we can install the floors, hang new doors, and put up the window trim/baseboards/etc. Sounds like a short list, doesn't it? HA!

Enjoy the pictures!!!

Our "Living" Room


Our new HVAC system needed different sized holes so now we get to patch up the old ones.


Our cool Corian countertop.

Our kitchen cabinets. I've finally finished all the doors, but I still have the side panels to stain and install.

Can you see the deer? I didn't want to open the door and scare it off so the picture is fuzzy.

Before the new roof...



After.

My fall decorations!

We're moved in

We moved out of our apartment the last weekend of July. We got everything into our cars even the couch and washer and dryer. Our Honda Element is fabulous! We just got cable yesterday as well as our garbage cans. I never thought I'd be excited to see garbage cans, but I did a little jump for joy when I came home yesterday and saw them in the driveway. We have to pay for a private company to pick up our garbage. I mowed my yard for the first time last Sunday. It was as relaxing as I remember. I love push-mowing yards and the fact that it's my own yard makes it all the more wonderful. Tim weed-eated while I mowed. I told him this makes us official homeowners. An unexpected perk that we have with this house is we have several deer that come to eat the apples under our apple tree every day. They are beautiful. Of course, Tim is now anxious for deer season to get here. Our air conditioner died a few weeks ago, but thankfully it has not been too hot with all the windows open and ceiling fans going. Unfortunately, this lack of air probably contributed to the passing of our Cocker Spaniel, Lilo. We had to put her to sleep on 8-8-08 because she went into respiratory distress. She would have loved our tile floors. We are all adjusting to living without her. Lily and Daisy are still doing well. Lily especially loves our back porch. Since we leave the back sliding glass door open when we're here, she spends a lot of time on it. We've nicknamed her "Nature Puppy."

Below are some pictures of out progress. Enjoy!

Our wood floors are just waiting to be put down. Unfortunately those will be one of the last things we do so until then I just get to stare at the boxes.

Our basement is being put to good use as a storage area for our stuff. I'm beginning to wonder how much of it I'll no longer need by the time we're finally able to unpack it all.

The only painted room in the house. My master closet.

Our bedroom "curtains"

Our kitchen may be cluttered and the cabinets may not all have doors, but we are pleased to have the appliances in place at least. We still need to put up the over-the-range microwave. We can finally wash the dishes in the kitchen instead of the bath tub like we've been doing since we moved in the last weekend of July.

Our dining room table. See the tile floors. We still have to add the grout and a few more tiles in the corner, but it's better than the concrete floors we were walking on.

Our favorite decoration so far.

We've gone from an open floorplan to actual rooms!

Every project needs a to-do list. So naturally I have created one for this project. And as is typical for me, I went a little crazy making it. It's color coded for each room/space in the house. I think it will either go in the scrapbook or the burn pile when we're done. I haven't decided yet. Our lovely stack of new insulation before it was installed in the kitchen ceiling and outside walls. I hate insulation.

The sea of sheetrock. It took all day to get this stuff (84 sheets) from the store to inside the house. It's HEAVY!

The latest in insulation installation attire. Did I mention that I HATE insulation?!?!?!

The newly insulated kitchen ceiling. We have 8 can lights and will have a light fixture over the sink and dining room table. There will no excuse for not seeing in our kitchen!

The newly covered kitchen walls.

Some of the 14 cabinets that I have the "pleasure" of staining.

We love the cherry color we picked out for our cabinets.

Before when you looked from the kitchen into the living room you saw the other end of the house. Now you just see the living room.

Two sheetrock-hanging professionals at work.

Tim got a little goofy with the sheetrock dust.

Oh, yeah. He's lost it.

The sheetrock is all hung except for the new master bath and closet because we haven't built those walls yet. We are focusing more on what has to be done before we have to move in. We only have 10 days left. I still have 4 cabinets to stain with the second coat and then I'll be ready to stain the doors. That will probably have to wait until after we move in. We still have to pack up the rest of the house. Yuck! I'm getting really good at finding excuses not to pack. My mom's parents came up Saturday night and stayed with us until Sunday afternoon. It was great seeing them. He helped my mom with capping off water lines in the kitchen that we won't be using. Apparently she hates copper lines like I hate insulation. Tim is anxious to start laying the floors, but the walls have to be mudded first. That is what they were going to start on today. Stay tuned for the next exciting installment in THE ADVENTURES OF OUR LIFE!

quick post

We now have all the subfloors installed, termites killed, kitchen ceiling leveled, and floor leveled. It's still not much to look at, but we have the bamboo wood floors and tiles in the basement waiting for installation. Tim is in Gordonsville, TN for a school training until Friday night and Laura is supposed to be back in town Tuesday night. Then the countdown begins. We have to be out of the apartment by the end of July so as of today we have 24 days to go. We have at least started packing and have moved some boxes to the basement. It will be really exciting when I can post pictures that shows significant progress. Until then you get to look at our new subfloors and the new concrete in the kitchen (the floor was 2 inches lower in the back.)

Our contractor, Laura.

Our progress

And you thought you had a lot of garbage to take out.

Just in case you wondered if we really did all of our own stunts.

We didn't waste anytime after signing the contract on Tuesday afternoon. We ripped up the carpet in the living room and hall that evening. Mom started ripping off paneling and sheetrock on Wednesday. We got the dumpster delivered on Friday and have already filled it full. We still have to finish up a few spots in the bathroom but otherwise we have the main part gutted. We will gut the kitchen tomorrow and begin jacking up the house. The kitchen is a converted garage so we can work on it while we level out the rest of the house. We are having a great time, but are really tired!