So I thought that I'd update everyone once a week or every other week, depending on how much we get done each week...
So as you know we FINALLY got into The House. After nearly 3 months of day dreaming about what we wanted to do to The House, we were finally able to start ripping things out and making it a reality.
There was a nasty smell to The House, like animal pee. So the first thing to go had to be the carpet. When we were doing all the fixes to get The House we had to fix some floor boards and when we pealed back the carpet there was a MAJOR pee stain. I could only imagine what the rest of the carpet was like, which was throughout the WHOLE house, including BOTH bathrooms. So we HAD to get the carpet out of The House ASAP. The official start of the renovations to The House started on Thursday May 20th 2011 at approximately 5pm. Dustin, Sharon (Dustin's mom) and I all were on a mission to get it out! We even took off the ugly '70s paneling on the wall in the living room. We ended just before 9pm.
Carpet in the Driveway...
GONE...
Tanner helped...
Friday May 20th - I wake up from sleeping in (I had to work later that night, 11pm for Night Audit), Got ready and went over to The House around 1pm and started pulling up all the little staples that were left from the carpet padding that were stuck in the floor boards. We had pulled off the carpet tac strips the night before. Then I pulled all of the base boards off. By this time Sharon came over because she got home from work, Dustin came shortly after that. Sharon and I did a little weeding and then went to get our Friday night Pizzas (Laura you remember when we used to get Pizza every Friday night for dinner? That's one of my favorite memories of spending time with Mom on Friday night for pizza and movie nights). When we got back from getting dinner, Marcia, Lloyd and the Girls were there along with Gavin. After dinner I kinda just supervised, I was exhausted. Marcia and Sharon weeded more in the front yard with help from the Girls, while the guys worked on the back yard (chopping and mowing).
Saturday May 21st - Since I had to work Night Audit the night before I didn't get home until 8am. So I went straight to sleep until 3pm. I managed to get out of bed and over to The House where I walked into The House with NO popcorn ceiling...hooray! I helped clean up the mess it left (of course wearing a mask the whole time to not inhale the dust). Dustin wasn't very motivated to do much else after that because he had woken up super early to help the Fire department wash down the streets in downtown so his arms were super tired. We (when I say we it really means he most of the time) ended up deciding to open up the doorway from the living room/hallway into the kitchen. Just by taking out that couple of feet out of the wall really opened up the house. We hope to do the same to the wall that divides the kitchen to the dinning room some day. We then thought it would be an even better idea to knock out the fireplace and open the dining room to the living room. Well, come to find out the fireplace is made up of not only brick but cinder blocks as well. So that idea maybe knocked down instead of the fireplace...boo.
Ceiling with no Popcorn...
Dustin taking part of the wall down...
Not done, but you can invision it for now...
Backyard freshly mowed, more to do but much better...
Sunday May 22nd - I worked Night Audit again but this time I only let myself sleep until noon. I spent the day removing wallpaper from the bathrooms. I was able to get the Guest bath done but the Master is going to be a hard one (it still needs to be finished). The wallpaper is probably original to the house, circa 1975. We decided that we didn't want the fireplace. It was in an odd spot in the house, took up a lot of room that could be used for something else plus I HATED it. We originally wanted to take it out and make the Dining room a part of the Living room but as we were taking the Fireplace out we realized that that was not going to be an option, the fireplace was a major support for the house. So instead we are going to hide it in the wall. It took Dustin the whole day to remove enough of the front of the Fireplace in order to add the wall in front of it.
No more wallpaper!
Tired Dustin
Monday May 23rd - I wanted to sleep in, Dustin wanted to get up...it was 9am. Dustin finally convinced me to get up and we were off to The House for another day of adventure in DIYland. The game plan for the day was to finish the Fireplace, stain the Deck and the Popcorn in the Hallway and Dining room. We had to rent a jack hammer for a couple hours to remove the concrete from the floor of the Fireplace, which left a hole in the floor. We then filled a giant hole that was under the Fireplace with pieces of what we removed and concrete, to make sure it would never fall into the hole. While Dustin was working on the Fireplace, I managed to get the Deck stained all by myself and get the Water and PGE in our name. After all that we were spent, exhausted, ready to relax, so we went home early.
We spent the next work week taking some time off from The House. We were beat from the weekend before, plus a crazy work schedule and Erin going to Sacramento for her little sister high school graduation, we decided to lay low and wait for the weekend to begin again.
Stay tuned to find out what we did over Memorial Day weekend...
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