Some videos.

Bath tub in the laundry sink

This video was a big hit on the facebook.  Here it is for the blogosphere.

More Christmas

A's new dump truck! He loves this truck, but sometimes we have to hide it because he mistakenly believes he can stand in it.

Oh I forgot about Christmas

Here are some Christmas photos.  Mostly of napping. 

The boy fell asleep on Aunt Carolyn for a nice long nap.

Ma forgot to pack pants on our short trip for Christmas, so any pictures taken of me were hastily removed. (Not because I wasn't wearing pants, but because the outfits that I created after wearing week old yoga pants should not go be documented.)

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.

Baby #2

Baby #2 is going to be a big one.  So big that they sent us for another ultrasound to make sure things were still ok.  (They are, just a big, healthy baby.)

Here are some 3-D ultra sound pictures, which I swore I'd never post publicly online, but this is some serious space age technology, so why not share? 

The little booger wouldn't move his hands away from his face so really this doesn't give anyone any clue as to who he looks like. You're welcome to say "Oh he looks just like Steph!" but we'll all know you are just being silly because he looks like eyes-closed-baby-face with hands in front.