Live-in progresses...

It's nice not to have a commute every day to come and work on the house. It's also nice to have other distractions here for when you just have to take a break!

Lots of smaller details are getting completed slowly, but surely. Here's an update since we last spoke :)



Unpacking: This is what our living room looked like after emptying the U-Haul....chaos I tell you!







Kitchen unpacking: it actually seems as though we have too many cabinets! Unbelievable! I'm sure we'll manage to fill it up soon enough - sigh.







Here is the bane of Brent's existence...or at least it was for 4 hours last Wednesday night. The black cable is the one that was stuck - you can see the wall and then the back of the bathroom wall cabinet - cable all twisted and stuck between the two...UGH!






We got our sofas and Brent helped me put them together...then he fell asleep :)








Moving onto finishing up the kitchen: Backsplash! I am so excited about the tiles, they look amazing.


Here we are applying the thinset (adhesive) to the wall, and then hanging the tile sheets.




It's very uncomfortable work...trying to get into the corners and right up underneath the cabinets was not easy or fun.

Luckily it's instant gratification work - you get to see the wonderful results of your labour straight away :)





Finished gluing all the tile....



















Not sure what that look is all about...








Then on Sunday we moved onto grouting. This is MESSY, MESSY work! Sandy, cementy stuff everywhere...ick.






















Grout complete!







24 hours later we are allowed to clean off all the grout haze, it took a while as you have to scrub really hard, but it looks really great!

We also put in the new stainless face plates - cool!







Next thing on the list for the kitchen was sanding back the countertops and coating them in many layers of wood oil. They look even better than I thought they would :)

New Oven!!

Arrived this morning....

....this afternoon we found a big dent in the side when we removed the plastic :(

Boooo! So Best Buy is sending out the new one but I think it's going to take another week to be delivered. UGH. Toaster Oven will come in handy :)



Here she is! It's a 30" Samsung Range - who knew Samsung even made appliances? Not me! So pretty, and functional too :) Bring on Thanksgiving!!

• One-touch electronic oven controls, rear-panel zinc die-cast alloy knob burner controls and digital display for simple, reliable operation; kitchen timer and clock
• 5.7 cu. ft. oven capacity and 2 adjustable chrome oven racks with 7-position flexibility
• Two 6" 1200W cooktop elements and two 6"/9" 2500W cooktop elements
• 100W warming element delivers low heat for warming
• 3-fan Airvection convection cooking system with convection bake and convection roast cooking options circulates air and heat evenly
• Delay-start feature lets you set the oven to begin cooking at a specified time, whether you're at home or away
• Keep Warm option uses gentle heat to keep food warm until you're ready to serve it
• Proof function lets you leaven bread dough by lowering the oven temperature to allow yeast to rise
• Custom Cook function recalls the settings for your favorite recipes for added convenience
• Control lockout feature prevents unintended or unsupervised operation
• Ceramic glass cooktop surface makes cooktop cleanup easy; hidden bake element provides a flush oven cavity surface for simple cleaning
• Pyrolytic oven self-cleaning function eliminates the need to scrub by doing the cleaning for you
• 20-minute SteamQuick oven steam cleaning option uses 10 oz. of tap water to rapidly steam-clean the oven for easy wipe-down

Jealous??!!

post move ketchup (catsup, catch-up)

I'm sure Vanessa will fill you in, in detail, however...

First off, thank you to Mary, Bobby, Cheryl and Will, we were able to move 95% of our stuff this weekend!

What we've done since you last heard...

• Replaced all doorknobs
• hung some window coverings
• cut sink-hole in counters
  
• installed sink, faucet, and dishwasher
• floors will be finished TODAY
• Packed
• Moved
• unpacked (30%)
• more things I can't remember
  

We've slept in the new house, we are home. The clutter is deep, but the progress moves on. Next on our list:

• Baseboard molding fixes.
• Paint touch ups including: all baseboards, some moldings, living ceiling, doors etc...
• Massive Trash removal (oh the horror)
  
• Tile & grout backsplash
• Hang window coverings (attach fabric)
• Paint Kitchen
• Minor bathroom fixes including, temporary storage and faucet replacement.
• Installing recessed and additional kitchen lighting.
• Refurbish chairs and paint patio furniture
• Hang fans in patio
• Put up hanging patio seating
• Sealing counter-tops
• and more... (touch-ups and who knows)
  

exhausting just to write it down...

Floor week!

Well what a busy week it's been so far!

Steve the floor guy has been working for 4 days, and the floors are looking pretty good! There were a lot of stains that won't come out, and a few that appeared after sanding that we couldn't see before...but overall, it's an enormous improvement for the fraction of what laying any kind of new flooring would have cost us. Not to mention it feels divine underfoot!

Here are some snaps of the work in progress:

Here is Steve grinding the first layer.













This is the borax-like stuff they put down before the grinding... it's fluorescent yellow & orange.







This is the repair job on the patio door debacle... not perfect, but a definite improvement!









This is how they repair the shatter holes in the floor - they fill the hole with marble chips, and cover it with epoxy (STINKY!). Then they sand it back to the floor so it blends in. Pretty cool!








Here is the floor cleaned and ground down, but not polished.










This one is the kitchen floor polished, but not buffed. There are a lot of rust stains and a nice long crack across the floor in the kitchen, but I think it makes it look rustic :)








This is the view from the kitchen into the living room. The living room is finished, as it was buffed this morning :)













Here's the bedroom looking glorious!










While Steve has been busy on the floors, I have been busy with a list of my own! 1st on the list, bye-bye pink walls for good! I finished up the edges of the walls and then painted the window casings.

























Brent stopped by on Monday to install the new ceiling fan in the den - it looks as good in there as it does in the bedroom!






Brent's latest exciting venture was installing the counter tops. Our kitchen installer Corey was supposed to come out and give him a hand, only he flaked and Brent had to do it alone. And he did! Our plan to extend the counter top into the doorway in order to create an eating area in the kitchen worked out perfectly :)




























My biggest achievement this week (besides getting a little electric shock while changing a socket cover), was installing the tracks for the window covers in the bedroom! Woohoo!














We plan to start moving in on Sunday, moving at least the bigger items while we have the rented truck. Pretty exciting stuff!!

One month down...

We realised today that we were only a month into our project... I have to say it blew our minds a little bit ;) It feels like we've been at this for a long time, but our first work day in the house was June 14th.

We had a hugely productive weekend, even though we were VERY social (contrary to other weekends recently!), attending both of Timb's birthday events :)

Thursday, we sat down and wrote a list of things we had to get done this weekend in order for the floor guy to be able to come in on Tuesday morning to start restoring the terrazzo. Here's the list...

















* New wall finished and primed
* Scrape moldings
* Prime living room
* Paint (well, prime actually) 2nd bathroom
* take all the debris to the dump (tip) This actually happened Thursday night when our new neighbours came over and offered us their kerb for laying out extra stuff for pick up! We have such NICE new neighbours! It's like Ramsay St without the drama (sorry non-Aussies...)!!!
* Dig out all the holes in the family room
* Tear up carpet
* Remove tack strips
* Pull up tile in bathroom #2
* Clear out all rooms/clean


EEK!!

I started by finishing up the removal of the family room tiles, and then moved on to caulk digging. They had filled all the holes from the exploded nails with crappy caulk and then glued the lino over the top...man, what a shi**y job. There was 118 holes. One hundred and eighteen holes. Not to mention all the goddamn glue and cement and crap! UGH...

















Brent had our friend Ed over on Friday evening to hep him install the microwave...well Ed was later that Brent had planned, and by the time he arrived Brent had figured out how to install it alone. Oh well!

He then spent Saturday powering through the remaining popcorn on the crown moldings. What a relief it was when that was finally done! Here he is on the last ft :)
















And the finished, primed product :) Finally, the Pepto Bismol pink walls are gone!!!
















Sunday we moved to the living room priming and carpet removal. We have been working messily on this carpet for a month...it's dusty and disgusting...here's proof:



































Can you see Brent through the dust storm???









































Finally - no more flooring in the house!!!!


























Then Brent got to pull up the last of the tack strips! Spiky, evil things they are :(


















And here are the CLEAN (ish...), After shots!

Old tile out, new tile in...

I finally finished removing the lino tiles in the den today! Yay! Those things were a dead-set b*tch to pull up. My hands are absolutely shot after 6 straight days of tile removal...UGH.












New tile for the kitchen back splash have been ordered...I'm excited!





I can't wait till they arrive and we can install them :)




So, not sure if we mentioned this before but we have these panels in the house that we weren't sure what they were for:















Well, they are, wait for it....UNDER FLOOR HEATING.

In F-L-O-R-I-D-A.

Weird.

The terrazzo floors are a slab on the house, poured under the walls before they were built. Inside this slab is an under floor heating system. Everwarm...

Bizarre. We are in Florida for pete's sake! This is just good, solid proof there is too many northerners in Florida! Seriously.












I started work on painting our 2nd bathroom today. It has lovely pale yellow 60's tile in the shower, but the walls are currently the same ugly green-blue as the den used to be...ick. Well I pulled down the cabinet (which then proceeded to fall on my head...but that is a different, more embarrassing story...) and it seems at some point that the bathroom was yellow. Got me thinking for a bit about painting it a nice shade of lemon...but good sense got the better of me and reminded me I have 3.5 gallons of gorgeous robin's egg blue paint left to use and only the living room left to paint. USE THE BLUE AND SAVE $50!! Geez ;)