Its a long road... but we're on it!!

Tom worked a VERY long day yesterday, got home at 8pm.

He is working again today for Kokosing in Ohio.  Blech.  He is bummed but hopefully, maybe, in another month or so his project there will be done and he can have a shorter commute and not work 4x 10 hr days + 1 normal 'salary' Friday.  Its just been a very long summer for him - funny that it was timed perfectly with us buying this house.

Updates on the house:

• Fired our electrician Monday!  Still looking for one - let us know if you know of one, please!
• Josh, Rick, and Dave have been working diligently on the house.  The woodwork is 95% done.  They finished the 2nd floor, and finished the dining room yesterday.  I can't wait to see it!
• Got $5k worth of plumbing done - that was a cost we didn't know we would have!  It looks great, glad that Matt Mertz Plumbing came in and GOT IT DONE!!  Now, we need an electrician to do that!
• Got custom stain from Sherwin Williams.  Kept working on it.  Still not exactly what we want, so I think we are going to customize the custom stain!! :)

Finding the right stain - quite a bit of work!!

So, I found this a while ago on one of our demo days.... It is proudly displayed on our mantle right now.

Can you tell what this says?  I feel bad painting over it... but, I mean... um, yeah.  The kids in this house last, their names were Dean and Stormy.  I actually got some mail the other day for Stormy.  (yes, I am hiding my true feelings)

...

Oh, and on a side note - the melanoma is all gone!  :)  Yahoo!  But, I have a chunk missing from my arm and a 2 inch scar!!  :/

And, the baby is developing well!!  15 weeks today :)  A little afraid this one may be bigger than the other one :)

Here's to a weekend of productivity!! :)  Have a great day.

Busy days

Well, STILL, all we are doing is woodwork.  Really.

If we could go back in time, I don't think we would have decided to refinish all this woodwork.  It is a cost we will never recoup in the house.  Probably going to end up costing us between 7-10k.  Really.  (all labor cost)

We sold our gas cooktop to a guy who is also renovating a house, a house built in 1845.  He was amazed at the woodwork restoration - and said he would NEVER do it!  Ha!

The woodwork in the master bedroom

Mary's room woodwork

They are moving and groovin!  Each window takes a day to strip, roughly, and probably at least a couple hours to sand.  Then you have to go through the nooks and crannies and get the paint out.  Seriously tedious process.

Baseboards and door plinths.  This house was SOUNDLY built.

Josh taking the paint off one out of FOUR french doors that go to this patio.  It took Tom one whole day by himself to do this (while the paint on the flat, large surface of wood was already removed).

Tom and Josh tackling the paint.  I respect them both very much for working so diligently on all this!!

Seems like 6am is the only time I have to update this thing!  Wish I could update more.  But, now off to buy some clearance items from Lowe's.

Happy beautiful Monday ya'll!!  

3 months later... an update on where we are

Life gets in the way, always, right?  (this post may be more about life than the house...)

I have 4 doctors appointments this week.

I am pregnant! :)

I have been diagnosed with skin cancer :(

I am going to be okay.  We caught it really early - I am very fortunate and feel very blessed.  But, I do have outpatient surgery this week - and usually that's no big deal to me, but... I'm pregnant so I worry.  (PSA:  I did do some indoor tanning when I was young and dumb.  DON'T do it.  You are 87% more likely to develop melanoma if you do it before the age of 35).  

Baby should be here in mid-March! :)  We are 12 weeks along.

So, as far as the house...

We have owned it for 3 months now.  Plumbers coming next week.  Our electrician is still not showing up.... :/  We have hired 2 more people along with Josh.  They all worked last week, and made TONS of progress.  I think almost all the paint is stripped.  This week, on to sanding it all.  They made great progress with sanding last week too!  

I took a door with the original wood color to Sherwin-Williams last week.  I'm going to buy gallons of stain this week! :)  I promise to take more pictures this coming week.

The door I took to Sherwin Williams.  I mean really, who takes a door with them somewhere?

Isn't that a pretty color?  Those two doors are our only examples of what the original woodwork looked like.

  

Spent my Friday with this beautiful little girl!

Tio Marco.  We went to Columbus on Fri/Sat. to see some good friends.

 

Mary and her cousin Jacob enjoying some ice cream.  Went to his 2nd birthday party on Saturday.  What a fun little guy!

Happy early Monday ya'll!!!

Update on things

There has been A LOT going on right now... I mean, seriously, plate is full.

But God only gives us what we can handle.  Right?  We can handle it :)

At any rate, I've been going to quite a few doctor appts lately and still more to go next month.  I will definitely share whats going on, on here - but need to make sure the most important people in our life are updated first!  (of course, we are going to see most of them this wknd)

My sister is in town from Texas.  Wahoo!  Love spending time with her.

But, all this means no time for blogging :/

QUICK update though:

- Been getting plumbing quotes.  Holy moly!  Think, thousands more than you would originally have thought.  Sucks.

- Hired another 'Hired Help' - a friend's husband who is laid off and will be working part-time with us.  

- Josh has still been working very hard on the house.  We would have given up on the woodwork by now if it weren't for him.

- Hired Jonathan Moran to custom build some baseboards and window casing.  Even went to the Allegheny Mill Works (BIG place) and they didn't have what we are looking for.  Jonathan is a pretty cool guy - found him at the strip district one morning.  His wife sells unique and beautiful cutting boards and small items there on the wknds.  Tom got to see his shop the other day - pretty cool stuff!

- Had a hearing set up to appeal property taxes.  The assesor postponed it.  They originally had our house documented as 8 bedrooms and 13 rooms total.  Its only 4 bedrooms and 7 rooms total (+kitchen, living & dining).  So, that was changed, but the # of baths was not.  They  have like 5 - it is only 3.5.  Also, they have 4,000 sq. ft and it is only 3,000 - since now we took apart the finished basement.  At any rate, its all wrong.  This will save us thousands.  But, I was getting prepared for this then they pulled the cord!  Sucks!!  But, what a pain in my ass.  Calling the county once a week.  Going to the county buildings to get documents, judge to sign things, etc.  Phew.  Will be glad once this is over!

- Oh yeah.  Electrician is not showing up.  #@@(#*&$^&*^!!!!!  I am still leaving this to Tom.  Funny thing though, Tom mentioned who we were working with (he does everything, not just electrical) to Jonathan and Jonathan's response:  "That's the coolest mother f$#cker in Pittsburgh!".   And of course, he's already offered to give us tickets to the Steelers game (he's got season tix) - AND 4 for the Bengals game.  I will believe that when I see it!

Happy productivity in the AM (before everyone else is awake)!!!!

Decision... MADE!

Any of you homeowners know that if you are designing your own kitchen, bathrooms, etc - there are a lot of choices to be made!!

I'm moving on. 

I'm going to do the 1st floor powder room in Navy Blue and white.  We bought a hot white pedestal sink and it will look AWESOME in front of a navy blue wall.  The two walls perpendicular to it - I wanted to do wall paper.  Well, I was looking for wall paper that was very specific - and it took FOREVER to find!  So, I don't know how I came up with doing a wall stencil, but that's what we are going to do.

So, for the past month I've been scouring the internet for a stencil.  I've used etsy before and I really liked what I got - so I'm going to try it again.  I just ordered this, what do you think?  You can click on the picture and it should take you to the website.

Also, on the four awesomely huge doors we have in our master - the ones for the closet.... they had this pretty medallion in the center.  Well, we took it off while stripping the paint and guess what?  Its plastic!!  Ha!  Since we are going to stain the woodwork to show off the natural, original beauty of this house - we had to pitch it.  

Then, another decision had to be made.  What to replace it with?  Would you know that lumbar specialty stores in pittsburgh don't have much a selection of this?  

On that note, I'm disappointed overall with pittsburgh's selection of stores for home remodeling 'stuff''.  They are all prim and proper and have pretty displays, etc.  I cannot find what we had in Georgia!  A run down place, with clearance or cheap discontinued stuff in corners of the store - that isn't all fancy and nice looking!  Maybe I just don't know where to shop.  But these stores were easy to find in GA... not here!

Sorry for rambling... but that is what blogs are for, right?

Here is the replacement.  What do you think?

Oh - and here are the four doors this is going on to:

We do have to hire a plumber.  The guy we really like isn't available for 1.5 weeks to come out and give us a quote.  

The dent in the fridge has been a nightmare.  Speaking of which there is something I STILL have to do for that!   

And, I need to appear in court to appeal the property taxes on this house (the taxes are based off a 'value' of the house that is about 3 times what we bought it for)

Okay, yeah, I really need to get back to work.  

Happy weekend of working!! :)

Last week's progress

Why is it so hard to find time to update a blog?!?!  Really?!?!

This week and last, we all have had numerous doctors appointments.  Eck.

At any rate, last Friday I was able to help Tom for the day.  I was only able to come to the house at noon since I had plenty of things to do at home until then!?!

Really, I can't wait until this project is over and we can 'resume' somewhat of a normal life!  Of course, this would all be easier if we just paid someone to do it, and paid someone to figure it out.

But, again, back to the reason for this post... 

Friday, Tom and I were able to map out the kitchen appropriately.  We also mapped out exactly where the electric work needs to be done (where pendant lights should be, which switches should be where and turn on what, and where outlets should be).  

Can you see the black chalk lines?  Those are the cabinets.  The blue is the lighting. At least we realized we CANNOT put the fridge next to the lazy susan - SO glad we figured that out.

Better shot of the chalk lines 

Um, yes, that is a steel beam in the middle of the house.  Between the 1st and 2nd floor.  Really, who puts steel beams in houses anymore?  Seriously, at least we know this house was WELL built.  We are finding it has GREAT bones, its just the electrical and plumbing that are messes!  Ugh!

Shot from below.  This is the floor between the 1st and 2nd level.  Yes, that is 4" of concrete folks.  SERIOUSLY.  Well built house!  Yay for us!

Closer shot of the concrete.  

 Well, my two year old left me alone for this long... but now is bugging me! :) 

Ciao for now!

SCRAP run!!

The story of our life right now... Trying to do TOO much with TOO little time!

But, we made it to the scrap yard today!  Mary and I went.  

How much do you think this all would be worth?!?!  

....





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Yup - $150 bucks baby!!! :)  

Gotta run, cya!