Yellow Pine

There are more pictures coming soon - of tile and partially finished bathroom spaces. For now, however, I have included some pictures of the floor refinishing on the first floor. This is fully sanded and covered in 1 coat of polyurethane. It will get buffed and get 2 more coats before finishing but for now, I have the tile and shower guys working and I needed the flooring fellows out of the way (as well as the drywall contractor.) Both of them will have to come back later and finish up.

This is looking from the dining room into the living room.

This is looking out the front bay window in the living room.

Here is the now-beautiful stair landing that was covered in crappy tile and adhesive.

Here is the ceiling that I dropped in the downstairs bathroom. The new ceiling is about a foot lower than it was.

Here is the bathroom fan that I installed in the downstairs bath. It is ducted through the floor in the upstairs bathroom.

Here is the soffit that I framed out in the computer room next to the downstairs bath. This is the plumbing for the toilet in the upstairs bathroom. Both of these dropped areas will be drywalled and covered later on.

More soon...

H2-Whoa!

We have a ton of water in our basement. It's pouring right now and is supposed to all day. I can see it running in the SE corner room. Steamatic is on the way to mitigate... accck.

My Hands Are Sore!!

I'll make it short and sweet (but with lots of photos because things were crazy this week) because i'm really tired.

New plumbing on the lower bathroom ceiling (plumbing for the upstairs bath.)

New drywall in the downstairs bath. You can see the shower fixtures installed.

Filled in spot where the old medicine cabinet was. New pedestal sink plumbing installed.

Replaced floorboards in the upstairs bathroom.

Removed lovely old green vinyl flooring in the kitchen.

Removed flooring - you can see where the small addition/crawlspace is.

Pulled the dishwasher out to remove flooring under there (also did under the fridge and stove.)

Called Harold again to haul a load out (hopefully the last)... goodbye kitchen floor!

New drywall going in the back stairwell.

Underlayment installed in the upstairs bath.

Framed out new wall in the bath that separates the crawlspace. New heating duct installed in the wall.

Framed out the new shower and tub deck. Also installed a decent bit of drywall.

Tub deck framed out. Later put a plywood top on here. It's ready to cut out for the whirlpool tub installation.

Framed out the new shower stall in the downstairs bath (the toilet is removed - that's not where it's going!). You'll note there is no upper wall on the left side because the window prevents it.

PETE helped me move the washer/dryer to the basement. It was a bear but thanks a million! I literally couldn't have done it without you.

Baby due date is now in the 50s. Seems like it was just 71 days away. Holy schmoly!

What a Mess

Didn't do much at the Ronalds St. house this weekend (except to discover the location of the coal chute! I have a window that i'll be retro fitting into the opening)

- have to wait for the electrican and plumber to finish up so I can get to work. I did, however do lots of stuff around our current house. As I stated in a previous post, there are water problems in the basement. Both the small spare room and the guest bedroom have wet floors. Unfortunately, i finished these rooms many years ago in the Summer not knowing that there were water problems. Upon discovering some rotten drywall and wood - i un-finished the spare room this weekend. I only took the carpet out of the guest room and think I can get away with leaving the drywall in there despite a bit of rotten-ness in the corner.

In the spare room, I had to remove all of the drywall, take the studs out of the block and smash up all of the old tile. Most of the tile is swept into a pile in the middle and i'll have to remove it later. It's HEAVY when you load up a trashcan with it and I already have enough in the can outside to give the trashman a hernia. I'm going to attempt to wire brush the existing paint off of the walls and use a masonry sealant on them. Then I will probably epoxy coat the floors and hopefully this will resolve the moisture issue. You can see the water coming in through the wall on the picture.



NURSERY
I cleaned up the nursery today and it's really looking pretty good. We need to get a baby in there! Carrie's Mom framed some nostalgic National Park poster cards for us and they look really great. The new mattress is in the crib and waiting for sheets! Word is that Dad nearly has the changing table ready as well. Exciting times are near. Last week at our class, we got to tour the birthing suites and various facilities that we'll head to when the big day is here. The hospital facilities at the U of I are really nice.

Jack Roosevelt Robinson

60 Years Ago Today: Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.

A great achievement and a great human being.

GO DODGERS!!!!

Here he is stealing home in the World Series against the hapless Yankees.

Put in new wood, Cut out old wood

This weekend I worked on finishing the framing that was started for the upstairs bathroom, so that when we're finished, the drywall contractor can get in and run along the ceiling, around the door, etc... Here is a picture of the ceiling framing with the insulation put back into the roof area. We'll be putting a ceiling fan duct in here next week.



This is looking the other direction where I framed around the door.


In the downstairs bathroom, I cut out the walls and disposed of all the rubble (that's in another picture.) This will allow the plumbing contractor to get in there this week and put in all of the plumbing for the downstairs shower and to run the water lines upstairs for the bathroom above.



Upstairs, I cut out 3 runs of floorboards between joists to allow for plumbing work to go in for the upstairs bathroom. You can also see that I cleaned out the far wall. That insulation was saved to go upstairs above the batt insulation in the ceiling. I'll replace the wall stuff with some rolled fiberglass before drywalling.

Lastly, in the middle joist run, you can see the ceiling fan for the downstairs bathroom.

It doesn't seem like as much work as previous weekends (and probably wasn't) but the demo and removal of debris took up a lot of time. Hopefully the electrician and plumber will get close to done this week and next. Thanks to Dad and Dave for helping me this weekend.

The baby is doing great! Almost every day we can feel all sorts of new things. Rather than a simple punching and kicking routine now, we can feel funny little pokes and what appears to be hands or feet slowly sliding across the stomach - very cool.

Unfinished Business

So the lower (SE) corner of our house has some real drainage issues. It periodically gets wet on the floor down there and soaks the carpet, etc... Having finished that room many years back and not knowing that this problem existed, we're now stuck with hidden moisture. So I started ripping into the walls I put up and will be removing the finishing on the exterior walls. Also we'll take the carpet off the floor. This should allow us to waterproof the masonry walls from the inside and epoxy coat that floor. I have some pictures to post soon. An additional downspout re-route will be happening as well to try and divert the moisture from that corner all together.

April Showers

It rained like cats and dogs this weekend. Our current house has water seeping in all over the SE corner in the basement. Carrie and I are both tiring of it and of this house/neighborhood but we always have the NEW (old) house to look forward to! Each weekend brings more excitement as we get closer to having the baby and closer to being in our new digs! It seems like crazy amounts of new things happen each week.

This weekend I worked on many items at the house. I took the old crappy door frame to the wine cellar down. It was installed way back when about 4-5" out of plumb which was wonderful. It made the door open into the old floor. After I got this out, I demolished the cruddy old shelving in the wine cellar and hauled it to the landfill. Oscar got a cookie there so he enjoyed the trip. Once the room was clear, i was able to do a quick vac-job and then "rubble-ize" the floor like I did elsewhere (this is inspired by it's success on City projects.) Once I did this, I wetted the subgrade and placed the last 5 bags of concrete for the floor. I screeded it all and trowelled it off so it could sit for the weekend. Now I can wire brush the walls and paint the room. I'm going to have Muller Plumbing get rid of the old pipes. Then our wine rack and beer fridge will go in here, along with a new small shelf i'll build. It will also get a new window but that will be recovered by black paper to keep it dark and cellar-like. I also wrapped the water line coming into the house with insulation and now that corner is bone dry... no pipe sweating... yay!

Sunday I worked on 2 new benches and got them mostly completed by lunch time. They're both 8' long and 3' deep. They make a great storage area and basement work space to stage the house remodeling after. Thanks to Dad who helped me finish the lower shelves on them after he and Pete built their speakers. I have to oil the tops and get the wall painted behind them. Then they can be moved into final position and I can put up some shelves, pictures, shop lights, etc... After this, Dad and I moved the old washer/dryer into the shed and now you can see how wide open and spacious the kitchen really is. I've got everything cleaned up and wide open so the contractors can come in and start getting busy.

Lastly, I took two pictures of the bathroom layouts so people can get an idea of what will be happening in them. Both bathrooms will have the corner shower concept that was in an earlier blog post and you can see the footprints of those roughly laid out. In the downstairs bath, we will be turning the toilet for better access and moving the sink slightly away from the toilet down the wall so it's better centered and so there is more legroom. Upstairs, we measured out the actual fixture sizes so you can see how things will layout. (The wall on the left will be 5" further to the left when done... TOMORROW!) The small gap between the shower and tub will probably not be there as i'll frame in a little ledge to make it look better and be more useful. Dad also had a great idea which will be instituted: we won't have the storage closet door in the bathroom - that space will simply be walled off solid making that corner way more useful (trash can, hamper, etc...) Instead, we'll cut an access door to the closet through the back of the guest room closet. This will allow a much larger door/access and will hide the door! Huzzah!

BABY UPDATE
Things are going really well. We're almost at 75% of the way! Tomorrow we have our 3rd of 5 baby classes where we will get to do relaxation tapes and hopefully listen to "Welcome home... welcome to life!" the awesome baby relaxation tape. I'll sing it for you the next time I see you. The nursery is fully painted and ready to go. I have to buy a mattress and Dad is busy on a changing table for us. We have hung some pictures which Will and Sandy gave us and we LOVE! Sue did the framing. They sit right above the crib. We have a few other things to hang in there.

I have included a picture of Carrie about 10 minutes ago so you can see the belly in it's full glory. After 8pm it's Kick 'N Punch time. That's when I feel her stomach to see what the baby is doing.

We thank everyone for their continued love and support as we get ready for both of these 2 huge life changes. We apologize for our lack of travel and communication... we know we're not doing as well as we normally do and we hope you'll bear with us while things change crazily over the next year.

R&C