Getting very close!

Last night I arrived at the house past 8pm, Xena and I had Canine Good Citizen class at 7pm. Xena had a grand time checking things out and testing out the new laminate floor while I caught up with Aaron. The laminate floor was finished except for trickier parts so Aaron decided to head home w/the pup and I stuck around for an hour to bang out the first coat of paint in the bathroom. I mixed the "Stampede" from the livingroom with white to get a lighter tan and continue my quest to tie the colors of the house into one another. I think it looks pretty good, but there are some thin spots that will need touching up tonight.

Goals for tonight (we hope!): Finish flooring, finish bathroom paint, install new mailbox. If we have time, install upgrade fixtures and put toilet back together. If we really luck out on timing, I'll also scrub the bathroom so it'll be fully clean and useable!

I was able to get some photos uploaded, here's a quick look at the laminate flooring:
Kitchen

Dining Room

Hallway

Closing in on the zero hour...

We put in some good hours of work this weekend, but still have much to do. Our lease ends a week from today, so the time crunch is in full effect! Unfortunately I don't have pics of any of our great progress because our laptop croaked and that's what I used to upload pics from the digi cam. I will have belated pics, I hope, sometime later this week.. if not, it'll be a while before our computer/house is running at full capacity!

Friday night Aaron and I finished up the insulation and now only have to haul the old nasty stuff away. Aaron cut the hole for the new placement of the cold air return on the far wall of the dining room (instead of right under the kitchen counter!).

On Saturday Aaron's buddy from work, Shane, stopped by and helped out quite a bit! They plugged the hole from the old cold air return spot, which I caulked over thoroughly and jumped up and down to test it's sturdiness. Then they took some time figuring out how to cut and lay down the first section of laminate flooring in the dining room.

They didn't lay much floor down but the experience set Aaron and I up for a great amount of sucess on Sunday when we were able to lay nearly the entire dining/kitchen floor down in a short 4 hour visit.

The bathroom isn't done yet, but mostly because I got sucked into the flooring project which was a higher priority. 2 coats of primer are up, the ceiling is painted and wall area is taped off, so it's just a matter of putting on color and spiffing it up/cleaning it a bit.

With luck after tonight the floor will be complete, or the bathroom will be done. I hope for one or the other, but know enough by now not to count on both!

Moving right along...

Still nothing we can definitely point to and say "this is completely done" but we finally feel like we are making some forward progress instead of just swimming against the tide. Saturday was frustrating with some bad luck and plans that didn't work out, Sunday was an improvement and by Monday night we had a good head of steam, rolling forward with our work. Our main focus is getting living space in working order - top priority being the larger bathroom, our bedroom, and getting the kitchen in some sort of functional state. Plus that pesky water problem solved, of course.

The one good thing we completed on Saturday night was an inspection of the insulation in our roof. Aaron had opened up a hole w/some bad drywall and thought he spotted mold. I went up for a closer look and discovered it was actually just plain old dirt, no mold to be seen. WHEW! Of course in case of mold, I was quite geared up for my little exploration, and while helpful, it isn't exactly fashionable:

Some mild success I had was using a compound miter saw and nail gun (I am woman, hear me saw!) to put up some casing around a couple door frames. I only call it a mild success because it was a non-urgent job, I think the quality of work was definitely pretty darn good!


As I mentioned, Monday was really the "get 'er done" night thus far. Aaron was able to put up the replacement outer corners in the hall bathroom and then we went down to the crawl space to finish up our insulation replacement project. Unfortunately we ran out of insulation just shy of completing it, so we plan on going back this weekend with enough to finish the job and also to haul out all the old nasty stuff so we can bring it to the dump. If all goes well tonight, Aaron will have the outer corners finished up in the bathroom and it'll be ready for me to prime and paint tomorrow night!

So little time, so little sleep...

While others might have been hunting for chocolate eggs or feasting with family this weekend, Aaron and I were trying to knuckle down and get things done at the house. Dash lent a hand again, making sure to wake us up extremely early in the morning for potty breaks and we were over to the house before the sun had really risen 2 out of 3 days.

Unfortunately the process of patching drywall is a slow and imperfect process, so our high hopes for getting the kitchen/dining/hall done on Friday were foiled by some very stubborn spots. We did manage to get all but touch ups done by Sunday, but all that extra time patching drywall took away from other projects and we didn't get nearly as much done as we hoped.

But the color in the kitchen/dining/hall area did come out well, though it's a pain to photograph because it's the lightest color I've done so far, a nice calm "celery" shade:


We also cleared out the garage of demolition debri for the second time, making 4 trips to the dump (a grand total of $70 in fees this time, $50 last time) and ended up with space to actually park a vehicle in the garage for the very first time since demo started! Imagine a space you need in a garage to hold a Ford Explorer. Then fill that space to waist-high... twice. That's the amount of trash that our garage contained, the amount of busted or nasty stuff we pulled out of our modest 1200+ sq.ft. house...

In other news, the one pair of jeans I was willing to sacrifice to house reno bit the dust this week. Sadly, I didn't realize it until I stepped out of the car and felt a rather large breeze on my rear one chilly morning!

To replace them, Aaron immediately volunteered up a pair of silver and lime green warm ups that I've had since he met me and that he positively loathes. Since I needed something and refused to ruin another pair of jeans, I gave in. Please ignore the dopey look on my face... half as much sleep and twice as much work as a body can take will do that to a girl..

Update from the Land of "Nothing's Simple"

Our appliances were due to be delivered on Saturday, so we worked to try and finish the kitchen drywall patching up and get at least primer on. So much for that! We noticed some iffy spots in the drywall behind where the fridge would go, so Aaron cut out a section:

But then he noticed the spot went behind the small base cabinet next to it, so off that goes:


That was late Friday night, and we realized we didn't have enough drywall at the house to patch the new larger hole, so we had to wait until Saturday morning to hit up Lowes and get the drywall. Dash got us up god-awful early Saturday morning so we were over at the house by 5:45am, doing all the work and prep we could until Lowes opened. After several coats, the patch was looking more like wall, but still wasn't ready for painting:


By the end of Sunday, "most" of the kitchen was primed, and a small section of dining room. Otherwise, most of the our dining room and hallway looked like a backdrop for 101 Dalmations:


Monday Aaron met w/the water guy after work and we found out that we have iron and sulfur in our water (we could have told you that!) and he suggested a $900 water filter system - we're shopping around for a better deal. Also he heard the pressure pump turning on and off as he tested the water and let us know that it was dying and would burn out our well pump if it wasn't replaced. He suggested what size to buy and where to mount it (20 gal., mounted on a shelf above our water heater), and thankfully the pricing on those items seems relatively in expensive ($130ish). Unfortunately it does add yet another project to our never ending list of things that "must" be done before we can move in.

On the positive side, Matt is coming back up this weekend and is letting us borrow his air nailer which will make the process of putting up window casing alot faster. This is one project on the "must" list because insulation is sticking out from the gap between window and wall and we can't have the animals in the house while it's exposed. My high hopes are that the kitchen/dining/hall will be completely primed and possibly painted, the window casing will be up, and the last door will be fully functional by the end of the weekend. If we get totally lucky, we'll also have either the pressure pump or the water filter purchased and installed, or a part of the kitchen/dining flooring put down.