Framing up nicely!

While my projects have mostly been small or fizzled out, Aaron has had great success. Given his initial struggle with new door frames back in March, I was a little leary about his pulling out and replacing the hall bathroom's door frame - the bathroom that is currently fully functional. I'm not a big fan of showering without a door, especially since our male boxer, Dash, is a big fan of pulling back the curtain so he can lick the water.


However we were both happily surprised when he tried a new technique and had the whole thing banged out in about an hour and a half. Then he moved on to fixing little picky spots on the guest bedroom and office doors, then on to framing them out with casing.

Overall, he was very proud of his accomplishments Sunday night (as was I!):

Things are coming together!

More success with the house, thankfully, and things seem to be moving faster just in time for us to make a mad dash to get ready for the housewarming.

One unplanned repair that came up, our mailbox post just started coming apart on us, so Aaron bought a premade one from Lowe's and had his brother help him put it up.

Sadly, that pile of "rocks" at the bottom is actually pieces of road that keep falling off whenever we pull onto our driveway... gotta call the county about that!

Aaron also attacked the two pine trees that were touching our roof, one was also blocking the garage door a bit. They really need to come down, but for not they aren't making direct contact w/the house

Before:


After


Inside we had a literal laundry list of things to do... after over a month of living at the house, it was time to get our washer/dryer up and running 'cause laundrymats are $$$!

Taped to the back wall of our laundry closet this weekend:


By Sunday morning, we had a fully functioning laundry closet and I had loaded up my first load of clothing:

2 for 2 - quick update

No pics 'cause I figure if you've seen one toilet, you've probably seen them all, but Aaron finally put the toilet back together in the hall bathroom yesterday, so now both of our toilets are functioning! He'll have to take apart the master bathroom toilet when we redo that room, but that's not going to happening for a while yet.

Our laundry closet is also close to done - Aaron put down a second layer of joint compound and I finished sanding it this morning. We plan to clean it up and then throw down a couple layers of primer so it will be ready to house our washer and dryer. Good thing too, 'cause we are running out of clothes and I don't want to waste another $20 (and several hours) at the laundrymat!

A little more progress, a little more debt!

Last night Aaron and I made a visit to a local furniture store that was going out of business and having a "last gasp" 50% off sale (50% off the original price of course, furniture places never go 50% off sale prices!). We quickly chose a nice green set, and Aaron said instead of a sofa and "chair and a half," he wanted to get two 84" sofas. Since we currently have two sofas in our livingroom, I agreed that sounded good. However once we got home, I had a nagging feeling that maybe they were too big. I took a quick measure of our current sofas (81" and 79" long) and told him we better hustle back and change our order 'cause those sofas wouldn't fit, especially since they were much deeper than our current ones. The bonus of changing our order is that the set was in stock, so we loaded them up in the truck and drove them home right then!

The livingroom w/all four couches, very "overstuffed"


As with all things new and interesting, the dogs had to check it out. Dash was his usual adventurous self, diving right in (and unphased when he toppled right off)


Xena was a little more hesistant, mostly avoiding them as I rearranged into a more permanent setup:


And then after things were more settled, she decided that the chair and a half was her new "throne" (she is the Warrior Princess afterall!)


The livingroom is coming together nicely, and I'm hoping to finish off the details before our housewarming on July 1st (less than 3 weeks!). To be "completely" done, we've got to:

• Touch up paint on walls and ceiling
  
• Put down trim around walls and exterior door
• Paint said trim, and trim on window
• Install/put up speakers and entertainment system

The rest of the house is making slow progress, and we've got very simple but useful curtains up in the bedroom keeping the earlier morning light outside where it belongs.

We're 4 for 4

Sorry for the long delay folks, life got ahold of me and wouldn't let go! As of Memorial Day weekend, Aaron had us at 4 for 4 on kitchen appliances. It took a bit of work - and a couple Uncles - but he got the wiring set up and the microhood mounted the weekend before:


Then after many false starts and missed parts, he got the dishwasher in and running over the long weekend:

I've been mostly assisting, cleaning and painted a second coat on the majority of the hallway/dining room area. Now that we are living here, getting to paint the kitchen is going to be tricky!

Aaron's current project is repainting a small grate for the heater mounted underneath the sink (it blows on your toes, very nice in winter!) which was nasty and rusted. He's got it sandblasted and primed, ready for it's layer of high-heat register paint to make it look pretty and match the rest of the black in our kitchen.

The animals are definitely enjoying their new home, running up and down the halls (we have to tell the dogs to get on the carpet so they don't cream themselves when they wrestle) and generally exploring. Dash probably gets the most benefit because he enjoys being on the tie-out outside with a bone or a toy, and it's nice that we don't have to worry about him eating tools or supplies when we work on the house. He's also discovered the joys of digging, though thankfully so far he's only tried it under the deck:


We've decided to throw our housewarming on July 1st, so our goal right now is to just get the parts people will see looking pretty and also having the guest room cleared out for our very first overnight guests - my parents! Given our current rate of progress, it's going to be a pretty big task to get things done, but we'll try our darnedst!