Taping and Spackling

As I’ve mentioned we are focusing on 2 bedrooms (Alex and Bella’s) and the smaller bathroom at the moment, hoping if we get those finished we can move in before finishing the rest.  So we’ve started taping and spackling the bathroom and Bella’s room.  My pictures aren’t the very latest progress but show some progress in that area.  Ryan and I hope to spend Friday evening making more progress while Bella sleeps at the new house for the first part of the evening.  Alex will be having a sleepover with grandparents.

Bella’s room
Another view

That picture is the first day of progress on Bella’s room.  THe second day I got the ceiling long seam taped and the 2 corner seams.  Her closet still needs sheetrock but at this point we’re hoping to finish the rest of the sheetrock spackling before the closet because we need to put in a new attic access out in the hallway before we close up her closet (current attic access).  The hallway will make more sense because it’s closer to the air handler which is the only reason we’ll really go up there and we should be able to put a staircase in (pull down).

Bathroom progress
another view

The bathroom we ran out of mesh tape for so we need to get more before we can finish that up.  The tub area will be tiled so that just needs the ceiling and upper part of the wall finished nicely.

Progress!  Can’t wait to do more!

Staycation at Lake House

We took our annual ‘birthday week’ off between Ryan’s and my birthday.  It sure is a bit different having kids though – and not living in the house we are renovating yet.  I haven’t updated in a while so let me just update by project.

We’ve been working on Siding before this week off … the dormers got new siding – the fronts and one side.  No progress over our staycation as we had inside projects to focus on but it looks great!

Siding matches the old stuff great!

Sheetrock – Alex and Bella’s rooms are both almost done with hanging sheetrock.  They both have small sections that need rock and then all the taping/spackling.  We held off on totally finishing as we knew we had to jack up Alex’s room and put in some better supports under the floor (we’ll do the same to the master).  So over staycation we did the jacking up part but before that we made good progress on the sheetrock:

Alex’s room has 2 pieces of sheetrock left to do (small sections)

I don’t have a picture of Bella’s room but hers is done except for her closet!

Over vacation we focused on some more heavy lifting type projects.  Kitchen ceiling project – jacked up and added to the main joist holding most of the weight …

Jacked up

New blocking and supporting that one floor joist and the floor upstairs is MUCH firmer!  And raised up quite a bit.

Blocking

Another project as the washer/dryer closet.  We had to widen the opening on a load bearing wall as well as build a new bathroom wall since we’re pushing that back to make room for the washer/dryer.   This is in what will be my sewing room/office.

New opening
Another view

All that demo (which was what we did on Monday) – also got trecked over to the dump – no dumpster this time around.  Cleanup is done though and looking good.  Not too much left to demo in our house – just a few ceilings, the rest of the kitchen eventually and the livingroom when we get to that.

Since we demo’d the kitchen ceiling and I had to move a bunch of wires around anyhow – I installed some new kitchen lights – functional but not pretty 🙂

Much better for cooking though!

Thursday was sheetrock day – the little bathroom!  Ryan and his dad got sheetrock hung on all but 1 small section that we are waiting on plumbing on (just moving the tub spout);

Bathroom rocked

We are in pretty good shape.  A tiny bit of sheetrock left to hang then taping time.  I’m hoping to start taping this week.  Our big goal is now to finish the 2 kids bedrooms and the small bathroom so we can move in to those and finish the rest once in – no longer trying to get the whole upstairs done.  Things will move faster once we move in (and slower too).  We’d really like to move in for memorial day – not sure if it will happen but hoping 🙂