Grout!

It's a great feeling to come home from a weekend to find more work done!

Floors are all finished! They completed all the grout work on Saturday and by the time we got home, all was dry and well with the world.

The bathroom is looking more and more like a bathroom now that the show is in... just need to wait for the vanity so we can get the sink put in! oh yeah, a toilet would be nice too. But at least the walls and getting done and the floor is complete.

The closer we get to completion, the more we are liking the work we they are doing! Curious to see what tomorrow brings, as they are probably 2 days from completion.

We have paint - at least on part of the walls... the bathroom is still purple drywall.

We also have tile on the floor... but we can't walk on it yet LOL The crew was here today and put down the tile floor. They will come back tomorrow (Yes, they was working on our basement on Saturday of Easter weekend) to grout. No more bare cement floor!


It is weird to come home to find a note on the floor "Do not walk on floor"... um, ok, where should I walk? The ceiling? Guess I better go dig out my spiderman shoes!

They also have finished boxing in the area that we are considering putting a built-in wine rack. But now when we look at it, that wall that is open for the wine rack would be the perfect wall to put the pinball machine on... oh why do we not think of these things earlier in the process??

Day 4 has come and gone!

Building inspector was here this afternoon! Everything is starting to look more and more complete!!

I am getting anxious to actually see what the flooring is going to look like once it is installed too.

We were told that they opted to cut out bathroom door a little shorter. They knew that we are going to be finishing the ceiling at some point and will end up boxing in the duct work. The top of the door was going to end up right near one of the ducts and when we boxed everything in, the trim and door frame were going to be in the way. The result... a doorway that is about 4 inches shorter than a standard door. But that is definitely the best of the two options - don't want to just make more work for ourselves later!

They did bring the vanity over today and it is a little on the large side. Now the quiestion is, do we go with on 3 inches smaller or 6 inches smaller? Depending on which size we opt to go with, we may or may not have drawers... I think I would be willling to give up the drawers for the extra space to move around. We figure we are not going to have that much to store in this bathroom and we have a whole closet on the other side of the bathroom that will have all kinds of shelving space.

Day 3

The work continues! Drywall is up, Inspectors have been visiting, Shower is in!

Tomorrow they should be brining the vanity in so that we can see how big the ones she ordered us actually is.

Fozzy is fascinated by the spot on the floor where the toilet will be. Everytime he walks into the bathroom, he has to go and sniff the same spot!

We hav ealso discovered that Fozzy does not like the plastic that is covering the basement steps... he refuses to walk on it! Any time he goes up or down the stairs, he gets as close to the wall as possible and tiptoes down, making sure that he goes nowhere near the monster on the stairs that might bite his paws! LOL

Everyday, when the crew leave for the day, this is what the basement looks like where they have their stuff left... and since every day it is moved around a little, all 3 cats have to veture over and check everything out .

Bathroom/Basement Project Day 2

Day 2 is officially behind us!

Dry wall started, shower in and several outlets installed. They also got rid of the annoying pipe that was sticking up in the middle of the floor from when the furnace use to be there.

We talked to the deisgner about the options for the vanity. They are going to bring one over later this week so that we can get a better idea of how much room we will (or won't) have between there and the toilet. You can almost see the pencil lines in the floor on the picture of where the vanity will be. We think the inside lines are where the smaller vanity would sit if we went smaller.

Cats are getting annoyed with us each day, as whey have been quarantined to the spare bedroom during the day when the crew is here so that they are not in the way and we don'g have to worry about them sneaking outside. They hear us come home from work and start whining to be let out of their prison...

I think it's going to get harder and harder to find and catch them in the morning before too long!

Basement bathrom is one day closer to being done!

Basement remodel - day 1

It's finally started! The crew was here this morning starting on the new bathroom in the basement! Today they got everything framed in and all the water lines run.

Tomorrow the shower goes in and they will start drywalling. We are actually looking at possible swapping out the vanity/sink with a pedestal sink to save a little room. With the vanity that we were planning on putting in, it seems like it is going to be a little tight between the sink and the toilet. Will have to call and see what our options are there.

One thing I will say - These guys take the time to keep their work space contained. There is a huge canvas tarp hanging in the basement to keep the "construction dust" contained to the ones side, stairs covered with plastic etc. Not to mention, before these guys leave the job site for night, everything is cleaned up (as you can see from the picture!).

Can't wait to see what tomorrow looks like

It's finally almost done!

I know that it has been a while since I have posted an update but once school started, things have been crazy!

We have been working constantly on putting the house back together. Since my last update we have almost everything done!

Completed thus far since the start of this adventure:
Pool table taken apart and moved
Basement carpet installed
Basement "put back together"
Pool table put back together and felt replaced
Bathroom painted
Living room painted
Living Room carpet installed
Living room "put back together"
Kitchen flooring installed
Kitchen Painted
Hallway and upstairs landing painted
New washer and dryer ordered and installed
Bathroom REpainted
John's "new" desk" put up
My new desk ordered and put together
New living room blinds ordered and installed
Basement Closet cleaned out and shelves redone
Duct Cleaning

During all of this work, we have made 5 trips to Goodwill, filled many garbage cans and donated several boxes of kitchen "stuff" to a friend's daughter who is in the process of purchasing a house and does not much to start with. We are still working on unpacking boxes of stuff that we needed to move when all of this started. I have a feeling that we will be making several more trips to Goodwill before everything is done.

We have a few more projects that we are looking to do over the next few months, but these are just "extra" things that we have decided to do since we have started with the updates. Some of these will be near future, some will be "at some point in time" lol

*We are in the process of converting closet by washer and drying into a pantry, complete with roll out shelves. John's brother did such a great job on the ones that he put into his house that we asked him to do some for us!
*We are also in the process of cleaning out the office and turning it back into a spare bedroom... just need to figure out what we are goign to do for a bed in there.
*As we are doing the office/spare bedroom project we are also doing some work with Darrin's room as one of this dressers is moving into the other bedroom, we need to get rid of one bookcase and may get him a new "smaller" bed so that he will have room for a desk in his room. (his current bed may end up in teh spare bedroom)
* On the "in the future" list, remains adding another bathroom in the basement as well as an egress window. Not really sure when that will be done, but it would be a very nice addition!!

The bulk of the work is behind us but at the rate that we are going, I don't think we will ever be finished!