Week 7: Lots and Lots of Rain

So we are now into week 7 of our remodel project and there are no major reports to make from last week.

On Friday Eric was driving home from work when his car overheated, so Eric spent Saturday fixing his radiator (he’s so handy!) and other small repairs that were on his to-do list for his car.

I worked until 1 pm on Saturday and was feeling exhausted and lazy, thus no house work got done Saturday.

We arose Sunday with grand ambitions of getting the majority of the drywall UP. We were up early and started working early… and then came the rain. Lots and lots of rain. Unfortunately, we only have a carport so we couldn't realistically keep working and keep the drywall dry. We tried to wait it out but the rain kept coming…. so we called it a day and went to Hale’s Brewery for an early dinner :)

Hopefully the rain will clear up a bit this week, so we can get all of the drywall up this week, as Eric's Dad is coming next weekend to help with finishing work. We'll have lots to report then!

Week #6: Drywall, etc! (tribute to Opa)

This week/weekend's accomplishments:

(1) We finished hanging the insulation in the bedrooms (we were waiting on the electrical, which also got done this week!)


(2) We started sanding the interior doors and found layers upon layers of multi-colored paint. The picture below gives you a sense of the "Neapolitan ice cream" look of the layers. The previous owners, like us I suppose, were not afraid of color! Christina's good friend Melba came over Saturday and helped with the sanding -- always in high fashion!-- thanks Melbs!


(3) And the BIG HOORAY of the weekend... the walls started to come up!!! We took a trip to [a very busy and chaotic] home improvement store early Saturday morning to buy 36 sheets of 4x8 sheetrock (1/2" thick). It is so weird/wonderful to see walls again!

Nick M. was a big help in hanging the walls with Eric (thanks Nick!). Here is Eric measuring cuts of the drywall.

The first sheet is UP!!!

It started off a little "rookie" but got more precise and 'professional' with each sheet.
They both seemed to know what they were doing ;)
We went to a bbq today to celebrate a friend's first triathlon (go Heather!) and Eric continues to work on hanging the drywall in the front bedroom as I type. We are working on getting the big pieces up first, and then going back to the smaller/custom areas.

We also appreciated Beth & Chad for stopping by on Saturday with flowers--- we were very sad to hear that Christina's Opa (grandpa) died Friday from Pancreatic cancer. Above is a picture of Christina asking him to dance at our wedding a year ago. Please keep us in your thoughts -- he was an amazing Opa and friend and we miss him already.

Goodbye "Pav" the Fish

It appears that the banging, hammering and dust was too much for our fish, Pav.
We found him lifeless with his head buried in the rocks today. So long little friend.
His buddy Lov did the same thing a while back. I think the rocks were too big or the fish too small. Good thing Eric and I dont have rocks to bury our heads into when the construction gets to loud or when the final re-model bill arrives ;)

To Pav and Lov... may you swirl down the toilet in peace...

Colors?

We are looking for ideas on color choices for the interior of our house. Thoughts? inspirations?
At a later time I will post what ideas we have floating around in our heads, but we would love to hear what you think too!

Week 5: Saturday - Insulation & Misc.

It is week #5 of our house remodel project.

This morning we ran errands getting various supplies, including french doors from the re-store, pictured below (they are stacked one on top of the other). We will sand them down and re-paint them, but other than that they are in pretty good shape. These doors will replace the wall between the front bedroom and the living room, adding extra light and entertaining flexibility!

The rest of the day, Christina hung the insulation in the front bedroom:

And Eric worked on replacing the chain on his motorcycle:

We are now waiting for the electrical to be finished in the office and bedroom, so we can hang insulation there-- and then start to drywall! It is slowly starting to come together.

We have become accustomed to living a bit more simply through this process-- enjoying our backyard, eating outdoors, reading and spending time with friends.
Our Backyard & Garden:

Week 4 (time flies!)

I can't believe we are already into week 4! Time flies... We had a partial work/partial play weekend, as Eric was in a friend's wedding on Whidbey Island on Saturday (our good friends Kate & Jim's wedding).

We did, however, accomplish 2 great feats: 1) ALL of the popcorn ceilings are down!! woo who. we are sore..... And I have sworn never to buy a house with popcorn ceiling again (at least not when they are super-glued to the ceiling!) 2) we started hanging insulation (see slideshow). The electrical is also coming along. I will allow Eric to get into the technical pieces... It is exciting to actually be putting things up rather than just demo, so that is nice.
Here is a slideshow of the weekend's work (you can also click here to go to our picassa web album)-- and enjoying good beer and time with friends Sunday night. Have we mentioned we heart Uber?

Week 3

Things are really moving along this weekend. We demo'ed the exterior walls in the MB (master bedroom) today, and discovered that we didn't have to demo the two interior walls (nice surprise!). The north facing wall in the MB is buttressed to our shed/laundry room. The shed is not sheetrocked, so we have access to install the outlets without tearing down the wall. We were able to cut out access for the light switches (pictured below), so once again no wall removal. Sweet.

Christina scraped all of the popcorn off of the ceiling in the MB.
It was a nice change from the living room, as this popcorn was not superglued with paint. Still work, but it comes down much quicker.

Good news is that we are really close to being able to insulate and start hanging sheetrock. Our electrician should have the living room, front bedroom, and middle bedroom all ready to go Monday night. I'll spend the rest of the week hanging insulation, and that is going to make me REALLY happy!

Special shout-out to Beth and Chad for bringing us Red Mill burgers for dinner. The burgers were awesome, we inhaled them! We're lucky to have such good friends ;)

Below is the MB as of tonight. We were able to keep the bed/dresser tightly wrapped, so we didnt need to move the bed out of the room. We are happy to be able to sleep in it tonight!!


Yes, this is Christina posting the new pictures. Too dorky to blog about blogging?

One-Year Anniversary

We took a break from work and spiffied ourselves up for our one-year anniversary. We went to dinner Monday night at How to Cook A Wolf, a posh scene-ster restaurant on Queen Anne. It mostly lived up to all of its hype. Then we visited Uber (our favorite tavern/beer haven hands down)-- it was a perfect anniversary!


Here we are at dinner (looking lovingly into each other's eyes - barf) ...























And here are a couple of goofy ones of us at Uber, and a stalker shot of our favorite bar-tender who we heart. (and don't all of those beer signs behind her look tasty! mmm... franziskaner...)










We enjoyed greatly the Black Butte XX on tap (an imperial porter/black ale version to their standard Black Butte Porter- yum!) among other tasty choices such as the Mad River Steelhead Double IPA, the Flying Dog Gonza Imperial Porter and a staple, the Duchesse de Bourgonge.

Eric was sad to leave....Cheers to a GREAT first year of marriage.... luv u babes

This Weekend's Work (continued)

One of the pleasures of opening the walls of your house is finding all the lovely things that are lurking behind them. As mentioned in the previous entry, we found a serious case of dry rot on the south wall of our second bedroom. We were told by the inspector that the mold on our wall looked old, so most likely there was a leak in the roof that was fixed many moons ago, but the damage was not taken care of. What you see in the before and after pictures is dry rot that spread from the studs to the sides of the house. I replaced all of the affected studs, but there is still a lot of dry rot on the siding of the exterior wall. When we re-side the house in a couple of years we will have access to the rotted siding under our vinyl siding, we will be able to replace the remaining dry rot. Helpful hint to all you DIY'ers out there (courtesy of my dad, Don), to stop dry rot from spreading, mix a 50/50 solution of Clorox and water and give it a good spray down. Ahh, bleach. What doesn't it do??
Before:

During:
After:
In the walls, we also found a newspaper from January 1951 and a good share of cobwebs ;)
This is Christina after scraping popcorn off the ceilings for a few hours.... and then some artsy shots.

This Weekend's Work

Weekend #2 of our house remodel project--- we put in a lot of hours again this weekend, although a lot of it was finishing demolition work from last weekend and scraping the ceilings, so the changes aren't as dramatic. Since photos speak larger than words, here are a few.

Here is Christina prying out drywall (the floors were installed after the drywall went up so it was a pain in the who-ha to get it out)








The next two pictures show the rotted wood we found in the middle bedroom (office). The roof used to have a leak (20 years ago?). Eric is working on replacing the 2x4's.



Below is a picture of our kitchen "wall" looking into the mud room.

... and at least some of our house is still put together.

Christina does work too, other than taking pictures. Here she is scraping the ceilings in the middle bedroom.

Below shows the ceiling in the living room. The popcorn was painted over (a couple of times?) so it is not so easy to scrape off. This little section probably took 2 hours. It's a good shoulder work out (feel the burn!).

And last but not least, the electrical work has started, and we are excited to see multiple plug-ins in each room, rather than just one or two. Hooray!

And SLOWLY we are getting to landscaping the front yard.... at least it's a start.


Saturday we had a nice visit with Christina's Dad, who came over to wish us a happy one-year anniversary. And a shout out to Jim who fixed our internet :) Thanks, Jim!