Month: February 2012

Demolition – and the nursery work begins

With only 2 months to go until the baby arrives!  Yikes (it’s actually about 10 weeks but who knows!).  We finally got a start on the nursery this weekend.  While most people just paint a nursery – we are building from scratch – per usual in this house 🙂

So this weekend it was demolition.  Unfortunately Ryan was not feeling well, and Saturday was not a good day for him.  I wake up a lot in the middle of the night and I noticed Friday night that he was not sleeping due to congestion, so by 5am I gave him some nyquil and let him sleep late – it definitely helped.

Since we had prepped Friday night, we were really ready to just start in on the demo and after 2 hours had the nursery ceiling done (and cleaned up) – which is really the hardest part!  Another 2 hours and we had the main exterior wall done, half of the next wall and the closet done and cleaned up.  With the light fading and no light in the room (the fan was not mounted to a box so I think the wires came a bit loose – will rectify that this week but we’ll be running new wiring anyway).

So here’s where we were starting Sunday morning:

Ceiling done - and yes it was filled with insulation - uck!
Another ceiling shot
Outside wall finished!
Half of the next wall and most of the closet finished

So that brought us to Sunday, we didn’t sleep quite as late but after a day of hard work we definitely needed a bit of extra sleep.  And then we commenced the demo.  This was easier demo in one respect (most of the walls were exposed from the other side so Ryan could kick them in from the outside), but harder in others – it was this hard cement board which is super heavy and hard to get off, so when we didn’t have access to the backside it was extra work compared to plaster and lathe.

Cleanup consisted of throwing all wood/lathe out the window, the all chunks of plaster board out as well.  We ended up with a truck load full of plaster and a huge pile (probably 2 truck loads) of wood/lathe to bring to the dump.  The rest of the plaster (and insulation) we bagged up and Ryan lugged down the back stairs to pile up for future dump runs.

The view of the nursery from the top of the stairs 🙂
And the view from our bedroom - no more walls 🙂
Our wood pile
And my dump load for today

With that done I spent the rest of the evening cleaning up – vacuum, clean out vacuum, vacuum more etc.  The dust was minimal since the plaster board does not generate as much as plaster and lathe and we did all the plaster/lathe while the walls were still up.  But I still had to vacuum a few times and probably a good mopping is in order out in our hallway.  Still by dinner time the house felt clean enough to relax!

Of course I still have to vacuum the ceiling and chunks of insulation that did not come down – some evening(s) this week after I get a light in that room again, I’ll get to that.  But this is great progress.  So what’s left…

  1. Cleanup (vacuum ceiling, take down nails etc.)
  2. Take down the siding (aluminum and wood)
  3. Prep for windows
  4. Install windows (3) – including the one at the top of the stairs
  5. Some minor framing to make sure we have nailers in the corners, close up the extra doorway etc.
  6. Run electrical throughout nursery (main light, closet light and outlet circuit)
  7. INSULATION (spray foam so we need to hire someone), then insulate the ceiling with bats ourselves probably
  8. Drywall
  9. Finish drywall (tape/spackle/sand)
  10. Install all trim
  11. Paint paint and more paint
  12. Re-finish the floors

Hmmm… I’d like to get up to number 10 before the baby comes – doable? yes/no?  yikes!

Weekend Update

Well this weekend was eventful but not quite productive 🙂  Ryan was away with his friends for a long weekend so after getting the house cleaned up and organized, and doing lots of baking I had a little girl party on Saturday (stitch friends).  One of the treats I made was these homemade strawberry sorbet in chocolate cups treat:

Mmmmm - strawberry sorbet!

Fitzy had his cousin Buddy over to play for the weekend and they really are best buds.

Tuckered out on sunday 🙂

Saturday was  a long day and after the girls all left I just crashed for the night (after clean up of course).  Sunday I had big plans to be productive – but when i woke up I was still tired so the dogs and I chilled for most of the day (I finished up a good books with them cuddled on the couch).  In the afternoon I did manage to do one little household item that’s been on my list for a long time…

We have this old switch (turn style) for the basement entryway light and it doesn’t always work (the wiring is old and loose).  Since we put in new basement lights when we first bought the house I’ve been meaning to run a new light and switch off of that circuit so I could reliably see going down the first half of the basement stairs with laundry in my arms.  Plus this means I could disconnect a bunch of the knob and tube that’s spliced numerous times for this light/switch and an old outlet.

Took a little while but we have a light.  This isn’t permanent, when we remodel the kitchen we’ll be redoing this entryway a bit but who knows when that will be so for now we have a light!

New switch (see the turn style one to the right - that's now disconnected)
New light fixture (the old one was definitely not up to par)

I also hung up a sheet to keep the dust more contained in our work area (since I’ll be sanding the drawers and shelves of the built-ins as soon as I’m motivated to).

Work area dust sheet 🙂

I spent Sunday evening over at my uncle’s house for my cousin Maia’s birthday.  Buddy is going to stay the week with them so he made the trip with me.  The dogs must have worn each other out because Fitz was pretty tired most of Monday when I worked from home.  He has completely recovered however and thank goodness it was daycare day – he was driving me nuts this morning!

And last night I decided to do something fun and make a baby quilt for Itty Bitty! I actually only intended to get the strips cut but it went so quickly I couldn’t stop myself.  This is the same pattern I used for the crib quilt for little Jason but this time I used all flannels.   I just have to figure out what to use for backing and binding now.  The one unfortunate thing was that I could only use 10 flannels so I had to limit my choices and now i have leftover favorites so I may need another quilt.  But after I finish this up I need to make an owl wallhanging.  Maybe I’ll make burp cloths or bibs something with my scrap pieces.

Fabrics that I selected for the quilt
Quilt top all put together (crib size)

The corners of the blocks definitely do not line up well but the nature of flannels is that they are stretchy so that was challenging and since the quilt is so busy I wasn’t worried about it.  Plus I plan to lay it on the floor for tummy time – not exactly important that it’s perfect 🙂  This quilt took only 3 hours to cut and piece (for future reference)!

That was my ‘weekend’ with a work day 🙂

 

Happy Valentine’s Day

I hope everyone has a wonderful day!  I got a special treat with my lunch (they’re doing free cupcakes if you buy lunch and for once they didn’t have chicken so I could buy lunch!)

By the way - this was too good and went too quickly - i'm tempted to buy a second lunch just to get another one 🙂

And Fitz is certainly having a good day at daycare  🙂

Lots of friends to play with!
This looks like a staring contest 🙂

Valentines surprise

Ryan had to work this past weekend so I was QUITE surprised when I got home to find progress on the tvroom!  The first thing I could see was a baseboard across the front of the built-in – YES!!!  Finally, no more Fitz toys stuck under there 🙂

The baseboards aren’t complete because he couldn’t find a cap molding (like we did in the gym) that he likes, so we have to head over to Brookline when they’re open over there to get the matching one.  But for now I’d say the hard half of the tvroom has the main part of the baseboard completed!

The closet also has a door!  And the two doors he previously installed have trim!  I’d say at this point that the moldings/trim are about 1/2 way done since 2 out of 4 doors are trimmed out and baseboards go around half the room (as does the crown).

I’ll let the pictures show the progress I came home to!

The closet has a door - and the door to the front hall has trim!
Baseboards in front of the built-ins (note that cap molding is just sitting there to see if we like it, not happy with it)
And trim and baseboards over to the door going towards the kitchen!

We’ll see what happens this week and next weekend.  I’m still working on the closet project in my free time (evenings) and next weekend Ryan is away and I’m having some friends over so progress will be limited but there should be some!

Then the following weekend we’ll be demoing the nursery!

A visit with liitle jason

Mom and I went down to visit with Aimee, Jason and little Jason this weekend.  The other reason we went down is so that we could all do some IKEA shopping and then some Joann’s shopping.  Little Jason came with us to IKEA (he was so good!), but unfortunately IKEA was a huge disappointment and none of us got what we were hoping to really find.  The good news about that was that we didn’t spend much at all!

We spent the rest of Saturday evening playing with little Jason who was in a great mood.  He is such a happy baby (when he’s not sick I hear) and I love his little giggles!  He loves being tickled too and anticipates it 🙂

Sunday it was just the girls out to Joann’s to shop – and what a shopping trip.  First mom and I stocked up on baby quilting fabrics (lots of flannels!), then some cottons too.  Finally I picked out a curtain fabric for the nursery and a matching/coordinating crib skirt fabric so I can get to sewing on nursery items even if I don’t yet have a nursery 🙂

Back for some giggles with little Jason before it was time for the drive home…

There's a big smile!
Action shot - he loves this football - most of my pics he's got it in front of his face 🙂

What a great weekend … and then I came home to an early Valentine’s Day surprise…

 

Some sanding

It sure is hard to do something like sand plaster when you’re pregnant.  The exertion required (and movement) is draining.  So I didn’t do much last night but get the closet prepped (hung a sheet and got the vacuum ready) and started some sanding.  The wall that’s drywall wasn’t bad of course so that’s done, the left wall actually wasn’t too bad either so that got a decent sanding.  What WAS hard was the ceiling/back wall that’s curved under the stairs.  It got a start at sanding but that’s in.  I think I need to do another spackle coat to make it smoother before giving it another try.  I don’t have the energy to really give it a good sanding so I need to have done a great job spackling.

If i’m up to it tonight I’ll do touchups on the walls I did sand so those will be done and maybe get another spackle coat on this one back wall/ceiling.

Closet spackling

After getting Fitz from daycare and getting home at a reasonable time I decided to get another coat of spackle on the closet while Fitz slept and Ryan was playing basketball.  It was tiring but went pretty quickly and I think we may be good with the closet now.

Next up is to sand the closet walls/ceiling and see if there are any spots to touch up after that.  It is JUST a closet after all and most of it will be covered with shelving or hooks with coats hanging.

Going to IKEA this weekend and hoping to get some shelving for the closet and some hooks for coats.  So if I’m up to sanding the closet tonight maybe I’ll get it primed tomorrow night (waiting for my new respirator to come to protect me from the paint fumes, although the closet will be latex paint which is much less VOCs than oil based, the built-ins will be oil based paint so the respirator is a good safety precaution).

 

A surprising amount of progress!

With the amount of work ryan had to do this weekend, he really surprised me when he said he’d do house work on sat and just work Sunday.  I had not been getting my hopes up with the late nights he’s been pulling that he’d have time this weekend.

Saturday we got to work on the drawers, ryan hung the last bit of hardware for the drawer slides, then we built the last 4 drawers!  Next we made face frames for them all with a nice routed top and attached them.  All 10 drawers are finally done!  Just doors to finish up and the built-ins will be done.

The right hand cabinet with finished drawers!
The middle cabinets with finished drawers
And the left hand cabinet with drawers - that's 10 total!

After that we put together the glider we got for the nursery (our first nursery purchase).   For now it will live in our room because we don’t have a place for it and Fitz is not a fan when it moves 🙂

As if that wasn’t enough for a day, Ryan said he would hang one of the tvroom doors if I could find the door and door frame I wanted to use.  Unfortunately this was harder than I though and he almost put in three frames before we found the real matching frame for the original door.  (The frame was hiding).  And we have a door (Fitz is also not a fan of this 🙂 )

Door to the front entry hung! This swings out into the entryway as it originally did.

After that we settled in for some chili for dinner and went to bed early.  Sunday Ryan had to work so I decided I would do some spackling and then end the day with some sewing while he watched the big game.  There was one section up by the crown molding that needed to be spackled so I got 2 coats on that (maybe one more needed) and I got the closet corners all taped and a skim coat on both the left side and back walls (including the ceiling).

I think in general I need one more skim coat on every surface and the closet will be ready to be sanded!  Considering how this started I’m very impressed with it.

Corner taped and another coat on the seam of this wall. Taping that curved seam was HARD!
Ceiling got a good skim coat as well as that left wall. This side did not get taped since it was in decent shape (not great shape) but didn't have a hole that needed taping at least.
And a view of the back wall, after this I actually skim coated that whole descending wall so everything except the right wall has a skim coat or more now.

While I was skim coating I think Ryan was looking for a break because he said that if I got everything set up and found a door and door frame (for sure this time) he would install the other door in the tvroom!  I dropped everything and went on the hunt.  This door originally was replaced by a newer door so I had to go through the collection of ‘removed’ doors and frames to find one for this spot – and we were in luck!

Door from the tvroom to the kitchen area installed!
A view of the built-ins and the door hung 🙂

That leaves only 1 more door (which I’ve already picked out) to be hung in the tvroom – the closet door.  It’s kind of nice to wait until the spackling is done though in there first (almost!).  We can start baseboards (which will make the built-ins look more finished) anytime now!

At this point I was going to caulk the built-ins but the game was about to start and I would have been blocking the tv so instead I went up to my sewing room and spent the next 4 hours making up a crib skirt for my sister’s nursery (hey it’s never too late – well it’s not too late yet – my nephew does still use a crib) 🙂

Pleated crib skirt, the main material is white with green stripes and the pleats are solid green that match the stripes nicely.
A better view of the pleats.

The only reason that took so long is that I overlocked every seam so it could put up with harsh washing (not that it will but just in case).  This probably wasn’t necessary but I had the time and it was good practice (i’ll have to make one of these for my nursery soon and being a dust fanatic it will definitely get washed a lot).  AND I used up 2 spools of thread almost on this – overlocking uses a lot of thread!  Me thinks I need a surger soon 🙂

What a great amount of progress we made!  I can really see a finish in sight for the tvroom which is good since pretty soon we’ll be switching gears to start the nursery and focusing on that room!.  I’ve planned out what I want to do storage wise in the closet in the tvroom which has motivated me to finish that soon so I can get some stuff stored in there (I currently have no closets downstairs at all!).