House Stuff

We are still plugging away on the 1st floor so we take every opportunity we have to get stuff done when there are folks around to play with the boys. The walls in the great room will be white on the bottom and green on the top, with a white picture rail around the transition. It will take awhile before that all happens, so I just started hanging pictures anyway. 

Grandma and Grandpop reading A the wheels on the bus. 

Baby D says "Too hot for pants!"

A and grandma Linda fold diapers. 

Here is the cabinet where the wall oven and microwave go.  We were disappointed when we opened the oven and realized that it in no way would fit into the hole designed for it in the cabinet I ordered. After it sat in the atrium for 5 months we talked to a few people and realized that modifying the cabinet to fit the appliance is pretty standard.  Tim is super talented and made it fit juuuuuuuuuust right.

 Notice the IKEA stool we painted to match the cabinets.  When the ceilings are 10' high and the cabinets are 8' off the ground, no one can reach the top. We're brainstorming a creative place to store the shelf.

 Here she is!

It is really hard to find solid black appliances that don't have any stainless steel.  This oven is a bit smaller than I had realized or hoped it would be, but I really didn't want to have just one stainless steel appliance.

The sink wall. 

Next steps on this wall: paint the underside of the high cabinet to match, install end panels on the bare wood cabinet sides, install under-cabinet lights, install drawer pull on drawer under oven, hook up separate outlet for the microwave (already roughed in the cabinet), install back splash, install toe kicks and crown moulding. Soooooo close, yet so many more little things that are so time consuming! 

Before Kitchen Flooring

Jenny the dog demonstrating the effectiveness of the dog/baby gate. 

We painted the floors of the downstairs, except the kitchen because that floor was scheduled to come within a week of moving back in.  Behind Tim you can see the pot rack, pendant lights and speaker wires hanging from the ceiling. The pot rack will be above the stove top in the kitchen island. 

To the left you can see the make-shift half door Tim built so that Attison doesn't go down in the basement.  The door has been ordered but will take a few weeks to come in. 

Here is our temporary kitchen/laundry/bar sink set up.  There will be cabinets along the wall under the window and an 18" bar sink in the counter where the laundry sink currently is.  This area will serve as a "coffee bar."  The sink for that area is probably a little overkill, which I didn't realize until it arrived and I opened it and realized just how big an 18" sink actually is. The price was right though, so we're going to go with it.
Also, you can see Tim's cup hanging from the pot rack.

A loves to wander around the big, open layout!

Insulation

Spray foam insulation.

Tim installed lots of blocking for framing and cabinets late, late late at night.  He took pictures so he would remember where it was.  This is the blocking for our kitchen cabinets. 

He also framed in above the windows where the original transom windows were, in case some day we want to cut open the wall and put them back in. This is the back door.

This is the front door.  There is currently a transom window above the very front door (this door leads to a small vestibule) but it has been painted on both sides.  I tried to scrape the paint off of one of our transom windows above a bedroom door and proceeded to crack the window.  So no more repairing transoms, only replacing.

Ceilings

We removed the ceilings that were dropped sometime in the 60's to around 7' in height.  The ceiling framing you see in the picture below is approximately 10' high, which is what it was originally framed to be.  The gas lines were all still in the ceilings (covered in coal dust).

This is the kitchen, with the walls framed. 

The floor frame for the 2nd floor where was covered with plaster and lath, and they had shimmed the plaster all over the place.  As we took down the walls, many areas of the old plaster just crumbled and fell, so we made the executive decision to just remove it all.  This left us with some wonky, uneven floor joists to drywall, which would have been unsightly and really challenging.

After much debate with all of our contractor friends and going back and forth 100 times, Tim decided to frame a new ceiling, directly below the old ceiling.  We ran metal stud track horizontally around each room and then ran new ceiling joists from track to track.  It was just like framing the walls, only we did it in the horizontal plane instead of the vertical one. 

We are so thankful for everyone who came out to help us with this task, but this day was particularly busy as the electricians and plumbers were also there helping us get last minute stuff in right before the insulation came and covered it all up. 

View from the back staircase. 

This is the ceiling of the back staircase and the ceiling in the kitchen.  See what I mean about the original framing being out of level? 

View from the back of the house in the kitchen looking forward. Plumber on the right, Electrician in the middle wearing black, Sascha the amazing hired hand on the right. 

View from the front right corner looking back.

Moving home. Day 1.

More window pictures. (and a baby)

Happy Christmas Eve!  

Tim put this kitchen window in on Christmas Eve and we headed out to our good ol' friend the PA Turnpike. (May your workers go on strike and we get to ride for free again someday)

When he was finished I hurried everyone into the car and did not get an "after" picture. There will be plenty more. 

 Front window.  Donzo.

Shout out to Andrew "I'm a Champion" Cutchall for "pulling an all nighter" with Tim and cleaning this place like it was Beulah's kitchen.  (Seriously Grandma, you'd be proud at these boys' cleaning skillz)

Again, the back dining room window.  Donzo.

Meanwhile, 3 blocks away...

Steph and Attison sublet an apartment.  When your house appears as if a person drove a car directly through it, reversed it back inside and smashed out a different wall, it is decided for you that said house is no longer livable for 7 month pregnant woman and her 13 month old child.

Here is Attison playing in his temporary bedroom in our "safe house."  It came semi-furnished and we brought some food, a pack-n-play (which he has officially boycotted) and a ton of baby toys. Here we demonstrate riding the firetruck.

The holes became windows.

Duke, making the hole ready for a window.

Ralph and Tim making the dining room window ready for glass. 

 Srh, getting her hands dirty.

Tim, putting in the front window.

Who drove a car through our house?

Front living room window

Back kitchen window

Back dining room window

Jenny the squirrel terror. Wanted for escape and evasion.

Containment

Attison's play space.

Waaaaaay behind

Here are some pictures from our house in December. If you have seen pictures on facebook, we have made quite some progress since then.

Matt and Tim tore out these steps

...and threw them out this old window.

Jenny watched.

Then we chose some bricks to match our existing bricks.

It wasn't actually snowing, but google decided that this visual effect was necessary.

 These are the steel I-beams that will be put in above the windows to hold the weight of the two courses of brick, three stories high above them.

Front window prior to removal and replacement. 

Back dining room and kitchen windows prior to removal and replacement.

I would also like to note that later in this day Tim took about 12 pictures of his own face to surprise me.  I didn't post any because he would be embarrassed, but if there is ever a need to humiliate my husband with 12 close up shots of him making silly faces...well, he walked right into that one. (and they are backed up online, heh heh heh)

Home Depot

Another late night at the Depot buying stuff to build our house.  This trip was electrical stuff, so lightswitches, outlet boxes, wire, etc. A was having a grand old time dropping the switches out of the cart and saying "uh-oh!" Unable to grasp that this was not, in fact, a hilarious game, we came up with a temporary distraction.  Grab a Homer Bucket, and teach him to put them in the bucket.  

Then this happened. 

Then he tried to eat the bucket.

Eventually we just put all our items in the bucket, put the bucket under the cart and let him play with my cell phone.