I can't believe I'm saying it... we are hiring a contractor!!

Vanity to the left, toilet on the right

Through ALL of this - we have pretty much done the bulk of the work ourselves.  Of course, Josh, Rick, and Dave, did A TON of work.  But they weren't exactly contractors nor do they have their own 'business'.

So, we decided to hire some of the work out.  

Justin Knepshield will be 'roughing in' the guest bathroom (or 4th bedroom bathroom).  It is the bed/bath over the garage - the room/bath that you will be using whenever you come visit!  - Well, as long as you are not coming in the next couple of months... although you are welcome to - you will just be sleeping in Williams room.

(behind door) Pink cast iron tub we will reuse.
Shower head on left.

Entrance to bathroom.
Yes, that is exterior brick you can see through the door

Basically, Justin will get everything ready for paint and for us to install all the finishing pieces (light fixtures, toilet, vanity, tile, etc.).

If I had to guess, it will take us another 2 months to finish the bathroom... and then I should double that.

Then, onto the bedroom.

Then, Tom wants to do windows.

I will continue to update the blog... my goal is once a week.  This week I'm going to try to do a post every day!

BUT - we thought we could finish the 4th bedroom before William was born.  Ha!  7 weeks later and we still aren't even close.  :/

AND honestly, I've stopped working so I don't know where the money for all of this is going to come from!   :/   Our property taxes are also REALLY high here.  BUT - we have a great elementary school, and a new great playground!

In the outside world of this house, we pulled THE BIGGEST dandelion yesterday.  Holy moly, we have a large yard to maintain (but will be plenty big enough for a vegetable garden some day!).

We do have a lilac bush (SMELLS GREAT!) and a beautiful-unidentified pink flowering bush that I think could be a tree if we trim it correctly.

Our roses are about 80% dead though.  Yikes - wonder who will get to clean that up!

At any rate... my future posts will show a lot more pictures!  Basically, pictures of the bathroom progress!

HAPPY TUESDAY YA'LL!!

BACK AT IT!!! :)

Its been too long... my apologies.

But you (probably?) know what I've been up to - feeding, changing diapers, and trying to sleep.

And actually we've been up to quite a few other things too!  Whew.  Its been exhausting.

First things first, let me introduce you to our son, William Joseph.  He was born on 3/20 and weighed 9 lb and was 22 inches.  Everything went very well and we are very lucky, thankful, blessed and so much much more!!

Now back to the reason you are on the blog... right?!?    The house.

We actually have been doing a lot to the house, despite the fact that we have a newborn and have had a lot of other things going on.  (i.e. I filed our taxes - that took forever bc I have a 1099 and we have a 'rental property' - our house we still own in Georgia, and I'm also presenting at a conference tomorrow on ergonomics, and representing myself (not representing Walsh or Humantech) so we'll see how that goes).  So - we've been busy, as it always seems.... AND we've had the usual round of visitors to see the new baby too!

Wait - back to the house, right?  Haha.

What we've done since my last post-  almost 2 months now!

1. Had an issue with our BRAND NEW FURNACE.  They installed it without a filter.  Ha.  Get this... they then mailed us filters to put in ourselves, they wouldn't fit.  They came back out and looked at it.  Had to come back out again to retrofit.  All the meanwhile they sent us a $60 bill for the filters they mailed us!
2. Working on the Jack n Jill bathroom.  I need to load some pictures of that.  I will this wknd... its looking awesome!  Tom made a concrete countertop!!  We finally got the sink installed and working.  Still need to do the backsplash and finish the built-in shelving.
3. Got some quotes for windows.
4. Had to have roto rooter to come out.  Jack and Jill bathroom got clogged.  That may be a bigger issue than we really want to tackle... :/
5. STILL fighting property tax assessment.  Filed our 2nd appeal - now officially going to court in front of a judge.  Hired a lawyer to help with that.  (deciding to do that has been stressful).
6. Every now and then I spend 5 min. or so picking at the front, original leaded glass windows.  There is stain residue and masking tape residue left on them. Picture on the right is after some work.  Both on the left are before pictures.  Kind of hard to tell - MUCH easier to see in person.

• Tom built shelves in the basement for organization.  
• We have leftover kitchen cabinets.  We got them out of the basement, cleaned and took high quality pictures of them to sell on craigslist.  (hoping for at least $400, if not probably more)
• Tom connect the two A/C units we have out front.  ONE OF THEM IS FROM 1980!!! MY GOODNESS THAT IS OLDER THAN ME!!!

 I was seriously shocked.  We are having Craft Heating and Cooling out next week to take a look at them.  We have a home warranty so that should cover most of the fixes.

• William was 8 days old.  It was 20 degrees here.  Our furnace stopped working... on a Sunday!  Bah!  Craft came out here and our furnace had stopped because the filter was COMPLETELY clogged!

I'm sure I am missing something though...

In other news... we have a BEAUTIFUL magnolia (or maybe called tulip) tree right outside the front our house.  For about 1 day it had bloomed.  Then, freezing temps at night.  RUINED!.  Bummer.

Stripes stripes stripes stripes stripes stripes!

I wrote that title while singing that song, 'Shots shots shots... '.  Ha.  

As Tom is vacuuming the house right now... and he just hung up blinds in our bedroom too.  

I know one day this will all be done with - right?!?!

Tom painted the stripes in the boy's bedroom yesterday.  Looks pretty sweet I must say!  I think it will look much better when the room is set up.  But that won't happen for a long while, actually.  Still need to finish 4th bedroom.

Mickey mudded the dry wall in the boy's closet today.  Yesterday Mickey was here too.  Tom and him worked on the concrete countertop for the kids bathroom and also insullated the attic furnace some more.

The stripes process went like this:

Here are the plain walls

Found the pattern in a Sherwin Williams booklet at their store.  Loved it.  Chose the blue colors I want for stripes.

Of course, on that website, they have directions on how to do that... except they just tell you how to do stripes.  And don't tell you that exact pattern layout.  So, we used a tape measure and 3/16" counted for 3" on our wall, 1/16" counted for 1" on our wall, etc.

So, once we got that laid out on the floor for those two walls, we used a level for the entire length of the wall to make each stripe.

She took her chair out and wanted to watch

Then, we started placing tape against each pencil line - floor to ceiling.  Had to use a ladder for the top part - so that wasn't easy!

We had a little helper!  She HAD to get her gloves :)

The tape, ALL of it!  (the yellow tape is hard to see - we ran out of yellow)

Finished product!!

Days go by... and cat lovers be ware

Here is what we are working on this week:

1. Getting insulation quotes
2. Getting new window quotes
3. Getting home equity loan to help pay for this and others
4. Putting stripes in baby boy's room
5. Concrete countertops
1. Already made one.  Mix too dry (Tom didn't trust his instincts)
2. Also - its not very 'white'.  I think we are going to add white paint to the next one.  Anyone know anything about making these?  We are just learning from the internet :)

That's about it.  I've worked 30 hours so far this week - that's a lot for me!  I do enjoy spending time with Mary and at home so I can pay medical bills or sell some things on ebay or craigslist!  (sold our 7' ficus tree an old cuisinart coffee pot last week - got $50 for them total.  Not bad!)

So, I promised the cat rescue video.  Cat lovers - be warned.  There is no intentional harm done - I just know you'll say 'awwww... poor Oscar!'

This was the 2nd day we were in the house.  Oscar was a bit fritzed out because of the move and new place - he had been hiding.  BUT, we hadn't seem him for a while.  He is a very social cat - when we come home he usually says hi.  We came home Sunday night from a last minute Lowe's run, and still didn't find him.  Hadn't seen him for 7 hours or so?  Kept randomly hearing him meow.  So, at 9pm that night, I knew he needed our help.

SOOOO.  We heard him meow.  Thought he made it outside?  Nope, no cat paws in the snow.  Anywhere.  Heard him meow again.  Thought - can he really be in the ceiling?  Sure enough, he was stuck between the first and second floor - in the ceiling!!  

Poor guy.  Here is video of it all.  You gotta watch all 3 parts, in order :)

Part 1:   http://youtu.be/kHztl17KmoA

Part 2:   http://youtu.be/AFo5ifWfc4U

Part 3:   http://youtu.be/kxKshr4LomU

Happy ALMOST THE WEEKEND!!!

Just like Daddy

What a whirlwind of a weekend!

We were as busy as you could be - really!  (yes, I think it was about 3 days between showers for me...!!!)

Dry-wall went in the baby's closet!  Gosh, its a tiny closet.  Everything about this house is pretty huge.  Except this closet.  Oh well.  Good thing its the boys room - eh?

Can't see much - but i think I posted a pic of this closet already.
Mickey is coming back tomorrow to mud and hopefully finish!  (sanding still needed)

Have I mentioned how thankful and lucky I am that my husband is handy?  (yes, he does occasionally read this!)

So.  Cutest thing ever.  We were putting drapery rods up in Mary's room and when her Dad asked for his drill, she got hers out!  As soon as he started using it - so did she!!

We hung these curtains in her room and they LOOK AWESOME.  I will have to put a pic up of the finished product (because her room is actually clean now too!)  Actually, they look very classy - as tom says :)

We had an $800 gas bill, yikes, so Tom and Mickey spent 4 hours in the attic fixing the A/C vents and making SURE no air escaped.  Also insulated them.

We had a window installer come give us a quote on Monday, and we have an insullation specialist coming Tuesday.  Ick.

Also, we started making the stripes in the baby's room.   Actually, I'm going to post a bunch of pics on that process and what it entails.  Nothing crazy - but its not easy!  I'm hoping its something that can be 'classy' and last for a long time (instead of doing like elmo on the walls or something, ya know?  Not that there is anything wrong with that... just that kids grow up too dang fast!)

Oh - and I'm going to make a post on the cat rescue soon.  Haha.  Stay tuned - that one will be worth it :).

37 WEEKS!!!  Much love to you!!!

A month late and a dollar short... Pre-move-in VIDEO!!!

Isn't my husband awesome?!?  (on SO many levels).

LATE friday night, before we were to move on Saturday - and after he mopped the whole hours for hours... he took the time to take video of the place!  (and I didn't even ask him to!)

Anyways, enjoy :).  I'll take another video in a couple months - to compare it with furniture in the place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK10O8Ja9jo&feature=em-share_video_user

Weekend's work

Tom and his Dad are hanging the french doors to the living room - while I type!!  (haha, of course, I'm sitting on my bum, typing...)

David is getting the hardware (hinges, etc.) with Brasso (brass polishing compound).
Tom is placing the hinges.

Funny.  Tom is hanging the doors and just said, 'That's why people buy NEW houses!'.  I've also heard many comments this morning about renovating always is more difficult than it seems, etc.

They are working on misc. projects throughout the house.  Seems like there is ALWAYS something to do.  I hope/think/etc. that someday it will all calm down, right?

Ceiling fan hung!!

We had our first dinner party!  We had 'The Noble Crew' and their families over for dinner. .  I should have also taken a picture of the kids, but just didn't.  There were 20 of us total.  We also celebrate Tom's birthday!  What a fun day.

And, the kids all ate in the living room.  Made three pans of lasagna, brussel sprouts, salad and rolls.  Also some carrot cake!  The Chorizo and Polenta was a big hit, and actually so were the brussel sprouts (with the kids too!!).  And of course, Becky's infamous carrot cake was a HUGE hit.

 From left to right:  Mickey, Autumn, Josh, Rick, Steve,
Carol (our realtor), Danny, Dave, Dara, and Tom

And actually, during the dinner, it would have been GREAT to have those french doors hung.  (to sound proof the kids!)

I am starting to really love this house...

So yeah - it is difficult for me to do things lately.  I don't think I've mentioned the baby much lately - but he's 35 weeks along!!  Here's what I look like now-a-days.  

Makes it hard to do much of anything!  (+40 extra pounds isn't helping!)

Hope you are having a great Saturday!!

I will be posting video VERY soon!!   (tomorrow maybe?!)