shiney, clean floors

The floors are in! The floors are in! Guys, did you hear? We finished our floors upstairs. 

Just saying.

So that's pretty wonderful. Really wonderful.

Then my momma and I went back this evening and cleaned. And cleaned. And swept the floor. And mopped the floor. And moved some stuff and swept and mopped. And mopped and swept. You get the pictures. The is so so much dust. That's what you get for dry-walling. Phff. I foresee much sweeping, mopping and dusting in my future.

So worth it. I'm only a tiny bit sad about it. Because I'm mostly really happy that we were able to re-drywall and re-insulate everything. We hopefully be cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter and be able to put a little bit in our savings account. Lovely. So I will dust and remind myself to smile.

And my father and husband (lovely, lovely men) were, well, finishing floors, put up lights (which led to grumpy words at Debbie Travis...) and, most importantly, getting more drywall up in the basement. They're getting 'er. That should be done soon too! Crazy.

Sad news. My really cool, wonderful, you should all be a little jealous shower head I ordered off Ebay did not come with a tub faucet... so back to Home Depot we go to pick something up. We'll save it to use in our someday bathroom downstairs, but until then it will be sad in the basement. Lonely and not cleaning me.

Most excitingly, I got to place things in my cupboards where they belong. I am so happy with my cupboards and my kitchen (she says before the concrete counter-top adventure). So putting my baking supplies away (where did it all go before??? So. Many. Ingredients.) I dreamed of actually baking things. Did I say excited?! I'll bake you something when I move in. And I'll make you coffee. And we can chat. 

I didn't take pictures because I was too busy actually helping. Sorry.

Yes, that wall is holding up my magnet marker.

 Sorry for the horrible quality. I clearly was not very steady while taking this.

Yes, that wall is holding up my magnet marker.

Because I have a magnetic chalk board wall. And I think it's pretty cool. To the average eye it may just look like a black wall. Do not be deceived! This wall is a wall you can write on and hang things on... if you have chalk and the things have magnets, let's not get carried away.

In other news, our bedroom is half painted with one coat of paint. I ran out of tape to tape along the ceiling seam (I have a mennonite husband who insisted we had enough. We did not.)... but I did what I could. "Viking" if you recall. It's blue. I'm pretty sure Josh would have agreed to the color if it was fuchsia, as long as it was named "Viking." He has a thing for vikings. He has a toque that makes him look like a viking. Oh! And soon after our reunited friendship*, he saw me writing a paper on vikings and Polynesians... this may have struck him as pretty awesome and thus, thought of me as pretty awesome. I'm not going to say conclusively, but it may have been this first impression of awesomeness that made him take a second look at this girl and think "hey... maybe she's the girl." That or the blonde and pink hair. For me it was obviously seeing him without a shirt. But we'll just leave that at that.**

Viking. This is the best picture of the actual color... it was getting dark by the time I was done.

Hmm, we also did a little bit more flooring. I was busy painting at first though (see above), and although The Josh is very talented, it's straight up faster if someone is laying out the flooring for you to nail in. He also does all the cuts, because tools with blades scare me. Also, he had to do around the chimney, which takes time. 

And then we came home, because we were tired and making silly mistakes. 

Oh, anyone want a couple boxes of bamboo flooring? I'm about 98% sure we have too much. As in quite a bit too much. I'll confirm once we finish, but if I have any spacial capacity at all, and obviously barring any crazy, wild and unforseeable mess-ups, we are going to have some left over. Not just a box... boxES. So think about it.

So. Much. Flooring.

I don't think I ever showed you a picture of the painted living room. You can see the grey walls above or below.

And here is a picture of my boys playing Mario on the Wii. Well one of them is playing Mario. The other one is using the remote as a phone. 

*We went on Outtatown together. He then went to school in Ontario and I stayed in my Manitoba. He decided Manitoba was way more awesome than Ontario... or at the very least the people in it were (oh fine, maybe he just thought God had better plans and came to CMU to study BTS... but we can pretend), and came to the same school as all his Outtatown friends.

**Ok, maybe we won't. I want you all to still like me. I am a little bit shallow (but who doesn't appreciate the tall, blue eyed, curly haired, blonde boy?) but not quite that shallow. I mean, he is pretty easy on the eyes, but he's also a sweetie and so, so  many other things. And I saw him without a shirt because sometimes, while we were traveling the world, we went swimming... nothing weird, mkay. He's a boy! It's ok to see boys without shirts!

The Purple Door

Darci came and helped last night. 

I'm not sure if I posted anything about my purple door in the past, but if I did you may have noticed that it looked very much like black. Also, when I painted it the furnace wasn't working. And even though this past winter has been a warm one, it was not quite summer weather. And my hands were cold. And I dropped the can of paint and spilled it everywhere. Which wasn't really a big deal because everything was getting redone still. Except the front window. But we let it dry and then my lovely husband scraped it off. 

To sum up. Purple was actually black. I threw it everywhere. And doors obviously can't be white. So I had to try again.

And this time I think they're actually purple. Darci came and painted them so I didn't waste another can of paint. So that was nice. They need another coat. But I think I really like it. That being said. I haven't gone back to look what it looks like dry.

Pretty sister painting. :)

The purple paint was really thick. I'm not sure if that's because it's exterior paint, or behr paint or what, but really really thick. It plops more than pours. I can't even think of anything to relate it to. After Dar was done painting purple, she started painting some of the interior doors with the white. It was semi frustrating, because the white paint is like normal paint, but she found it runny and ineffective. I forgot to take a picture of that.

So while Darci was painting doors purple. I was painting ceilings white. Painting white on white is difficult. It's really hard to see where you've painted. Especially in our not so well lit house. But the living room and kitchen have one coat of paint on. Yay.

And while we were painting, Josh was actually installing the flooring in Caed's room. So that's really exciting.

 It needs a swiffer... but you get the general idea.

 Close up. I'm not sure why it looks so red. I don't think it is this red.

Oh. And I filled some of the holes in the wainscoting and trim in the bathroom. Which was not hard, did not take long, and was pink. Fun! It dries white. So they say. But the pink is fun.

Pink!

Just so you know... We're not professional

Disclosure. We are not professionals. We do know enough to know that how we baffled (baffled??) in the attic was incorrect. But we did it wrong anyway. Because it was so so so much easier. And possible even. And far less time consuming. And probably just as good. For us anyway. I think it will be good. The thing is, we need to insulate the attic. Because the insulation that is in the attic right now is almost useless. Look down I can see cracks of light shining through from the main floor. Look up and I see sunshine, which means if I sat long enough, I could watch snow, rain, hail and other elements that are supposed to stay outside, inside. Anyway. The baffling (I don't know if I can say that.. maybe I can. I'm going to leave it.) will keep the insulation from going to the sofetting. Which is also not done right, and is at this moment serving no purpose but to look pretty, but we'll fix that. Some day. Like after we're finishing all the mudding and painting and flooring and counter topping and we're moved in and we've seen if the light fixtures look ok and we're actually living in our house. 

 Holes. You can see the main floor.

Our attic before baffeling.

So, Josh crawled in to our ultra dusty attic and laying on his back where the roof hits the ceiling, yes in that claustrophobic space, and stapled in baffeling wrong. And I shone a flashlight at him. And handed him baffles and said things like "you're amazing," "you're manly," "you're really pretty," "are you dead from inhaling this dust yet," "I hate you for making us buy this house that needs baffeling that is impossible to put in correctly in this ridiculously dusty, stupid, dark, small attic," and "thank you for working so hard to make us a beautiful house, I love you" over and over.

But it's done! Yay. Tomorrow is insulation time. Who's excited? I am!!

Foam baffeling. So nice.

Also. We have a new furnace! One that runs. All the time. Well not ALL the time, but whenever the thermometer tells it to! And it's small. And pretty. And we got a humidifier too. So exciting. Also they took the old, bulky, I don't know how they got it through the stairwell let alone lifted it furnace away for us. So amazing. They were really great. I would recommend them to anyone. Them being a company called Design Air. Really nice. They didn't give me one weird look when I showed up unexpected with my baby and watched them put it in. Not that I noticed anyway. Which is really nice of them. 

York. Yay.

Also. I got flooring! Many people know this, but there was really nice bamboo flooring at Costco that was cheap. I think they've basically carried it since they first opened. I'm sure of it. Okay, not really. But I am pretty sure they've had it for the last 5 years. Don't quote me on it, but I really think so. Really really. But they don't anymore. Anymore meaning, since February. Not the Costco here, not the one in Calgary, not the one in Regina. I called. So we were sad. We thought we were going to laminate. Which would have been fine. But not bamboo wonderful. When shabam, what?! That's right, shabam! A Windsor Plywood flier fell on my lap. Not literally, but I was cleaning up all the fliers from the table and there it was. Bamboo flooring. For a decent price. Not $6, or even $4. No friends and readers, they had it for $1.99 a square foot. Which was only .01 cent more than the laminate we were looking at. And it's more beautiful than the Costco version. Lots more. Less red. Oh I'm excited.

Did I mention it's really nice?

*sigh*

 Pretty bamboo flooring.

Many many boxes of beautiful hardwood.

Tired

I'm tired. We've been at the house lots lately. I'm going to be honest. Josh has been there a lot more than I have. I don't know how he does it. Either way. I'm tired.

I've also been mudding the same section of wall and ceiling for four days now. It was really bad. I should have taken a picture. Regardless, because of the difference in thickness between the drywall they used 50 years ago and the drywall today matching it is not easy. So it's bumpy and gross and it's getting better, but so so slowly. I will defeat it though. I will. 

So while I mudded the same piece of wall and ceiling, my brothers joined my husband and they took apart the basement. It looks so big now! Wow. There were two bedrooms and a bathroom that needed to be taken apart. They got most of it down last night. The sub-floor and exterior wall in the one bedroom needed to be finished tonight. The garage is once again full of junk.

Dad busied himself with electrical work. He got some more plugs working for us, which will be wonderful because between extension cords and few plugs, it was sometimes a chore getting something to work. But now it does. He also let me strip some wire when I was done mudding. That was pretty fun. He has cool tools. 

Dad putting a plug in the chimney.

 Josh hydrating. It's important.

Notice the lack of wall. Yay! You can also see Josh cleaning up the wall.

Curtis working really hard.

 Curtis lifting up the sub-floor by himself.

Lifting the sub-floor together.

I think one of my favorite things that keeps on being repeated is "what were they thinking?" It's true. I mean, sand under the shower, an inch and a half of insulation on the walls, the peep whole*... what were they thinking? But I also imagine in 50 years from now someone taking out my pantry with the rigged up platform it sits on, the dry wall... in general, the hole above the cupboards, and the unpainted strip there also, saying "what were they thinking?" My imagination makes me giggle every time we see something silly. Because we're silly too. I do hope the cycle repeats itself some day.

*I forgot to ever mention this. Not only did the original bathroom not have a shower, it had a small cupboard above the sink. But this cupboard was not an ordinary cupboard. Oh no. Once opened you realize it is not actually a cupboard at all. It is a small door leading to the laundry room. I'm really, really not sure what they were thinking. Laundry chute? 

To help orient you - this picture is taken facing the hallway. The little 'cupboard' you see is looking out into where the laundry used to be. You can actually see the door to our bedroom, which has not moved, through it.

Curtain doors

I have found my calling! Grout. Doing grout is wonderful. Plus I'm really good at it. You would be too! I didn't even mind having to wash the floor four times within an hour. First you wash the floor. Then you slap on some goo, otherwise known as grout. You use this cool spreader thing (it's technical term might actually be "grout spreader" but I can't be sure). It looks tough, but it's really foam on the bottom. And then you spread, and it fills your spaces, and it looks really nice. It spreads really nice too. Like soft butter on toast. 

Then we wait. 

Wash the floor three more times, and viola, your tile looks finished and pretty. The only part I didn't find thrilling was the cold water I had to wash the floor with. We don't have and sinks or basically any running water except the main, and it's c-c-c-cold. Regardless - worth it!

My really pretty, getting so close to being done, bathroom.

This is actually a picture I got online. The one with the handle is my favorite!!

So while I'm doing all the fun jobs like painting trim and wainscoting and grouting tile (in my defense I also started hauling stuff upstairs so we can finish the basement next weekend and not have to be worried about that anymore) my lovely husband is doing all the 'bleh' jobs. Like cutting tile around round bathtubs. Oh yes friends, it looks beautiful and I am so excited to use it, but this bathtub was not easy to tile around. Because even with a tile saw (thanks again Kendra!) rounded cuts and tile are not like the pink and blue smartie... so not getting married.

It looks so good though, because Josh is amazing, and I'm picky and made him redo anything I didn't like. I'm nice like that. Aside from professional grouter, I would make a first class supervisor. 

He also sanded the finished drywall in one of the bedrooms and cleaned it out. I suppose the next couple of nights will be about moving our junk upstairs. Whoo....

Thanks once again wonderful husband!

Oh, and we bought doors last night. They have to be shipped, so we won't have them for a bit. It's because I wanted the pretty ones. And I'm spoiled. But I've mentioned that. Silly me getting all into doors. I didn't even notice doors before this little project. Now I can tell you that in the show parenthood two of the families houses have the doors I got and oh yes, I will be looking at your doors next time I come over. Unless I come over when we're done this project, because then I won't be looking for inspiration and how you did what and, hey, maybe I should get light fixtures like that... (I've returned and bought three different fixtures for the kitchen already.)

Door I could have just picked up and gone home with. 

 Door I really, really wanted.

They were on sale. So I did it. I'm really excited. And when we finally get a toilet installed and I still don't have door I will happily say "Dear pretty bathroom, I shall hang a curtain in your doorway and I will be ok with everyone hearing what's about to be done."

babies and men wrecking things

So it has been a while since my last blog. And I will make an excuse. I wanted to put up pictures with my post. My baby boy ate my computer charger. Or tried to. The charger did not like his attempts. And the pictures are on the computer of which the charger that is angry with Caedmon charges. Alas, this post will not have pictures. I have given up waiting for my new charger to come before posting. (Ok, the charger costs 99 dollars at future shop or I could be patient and order it on ebay for 40 and that includes shipping. The choice is obvious. So the wait began.  I would be patient. And that lasted two days. My wonderful and beautiful sister-in-law has loaned me a laptop.)

So my baby wrecked my charger.

And my husband, he wrecked a wall.

Which is a good thing.

Open concept anyone? Yes please! I'll take one.

So my kitchen is now in my living room... or they share. And that is awesome.  Thanks to two brother, a father and a husband I have the open concept house that I preferred. And it looks great. Along with a beam to support the ceiling, they have also enlarged the bathroom (as well as adding new insulation and drywall, which meant ripping out the old insulation... not that there was much and drywall... which there was and it was built to last. Apparently drywall in 1957 was meant to stay up.), the floors are closer to being even throughout and the electrical is getting oh so close to being done. I'm sure they've done more too which I've probably neglected to mention, but it will come up in the future.

Now we just have a garage full of garbage to get rid of.