Dry Spell

We've got drywall folks.

Here's the loot, in all its glory.

 The boys spent a Saturday hanging it. This is the ceiling downstairs:

The most exciting part of drywalling for Will was finally being able to take the door off that separated the old part of the house from the new part of the house.

Remember this?

Sorry door, you are no more. It kinda looks dead the way it's just laying there.

Now we can see all the way through the house.  It was weird and exciting to have to start changing our mentality to thinking of the addition as part of our living space. It's just that it's been there sooooooo long, but has always been partitioned off.

 Here's the addition all drywalled:

And the stairwell:

The beanette's nursery hallway:

And our bedroom:

Drywalling is very tedious work, and yes, we are doing it ourselves (it's totally appropriate to call us crazy at this point). We managed to finish all the mudding and sanding in the mudroom, but are still trudging away upstairs. Thankfully though, we were able to paint the mudroom (Benjamin Moore HC-115 Georgian Green) last weekend with help from my dad and Travis and Ashlee:

Our next big task is tiling. Our friend Chris Elam (who drew up the plans for our house and also owns Sycamore Tile Works with his wife Emily...seriously, check them out and order some sweet house numbers as gifts for holidays and weddings!) lended his help and expertise to get us started. Will, Tim, and Chris were able to lay all the cement backerboard in just a few hours...an encouraging quick win after several weeks of drywalling with several more in sight:

Ummm, did I mention that neither of us have ever tiled before? Ever? 

This should be interesting...

Nostromo

10 weeks and counting.

And that's if all goes as we hope.

I'm 30 weeks this week and things are getting REAL folks. For REAL. Like, I can see her punch through my belly real (not to be confused with this kind of punching).

I've resolved myself to the reality that we likely won't have a pinterest-worthy nursery (ahem, hallway) by the time our sweet babe comes. Or a bathroom that doesn't require traversing a set of stairs to get to. And who knows what else I'm not thinking about (trim? light fixtures? air vents?). I know, I know, it's so hard being middle-class!

But I've also heard that you really only need a few things when baby arrives: boobs, a bed, diapers, and clothes. I think we can manage that. And in a way,  the simplistic approach feels kind of liberating.

I'm hoping to help as much as I can these next few weeks before my big ole baby belly becomes a liability (images of smeared paint swim in my head from a belly that just doesn't leave enough room b/w it and a freshly painted wall).

Yes, pregnant ladies can help with home projects. And we can take walks, stand and not use a chair, garden...pretty much all the normal stuff. Maybe I won't be able to trim my toenails soon, and DO NOT get between me and the nearest bathroom. But mud and paint and tile, I can.

I think I can confidently say that we will have painted walls and finished floors by the time she arrives. And I'll eat those words if she decides to make a surprise early appearance.

To be honest, I'm looking forward to being able to tell my children one day about this crazy adventure in our lives. I guess it's our version of "I used to walk 5 miles in the snow to get to school every day..."

We've Been Framed

Things have been moving forward at a dizzying pace on Wylie St. Will and I are expecting a little girl in mid-September, so we've been working hard to make sure the new addition is liveable for her and us by that time. Things are looking hopeful for that to happen, but we've still got a ways to go!

Planning a home addition and baby addition is a somewhat surreal experience. One moment I'm researching toilets, the next it's strollers (which I gave up on. SOAP BOX ALERT: Picking out things for a babe who isn't here is like trying to furnish a house you've never seen! Who came up with this system?!?!?!). Things swimming in my brain at any given moment include Janka ratings,  breast pumps, light fixtures, rocking chairs, tile sealer...I will spare you the rest of my madness. Oh, and then there's that whole labor and delivery thing. Yeh...

Life is FULL, but it's a good and exciting full. The light at the end (or is it the beginning?) of this proverbial tunnel is a sweet new babe (did I mention she's my first crush in 12 years?) and a new home. I'd like to have more of that swimming around in my brain. 

This is the knee wall in our back bedroom upstairs. You can see there will be a door in the middle so we can use the inside of the knee wall for storage:

 

Other side:

This is the closet. Should make for an interesting door!:

This is looking down the staircase. The wall for the back bedroom is on the right. The bathroom is on the left:

So maybe it's not conventional, but we're excited about it: Baby aka "Daisy", aka "Beanette" Rose will have her very own nursery hallway. Yup, a hallway. It's pretty spacious and is right next to our bedroom, so we can keep her close to us. She'll be right across from the bathroom too, which means a direct shot for mom and dad from poopy-cloth-diaper-baby-bottom to toilet sprayer (man, I bet you all are just loving all these details I'm giving you in this post):

Will installed a pocket door kit so that we won't lose any hallway or bathroom space to a door:

This is the hallway nursery's skylight. It'll get blinds so that the Beanette can sleep, although looking through it from a crib at night with all the stars in the sky would also be pretty rad:

This is the view from our new bedroom down the hallway (more knee walls on right, bathroom on left):

This is a shot of the bathroom from our bedroom closet. Although I couldn't decide on a stroller, I did choose a toilet:

Our bedroom:

Knee walls:

More knee walls. No storage back there though--it's all for duct work:

View from the back of our bedroom. I'm not quite sure yet if the brick will be painted and exposed, or painted and dry walled in. It's not really as cool as it looks and is pretty nasty. I definitely wouldn't want kids or animals touching it!:

I'm about a month or two behind on posts, so there is a lot more to show! We are getting ready for a phase of the project that doesn't really require any skills, so if you have time to spare and would like to help us out for an afternoon painting, just let me know! There's usually some Aver's or Naughty Dog in it for ya.

Insulation

When we first moved into this house about 4 1/2 years ago, there wasn't an ounce of insulation in the entire house. Well, except for a pile of vermiculite ore insulation (likely laced with some tasty asbestos) in a pile in the attic above our bedroom. It was COLD. You could see the imprint of your foot on our wood floors during the winter b/c of condensation. The windows would flap back and forth, and I would shiver for about 3 minutes uncontrollably in bed before even being able to think about falling asleep.

We've taken some drastic measures folks. Drastic.

A few years back we had someone insulate the crawlspace. Now, during this major remodel, we replaced all the windows (no more flapping in the wind!) and put insulation into the exterior walls. Remember this?

The last thing we needed to do to make our house more comfortable was insulate the new addition and attic. We chose to go with spray foam insulation, which is some pretty crazy stuff.

We hired local Spray Foam Insulators to do the job, and they were great. We felt pretty bad for the guy that was doing the spray foaming because it was an unseasonably warm 80+ degrees in mid-march and he was having to spray foam that was 140 degrees in our hot little attic...with a jump suit on the whole time. By the end, he had totally soaked that jump suit through.

And here's a peek at our newly spray-foamed space:

We also put some insulation in the floors to help reduce noise between the upstairs and downstairs. You can see that they didn't shave it level towards the bottom of the roof because knee walls will be covering up that space.

Once that was done, we were able to start putting down subfloor.

In one of the next posts I'll show you the new floor along with our newly framed rooms!

Sister Wives

Remember this?

Yup, that's the attic. And yes, it's part of this giant remodel project. One day this will accomodate a master bedroom, bathroom, and hallway office.

Nowadays folks see the outside of the house and say things like, "The house looks soooooo good" or "You guys really worked hard! How does it feel to be done?". I'm not sure if it's more dejecting for those folks or for me to have to tell them we are no where near finished (and that the outside changes weren't even a part of the original plan!).

The most amusing experience I've had related to this was when a friend came over, walked inside our house, and said "Oh". Yup, you heard correctly. "Oh." Ouch.

We've been working hard though and should have some big changes to show in the coming months. 

Before we could put subfloor down in the attic, we had to sister the joists. This basically means nailing boards against all of the existing floor joists in order to reinforce them and level them out:

It took Will and friends several weeks to sister all of them. And once they had them sistered they still had to level the top of the wood (i.e. lots more backbreaking work by hand):

We also had to add some framing to the roof in order to reinforce it:

 The duct work went above it, which will eventually be drywalled in:

And more will go behind the space that will be enclosed by knee walls:

Not very exciting stuff...but all of this work is in preparation for a walkable attic space for the first time in the house since it was built in the 30s.

Live Together, Die Alone

Winter came and left without a peep from me. A LOT of work has been happening since January so I will update you with a few posts over the next few weeks.

Just when I thought we were done with demolition, I forgot about this guy:

That's our laundry closet. If you've never been to our house, let me paint a picture for you about what it's been like doing business with this guy. It's right in Kevin's "bedroom", which actually has no door but is considered a "room" because there is a "closet" in it. (Please don't report me to Unnecessary Quotes, all these quotes are truly necessary). He's been living this way for a few years now so we thought it would be best to officially welcome him to adulthood by giving him a door and closet, and moving the laundry center out of his room and into the addition.

And here she goes:

This is the "closet" in the hallway to Guff's "room". This also had to go in order to make room for our new furnace and water heater.

Bye-bye "closet". The gray plastic square on the floor is a hole to the crawlspace where the furnace will sit.

New furnace. You can see the duct work to the left, which will be inside Kevin's new closet.

Framing. The furnace and water heater will go behind bi-fold doors, and one day we'll finish Kevin's closet and door.

Ain't it a beauty?

So our furnace and water heater used to be in a giant protruding closet in our kitchen. See it behind that giant dog, with the doors and the coat rack? Since we moved the water heater and furnace to the hallway, it's now giving us some much-needed extra storage space. Down the road when we have some more dough and have recovered from this remodel project, it will be knocked out during a kitchen remodel.

This is the hole left in the floor of the closet where the furnace used to be. It had to come out so we could actually put stuff on the floor. Apparently I'm not quite strong enough or determined enough to take something like this out on my own.

So once again it's Will to the rescue. Down the hatch he goes...(4 8 15 16 23 42).

And this is what we were left with.

Next post I'll hopefully have some attic pics to share.