So Alex started crawling over the last couple of weeks. On Friday she did the official hand/knees crawl but she still prefers the army crawl she’s been doing for a while. Of course I can’t upload a video bigger than 1MB so I have nothing to share on that but some cute pics of Alex standing up.
Just chillincaught ya! Sneaking into mommy’s work bag 🙂
She had a great weekend back in NY with her cousins. She played with little Jason and he found it very strange to have another baby sharing his toys at grandma’s house. He is obsessed with ‘Aahee’ as he says though, always asking where she is and pointing her out in pictures (or pointing to her high chair since they ate next to each other a lot). It was adorable!
Bouncing on the bouncy bike – she loved this thing and now bounces on her dragon at home 🙂Oh the concentrationSee ‘Aaii’, this is how you do it …
Over at Grandma and Papa Williams’ house she played with both of her cousins who just dote on her and give her tons of attention!. She also bounced on her cousin who was still in the womb (hmmmm… maybe that’s why he came the next day!).
And Ryan took last weekend as a long weekend, taking Friday to Tuesday off. He got some projects around the house done and took a much needed break (of course we also traveled to NY and it was nice to be able to leave friday easily because he was already home!).
New basement door installed (especially important now that alex is moving around so much)Blocking in the ceiling of the diningroom, firms it up a little bit more. Next up is the fake beams.KitchenAid mixer lift – it just needs the shelf to be attached. It would be good if that was after I got the outlet installed as this gives me more room to maneuver.
Ryan also made a much needed trip to the dump so the side porch is cleaned off now. We have many more dump trips needed now that the snow is melting and piles are exposed 🙂 Getting there slowly!
It sure has been a while, it was a nice break though after the craziness that was the majority of the kitchen renovation, then the month of illness – yikes! This weekend was a nice relaxing weekend with a little house work – a perfect balance.
Saturday Ryan ran to the dump and the home depot to get some wood. Evidently they aren’t carrying 5/4″ wood anymore that we use for trim, not sure what the deal is with that and how we will make our door frames and other trim now. Around noon, our neighbor came over to help ryan and they worked on getting the beam/support up in the diningroom (to support what will be the master bathroom). It came out great and definitely helps the upstairs stability. We still need to put in blocking that will firm things up more but we’re getting very close to being able to jump upstairs and not see the entire ceiling shake/jiggle 🙂
New support beam in the diningroom
After the beam was done they got the piece cut for the back of the cabinet and got that installed. This was a definite 2 person job to cut this large piece so it was a big help having our neighbor for a few hours.
Back to the cabinet peninsula finished!
The rest of the weekend was relaxing, we went out to breakfast on Sunday and then just played with Alex. Saturday she decided to fight her afternoon nap with everything she had so Sunday afternoon was basically hours of letting her put herself to sleep (fail), rocking her (fail) and finally napping with her (success!) so that we didn’t have a Saturday repeat. Today she is home to play with Daddy while I work from home so I get to hear their antics from a room away. It is a nice treat!
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) 🙂
It’s a new year – and how did we spend New Year’s Eve? Well working on the house of course!
We determined that the upstairs diningroom/master bathroom floor had way too much movement to hold a new bathroom at some point. Just Fitz walking across made it sway (not good for grout). So today we worked on the floor. First Ryan and his dad took up the wood floor (we saved almost all of it). We’ll re-lay it for the hallway but the bathroom will be tiled. Then we de-nailed all the boards to save them and I cleaned up the subfloor.
Upstairs diningroom floor - gone! (see it piled on the right, that's most of it)A farther back view - we still need to reframe what will be the entry to the hallway but at least there's a doorway.A different view (toward the bathroom)And back toward the stairway hallwayA view of the old chimney way - we're waiting to close off this hole in the floor until we know what we need to run to the attic through here.
Ryan and his dad then worked on supporting the floor joists from below – using 1/2″ plywood on each side of every joist after jacking up the floor a bit. We have to wait 5 days for the adhesive to dry fully before we take down the jacks and see if the floor feels more secure (it feels very secure with the jacks under it) 🙂
Jacks holding up the floor joists for extra support temporarilyThe supported floor joists - 1/2 inch plywood on each side, glued, nailed and screwed inThe other half of the roomAnd a different view
Suzanne made a potato, bacon soup for the guys for lunch that Ryan has been enjoying the leftovers from today as well. We ended the evening with a night out at Chunky’s to see the new Sherlock Holmes – love sitting in comfy seats and getting to eat while watching a movie! Unfortunately probably due to the dust, I was starting to feel like I was getting a cold/sinus infection by the evening and didn’t wake up feeling much better today. But a day of relaxing certainly helped (as did tylenol for the headache). I also think the high pressure system we had passed through which was not helping. By tonight I was feeling much better and got the house vacuumed to remove the dust pretty thoroughly.
Due to the continuation of great weather I took a half day today off of work to continue the window panels. Around lunch time I did the final sanding of the diningroom panels and then primed them.
Diningroom panels primed!Another view
Once those were done, it was time to paint the cupola panels yellow (first coat)! Just as it was getting dark we got the last part of the cupola painted!
Cupola has first coat!
And just to see what it will look like, once the second coat is on we’ll be installing this red trim inside the panels. We’re trying out all yellow with red trim but haven’t ruled out having the recessed part of the panels be green yet. I think at this point there is a concern that the red won’t ‘pop’ on the green as much though.
A look with the red trim to get an idea
I finished up the night (after getting a few hours of work in) by getting the second coat of paint on the window sashes so tomorrow they’ll be all dry and can be put back in the diningroom since it’s getting cold out. It would be nice to get a few more windows done, maybe the next 2 on the cupola which are more exposed to the sunlight. Since they’re under the porch I can keep the sashes out even if it’s raining but not if it gets too cold.
Wow, October and it was in the 80’s! Perfect for finishing up window panels! So Ryan and I worked hard this weekend!
Friday night Ryan got home and started right away working on the built-ins! He got the box for one of the bookcases put together so we could see what they’d look like installed – it will be so great to have the storage when those are done. I know he wanted to work cabinets all weekend but due to weather he was compelled to get the outdoor work done before it got cold out.
Saturday we started by getting the rest of the panels installed, it was just a few vertical panels and we were done just after lunch!
Diningroom panels finished!
Back side of diningroom panels
Once they were installed Ryan got to work on finishing up the sanding of the cupola panels. He was able to sand the last 2 of the cupola windows, the large diningroom window panel and we got the cupola windows all caulked. We ‘ended’ the light hours of saturday by priming the first 3 windows of panels (it was pretty dark when we finally stopped).
Cupola windows - all sanded and caulked!Main diningroom window all sandedFirst 3 window's panels all primed!
We didn’t stop there though, we stayed up until midnight priming (inside and outside) of the 3 diningroom windows themselves! They are exposed unlike the cupola so it was important we get these ones painted. It would be great to get all the windows painted but the cupola ones are at least under the porch during the winter and have been primed.
Sunday it was back to windows! I finished hand sanding the last 2 cupola windows while Ryan finished sanding the diningroom windows and got the panels all caulked and ready to go.
Diningroom window panels, ready for primer
Before lunch I got the last 2 cupola window panels primed, including the post against the house which came out great after a good sand.
Cupola - primed!
After lunch we had some surprise company! Ryan’s sister and her husband came up with the nieces for a few hours! The girls were a lot of fun, after a tour of the house progress we went to the park down the road while the guys watched football 🙂
After they left we finished up the outside work, Ryan finished caulking the diningroom window panels and I put the second coat of trim paint on the front of the house (so that is FINALLY done). I continued painting until dark, after dark moving inside to get a coat of paint on the diningroom windows.
Front of the house finally done! (window panes still need to be painted)And started painting the cupola. We've decided we might do the cupola all in yellow with the red trim (still to be added) as an accent instead of green on the recessed parts. The all yellow idea is growing on me and it's definitely easier to paint that way 🙂Window panes everywhere - drying!The large diningroom window panes
Painting just one side of the windows goes MUCH faster than priming the night before so I actually finished up by 9 and went to bed early. With the nice weather sticking around I’ll probably get the final coat on the windows tonight and let them dry through Tuesday before we put them back in. I’m taking a 1/2 day today off of work to maybe get the diningroom window panels primed?? We’ll see how it goes, it’s hard moving the ladder by myself and they should be hand sanded still which is a lot of work.
Great progress for a great weekend though! Almost ready for winter! I still want to get the copper caps on but we can do that on a cooler weekend since it doesn’t involve paint 🙂
I feel like this has been the focus of my life for the past 9 months or so – but finally it’s over – we have insulation in our livingroom, diningroom and front hall/stairway! That’s most of the downstairs completed now – everything but the kitchen and backporch – plus a tiny bit of the upstairs. What a relief! We should notice a big difference in how long the rooms downstairs retain heat now, I can’t wait – I turned it up to 60 immediately to find out!
So without further ado – here is a walk through of our downstairs 🙂
Bags of leftover insulation, they took most of them this time.diningroom insulatedclosed up window in livingroom now insulatedlivingroom cupola insulatedgaps sprayed with cansView of the front wall of the houseunder the stairwayFront closetstaircase wallCloset wall and stairway wall at front of house
Wow – can’t believe that’s done. I have some cleanup to do, they were having trouble with static making it hard to clean up too well so I’m going to have to go over it one last time, then move some of our stuff around to make the space more usable again. Maybe we can get the gym cleaned out this weekend to work on it again. *big sigh*.
Well today did not go as planned unfortunately. We spent the evening last night clearing out the bottom of the driveway and taking nails/screws out of the walls for insulation today. We got the last wire run and everything secured. This morning we moved the radiators and I installed the last cable drop.
The insulation guys, after getting all set up however were having equipment failures. They couldn’t get the pressure they needed and need to do some repairs. So they sprayed just enough that we could put the radiators back and not have to move them again (can’t got days without the radiators in at all!). Then left to come back end of next week. UGG! At least we got the radiators in though.
I’m totally bummed that insulation is not done yet and we’re having some leaks from snow build up on the porch roofs. Ryan is clearing the front porch roof as much as he can. We’re more worried about the roof over the bathroom/gym but it so far has not leaked. We’ll try to clear it a bit but it’s really built up there.
It’s going to be a different weekend than I had planned, that’s for sure. Probably clearing snow and maybe doing some insulation in the basement but probably not putting up crown molding in the gym since we can’t move the stuff out of there into the other rooms yet since they are not ready.
Here are some insulation pictures – what’s done so far:
diningroom insulation startedanother diningroom shotlivingroom insulation startedthe other side of the cupola
Mom and Dad came out Friday night so we could get an early start on Saturday. Friday night Ryan and I got some of the wood off around the diningroom windows and got the room ready to go.
I set up the camera on Saturday to take a picture every 10 minutes of our progress and I made a short video of the window install. We managed to get the 3 diningroom windows installed and the last livingroom window closed up before dinner Saturday. I’ll let the movie speak for itself 🙂
Then we moved onto the front door project – again I set up the camera to capture our progress. The door project actually went through dinner, then wrapped up for the night and we finished it up just after lunch on Sunday. The door looks amazing and tonight I’ll get the sidelight and frame sanded and stained if I can get off the couch again 🙂
What an amazing amount of work we got done this weekend and we never would have gotten this amount done without Dad’s help. It was great that mom and dad could come out and help with these projects, it made everything go a little faster with an expert’s help. I am hurting now though, my feet can’t even hold me up and unfortunately a headache is rampaging. Time for some tylenol and a nap maybe and I can get back into some work.
