Everybody Staze…

First, let me be clear. Tara’s been unemployed for a while now, and because of that, she’s been doing a lot of the work on her own while I’ve been at work. A HUGE thank you to her. 

Well, since my last post about the house, we’ve done a lot. Hardwood is installed and looks great! Took us 3 weeks to install. Before that we had to pull out the carpet, then found out there was particle board below the carpet. DOH! Had to pull all that up (can’t install nail down hardwood on top of particle board because it isn’t sturdy enough for the nails, and it swells), and more importantly, had to pull up thousands of staples that held the Particle board down. So, that took about a week of Tara working pretty much non-stop on it. So, all told, the hardwood probably took us about 5-6 weeks from start to finish. We lived with just the floorboards for a bit too.

Replaced the carpet in the guest room with some castoff from Tara’s mom. It’s wool, really f-ing nice carpet ($17/sq ft.). We also painted a bunch of the house… looks much better!

Replaced the lav and faucet in the master bath, SO MUCH better. 

Then, this last week, we started the process to tile the laundry room. Pulled out the W/D, pulled the baseboard. Found some of the drywall was rotted out below the laundry drain. Probably baked up at some point and got the wall wet. So, replaced that (Thank you Tara!). Pulled the linoleum, and sealed the floor. Today we poured SLU (Self Leveling Underlayment). Thought one bag would do, actually took 2. The floor still isn’t perfectly flat, but hopefully it’s close enough. Don’t really want to spend another $30 on a bag of SLU. Tiling will start next week. 

After that is done, our list turns to putting in new light fixtures in the master, guest, and office. Replacing the light fixtures in the master and guest bathroom. Also need to put in base boards throughout the house. Replace the carpet in the Master and Office. 

Big ticket items are replacing the windows (currently double glazed aluminum frame windows (yay sweat and mold)), and I hope replacing the garage doors (there are huge gaps between them and the frame). 

Oh, and this summer we get to replace at least one of the fences in our yard (a “fence” being the section of the continuous fence that separates us from one specific neighbor). 

And yard work is starting to pick up… but, we’re hoping to put in a new raised bed soon. So, here’s hoping.

So, on the non-work side… it has begun. Last Saturday, Tara’s sister left after spending a week with us (that was a lot of fun), and her mom made a comment about us scraping the ceilings (something we needed to do, but you know… us == lazy). So Sunday, wild hair… we scraped the upstairs hall, then the dining room, then the living room. Took about 5 hours. Not too bad, but it took our previously very clean house, and turned it into a mess. 

Since then, throughout the week, we’ve been fixing imperfections in the ceiling, buying a hopper sprayer, and a few other things. Last night, we spent about 3 hours texturing (well, maybe 60 minutes texturing, the rest of the time was taping and plasticing) the ceiling with “Orange Peel” (that’s the look, not the material). The house is now really really dusty, and there’s the smell of plaster everywhere. And, we still have more to go. We had to fix a few more issues with the ceiling (drywall tape marks, low spots in the plaster, etc). We’ll probably do the rest next weekend, or the weekend after when we scrape the vaulted ceiling area. I’m just happy at this point, at work, I don’t smell, taste, and am not covered in plaster. I’m also happy that my 14.4v DeWalt drill is beefy enough to stir the 5gal bucket of plaster to the consistency needed for doing texture. 

Also, on Tuesday, our floors came!!! About $2500 spent a few months back, and we now have 1800lbs (21 boxes at 85lb/each) of Jatoba (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatobá) (Brazilian Cherry) sitting in our garage. Now we get to finish the ceiling, rip up the carpet, fix any subfloor problems, then lay the floor, and then paint the walls, ceiling, etc (theoretically in that order). 

To that end, we’re heading to K-Falls this weekend to go to Tara’s Aunt and Uncles, to have him (her uncle) help us make the bull noses for the stairs. You can’t buy them for this wood (at least, from our distributor), so we are going to rip some of the boards, laminate the result, then router the edge to make a nice nose. We purchased extra wood for this purpose… so it’s just a matter of the time needed to make them. 

While I’m down there, I’m also going to try to get some work done on creating a script to send out quota warnings on our system. 

Will try to post again from K-falls…