I'm back......

I know it has been months since my last post.  It's not that we gave up and sold the house... although some days that seems like a really good option.  Nope, we got distracted with a Spring Break trip to Park City, Utah, the re-listing and selling of the Hightower house, and celebrating a college graduate!  Many of you know that we remodeled 3 of the 5 bathrooms in the Hightower house and re-listed it at the end of March.  We were ecstatic to close on that house on May 21st but there were so many things that distracted us from this house and my blogging about it.  So I will give you the 50,000 foot version of what has happened here since the beginning of February. Then I will try really hard to write weekly updates so you can all see our progress.

Most of our work in the depths of the winter months was done in the basement.  Matt's bedroom and the bathroom both saw a good deal of progress as did the fireplace framing.

Eventually Matt will call this space home! It now has lights, outlets and heat ducting.

The fireplace will be a great addition to the basement.

We will add built-in shelves and cupboards on each side

We have also added a gas line and electricity here (but I didn't retake the picture)

Eventually it will look somewhat like this!  

The house had a bathroom on the lower level when we bought it but most of the finishings had already been torn out because of the water damage.  What was left we had to tear out because it was really poorly built.  We started with digging up the floor so that the tub/shower can be installed where it was intended to be installed when the house was built in 1978.

Getting at the drainage pipe

Tub/shower drain pipe ready for the plumber

Bad plumbing and framing that we ripped out

Ready for the fire pit!

New framing on the bathroom walls and ceiling

Ceiling framing so new sheetrock can be hung

Mostly cleaned up and ready for the plumber to put the new stuff in

A bit of work was done on the first and second floors as well.  The messiest job that we did was taking the texture off of the ceilings in the kitchen, dining room, lower part of the living room, hallway and the office.  We went from this:

To this:

It really wasn't that bad once we discovered that there was a sprayer (previously used for weed killer on the yard) in the garage that worked great for wetting the surface and then it practically fell off. Scraping it wet really helped cut the dust but boy did it make for some fun cleanup.  Luckily I had some left over tyvek laying around so I spread it out on the floor, wet away, scrapped it off the ceiling, let it dry on the drop cloth and then swept/scraped it up and dumped it in the garbage.  Not really that bad if you have the patience to let it dry.  

We also spent quite a bit of time installing lights, re-wiring outlets and light switches and working with an electrician, HVAC guy and plumber to do the things that we are opted not to do ourselves. 

I learned how to "pig tail" wires.  Who knew such a thing even existed?

Cutting holes for new lights in the kitchen

Ready for the fixture

A really great HVAC guy fixed all the bad heat ducting in the house.  Thanks to him, Emily's bedroom is actually connected to the heating/AC system.  No longer does her vent lead to never, never land.

Heat duct leading to Em's room

He also ran 5 gas lines for us.  My favorite one of all is this one:

Gasline on the deck ready for the grill

We also have lines for 2 fireplaces, the new cooktop (the old was electric) and dryer (also electric in the past).

Main floor fireplace with gas line (yellow), electricity (white) and tube for TV/Cable cords (black)

 Our neighbors are having a wedding reception for their daughter in their backyard at the end of June so we took some time to improve things on the west side of the house. This meant completing some more siding and removing a broken down fence. At the end of April it was finally warm enough to get outside.  We had to remember how to hang the siding. We quickly learned it's like riding a bike.... just get back on and it all comes back.  

Putting on trim

Many people have asked us if the exterior is all done once the siding goes on.  No, it's not. There was an option to get pre-painted siding but we opted to just get the primed boards.  We will have the house painted sometime this summer.  No, we are not doing it.  It's time for some expert help to speed things up.

The other giant eyesore on the west side (besides the weed-filled lawn) was the falling down fence.  We saved this job for when the kids were back from college and it just so happened that Matt's girlfriend, Kylie, was visiting from Vermont.  She fit right into the chaos of this family.

Is this a city road crew.... 1 person working and 3 watching?

That's a big board, Matt!

Prying the clips that hold the chain link fence from the posts.  

Kylie doing her part.

Matt breaking out the heavy weaponry - pry bar and sledge hammer

Fire wood! 

There's no shortage of "house parts" to burn around here

Matt and Grandma Nancy goofing around on the rolled up fencing

2 of 3 rolls of fencing ready to be taken to the metal recycle center.

Kylie, Grandma and Emily relaxing after a hard day's work

This work was completed on Saturday May 17th, 4 days before we moved in.  Moving in was our next focus but I will write about that in another posting.  (soon, I promise).

Getting ready for new hardwood floors

When we bought the house it had laminate wood floors.  Not Pergo but some other fake wood like product.  We will be having new hardwood installed in the kitchen and main floor hallway so we decided to tackle floor preparation next.  

This task is really two separate tasks.  Step one is to remove the existing floor and step two is to fix the floors so they are level.  There are actually several places in the house where we have dips or slants in the floor.  The dining room floor drops off about an inch towards the living room (this is the problem we have been jacking the house up to fix but there is still a slant).  There is a pretty large low spot in the bedroom that we will use for an office also.  

First, since the kids were home over break we decided it would only be right if we got some free labor out of them.  We had a ripping out party in late December - 12/23 to be exact. 

This is what we started with - fake wood all through the Dining Room and Kitchen (not shown) 

Using various pry tools the floor came up pretty easy.  Well easy in my opinion.  Mark and Matt did most of the work.  I just had to haul the trash out to the dumpster!

After the fake wood was removed - Dining Room looking into the Kitchen

The white stuff that you see on the floor in the middle of the picture is some kind of leveling material.  The kitchen floor had a layer of linoleum on it which made it an 1/8th of an inch higher than the Dining Room.  Rather than bring up the Dining Room floor they made a transition to compensate for the difference. We also found that the Dining Room and Kitchen are higher than the Front Hallway so we will be installing plywood to fix that before the new wood floor is installed. 

Emily got tired of hauling and decided she should pry some flooring up

 While we were taking out the flooring, we also took out a lot of wall and door trim.  It is all piled up in the picture below.

Working hard while Dixie sleeps in the background

The Dining Room to the Hallway wasn't the same either - the Hallway is 1/4 inch lower so more leveling mess.  I scraped all that white stuff away and we will cover the hallway with plywood to make it flush with the Dining room.

Teamwork - Emily pries it up, Matt kicks it (with a sprained ankle) to break it off, Mark advises and I take pictures.

Almost got it!

It takes two to pull it apart!

After we got the flooring all taken out, we met with the hardwood floor guys who advised us on how best to prepare the floor for the new wood.  In the dining room, some kind of pressed board was used.  It looked like saw dust mixed with glue and formed into rectangles.  It is not a good surface for installing hardwood as the nails blow right through it so we had to remove that subfloor.  We took the opportunity to fix the slope in the floor as well and installed new plywood so we now have a good strong subfloor for the new hardwood.  

New Dining Room Plywood Subfloor

Looking back into the kitchen

 The Dining Room area is ready to go but we still had a challenge in the Hallway and Kitchen.  That challenge was hundreds of staples that remained behind when we pulled up the fake wood floor.  While this job was really annoying I was happy to have it completed as I was getting really tired of my shoe getting caught on them as I was walking around.  Nothing like feeling like you are tripping all the time.  

Tiny staples that had to be pounded in or pulled out

 Mark chose to pound them in.  I pulled them out with a side cutter.  I tried pounding them in but half the time I missed and the other half I was pounding them in sideways so then they weren't flush.  In my completely anal-retentive way I wanted the floor perfectly smooth when I was done.  It gave me a feeling of great accomplishment.  Oh the little things in life.....  

Mark using a heavy hammer to pound the staples in

When we got to the back hallway we discovered that there was an area in front of the door that was covered in linoleum which was making it a 1/4th of an inch higher than the rest of the hallway.  I pulled all the staples out and then scraped up all the linoleum.  It was kinda hard work but it didn't take all that long to get it done.  Part of the subfloor also had substantial mold and rot so we cut it out and replaced it.

Back Hallway with moldy rotten subfloor replaced and linoleum removed

The entire surface is now staple-free from the front door all the way through the hallway, dining room, kitchen, laundry room and back hallway. The only thing left to do is put in the hallway plywood and the floor will be ready for hardwood.  

We had other places to fix the floor too.

Dip in the office floor - before 

We could put a long board across the floor and there were places that it did not touch the flooring.  Not good. I can just see my pencil rolling off the desk every time I set it down.
  

We used this board to see how low it was

  

Newly installed level subfloor 

The subfloor in the front hall closet as well as the upstairs hallway had to be replaced as well because it was the "sawdust" board.  Not sure why the proper subfloor was used in some places but not in others.  Can't quite figure that one out.  

Upstairs hallway partially complete 

Another view of upstairs hallway with new subfloor 

  

New subfloor in front hall closet - ready for hardwood