Amazing!

A few very happy things have happened in the last few days...

First, I traveled to New Hampshire for a long weekend of seeing two of my girlfriends from PT school. One just had a baby (9 weeks) and the other is 5 months pregnant. Babies are definitely little miracles. Here's the munchkin, not at all related to me, but who brings so much joy to so many people:Second, I came home to have our new white oak floors being installed. Here's where we were at yesterday evening.



And here's where we're at today...









They are going to be GEORGOUS!!! I'm so psyched!!!


Thirdly. John got called today, and he's been hired on officially as a 1.0 FTE!!! He's going to be team teaching 5th grade with his mentor from last year, and being the head-person of the Title 1 staff! Hurray!!

Now we're in the market for a new car... I'll need to start driving, or else show up at work at 6:30-7a. Yuck.

Coming along

A lot has happened in the last week! We filled our 3rd dumpster with the flooring from the living, dining, and front rooms. New plywood subfloor was then laid, and we are now ready for a new wood floor to be laid. Crazy! We also had some much needed tree maintenance/cutting was performed, and we have a ton more sunshine to our back yard now. :-) The kitchen's taping/mudding is still being worked on, but is coming slowly but surely. We might actually get a kitchen one of these months!!

Watch out for rusty nails

Yes, more demolition is happening. Per John's request, we have moved the project of replacing the hardwood floors in the 1st floor front room, dining room, and living room up. To yesterday. (The original plan was to do this in August...) Yesterday, John took out the wood in the front room and 2/3 of the dining room.




I came home to tear up the barrier layer (feels like tar paper for roofing), and pull out a bazillion nails. John's Dad came over to move the heavy stuff out of the dining room and into the front room so that we could tear out the dining room floor. Crazy stuff.

















All this week, John and our contractor have been working on the sheetrock in the addition, and starting the mudding. Apparently we're going to have scaffolding next week in that space so that the ceiling can get done. Here's where we are at the moment:The spot where there is still exposed insulation will be getting an octagon window....

Today's progress

It was a beautiful day, finally! The St Paul Farmers Market was on our list and we came home with sweet peas, focaccia and flowers for the garden. We then finished priming the ceiling of the den/office/guest room, and John put on the first coat of the wall color - poker table green!

My dad came over and helped us trim down and put in a new door at the bottom of the back stairs. We spent the rest of the day lounging around and then had dinner at the Horton's.

Conquering the house and yard

Look, Ma! We have some walls and a ceiling in the kitchen!













And a defined laundry room!












We've even reclaimed one of the flower beds in the back:
















We had a neighborhood bonfire... good times had by all, but it was quite a chilly night, so we all tucked in close to the flames. I'm sure there will be more smores in our future this summer....

Fully inspected

We've passed all of our inspections!

And now the big projects will begin!!!

Here's the tenative outline:

Sheetrock this week/early next week
Tear out the 1890's (destroyed) wood floors in the living room, dining room, and den/office
Lay new joysts, subfloor in mentioned rooms
Lay and finish new oak floor (end of June)
Install lanoleum in kitchen
Install kitchen cabinets and countertop

With any luck, we'll have a working kitchen by mid-late July! Hurray!

Here's where we're at at the moment:
West kitchen wall/pantry space









Laundry room:
South kitchen wall/bathroom wall:

A perfect long Memorial Day weekend

(Here's a late posting of what we were up to last weekend...)

Friday: A Schiller family friend came down from the boonies to help fix our plumbing issues on my day off. He used to do plumbing inspections, and so he knows what the guy is looking for, and what for us to expect when we go through inspection on Tuesday. He helped add in a couple of helpful things too, like an access to the waste pipe.... a "just in case" for unfortunate plugs. Hopefully we're ready for our 5 lbs of pressure test for 15 mins....

Saturday: Went and bought pretty fabric for bedroom curtains, but the sewing maching is burried in our storage area. Oops. John worked a half day, and we both proceeded to tear apart the yard once he got home. I pulled a recycling bucket full of weeds, and John yanked out some sickly liliac bushes in prep for a new flower bed in the front. We had a backyard fire and social hour, which was tons of fun!

Sunday: Woke up with a friendly meow from a stray cat that had gotten locked in the house. Oops. It was blasted hot, but I was out working until 1p. I cut down the bazillion suckers on the trees in our yard... now we have well defined trees that point pretty much straight up. Well, not really, but it's better than it was. Attempted to clean up nasty insullation in the basement, and construction debris in the yard. Still have a lot more work to do. Went to the Horton's for dinner - brats and hot dogs.

Monday: Went out to breakfast with Mom. Another steamy day full of yard work. We were both exahusted by the end of the weekend, but we had pleanty of productive time.

Tuesday: Passed the plumbing inspection!!!!!! We should now be ready to have the hold taken off of our house by the framing inspector, and will hopefully be sheetrocking soon.