Week 18 Update

This past week has somehow been both relaxing and busy. How does that happen??? I do not understand. But I’ll take it – it’s the best of both worlds: a bit of down time (i.e. not every second spent at the house) combined with good progress. Week 18 was a good one. Let me count the ways….

1. We continued to work on the cabinet that’s going to grace our 2nd floor laundry room (I specify the floor not because we will be having more than one laundry room, but just as a reminder of where it will be in the house)(and another reminder: this cabinet was a built-in feature in the original kitchen)(end of parenthetical asides).  We finished up the painting on the base and hutch – you can see a few more pictures of that here – and then got started on the counter top. We sanded it down and cleaned it up (we used a couple ‘home remedies’ to get some lingering animal smell out of it), then applied wood conditioner, a couple coats of stain – Minwax Red Mahogany, in case anyone is curious – and finally, two coats of polyurethane to finish it off. This was of course all over the course of many days. The sad part is that I won’t be able to show you a fully put together finished version for at least few more weeks, because we aren’t going to reassemble it until we get it moved upstairs to the laundry room, which won’t be until after they’re done with all the drywall shenanigans, painting, and flooring. So we’re just going to have to imagine how amazing it’s going to be for awhile. Oh, and I do still have to work on the hardware. It’s a little rough, so I need to spend some time working on cleaning it up. And if that doesn’t work, Restoration Hardware has some super similar hardware that I have my eye on. Just in case!

   

   All painted. Behr Bubble Turquoise.

   

   Doing some cleaning

   

   We forgot to paint some pieces the first time around..

   

   Painted! Like magic!

   

   Putting wood conditioner on the counter top

   

   Then time for some stain.

   

   And another coat of stain

   

   Then it was time to apply the polyurethane

   

   And another coat. So shiny!!

2. We worked over the weekend to check some more items off the to-do list, the largest of which was to demo out the old furnace and duct work from the basement to make room for the new. This was a messy and not altogether pleasant job, but it didn’t take nearly as long as it could have (I’m sure glad Aaron’s friend Jay came over to help) and now it’s done! AND we got the new furnace and all its parts moved down there. So, huzzah for that. Also, apparently once you turn 32, you get excited about things like furnaces. #youknowyoureoldwhen…

   

   Here’s the beast of a furnace.

   

   And now she’s gone!

   

   Somehow there was a LOT of scrap.

3. Tom and his crew got the permanent posts up on the porch. They’re so shiny and bright white and purdy.

   

   Swoon.

   

   How can simple posts make such a difference??

4. The drywall dudes have been knocking out taping and mudding, which of course is very difficult to show in pictures. But trust me – they are making good progress and we’re inching closer to having the drywall finished.

   

   I’m considering just leaving it like this. All geometric and stuff.

   

   Master shower in progress

5. The siding people got started this week! On siding! On our house! We have some siding on our house now! It’s incredibly exciting! Can you tell how excited I am?! Do the exclamation points give it away?! I think they probably do! Anyway, they were able to work on the north side of the house for a day, but now the weather has turned a little bit, so I suspect it’ll be a number of days before we see any further siding progress. But hey, I’ve been dying for siding ever since we decided on CertainTeed Pacific Blue as the color. So I’ll take it, even if it’s just a tease at this point. 🙂

   

   Pacific Blue = gorg

   

   Ignore the weird shadow. It’s all the same color of blue.

   

   Hard to really see in this picture, but you can get an idea of what the house is going to look like!

Numbers 3, 4, and 5 are the reason we had some time to relax, because they were all things other people worked on. Which is of course my favorite type of project; I get to show up and see how amazing everything looks. Plus there is time to go shopping for tile and lights and fun stuff like that. Woo hoo!

So there you go. We’re getting there, people. After drywall is done, it’ll be time to paint, then lay tile floor in the bathrooms and have the original wooden floors refinished, then on to cabinets, and getting the furnace stuff all set and ready to fire up. I hope the weather continues to cooperate with us like it has been so far these past 18 weeks. Cross your fingers for us!