March 2014 – nicole.groudasfamily.com

2 week countdown

Someday my birthday party planning with simply be planning for a party (favors, decorations etc.) but like last year we have a huge push to get the house as done as possible before the party since this is the only time of year some of our family gets to see our house! So the big push continued last weekend.

Friday my neighbor came over and finished filling nail holes and got the upstairs linen closet taped. Saturday he came back and sanded ALL the trim in the livingroom and diningroom (including ceiling boxes). Not a fun job!

Ceiling boxes are pretty much where they will be for party

There is some hope we’ll get them caulked and primed but I’m not actually that hopeful (ryan is). We’ll see.

Our contractor was only here Saturday and he got baseboard caps installed in the kitchen, baseboards on the backs/sides of cabinets and baseboards in the front hallway (the one section we can do currently).

Hard to see but those baseboards finally have caps!

And this little hallway off the kitchen has baseboard caps too!

The front hallway is basically where it’s going to be for the party as well, although I do hope to maybe get the ceiling painted so I can install the light. Not a deal breaker though.

Ryan and I caulked all the trim in the livingroom and diningroom Saturday, sanded (and scraped) the big archway in the livingroom and Ryan finished putting up any trim that was missing (a few of the shadow boxes in the wainscotting and the plinth blocks in the front hallway). Saturday was a busy day handing off toddler duty and house work.

I stained the oak knee wall caps the color we will stain our floors when we refinish them!

Saturday night we stayed up till 1am priming all the trim in the livingroom – yikes!

Sunday was another busy day but Ryan had to work so it was just me painting when I could fit it in. Alex decided to skip her nap but she was in her crib from noon-three (with some breaks where we went in to rock her to see if that would help – it didn’t). But it was a few hours for me to paint and then the evening when Ryan watched her. First I finished up priming all the trim in the diningroom (not the ceiling or columngs, but the baseboards and windows).

Baseboards wrap around and end at the edge of cabinet

And finally some actual paint …

Hard to see but it’s linen white, the wainscoting is all going to be this solid color along with all the trim. The walls will be a light brown later on.

This side of the archway and 2 windows are painted

Painting takes a while because there’s a lot of surface area! But hopefully a little progress each night will be made. Once we get a coat on I want to get 1 coat on the walls so we can see the finished look just about. This whole working in the evenings only works if work isn’t busy but here’s hoping, I need some evenings off, been a busy few months!

A new baby in the family

Aimee, Jason and little Jason welcomed little Madelyn to the family last friday! Alex and I drove down for 5 days in CT to hang out with little Jason and make the time that Aimee and Jason were in the hospital a little easier on him (Alex is a fun distraction). Little Jason did great, he missed his parents but had lots of fun with his cousin, grandma and auntie Cole 🙂 Baby Maddy is doing great, she was a bit early so she stayed at the hospital when Aimee came home but we have high hopes that she can maybe come home by next week?? 🙂

In the meantime, Ryan stayed home (he had to work) and worked on the house over the weekend, our contractor and neighbor came for the whole weekend so when I got home Tuesday night I had a LOT to see! Let’s start with the diningroom:

First up, the drywall is temporarily hung in the second half of the ceiling now, we will remove it to finish plumbing but for now it will look a bit nicer to have it up.

The chair rail and baseboard cap was installed ALL the way around the diningroom and livingroom. The one small section in the diningroom that has to remain unfinished (for plumbing) has none but it’s behind our hutch.

Also notice the walls are primed in here – our neighbor sanded and primed the diningroom (or the section we are finishing anyway) on friday!

The wainscoting – oh wow – so the livingroom is completely done, the diningroom they ran out of the trim for this so there are 2 small boxes left but here’s a view of the diningroom side of knee-walls.

The left one isn’t done, and there will be one on the left of the built-ins.

And on to the livingroom:

First up the cupola – baseboard cap and chair rail done!

And check out these knee walls, the posts are mostly done (they will have trim at the top and bottom but that’s waiting until I finish the oak parts). The quarter round and filler blocks are installed so they match our porch columns! The wainscoting is done:

Another view, wainscoting is done on that back wall too!

And a view of the front section of the livingroom – also finished

These pictures were from Tuesday night, i really should take new ones now that I’ve cleaned and moved stuff but we’ll be painting this weekend so more pictures will be posted after that.

Note the livingroom was also sanded (what was left to sand) and primed!

The front hallway was sanded and primed too!

The first story of the stairs is primed too

So exciting! Now we have a lot of holes to fill, some caulk, lots of sanding and priming of trim! Then painting of walls to do! This weekend we’ll get to work on that prep work and painting. I’m hoping our neighbor can come and finish spackling upstairs, including the linen closet, get that sanded and primed soon too. He can also do some prep on the trim with us.

Just 2 weekends to work until the party! Plus i need to make time to go down and see little Maddy when she comes home from the hospital! So much to do!

A different 3 day weekend

Last weekend I took Friday off of work (kind of, I still came home to work all evening but the intention was there and I had the *DAY off) 🙂

My friend Sarah recently just bought a new house and had a few projects she wanted to do so I went down there to help her out. The main project was sanding down the railings and adding a coat of poly since they were so rough. We did a few other projects too but she’s having the whole house prepped and re-painted so that didn’t have to be done.

The weekend it was back to working on our own house. Saturday we drove around all morning looking for trim we liked and ended up finding something decent we are happy with. This is for the chair rail and shadow boxes in the livingroom. While we were gone our contractor and neighbor were working away. The vertical posts were covered nicely and then baseboards installed in the diningroom.

See that beam on the left of the knee wall.

Baseboards are in (still need cap molding but we dont’ have it yet).

Baseboards in the livingroom were started (cupola mostly done).

And our neighbor finished spackling the front hallway and closet. So spackle wise we have one section of the diningroom being left un-done for now and the upstairs hallway left. I hope this weekend to have him sand and prime what is done on Friday!

Stairway (just the bottom 1/2 is done, my neighbor is afraid of heights!)

Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning Ryan’s project (with my help) was the moldings on the cabinets. As you see, the taller cabinets have a very complicated multi-piece molding. It’s kind of crazy actually. We even modified it and removed 2 of the backer pieces by lowering the very top molding or it would have been an inch taller than it is now! So first Ryan got one tall cabinet done, then he did the smaller cabinets that just have cove moldings.

Sunday progress – these 3 lower cabinets – just 1 more cabinet to go!

During naptime Saturday I also got the molding on around the microwave cutout, we completely forgot we bought this molding but it was in with all the cabinet crown!

And finally my last project for the weekend was getting the final coat of paint on the bathroom door! It’s all ready to hang now!

Door done, my little helper helping to put hinges on

All in all a very good weekend. If my neighbor is good with priming walls, then this weekend we’ll start the chair rail and shadow boxes! I need to pick the next door to start refinishing (probably a tvroom door) and we have some electrical to do (I need to hook up that microwave outlet and remove a bunch of knob and tube just sitting around).

Progress everywhere

It’s been a few weeks since I posted progress from the house so we have a few updates. On top of that fact, my in-laws came out this weekend and extra progress was made with their help!

Let’s start with the Diningroom! Our contractor has finished up the beams/boxes for the cofferred ceiling and they look great! They will have crown installed around the inside of each box and it will all be painted white. But for now here they stand:

This is the kitchen side, so the ceiling isn’t sheetrocked (leaving plumbing exposed)

This past weekend Ryan installed the window trim on the diningroom windows, he had 2 sills he made along with the livingroom windows so he just had to make the big sill and install the trim. I stripped rosettes for the windows on Saturday during naptime as well!

Ryan’s dad did some painting for us, more specifically priming but it’s great. The cupola in the livingroom is now primed!

And then he moved on to finish up the sections off the kitchen that have been un-primed for almost a year now 🙂 That’s tinted primer, so the walls are tinted green and the ceiling is an off-white. Just needs a coat of paint now!

Small hallway by the bathroom is primed!

Our contractor has been working on the knee walls since he finished up the ceiling boxes. First he installed these caps of oak which we will stain to match the floor (which will get stained when it’s refinished). Then he installed the columns and wrapped them with wood. We are going to put quarter-round in the corners to match our porch posts and then some decorative trim around the top and bottom most likely.

Another view so you can see a column and a ‘half’ column up against the wall.

And I’ve been getting paint onto the bathroom door, so far one coat on each side is done and both are sanded and ready for coat 2!

I’m on the hunt for door knobs and once this door is done I have a line of doors ready to be painted (prepped and painted), from the linen closet doors, basement door and all the doors we had stripped/dipped. I need a better painting station though, the upstairs area I’m using has no light and only a small window. I think if I move my setup downstairs I’ll paint more often and only being able to do a side at a time makes painting doors slow work.