This past weekend was quite productive! First and foremost we got lots of play time with Alli boo who also took some great naps (although only an hour long, she did a great job putting herself to sleep for most of them and in the crib no less!). Baby girl is definitely growing up!
On Saturday I started the day by moving our open shelving from the kitchen into the gym (our temporary pantry) and Ryan hung up the tvroom doors. Our neighbor came over to play with Alex after she woke from nap number 1 and Ryan got to work removing the wall between the kitchen and diningroom. I helped as much as I could and we worked almost straight through till 1 when the dump closes (ryan had a quick dump run). Alex and I spent the rest of the afternoon together while Ryan continued taking down the kitchen ceiling (no plaster/lathe!) and cleaning up. It went pretty well and the cleanup wasn’t bad considering it’s a kitchen we still need to use!
The kitchen was vacuumed but still needed major cleaning so on Sunday Ryan spent his time with Alli while I mopped down the kitchen and everything that was left in it that got dusty. Then we took measurements of the kitchen and played around with our kitchen layout/design that we’ve been working on with home depot so we can order cabinets soon (4 week lead time).
Kitchen demolishedKitchen ceiling removed!
I also have been working on the layout for the upstairs master bathroom, bathroom and laundry room because that’s the plumbing that’s going in this weekend so layout needs to be finalized. So items need to be chosen (like tubs) so we know measurements and where everything can go. Luckily we have PUNCH 3d home architect (we’ve had it for years) so that works reasonably well for designing this all out!
Here are the layouts i’ve been working on (click for larger view):
This is a possible bathroom layout, although I think we’ll end up switching the shower and toilet and the shower will be a rectangle instead of that diagonal wall (that’s a limitation of the software).Kitchen cabinet layout most likely, although we have to get this priced out now that we added a few more cabinets than we had before.In this one I added lighting (just getting started figuring that out) and the beams in the diningroom (we need one support beam to firm up the floor and we’re going to make some fake beams to make it look like it was meant to be that way) 🙂
Alex has been exhausted after daycare each night this week (her naps are too short!). But she’s a trooper and I get about 30 minutes of play out of her before we head upstairs for bathtime, quiettime and bedtime. Last night while I was snapping some pictures of her grabbing her feet she decided to show off her rolling skills, she rolled from her back to her front (which she has been doing) but then she continued on and rolled to her back again! And I caught it in a series of photos.
she likes to start her rolls with a foot grabthere she goesand going…and she’s overhey mom, look what i did!guess what, not done yet!it starts with a flopand i had no idea the roll was coming!whoa!really mom, this is no big deal, i’ve been doing this at daycare for days (probably) 🙂she probably would have continued on but i was in the way at this point
Tonight, each time I set her down for second she proceeded to immediately roll to her belly! And then she’d look for me and smile up at me from her belly – she knows she did something great 🙂 Then she got tired and whiny each time she was on her belly. We skipped bathtime tonight because I kept her up a bit late (i wanted to eat some dinner for a change). Still down by 8pm so I had plenty of time to upload pictures and blog 🙂
With rain coming today this may be the progress that’s made. Luckily it was good progress. Ryan made window caps (we couldn’t fit our entire window cap like we made for the lower level windows but he made some nice caps that fit perfectly and since it’s the second story I think it looks great! Then he finished the siding up around the caps, getting the last piece in last night just as Alex and I got home.
Last piece going onThe right side is finished
As you may notice, the crown molding was also finished up along the roofline! The carpenter we hired and the carpenter from our painter’s crew worked together and managed to get all that molding up (around the porch and then the roof) in just 2 days. We liked the carpeter’s work and we’ll probably hire him in the future for more exterior work. Unfortunately, aside from the carpenter (subcontractor) of the painters’, we haven’t seen any other painters around. They still have some sections to strip and then painting to do. The owner was supposed to stop by last friday but Ryan never heard anything from him. If i have time today I will call the office again but that’s never helpful since it’s just a receptionist. I doubt they’re coming over the next few days with rain forecasted.
It went slowly, one panel at a time but this weekend I finished the last curtain panel for the nursery! I still want to make tie backs (for now I’m using ribbons), but they give great coverage and make her room dark enough for naps!
These are simply a brown fabric with beige dotted vertical lines and a white lining on the reverse. We’re using spring rods for now because we didn’t want to cover the trim up although if the rods fall down easily I may do some mounted rods on the inside of the windows instead of the springs (babies like to grab things!)
Second window has curtains now!And tied open with ribbons to let in some light for photographs 🙂
So a bit of the story with this painter. We hired him to strip and then paint a few sections of the house including:
The soffit and frieze board on the driveway side of the house
The soffit and posts on the porch, all the way around (top part of the posts since we are re-doing the lower sections)
The siding next to the side door
The shingled section in the peak on the driveway side (he didnt have to strip this section, just sand/prep for paint and then paint.
The quote is not tiny, mostly it’s for the stripping which is understandable and it was very clear that everything was covered except for the shingle section since that wasn’t getting stripped he didn’t write that part out explicitly like the rest.
Well they stop by the first day of the job and I talk to the owner (who did the quote) and turns out he didn’t realize we needed the whole soffit of the porch done, he thought it was just the posts and the board the posts touch (or something like that) so he wanted to get back to me with a new quote. At the time i didn’t have the quote in front of me so I didn’t argue but was concerned about how much more this would cost.
So I get the new quote and the wording ‘soffit and frieze board around the porch’ is the exact same wording as the original quote so we mention this to him and he admits he just screwed up. He asks if we’ll work with him, it would be cheaper for him to have his guys remove most of the wood instead of stripping it and put up new wood. Fine, as long as they can make it look very close to the original, that is fine with us.
So they get to work, they have 1 guy stripping the posts (and man is he slow) and another guy starts taking apart and rebuilding the soffit around the porch. Well it became clear pretty quickly that a) the stripping is going to take forever, the guy only showed up sometimes and he was ridiculously slow at stripping (he had the wrong type of scrapers mainly and he kept dinging up the wood). I mean it’s nothing compared to the work I did stripping the soffit outside our gym. ho hum.
Then it became clear that the carpenter he hired is not a finish carpenter, he can’t do moldings well, not only does he waste tons of material cutting things wrong, he leaves corners with gaps and broken tips and he puts up the moldings in small sections because that’s all he can manage by himself. One corner in particular was really bad so we complain about that and the owner decides to get another carpenter he hires sometimes to come fix it. Meanwhile the first guy is still working on other sections.
In the mean time, they started this job in August (13th), they worked that first week then showed up sporadically the second week then stopped coming until this past week, right when Ryan was off and needed to do siding on that side of the house (we had anticipated that the main work would at least be done and they at the worst would be painting at this point – nope).
So Ryan and the guys are stepping on each others’ toes and Ryan is catching them doing all manner of stupid things and ends up helping them (when he needed his time to do siding etc.). Finally the owner basically fires the first carpenter and wants the second carpenter (who admits freely that he is not a finish carpenter and it took him so long to do that one corner of molding he doesn’t feel comfortable doing the larger molding by himself). He however knows a real finish carpenter and we decide to just hire this other guy to put the molding up and the painter’s carpenter can help him (the painter is paying him to put up the molding so that works out). So we will be out an extra thousand probably when this is all done but the large molding is coming out SO much better and we are finally happy with the work.
The stripping is still taking forever! The same kid (whom we found out was hired at the time of this job starting so this is his first time doing any type of construction and no one is overseeing him!), is still working on stripping the porch. They replaced almost everything but he’s got to strip the moldings at the top of the posts and the moldings in the front of the house/triangle/peak. The soffit along the driveway hasnt been touched yet and has a large section to strip as well. No idea when this project will get done.
Today however Ryan got a few more pieces of siding up and the window installed! He’ll be continuing siding this weekend and next week before he goes back to work on wednesday.
And now some pictures, we walked around the house today after everyone left.
The last window is in on this side!The peak, they had to replace some rotted wood and the first carpenter put in the small molding. Ryan agreed to put in these small blocks to save the carpenter from having to do these outside angles on the molding which saved probably a day of labor.The large molding is done – all around the porch, they just have to do the one at the second/third story of the house next week.They even did the peak because there was no way to meet up the new trim with the old. Notice only 1/2 of the peak is stripped, the kid started this in the morning and must have got bored because he then swapped to doing other parts instead of just finishing it for some reason. This whole triangle I could do in an hour easily, took him 3 to do half of it.The painters showed up one day this week and started priming the molding that was up, Ryan mentioned to them that the stripping still had to be done and would mess up their paint so they stopped. I hope painters are coming next week now that it’s almost ready for them!The back corner. We are so happy with this now, thank goodness something is finally working out.
So this will cost us but it was worth it to find a local finish carpenter that does good work on historical houses and he’s not slow about it either. He also brought his dog (he brings here everywhere) and she hung out in the back yard and even met Fitz for a bit 🙂
Ryan is working on the siding this week. 2 problems with this, our painters/construction crew took a couple weeks off and decided this week to start back up full time so they are kind of stepping on each others’ toes and annoying Ryan in general with the quality of work. I’ll wait until they are completely finished before I do a post on all of that, so far they have fixed the couple of things that were really bad but in general, having a single carpenter trying to put up long lengths of boards or moldings is not easy and they did not staff this job correctly. Ryan and I could easily have done everything they plan to do in just a single week with just the 2 of us. They finally seem to have a second carpenter here (although they do not work together) and Ryan has been helping them here and there so things get done correctly (one guy wanted to use 2 pieces for an 8′ length just because it would be too hard with one person so ryan helped so we wouldn’t have that break).
All well, we’ll see how it comes out. Anyway so on Monday Ryan got up some frieze boards and got the siding started. Problem was that the first side to do was full 16′ lengths of siding and doing that with one person is very hard so after a few hours we decided that I would take 2 hours off on Wednesday morning to help him finish up the long lengths and he could focus on the smaller stuff.
Tuesday he removed the rest of the siding on the left side of the window we still need to replace and got the front porch section cleaned up that we are siding up to (aluminum siding still to remove and some trim). Then he almost fell of the roof after slipping on some debris the contractors were leaving all over the place so he quit for the day and took a break.
Wednesday was a much better day, I started by sweeping up the roofs. Then we got the long sections of siding done with the two of us. Ryan spent a good deal of time helping the carpenters with their jobs and trying to make things easier for them because angles and moldings are definitely not their specialty! He then got the section of 12′ pieces of siding up on the far right.
I’m pretty hopeful that we can get the siding finished up by this weekend. Ryan also has next monday and tuesday off if he needs them but i think he wants to do some other stuff by then. Oh and this weekend we have our neighbor’s daughter coming over for a couple hours to play with Alex which frees me up to help finish up the siding too.
Wednesday afternoon progress – the carpenters are done for the day (they are waiting for some moldings to arrive) and Ryan is still siding that far side.a closer look at the siding done so farRather than strip the siding on the porch the painter asked if he could replace the siding with new – we agreed and even paid for the siding (they are losing a lot of money on this job with how much work is going into it since he did not estimate enough time for stripping everything).
Ryan was able to get the far side almost up to the top of the window before calling it quits yesterday. Today he is working around the carpenters again (they are doing the moldings right above him) but he’s gotten the 2 smaller sections about halfway up and the last 2 12′ pieces done (the last piece has to wait for window caps). He thinks he can finish up that side minus the caps/last pieces of siding this afternoon before he has to pick up Alex.
Tomorrow will be the window on the left and siding over there.
Alex is 5 months old – and started daycare on the same day! She is approximately 13lbs 13oz and wearing 6month and 6-9month clothes but out of the 3-6month for the most part.
She is working on rolling, she can get from her belly to her back and from her back almost to her bellly (hasn’t figured out how to move her arm out from under her yet). She likes tummy time now and usually only rolls because she’s trying to reach something. If she’s on her belly she tries to scoot herself by kicking her feet against the floor rather than trying to roll. She’s no where near crawling but I do see her scooting around on her belly soon (and getting frustrated!).
She loves to hang out naked, it’s her very favorite thing and it’s so much easier to get her to laugh or giggle when she’s naked and you tickle her face or belly with a soft blanket. She loves to try to grab you with her feet and she tries to investigate your face with her hands (usually daddy’s face in the morning and she’s quite violent about it) 🙂
She can fit in the jumparoo without anything under her feet now (toes just touching) and loves to bounce and explore. She also loves standing if you’ll help her and playing that way. She’s obsessed with electronics and technology, if there is a cell phone or computer (or tv) anywhere in the room, she will crane her neck to try to see it 🙂
And finally the pictures. It was harder to get her to smile because I did these later in the day on Sunday instead of morning when she’s at her best but I got some fun ones!
5 months oldThere’s a smile!Always trying to eat anything and everything!example number 2dresses are so constricting – freedom!oh what’s this over here?Her twin in the mirror!
More progress on the built-ins this weekend! We got the shelves painted (last coat) so we can install them tomorrow. We put in the 5 drawers that were finished (yea – storage!!!). Ryan hooked up the final speaker wires and we ran a new wire for the subwoofer that is hiding behind the couch. All of the electronics are hooked up and wires are run appropriately. Ryan also drilled a hole in the console of our couch and we installed a surge protector in the console so we have easy access to outlets for our laptops and phones!
Outlets in our couch!Speaker wiresSpeakers are wired in the top and bottom of the bookshelves.The cabinet with doors has 3 finished drawers installed and the 2 drawer cabinet is baby stuff!Almost done!
We still have 5 drawers to finish (the shellac goes fast, but they need a first pass of good sanding first). Then Ryan has to make/install doors on the built-ins – he has 1 set of doors almost done and ready for paint but that leaves 3 more sets. We still have to finish the doors to the room and the closet itself. I can’t wait to move our dvds into the built-ins and put some things up on the bookshelves and walls!
This week the weather is supposed to be great, which is good because this is Ryan’s one week to get the last window installed and all the siding up! By himself. Hopefully this works out!
That’s right, last weekend was our annual Groudas family camp out in Knox. This year we had 2 little ones with us so it was very interesting. Luckily the days went on without a hitch, little Jason crawled around happily, not caring that it was grass and not a floor to crawl on. His favorite activity by far however was getting pulled in the wagon by grandma who drove him over to the pond and back multiple times (a day).
Grandma, the pond is that way, why are we going into the woods??Oh! You want to take my picture? Awesome!
Alex’s favorite activity during camping (and any time really) was getting some naked time with daddy tickling her with a blanket or burp cloth or whatever. This is her favorite game and getting to be naked made it even better evidently. She surprisingly did not pee all over the place like she does at home.
Our kid loves to be naked and outdoors.
On Saturday it started to get a bit warm out so the kids got changed into something lighter to wear. Alex decided to sport her favorite dress.
She loves dresses because she can pull them up and eat them.little jason doing some yoga posesthank you grandma for bringing the little travel swing – naps were great because of it!
While naps were great, sleep was ‘okay’. Better the first night than the second for sure on both counts. Alex slept until 2am in her bouncy chair Saturday night. When she woke up her hands were freezing (i didn’t think to bring mittens or a hat). So she spent the rest of the night in bed with us which meant she woke me up to eat a few times. Saturday night jason slept great, he did wake up crying at one point but it was probably a dream because he calmed down and slept the rest of the night.
Sunday night was a different story for both kids. Alex slept the entire night with us after watching fireworks. This meant we were up every 2-3 hours to eat. Jason was up crying quite a bit himself – probably the molar he had pop through (bad timing!). Of course he slept soundly right through the fireworks.
The fireworks were short lived though Sunday night, Fitz got freaked and after a while ran off to get away. After an hour of everyone searching in the woods (and down the road) for him he finally slinked back on his own. Crazy dog.
So Sunday was not as good a night as Saturday and on Monday everyone was a bit tired. All in all though camping was successful, no one got hurt! Oh except Fitz there too – he got a huge thorn in the paw and was limping/crying until Ryan took it out. Other than that no one got hurt!
the tents – notice pj and erica’s tent hiding behind our tent – not the ideal location when babies are crying in the middle of the night !Jason and PJ had a little accident in the pond when the canoe tipped over during an attempt to land 🙂
I didn’t get a trip in the canoe this year, Alex needed constant attention (she always does) so I took my breaks to do more productive things like eat. Next year though I plan to get out there!
And another one down for a nap! Success!One goes down, the other gets up – ‘Mom, i’m not amused, don’t you have any NEW toys for me?’ 🙂 She’s so opinionated.Don’t be fooled by my cool shades, mom did not let me out in the sun at all, i was stuck under the tarp all day!Dressed in her new camping outfit as it started to cool down for the evening.Oh look – the cousins match!Jason’s favorite books by far are his bug books – he just kept going back to read them again.Alex, not to be outdone grabbed her own book to read and settled in 🙂 She’s not competitive in the least i swear!and the burpcloth/blanket game again – she loves this!jason got to sit on the tractor with grandpa, this did not last long, but he kept looking for the tractor when he heard it!a little photo opportunity
On Sunday we all went out for a little adventure (actually Alex slept so she stayed at camp napping). We went out on the quads then met up with Aimee, Jason and Jason at the pond. PJ caught a bass after only fishing for about 15 minutes with bobbers that don’t float no less!
See! I wasn’t joking – this kid loves to read! Just like his momma!Giving me the stink eye – cutie!
Later on Sunday our friends Justin and Jen brought their little one over to play for a bit as well. He and Jason didnt’ exactly play ‘together’ but next to each other, it was cute and Landon liked the wagon just as much as jason did. Next year it will be Jason and Alex fighting over the wagon! Or hopefully, Jason pushing/pulling Alex in the wagon.
One wakes up from a nap…The other passes out 🙂
On Monday we waited until the tents dried out and then got packed up to head out. Since we were able to drive the trucks all the way into the campsite setup/breakdown was really pretty easy this year. One good thing about drought conditions at least.
He’s a crawling machine now!Packing up camp is hard work – tired Alex right out.
Just before lunch we headed out to go to Grandma and Papa Williams’ house for the day where I got a nice long shower – the best part about getting done with camping – showers feel awesome when you haven’t had one in a few days!
