November 2012 – nicole.groudasfamily.com

Catch-up

Wow, been a little bad about blogging lately! I will try to remember everything that we did since the last post. We have since had a weekend to work on the house, then I took thanksgiving week off and the first part of the week worked on the house then back to NY to visit family for thanksgiving. Finally ending in a Sunday at home relaxing (out to breakfast!) and during a late 2 hour nap we went through all our cabinets to make sure they were all in good shape (they weren’t, so they are express ordering 3 of them – 1 of which was broken and 2 had minor issues).

Anyway so back to the weekend of the 17th. Ryan finished the upstairs bathroom floor (patching in some subfloor, then laying down new cement board). So the upstairs bathrooms are all ready for plumbing rough-in when Jason can come out (this week).

Then it was on to the kitchen floor – it was a lot of work but Ryan got up the old kitchen floor layers and then we started putting down cement board (2 pieces) 🙂 Our drill does not like this kind of work evidently and it was over heating (it’s new because our old one burned out the batteries and we have to take them someplace to get replaced – no time yet!) – we may be replacing this new one though).

kitchen floor removed and 2 pieces of cement board glued and screwed down.

a view from the other side of the kitchen

Once the weekend was over Alli went off to daycare per usual but I was home to work on the house! I actually don’t remember what day I did what but I ran to the dump every day (monday through wednesday). I caulked the new siding and windows on the driveway side of the house (it was crazy cold on my poor little finger!). I moved everything in the attic over to the small section we are not having insulated yet for storage reasons. I cleaned up the basement really well (the kitchen demo did a number on the basement below).

I also demo’d most of the outside wall in the hidden section off the kitchen (old stair well). This way they can insulate that section for us.

Hidden stair well – with wall demo’d for insulation

After that i finished up the outside wall electrical, running a cable/ethernet drop, the feed for the outlet run, a feed and wires for the disposal and dishwasher, the recessed lights over the sink and counter. I also put down 2 more pieces of cement board in the kitchen but wasn’t able to get the saw to cut the other pieces I needed to install so that kind of halted.

dishwasher and disposal lines (the disposal is on a switch), both run under the sink.

I’m pretty sure that’s all I did other than pack and get ready to head out Wednesday night to NY. I don’t have recent pictures of the kitchen – I’ll get some before insulation goes in on thursday. Jason is also coming out thursday to rough in the upstairs bathroom and laundry room plumbing so we can drywall the kitchen as our next project.

We realized this past weekend that another driving factor for getting the cabinets installed before xmas (besides the major one of wanting a working kitchen again) is that we can’t put up a xmas tree in our cupola until the cabinets are out of the way and it’s Alli’s first xmas – we need a tree!!!

Weekend Update

Weekend plans went a little wonky this past weekend. We were supposed to go back to NY originally to celebrate Aimee’s birthday. Then Ryan decided he needed to stay home to make progress on the house so we can still get this kitchen done in time (there’s been more work upstairs than we had hoped before we can finish said kitchen). So it was going to be Alex and I driving back.

Then Aimee’s back which had been really bad all week wasn’t getting better (worse?) so we considered getting together in CT instead for just a day trip, then PJ couldn’t make the trip and my cold that started thursday actually got worse for the weekend. So we cancelled the whole thing.

So Saturday Ryan got up and started the dump runs (since the dump is only open till 1 on saturday we usually have a couple of runs to do with last weekend’s demo). By the second (or third?) trip, Alex had finished her nap and we decided to hit home depot all together and get cement board and 2x4s. The rest of the day included Ryan taking down the bathroom walls, putting in new sill plates for the new walls and cutting out tons of piping (cast iron drains/vents). The good thing about only using a single bathroom in our house is that the only plumbing that needs to be on is that single bathroom.

The upstairs is mostly done for now (on hold till the kitchen is done) but we do need to finish the sub floor (patch it and then add cement board). Ryan also framed in the old pantry door (into a wall) in the kitchen so we can now run the rest of the outlet circuit around that corner and finish it up.

The final project was getting some stain on our new railings, they needed a nice final sanding and then the stain to match the deck:

cedar railings with red semi-transparent stain

Don’t be fooled by little I have to report for the weekend, taking those pipes out took quite a while, as did the floor prep up to this point. What is left in the upstairs is minor. One more weekend before thanksgiving and then insulation. The kitchen is almost ready for insulation (just a bit more electrical) and the upstairs needs very little prep (some nails pulled). I took the whole week off for thanksgiving so I can work up in the attic to prep that for insulation on monday and tuesday. That’s where the real work is at this point.

Once insulation is in, we just have to finish the kitchen electrical, then drywall and put in cabinets (that’s all?!) not really, but those are the big ones.

Cabinets are here

Before I get to the weekend update (I haven’t take pics yet), I figured I’d show the cabinets. On friday our stove, hood and cabinets all arrived. We now can barely walk through our front livingroom and diningroom. Not quite sure how we plan to get drywall into the kitchen… future problem.

I opened the wall corner cabinet up to take some pics. These are Martha Stuart (from Home Depot), in maidstone style – finish pictured here.

And here is a view from our kitchen – the diningroom and livingroom are packed…

coming soon… how we spent our weekend

The demo never ends!

What a long weekend, the little tiny bathroom upstairs was insane, Ryan said there were 3 layers of renovation and each time they renovated they didn’t take anything down so we had more plaster from a tiny bathroom than we did from our entire kitchen demo!

Saturday morning Ryan got to work on the demo (starting with some dump runs which will never end!). Our neighbor came over to play with alex for a couple of hours saturday so I was able to help here and there with demo and other things. Ryan got most of the bathroom demo’d and what will be the laundry room, leaving the tub, toilet and floor (and miscellaneous unfinished demo) for sunday.

Then Ryan’s parents showed up for the evening and we all went out to dinner (Alli-boo got some great snuggles in at the restaurant and did great considering it was latish for her to be out and about). No melt downs though and she got to try a sippy cup for the first time (which she grabbed right on to!).

Sunday Ryan and I finished up the bathroom demo and cleanup while Suzanne spent the day with Alli-boo and Mark installed our new railings he built! They look amazing, and half of our porch is going to be the envy of the neighborhood for sure now! Hopefully next summer the whole porch will be 🙂

Alli gets some snuggles from grandma at the restaurant

new railings – they look exactly like the original but better! We plan to stain that top piece of cedar to match the deck (maroon), the rest will be yellow.

from the street – half of the porch is done!

Unfortunately the bathroom took SO long to demo (come on it was a TINY bathroom, we didn’t think it would take more than half a day!) that we’re a bit behind on the renovation. Plus one wall needs to come down completely and be rebuilt, these walls are just horrible. So we have to come up with a game plan to get a few things done quickly and soon.

a start on the electrical – saturday morning

hard to tell but a bunch of the old plumbing and gas lines were removed (water capped in the basement). The only water in our house right now is in the downstairs bathroom running off our manifold and our washing machine in the basement!

upstairs bathroom all gone. notice the old doorway – always interesting finding different layouts to the house. this is a view from the master bathroom

a view from the hallway outside the bathroom. This wall is the one that we’ll take down and rebuild. It will have the washer/dryer on one side and the sink on the other side plumbing wise.

Happy Halloween

Alex had her first halloween and she was such a good sport for it! She was dressed up as Pubert Addams (easiest costume I’ve made yet – a grand total of 2 hours to complete it!). Since it was designed after one of her jumpers it was nice and comfy (although she’s already growing out of it!).

She got dressed up, with makeup and got to play with candy for the first time. Then we went trick-or-treating to a couple neighbor’s houses where she proceeded to dry to grab candy from bowls. Back home to hand out candy until bedtime, where she got to play with candy in our bowl for another 20 minutes. So I think halloween is her favorite holiday, she got very very mad when I took candy away from her (evidently wrappers taste really yummy).

handing out candy (yes that is the bowl right there for her to play in)

And now it’s almost the weekend again! We’re very excited about this weekend, Ryan is going to demo the upstairs bathroom and soon to be laundry room. Then we plan to get new cement board down for flooring up there. After that it’s back to the kitchen to work on electrical and the floor down there (has to come up and cement board put down). We have one more weekend before thanksgiving and insulation so this weekend has to really count!