2.25.2010

Today's Project

Today, Mark is going to be building the master bedroom window seat/storage bench!  I drew out for him what I wanted it to look like so I'm excited to see how far he gets on it today.

I gave him these pictures for inspiration:




Instead of having two "boxes" on the face of it, I only want one.  EEE!  I'm excited.  Unfortunately, I won't have pictures of the process.  But I will take pictures and show you how far he gets today.  

That's not all he's doing... he will also be doing a major basement clean today. It's a little on the out of control side. What a guy!!!

2.21.2010

I'm back!

Finally!

A moment to sit and breathe and blog.  It's been a long time!  Last you heard I was getting ready for my work trip to Cincinnati.  I went, it was fun, and I got stuck in Atlanta.  Got home 3 days late - a long story for another time - and here I am now!

Update time...

Mark didn't have a lot of time to work on the house while I was away because he was really busy with work.  He did manage to texture before I got home.  On Tuesday and Wednesday, we primed the walls and ceiling, and yesterday we bought paint and painted the bedroom. Yesterday, we also found the place we will be buying our cabinets (more on that later), picked out our interior doors, and picked out the carpet we're going to buy for part of our bedroom.  Today, Mark put most of the outlet and switch covers on.  So we've been busy!!

Here's a couple priming pictures:



Here's a "tease" of our bedroom wall paint:


You want to know someone else who has been busy lately?  The builders next door.  Check this out:



Our house actually has more square feet than this house, but it's so tall!!  A nice thing is that the new house's driveway is between our house and the new house, so it's about 25 feet away from our house, instead of 10. They put up a retaining wall on our property line and will probably put a 6' fence on top of that.  That will give us - and them - some privacy.  I haven't taken a picture from the front, but it will look like an early century Portland foursquare house.  Very cool.

This week, we hope to:

- finish painting the bedroom (touch ups and cutting in)
- order our interior doors
- order our kitchen cabinets (maybe)
- order carpet
- clean our wood floors in bedroom/bathroom REALLY well
- install floor molding in our bedroom
- clean our chimney (Mark finally bought a chimney sweeper! we can have cozy fires in our upstairs fireplace now!)
- start to clean up/cut up wood in basement

I think that's probably enough for now.  :o)

2.06.2010

Taping and mudding progress

We're back with another update.  Mark made quite a bit of progress this week, finishing up all the taping and mudding of the hallway and master bedroom suite.  All he has left to do is the last sanding (blah - I hate sanding - dust gets everywhere!).  Pretty, eh?








Do you see rooms taking shape? I do!  I will be in Cincinnati all next week and by the time I get home, I think that Mark will have textured and leveled the floors (he has some spots to fill because we moved walls).  

On that same note, I think by the end of next week the house next door will probably be done!  I'm exaggerating just a bit, but they are building it so quickly!  I'll show pictures of the progress soon (maybe later today), but they've moved the driveway, poured the foundation, poured a retaining wall separating our property, and today are putting up the walls on the first floor.  It's going to be a very nice looking house when complete - a cool, old PDX style (see the Palazzo Custom Homes website).

Back to our project...what is really exciting is that once we get the texturing done and the floors leveled out, we can start patching up the wood floor (with wood we've recycled from spots in the house)...and then...once that is done...we can start putting in things like the bathtub, toilet, and vanity. We can also build the window seat, paint, install carpet, add the cove base (base trim), hang closet and bedroom doors...and be done!!!  I have a feeling that our master suite will be livable very soon which is pretty exciting!  The bedroom next to us is going to house all our constructions supplies, so we're not finishing that one completely yet.  

After the master bedroom is done, we tackle the big kahuna - the kitchen. We haven't picked out cabinets yet :o(  but if we have time today, we are going to look at a few more cabinet places in Portland in hopes to find the perfect style in the perfect color.  

I'm a little scared to tear out our kitchen...it's already been hard to use it with the bit of construction that has affected it.  But, we hope to get everything ready to be put back together before we even do the demo on it (have the cabinets assembled downstairs, granite ordered, flooring ordered, sink, refrigerator, and dishwasher bought, etc.) to make this very disruptive part of our remodel go as smoothly and as quickly as possible.  

For now, my life is filled with dust, dirt, flannel sheet window and door coverings, and plastic doors.  It's sooo attractive...


I probably won't post again until I get back from my trip (unless I show you a peek of what's going on next door).  I'd appreciate prayer for safe travels - the weather back East isn't too great right now!!