Victory!

All our hours of hard work paid off yesterday when we very nervously turned on the water main to our house... first the cold water. We heard it rushing in and quickly followed the pipe line walking through the basement pointing our flashlights up, carefully scrutinizing each and every soldered joint... NO LEAKS! But wait! We heard water rushing out of the tub faucet, ah!!! the handles were put in the wrong way! But the crisis was quickly averted, we just turned it off, no mayor damage, just a bit of water accumulation in the not yet sealed sewer lines, oops! But it was good! No leaks! one down, one to go. Then the hot water... NO LEAKS!

Before that moment I really never thought I could get so excited about anything related to plumbing, but just knowing that we did everything right, in the first try, I was beside myself! After a few minutes we did find a couple very very slow leaks, but I'm happy to say, they were all easy fixes, some valves just needed a bit more tightening.

I had nightmares about every single spot I'd soldered bursting and water spraying every corner of the basement... my biggest worry was that everyone would know which ones I did, the ones that leaked! But all my worries have subsided, and now I feel pretty good about my new skill set... Dan says i might be getting too confident! pshh!

But for the sake of full disclosure I will confess I burnt a cable while soldering a very tricky spot last week... and I panicked and called Max who had no help to offer... and then Dan who calmed me down and then came to fix my mess... so I don't think I'm quite ready to graduate.

This week... more electrical stuff.

CLICK HERE!

Two steps forward one step back...

It is the second day of the second week of my new work routine... since the new year I've been going over to the house to work every afternoon. I've learned so much about plumbing, running copper piping, "sweating pipes", not to connect galvanized to copper without a connector thingy (haven't learned that much apparently). It is surprisingly fun, i actually kind of like it, but would not go as far as to say I found a new career path, as Max suggested.

Last week we made huge progress and over the weekend we even had a guest appearance! It was so fun, our friend Cary helped us out with plumbing stuff and provided much needed comic relief to the work session. And then.... we found an electrical nightmare! There's a huge mess behind the walls in the bathroom and the further we dug the bigger the mess got... so a brave a wise decision was made by our G.C... we are redoing the wiring to the rest of the house! who knows what else they just covered up! It's the perfect time to call Holmes on Homes (great show on HGTV about this awesome guy who comes to peoples houses and fixes all the messes previous builders have done, and says "tear is all down!").

Anyway, we are not calling Holmes, we are hacking away at it ourselves and just adding a little more to our "TO DO before moving in" list. It was definitely a discouraging set back, but we'll feel better when we're done, and we'll know our house is safe and solid!

It's a New Year!

It's been a long time since the last update, but that's because there were a few slow weeks in the renovation efforts. Between Thanksgiving, wedding number 2 in Isla Mujeres and then Christmas we haven't been going at full speed like we started. However, as soon as we got back from the wedding we got busy with the plumbing (by "we" I mean the boys) and us girls have sanded and painted the cabinets, and they are looking so great! We chose a beautiful vanilla ice cream color, and we are done with the first coat on everything. We also have our counter tops ready to finish. They are made from salvaged barn wood from a barn that was about 150 years old and was torn down like a 100 years ago, so we have the most amazing OLD walnut counter tops you've ever seen! We are so excited!!! Those were made during our little Christmas break and we picked them up yesterday!

We have also made progress with picking out stuff, we have a super awesome old harvest table for the dining room and new chairs, we also picked out tile for the kitchen floors, a white cast iron sink, brushed nickel faucet and brushed stainless hardware for the cabinets. And got a garbage disposal for Christmas!

As far as the bathroom goes the toilet and sink are not in place yet, but the toilet has been fully restored to its 1936 state! and we'll be putting it in as soon as the plumbing is further along. Turns out we are doing the whole thing! New sewer, new plumbing in the kitchen and bathroom, and leaving things ready to do more work for when we decide to do the bathroom upstairs!

We also bought a really cool pedestal sink and nice hardware to go with it and located the right tile to match the existing wall tile so we can continue it all the way to the ceiling when we put in a shower (the house is that old... no shower, just a tub).

Lots of work to be done still... probably not moving in for a while... but we did spend our first night of the new year camping out with our sleeping bags in the living room and received 2010 in our own house! It was cool, however a day later the furnace went out and we found out it was leaking carbon monoxide and found 2 dead birds in the exhaust tubes (which were rusted all the way through). But no worries, we are alive and well, we did not see any ghosts and "we" have already fixed the furnace, replaced the rusted tubes and have one more cool story to add to our repertoire! All I can say is, it is awesome to have a husband and father in law who can do everything, fix everything, and if they can't they always figure it out.

Thank you GC!

Pictures will come... AND HERE THEY ARE!

(just realized my camera has the date WAY OFF! these were not taken in 2006...ha!)

Much progress has been made! Specially by our G.C... he's been working really really hard, I think he wants us moving in soon...ha!

The last few events have been huge. We bought kitchen cabinets, and have already primed them, they are going to be painted white, so the final thing is going to look very close to how they do now, except smoother and with sweet hardware! We were a totally efficient assembly line during the whole priming process, and we had extra help! So while the girls painted they boys did some slightly dirtier and smellier work. They took out our toilet and sewer line and it got cleaned this week... so we have no toilet yet, but we have a cleaner exit for all that stuff... PU.

Today we had another dumpster brought to the house and the task for the next couple days is to fill it up with all the trash we've been creating for the last month or so. Should be a blast! However, the hard part, which was taking the big pipe upstairs and putting it in the dumpster was mysteriously taken care of this afternoon... so I guess we are going to the movies instead! yay!

Another huge thing is that we have 200amps of power, fully working and even light fixtures in the dinning room and kitchen! It was an emotional achievement... and a super nice surprise, in Max's own words "these are the most beautiful f-ing-ugly light fixtures I've ever seen in my life".

So we have light, and we have cabinets to sand and paint, and our walls and ceiling are primed, and we have a sub floor in the kitchen ready to be tiled, and the flat roof over the bump out upstairs has been redone... we are moving along!

here it is

We have walls again! A good friend gave us a wonderful wedding gift... a crew of expert sheet rockers, who did a wonderful job, and now our kitchen and ceilings look so great! We also had an electrician come in and and finish the job, as it turns out our G.C. did a splendid job getting it all ready for him and after a good day's work they finished the electrical work and turned our power back on! It's all coming along so great! The walls in the bedroom are primed and the ceiling is patched, ready for primer, the rough plumbing in the kitchen is done, the vent that used to be in the closet wall we took out is now in the low wall for the breakfast bar and it is working... slowly we are transforming this little house into an awesome home!

We've bought our really nice fridge and stove, and we're still holding off for the dishwasher, because we might e able to save one we "aquired"... we'll see.

Today we had the gas turned on and we have heat! fortunately we got the furnace going and it works pretty well. We'll have to fix the water heater tho... but I hear from a reliable source it's not a big deal... so we're not too worried about it.

Another big thing is that today we got our super sweet government stimulus for first time home buyers, and we are so excited! we can't wait to get started with spending it! We already saw the tile we'd like for the back splash and we have a good idea of what the counter tops and floor tile will be... next step (one of many) buying and painting kitchen cabinets!

LOOK

I must be the worst blogger on the web... oh well!

Much progress has been made, the electrical is underway, after a very brave kick off by our talented GC, we have no power and we are making our way towards a super nice lighting job in the kitchen, and a new and improved 200 amp service, so exciting!

The downstairs bedroom is ready to be primed, we scraped the peeling paint off the windows, washed the walls, mudded and sanded the gouges on the walls and the patch covering the old closet door.

The ceilings in the dinning room and living room are much better looking now that we've knocked off the popcorn finish... however I must admit we got a little over zealous and now we have to cover the dinning room ceiling with sheet rock...but it will look so nice!

We had to take out the hardwoods in the kitchen and another wall down to the studs for technical purposes, it's looking more and more like a tiny barn in there, i love it!

Check it

This weekend we finished with most of the destruction... another wall came down, a couple of funky looking arches and a little built in bookshelf in the corner was semi-demoed. The layout for the kitchen is figured out, and we have a clear plan of what's going where and where we are buying all this stuff... and HOW.... ha! We laid out in blue tape where our appliances and cabinets will be, and we got the back wall down to the studs (only on the inside) to be cut out for a new door to the backyard. We also started to plan the layout for the master bathroom we want to build in the unfinished attic space, but that won't be taking place for a long time... maybe next summer.

Our GC is finally back, so now we are feeling less uncertain about the sequence of steps to come.

But the really cool thing about this last weekend's work was all the help we had! We filled up an entire dumpster with all the stuff we cleared out of the garage, garden shed and the attic. There were remains of old kitchen cabinets and tons of cement chunks that we scrapped from the basement and kitchen walls, wall paper, tile, wood, old carpet, screens, AC ducts, etc etc, etc. And our GC cleaned out a lot of our electrical system...It's all moving along! Thank you guys!

ENJOY!