Not only do we have power restored to the house (LIGHTS!!), but we have more or less finished hanging sheetrock throughout the house, have trimmed out the exterior of the new windows, removed the remainder of the west chimney, had a new furnace/AC/water heater installed, restarted soffit work, and laid the groundwork for hanging siding. Oh! I also bought more cement board for the kitchen and laundry areas as well as decided on exterior lights and a bathroom sink and faucet.
As I said, the drywall is hung (with the exception of the living room ceiling), but we’re waiting on the contractor to come mud, tape, and texture. Timeline on that is another 2 - 2.5 weeks, so, in the meantime, we’re working on the outside before the weather turns nasty. On rainy days, we’ll rip up the carpet, sand the hardwood floors, and plop the carpet back down again to protect the floor from drywall splatters and stilts. I can refinish those later..I'm just hoping to get the dusty projects out of the way all once!
Also in the meantime, we can lay the cement board in the kitchen and laundry room – this acts as a sturdy base for the tile. We’ve already done this in the bathroom, but hadn’t done the rest because we weren’t totally sure what the footprint of the rooms would be. Now that the major demolition is done and we’re putting things back together, we can feel confident knowing where this stuff will go!
The exterior trim was pretty exciting for me.. it’s another reminder that I might actually get to live here one day! That, and the fact that I’m excited about the product itself: the trim around the windows and doors is a PVC product just like the pipes you might use when plumbing your house. This stuff comes in a variety of profiles and designs, and the real beauty of it is that there should be minimal maintenance going forward. Because it’s plastic, it can’t rot and it looks like the old trim might have – double win!
The west chimney has been coming down for the last two weeks or so. As we find the motivation, we go around back and smack at the bricks for a while. Well, over the weekend, dad and I took the sledge and a wheel barrow and finished her off J I have saved the old bricks because there is repair work to be done on the front steps, but I’d also like to use them in something else. Maybe next year..
I was able to pull the chimney down instead of tuck pointing it because the insulated pipe inside was no longer needed. My 1980’s furnace has been replaced with a new, high efficiency model and I’ve installed an electric water heater so there’s no need for a vent. Not to mention, I get more rebates now J
A side project I’ve been working on is the interior doors. When I bought the house, none of the doors matched each other. I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m just obsessive-compulsive enough that this would bother me. Well, I was lucky enough to be able to sweet talk the neighbors into letting us salvage the old doors from their house before it gets demolished. Now every interior door in the house is the same..and my OCD remains fully intact.
After taking measurements and deciding which doors we could use, I set about sanding, priming, and painting them. I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen lots of magazines and blogs lately featuring people with these glossy black doors. I don’t know what it is about them, but I just think they look kind of…sexy? So, I thought I’d give it a try. If it works, I’ll have the sexiest doors in town..if it doesn’t, I’ll repaint them another color and life will go on. The only issue I anticipate would be the bathroom: it’s a smaller space without windows, and the dark doors might overwhelm it. Otherwise, everything else should be bright enough that they work just fine. Stay tuned!
I’ll post pictures of all of this very soon. At this point in time, I don’t even have any – pretty lame, right?
Happy Tuesday!
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