The Boy Is Back In Town

We are back to a family of four. I picked G up from Grandma and Grandpa's this morning. It was just the welcome I hoped for. When I walked in he got a huge smile on his face then went back to the living room to do a little show-off dance. Then he made a beeline for the closet and grabbed his coat. We are so thankful to Matt's parents for keeping G while the house was turned upside down.

The urethane will be dry enough to put the kids' rooms back together. Ha! Kids' rooms - as in more than one! I'm sure G is ready to sleep in a real bed and not a Pack 'n Play.

Pictures of the finished rooms tomorrow!

House Renovation, Day 5

Mr. D and the boys are just about done.  They worked really hard this whole week to get the place ready for Zak Brown to work on the floors. 

I stopped in at lunch each day this week to check on their progress and see if they needed me to answer any questions or make any final choices.  I’ve noticed that they guys get drive-through lunch each day and have a picnic in one of the rooms.  On Tuesday I told them to sit at our table to have a more proper meal.  Mr. D. declined saying that this is what they do when they are on the job.  No matter how much I pushed they had their picnic in the bedroom.

I know that I’ve gotten sick of eating out all week since the kitchen is a dusty disaster and cooking food in that does not sound very good.  No matter how much I wipe down the counters, the dust remains.  I decided to give Mr. D and the boys a home-cooked meal for lunch today.  Last night I put together our favorite Chicken Tortilla Soup in the crock pot.  When I got up this morning, voila, lunch.  Mr. D. was happy that they would not have to go out today.  I warmed up some soup at lunchtime and made them sit at our table.   Maybe those brownie points will put a spring in their step to work faster!

At lunchtime, one of the boys was plastering the corner bead around the former pocket door opening.  Although it’s not the size I wanted, it is going to be a great addition to the flow of the house.  Mr. D. and his other son were fitting the new doors on all the rooms down the hall. 

Did I already tell you about the doors?  Since we needed a new on for the new bedroom, we figured we’d go all out and make all the doors down the hall match.

Zak Brown was getting ready to stain the kids’ rooms.  I already picked the color for the final stain yesterday and he had G's floor already stained.  It looks amazing!

You can see the awesome 6-panel doors that need some stain once the weather gets nicer.

As of this point we had not decided if we were going to stay at home tonight or go to a hotel.  This depended on how much progress Zak made on the floors.  He said that he would be able to stain and put both coats of urethane down so staying in the house was not going to be possible.

Boy was he right!  After work Matt and I zipped home to pack a bag for a few days.  We could only stand being in the house for a few minutes before the fumes became too overwhelming.  We went in and out in shifts until we had, what we thought, was enough to sustain us away from home.

Matt used some of those accumulated hotel points to get us a place just on the other side of the expressway from home.  So any trips back to the house would not take too long.  

Of course Lotso Huggin' Bear had to come, too

House Renovation, Day 4

Things are flying today.

When I came home for lunch I thought the fire marshal would show up because the house was full of people!  Mr. D and the boys were eating lunch while the electrician was working in G's room, and a clean shaven guy was in M's room.  When I introduced myself to the guy in M's room, he reminded me that we had met the other day.  Guess who it was?!

Zak Brown shaved his beard!  I soooo did not recognize him.  The good thing is the beard has nothing to do with his skills with the floors.  M's room was already sanded and we chose the stain for the floors.  Zak Brown would not get much more done in her room today.  Tomorrow he will sand G's room, stain both kids' rooms, start laying the floor in our bedroom (since the original could not be salvaged), and lay the first layer of urethane.  He'll come back on Saturday morning to lay the second coat.  We can move the kids back into their rooms on Sunday!

M's room at lunchtime today

There is one small additional project that we decided to add since Zak Brown was going to work on the floors.  We have a pocket door in the kitchen that is a ridiculous, annoying toy for the children.  We never use it to block off the kitchen.  Since it was not a load-bearing wall, it has to go!  One wall up, one wall down :)

Pocket door - before

Pocket door - during

Let's call this pocket door the best laid plans.  I wanted the pocket door removed all the way up to the ceiling.  That would make the living room and kitchen seem just a bit bigger.  Since it's a pocket door we figured that the removal would be an easy job.  When Mr. D and the boys opened up the wall they discovered that there was a 4x12 header (I have no idea) that ran from the top of the pocket door all the way across the kitchen.  So my way open passage has turned into a really wide doorway.  I guess it's better than nothing.  However, that puts a wrinkle in my furniture plans for a bookshelf along the wall.  Oh well.

The electrical is another snowball that's brewing.  Our house has a mix of original wiring and new wiring.  We don't trust anything The Hack did plus the original wiring is pretty gnarly, to quote Zak Brown.  We might, might, have the electrician pull all the old wire while he's here.  We'll decide that tomorrow. 

We surely miss G.  We've Skyped with him several nights this week.  It's a hoot to see him get excited to see our faces.  If one of us is missing, he'll ask where we are.  When we pop into the screen he does his trademark, "OOOH, OOOH!"  I hope to get him back from the grandparents tomorrow night or first thing Saturday.  For all the chaos and craziness he brings, it's noise we need him back in our house.

Day 3

We have closets!  Mr. D and the boys got them drywalled, taped, and mudded.  Now that we've seen the actual size of the room we are wondering how much of our furniture will actually fit back in.  Of course we worry about where the TV and satellite receiver will go.  In the old room they easily sat on our dresser.  In this room we are not sure where the dresser will go, and if that placement will allow for comfortable watching from bed.

Matt and Mr. D. came up with an ingenious idea for our satellite receiver.  Hang the TV on the wall, and steal a little space from the ceiling of G's closet for a built in shelf to hold the receiver.  Mr. D. will deck it out with a 4-gang outlet so we could possibly put another component in there as well.

The most brilliant thing about it is how he is going to hide the cords.  We did not want the cords to hang down the wall to an outlet.  Mr. D. fashioned a cord chase out of  a length of PVC pipe from the built-in shelf that has an elbow where it comes out of the wall.  Yes, we have a round hole of PVC in the wall, but once the TV is hung you will never see it.  You've got to see it!

M in G's doorway

The ingenious shelf in G's closet.  It will be drywalled off soon

There's the shelf in our room.  It looks weird now, but once it's painted it will blend.  "Oh yeah, you blend."

 The flooring guy, who by the way looks like the lead singer of the Zak Brown Band, will be there in the morning.

He talks like a surfer and isn't sure how gnarly the floors will be under the carpet.  Cross your fingers for quality floors that just need to be sanded and stained so the kids can sleep in their rooms!

And We Have A Closet

The flooring guy came by this morning and indicated he could start on Thursday.  Wahoo!  Now the true logistics of how to refinish all the floors in the house begin.  We think we might have them finish the bedrooms so we can move the furniture out of the living room.  We'll see! 

What I do know is that by the end of the day we had a skeleton of closets.

It's a good thing the weather is going to be nice today

Mr. D. and the boys got to work right away this morning.  I'm home with them for a bit to talk to the hardwood floor guy.  They have now cut through the wall for the new doorway.  I guess there is no turning back now, right?

The whole-house fan and the windows are open.  Whoa, baby is there ever some dust flying here.

House Renovation, Day 1

Mr. D. arrived right on time at 8:00.  I had to leave for work but Matt stayed behind to answer any questions Mr. D had.

All day I was awaiting an email or text photo that never came.  I could not stand it!

Finally the following text came in - "It's a mess in here."  Really?  That's all you can share!!  I had to come home and see for myself.  Mr. D and his son were just leaving for the day.

Here's the progress:
Our old closet is gone.  It's been widely known that at least one former owner of this house was a hack when it came to home renovation.  Today we have even more data to support that fact.  When Mr. D was removing the drywall in the closet he jostled the light and a fuse popped.  Mr. D. later found that the wiring was not securely or properly installed in the fixture box and the wires had burned through the electrical tape.  Now it makes sense that the closet light would flicker in and out at any old time.  That was a great fire waiting to happen.

The closet was the white rectangle to the left.  The hole in the ceiling was the fire hazard. 

They removed the carpet and decided that half of the hardwood had to go.  The planks in one of the rooms could not be saved.  The saving grace is that the planks can be used to patch other areas of the house.

There's where our bed used to be

Mr. D. will be back in the morning with his flooring guy to make the plan of attack for the rest of the flooring in the house.

House Renovation, Step 1

G is safely at Grandma & Grandpa's house for a few days.  Matt and I started moving furniture after returning from our drop off rendezvous.  We got less moved that we had anticipated, but at least our bedroom is empty.  Here are some before and afters

Good bye big bedroom....

The end of an era

Tonight is the last night our two kids will share a room*.  G is going to grandma & grandpa's house for the week while the construction begins.  M will be home with us as she knows not to play with leftover power tools and eat debris from the floor.

I think M will be excited to have her own room back.  She continually talks about how she wants to decorate and rearrange her room.  However, we think G will have a hard time.  He likes to call out to M in the morning when he wakes up.  He might be a little lonely without her.

Our contractor, Mr. D., said that he'd only need 3-4 days to construct the wall.  The only caveat in this situation is the hardwood floors.  We are not certain of the time line associated with the floors as we have no clue what they look like underneath.

The snowball has gotten a bit bigger as we realized that the new door for the bedroom will not match the other doors down the hall.  Mr. D. will ensure that the three bedroom, hall closet, bedroom closets, and bathroom doors all match.

*I say the last night if all goes according to plan.  They may spend a few more days together at the end of the week depending on how construction progresses.

The decision is......

To stay.  After a lot of number crunching and an honest pro/con list for staying or leaving, staying in our current residence is the most prudent financial decision at this time.  That's not to say that things will not be happening at our house in, oh say, the next week!

We have committed to a contractor that can start next week.  We've talked about this as a possibility for so long, I now have some anxiety that it's finally coming to fruition.  The contractor, we'll call him Mr. D., asked us a lot of great questions: How big do we want the closets to be?, Do we need additional outlets in the rooms?, and the biggest question of all - What kind of flooring do you want in the bedroom? Well that question started a snowball.

The original hardwood floors are under the carpet in our bedroom.  We would like to salvage them and restore them back to their original glory.  When we replaced the pink carpet (yes, pink) with a beautiful, creamy frieze we were appalled at how previous owners used huge nails to probably remove squeaks from the floor.  At the time we made mention that it was a shame to ruin the floors like that.  Now, we that we want hardwood floors in the bedroom, we really cringe.  The decision to restore hardwood floors is not just for the bedroom.  Since we tend to be a go big or go home kind of family, the decision has been made to restore the hardwood in the whole house.  See the snowball getting bigger?

The final cost for the floors is slightly unknown at this point.  They will refinish what they can (for a decent per square foot price) and replace what is beyond its life (for a little more per square foot).  We also have an interesting situation with the status of the visible hardwood in the hallway in the kitchen.  The hallway planks run the length of the hallway in a north/south fashion, which makes complete sense.  When the flooring was installed, the kitchen was laid at the opposite east/west direction.  We're not sure on the logic for that.  Now that we want to expose and refinish the living room, which completes the circle from kitchen through the hallway we need to remedy this.  Mr. D. thinks that the kitchen could possibly be carefully taken up and turned the proper direction.  If it can't be properly taken up and turned we will have to replace it with new, but once we commit we're ready for that expense.  Snowball

To make the snowball just a bit bigger, and since work has to be done on the floor anyway, we are going to have a pocket door removed that's between the kitchen and living room.  It won't help us move our table into the kitchen, but it will give the feeling of more space.  Then maybe we can find a great bookshelf that will get my cookbooks off the floor of the hallway closet.  I'm getting ahead of myself, let's see how the whole thing turns out before I go finding a bookshelf.  That's a whole other snowball.

Snow-MG

Winter finally showed us what she's got - all 20 inches.  Blizzard of 2011 was hyped since late last week and the weather folks did not disappoint.  School was canceled for Wednesday by 1:00 on Tuesday.  The big snow started flying at student dismissal and I was happy to walk out with the kids.  Matt picked up M and I grabbed G so we were all home by 4:00.  The wind was horrendous by nightfall and we were happy to hunker down.

We went to bed seeing lightning through the blinds and the snow pelting the windows.  The kids slept until almost 8:00 and that's when we caught our first glimpse of what the blizzard left behind.

One whole panel of the garage is hiding. That was the low part of the driveway drift.

Mickey Mouse almost didn't make it.

We watched a little bit of the news coverage and shook our heads at the crazy totals.  The official measurement at the airport was at almost 20 inches at that moment.  There was still a significant lake effect snow happening so that total was sure to increase.

Matt and M bundled up to start shoveling around 10:30.  He started with a path to the garage and then along the front of the garage.  After about 30 minutes he realized that shoveling the whole driveway was an insurmountable task.  We made the decision to kindly ask our next-door neighbors, the ones we like, to borrow their behemoth snow blower.  They were more than gracious to hand it over.  Matt had the drive cleared in just over an hour.  We have debated for several years whether or not to buy one of these.  The snow we get is not usually so bad that we can't just shovel it real quick.  When these big snows happen we really wish we had one.  The return on investment is hard to quantify since it might be absolutely needed once or twice a year.

M's new perch

Matt made it to the garage

G trying to figure out how to climb the drift

Matt's first pass on the driveway

We heart this machine.  Thanks, neighbor!

 After the drive was cleared we all took a break for lunch and G's nap.

M went out to play with the neighbor kids and the most glorious thing happened, a phone call to say that school was canceled for a second day!  I'm not quite sure why, but I'll take it!  Another day at home with my babies that are not sick, watching TV and making cookies is a beautiful thing.  Maybe we'll even think about taking showers, maybe.

Next Steps

A contractor that lives in the neighborhood stopped over last Tuesday to give us an idea for the cost of putting up the wall.  He's done several renovations in the neighborhood so he's intimately aware of the inner workings of our house model.  He dropped off his quote by the end of the week and we were pleasantly surprised at the affordability of the project.

One quote does not a project make, so a colleague recommended another contractor that came over tonight.   We should have his quote by the end of the week.  He did say his price would be cheaper if we decide to go forward with it in February rather than March.  Concrete can be poured in March and our wall project is small potatoes compared to a house addition (sniff, sniff).  He should have some time to put together a well thought out quote since there's supposedly a blizzard coming our way tonight!