KCparsons

Drywall was completed on Tuesday and Ken had a window installed that night! Wednesday he completed the 2 window installations, trimmed out the outside views and began the 1st of 3 layers of stucco under each one. By Thursday, Carrie had 2 coats of primer on the ceiling and walls, leaving us with an empty shell just begging for cabinetry and appliances!

On and on we go about our kitchen progress, but we have hardly said a word about one of my favorite changes we made to our house! Knocking down walls in our kitchen meant losing our interior basement entry. Since the washer and dryer were in the basement, we decided to relocate the laundry room. Our master bedroom has 1 closet - a very deep, narrow closet - and we thought it may be better used to store a stackable washer and dryer. I LOVE having my washer and dryer on our 2nd floor. This is so much better than descending into the basement for every load change. Not to mention, it meant we got to splurge on a new set of LG appliances. :) Thanks to Sid and Ken for re-routing the plumbing and setting up the new room!

I just returned from the blue/yellow store (don't want to attract spammers or searches by naming it) w/ all our kitchen cabinets, hardware, etc. Long trip (8 1/2 hrs), but the 10' moving truck drove quite nice and is very clean. Sheetrock guy (Andy Kitchen) will be here tomorrow to sand and hopefully tomorrow night Carrie can sand/prime the walls. Then, I'll install two of the lights and we'll start to address the flooring. We may have mentioned it, but we are keeping the original wood, but some patching, sanding, and sealing needs to be done. On Wed/Th, I'll install the two windows that are going in and then on Friday, if we have time, install the sink cabinet, in a temporary fashion, so we have that functional when I return from Seoul on the 7th of August (which I leave for this Sunday). Carrie will be at her parents starting this Sunday, so we won't need the cabinet necessarily installed.

Here are a couple of pics of our Living Room after we unloaded the truck with all of our cabinets!

This is our only bathroom, located upstairs with the bedrooms. We considered trying to fit in a new 1/2 bath with our kitchen renovation, but got greedy when we saw how large our kitchen could be without one. Maybe if we stay here long enough, we can add a bathroom onto the back of our house someday. Until then, we're happy with the one we have! It was dark turquoise when we moved in, now a pale blue to match one of the variety of blue/green swirls in the bathtub tile. (Not my first choice in tile, but it is clean and new - and is hidden most of the time with the curtain drawn!

Here are a couple of pictures of drywall in progress. We hired this out and are glad we did. Should be done by Tuesday, July 23, the same day our 2 new windows should arrive.

Here are pictures of Eva's and Owyn's bedrooms. After sharing a room last year, it is nice for each of them to have their own space. So far, they do a good job of allowing eachother to play freely in either room. Eva chose purple for her walls and Owyn decided on green. Feels good to have a couple of organized spaces in our house!

Tonight we are celebrating w/ some ice cream that we are done w/ the dirty work for now (when we redo the floors, I'm sure we'll get a little dirty). I am so relieved to be able to have someone else now cover the studs w/ 1/2" sheetrock. I finished foamboarding and all the prep work today, so now we are hoping this week that the promise the drywall guy made comes true: that we can prime the walls on Friday! We'll see...

I did forgo installing a pot filler faucet over the stove - would have been cool and handy, but not really all that necessary and wow, they are expensive faucets.

These pictures are 2 of 135 I took over the last few days as a way to catalog the wall cavities and stud locations (in addition to meticulous measuring and recording of that). A bit overboard, but if we want to put anything on the walls, I don't want to guess if the screw/nail will hit wood (and not wires). For example, we are going to support the peninsula countertop (5' x 4 1/2') w/ a rail along the wall and thankfully, there is a big header that will be great for that (esp if we go w/ a quartz surface ;) ).

I'll leave two more pictures here - one of a foam-face and the other of the Owyn and Eva on a day when they played very sweetly together.

Here is the screenless porch and new landscaping. Carrie and her mom worked tirelessly for a few days and wow, things are looking quite beautiful.

Last night we finished up the kitchen wiring and Jerry (my father-in-law) thankfully tackled the most difficult section. It involved wiring up two light series w/ the ability to switch them on/off from three locations in the kitchen. We also wired up 12 receptacles, a sink light switch and wiring overhead, a garbage disposal switch, all on 4 breakers. Also, we spent a good deal of time cleaning up tons of wiring in the basement and making sure other circuits were properly wired. For example, we found out that the basement and 2nd floor were all on the same circuit, so we split the circuits and wired a new switch in the basement. Oh yes, and we also wired up a light and GFCI switch out back on the deck so I can now charge my car close to the driveway! Thanks to Connie too for all the help w/ the kids and outdoor labor, as Carrie too was busy beautifying the outdoors (unfortunately we are in a hurry to go out and blogger isn't allowing me to post a picture of the front of the house).

So, my previous prediction was a bit ambitious, but I think that we are still on track to have the sheetrock hung in about a week.

The other project we have been involved in - squarebackev.blogspot.com - involved lots of wiring and now this week we'll be wiring inside the house. Carrie parents are here and her father and I will be totally rewiring our gutted kitchen. We will also be putting in a GFCI receptacle on the back deck in order for me to recharge my car and replace some knob-tube wiring in the basement and going upstairs. The plan is to get wiring, windows, and framing done by the beginning of next week, get someone to do the sheetrock hanging-taping-mudding (b/c my skills are next to nothing in that department), then hopefully get the cabinets (either ordered or pickup from the big blue/yellow store), set them, all before I leave for Seoul at the end of the month.

More will follow here, and this time I will post some pictures as I'm sure this workweek won't be like the previous one's as I totally cleaned out the basement over the weekend and got the car running, and the kitchen only has minor tear-out left. Carrie has been busy painting (both our kids' rooms - a 'dill pickle' green and a 'violet-ish' purple), landscaping, and keeping us all afloat w/ bills, laundry, food, childcare, cleaning, on and on......