The master bathroom plumbing is finished thanks to Jason! All we have left is the glass shower install (tomorrow) and the master bathroom is done (time for final inspection!). I’ll call and set up the inspection for Monday.
Double vanity!Shower!Toilet!Full bathroom shot
I bet Ryan can’t wait to use the new bathroom in full view of the neighbors this weekend (no curtains up) 🙂
Jason also got a new hose line installed on the back of the house (the original hose lines had burst and we were running a long hose out the door of the basement this last year).
Hose!
I also finished painting the doors/drawers for the built-ins, I just have to strip the hinges of paint and put the hardware back on and Ryan can pop them in tonight when he gets to NH. He’s going to work remote tomorrow so Friday night he can get an early start sanding and working on the floors. I bought all the poly today, going to be a long weekend since he took Monday off and pictures of the house are going to be taken monday to officially list it!
This weekend was the last weekend I plan to go out to the house to work! We’re busy the month of may and with the baby coming I won’t travel out there in June. Ryan and Dad will go out next weekend to do the floors upstairs and Ryan will stay and finish a few more things. We have our contractor back working on some things this week and next if we need him. The house goes on the market on Monday next week!
Let’s try to recap the weekend a bit.
Friday night Ryan got the drawers installed in the built-ins so the tv-room built-ins are finally completely finished!
Built-ins are finished!
Since the doors are all painted I put the hardware back on all the downstairs doors and they look great. Ryan hung the tv-room closet door too that I had finished painting last week.
Saturday we got an early start, the first thing I did was clean and mom the diningroom which was scuffed up from the painter, then I covered the floor with paper and a new drop cloth knowing we’d have people working in there still but wanting to minimize damage. Our contractor came out (he’s back from Arizona!) and he did the crown molding in the ceiling over the weekend – it looks awesome!
Diningroom ceiling crown is done (just needs paint!)
His wife is actually going to do the painting for us, she painted the front closet on Sunday. She’s also going to do some cleaning downstairs for us this week to get the house show ready (wash windows and such).
I got the built-ins stripped (just the front face) and sanded. Ryan put up the last bit of trim on the built-ins and they are ready for caulking/prime/paint!
Built-ins are ready
My project at home here this week is to strip/prime/paint the drawers and doors so ryan can put those back in next weekend.
Maribeth and Dan worked on outside projects mostly for us. First Maribeth painted the outside of the little upstairs porch!
Porch is painted
Then she and Dan scraped the old paint off the back porch and got it primed (the 2 sides). Our contractor will do the siding on the back side of the porch this week and get the final paint on everything back there I think.
Back porch siding scraped/primedOther side
A big project Ryan did with Dan’s help is getting the ceiling of the front porches done (the wrap around and upstairs porch). They finished putting up the last pieces of paneling, then quarter round around the edges, then lattice, flat trim on the seams.
Porch has a ceiling!
Once that was done I could put up the ceiling fan on the porch!
Ceiling fan!
Speaking of fans, I got the back bedroom fan and closet light installed. I also go the master bedroom fan installed and fixed the master bedroom closet light wiring which was flaky/not working for some reason.
Back bedroom fan!Master bedroom fan
Ryan also got the hand rail on the front staircase installed (the second one) and finished the small railing by the side door which Maribeth then painted. The one last back railing he got the hand rail and bottom piece installed, but has to do some sort of railing still, it won’t match exactly but it never did anyhow before.
Maribeth got the final coat of yellow paint on the little porch off the master bedroom.
Little porch all cleaned up and finishedAnother view from the little porch
With a ton of help Ryan got the vanity upstairs, he had to cut the side of the vanity that sticks out further than the granite in order to fit it properly in the bathroom – (that was unplanned work) but it came out great!
Vanity installed! And he could put in the last piece of baseboard on the right there.Another vanity viewAnother bathroom view
The bathroom list remaining is just : Paint touch ups (Last baseboard), hanging mirrors and bars, plumbing and glass. Then it’s done! That was definitely fast for a bathroom renovation!
Ryan and Dan also moved the washer and dryer upstairs on Saturday and I tested them out. They are awesome! Not too loud at all like everyone said, I ran a full heavy load through and you could barely hear it during the spin cycle. The dryer noise was actually louder (and not too loud). Man I wish we had done this particular project sooner so I could have enjoyed it!
Washer/dryer upstairs!
Finally one of the projects that was just waiting to be done.. the banister! Everyone pitched in Saturday night and got the banister sanded. Maribeth and I stained it and she waxed it on sunday as I was packing to leave. It looks awesome! We’ll have it covered with plastic next weekend while the floors will be done so it won’t need to be dusted and it will certainly be a showcase feature!
Banister – wax in progress!Another view
What an exhausting weekend, everyone worked so hard and we were all sore after but so much is done. My list of what’s left to do finally fits on a single page! That’s amazing! After this week I can focus on getting ready for the pig roast and then baby coming. As we move more and more stuff out of the house (mostly attic and basement/tools left to move) we’ll have to find a place to store more stuff (another storage unit!?) like tools but it’s a good problem to have as it means we’re getting close to not paying a mortgage on a house we don’t live in (after 8 months already of doing so!), i’m hoping we can keep it to 1 year total.
Our house…. for now
Goodbye Nashua – hopefully I’ll see the house finished when we sell it if baby arrival works out well with that! (She has to come a couple weeks before we close in order for me to deal with the drive out!). I think that’s very likely.
Ryan and I had our first kid free weekend since Alex was born! And that weekend involved driving to NH to work on the house – and Ryan’s back is still out. It was definitely worth it though, although the 5 hour drive back was horrible (it’s normally under 3 hours).
We drove out Friday night after dropping Alex over at the grandparents for a sleepover. Saturday we slept in until 9am – oh so glorious! Then it was time to start painting (for me, Ryan’s back was horrible). We had our neighbor paint the last 3 windows (first coat inside) and I started by finishing up the bit of red molding around the porch (of course it rained!) – but the red is all protected so not biggie.
Friday, our neighbor got the yellow by the stairs and all around the skirting sanded and painted final coat! He also finished painting the last railing so we just have the 1/2 railing and the back railing we plan to rebuild still left!
Next I started on the little porch off the master bedroom, I got the last tiny bit stripped, everything sanded, cleaned up and then primed – priming until after dark! Then I went in and did a coat of paint on one window that was lagging behind (it needed a coat of outside paint). Then I called it a night!
Everything primed!
Sunday Ryan was feeling a bit better so after breakfast and a trip to home depot we both worked on painting the little porch. He painted anything he could reach without bending at all – which was the red and then the posts in yellow. I started by caulking and filling any holes that had been missed, then painted the green siding, then the rest of the red and yellow that Ryan couldn’t finish. We were done by 1:30, then time to clean up and pack up and hit the road (and hit the closed i-90 resulting in a 5 hour drive).
And the porch is painted – the green is just primer but the yellow is first coat of paint!Red! The ceiling will be a new drop ceiling, so that can be ignored.Another view. The shiplap that’s white will probably be green, undecided still.
Good progress for a weekend where Ryan’s back is out. We decided we’re going to have to have our contractor finish the back porch- no way we will be able to before it’s winter with Ryan’s back in bad shape. So now we can switch to inside projects and if we get a nice day by chance we can do the final coat of paint on that porch but no worries, it’s protected for winter!
Back to NH this past weekend and of course it rained on Saturday 😉 Ryan’s back is still out – worse this weekend than the last! I was able to get some painting done though. On Saturday I vacuumed the master bedroom ceiling/walls and then got them primed! My plan in there is to save money and use some of the old paint we have that’s too dark and take it to home depot to have the colors lightened to more neutral colors. I have a light brown (2 cans) and a dark green (tv room color) that I’d like to use up in the upstairs rooms to save some money and use up the paint!
Primed!
Sunday the weather was great, so after some errands in the morning I got the green painting on the outside of the house finished up while our neighbor painted some more railings for us! The outside painting is winding down, next weekend we hope to work on the back porch, we still have the small porch off the master bedroom left and a tiny bit of red paint on a molding to finish up and we’ll be done.
Finally this section of green is finished!This green wall by the side door is also finally finished. Only 1 last railing to paint, then the posts and frieze boards by the skirting.
Getting there, once the outside is buttoned up for winter we’ll be focused on getting trim installed in the master bedroom, front hall and upstairs hall. The sooner we can get the master bedroom done completely, we can put our bed back in there and empty out the front livingroom again so we can paint that crown molding! Lots to do!
OK so the trouble with driving out to work on the house for a day and then driving back – means I always forget to take pictures! Arg! 2 weekends in a row now! I don’t want to forget what we did so I’ll update anyhow and hopefully next weekend I’ll remember pics.
We’ve been driving out Friday nights then Saturday Ryan is doing errands with Alex (dump runs etc). The weekend before last I sanded the railings and got them stained after we went and bought new stain that actually matches this time 🙁 Then I went up on the roof over the porch and painted the red molding that was left and the green siding – and just as I finished it started pouring. So the last 5 boards that weren’t dry all have to be re-painted as the paint washed off – yup!
We waited for the storm to pass before hitting the road and coming home Saturday night that weekend but last weekend we stayed until Sunday morning which worked better (rain again too).
So this weekend it was planning to rain again so i still couldn’t sand and stain the deck (UGG!!!). But I had the morning rain free so I painted the soffit around the porch yellow (part of it that needed one more coat). So the porch soffit just needs the red molding painted next.
After that Ryan and I worked on installing the last trim around the skirting of the porch (I believe there’s 1 piece left that needed an angle cut and hence a different saw) while Alex napped. I got the nail holes all filled and caulking done while he installed those. Georgia came over to play with alex for the afternoon/evening so we then built the small 1/2 railing that goes by the side door and got that ready to prime/paint before installing (so we brought it back home with us). We’ll install it next week!
We took the doors off the built-ins as well, hoping to have time to paint those this week and bring them back to install. The more we can do here in the evenings like that (painting big doors is next on the list) the better!
That’s it. Next weekend Chloe is coming over to watch Alex (getting lots of cousin help!) so hopefully the rain will hold off and we can get the deck stained already!!!!
The last week and weekend has been a bunch of projects so I’ll just update using pictures on all the work that’s been done recently.
During the week we had a crew working on the siding on the back side of the house! They got the siding installed and the soffit stripped and all primed (new siding primed too). good progress. Our contractor is back today getting paint on the soffit and siding and when the crew comes back they’ll install the red molding and take down the pump jacks.
Progress from Monday – just our contrctor getting the base piece on, the tar paper up and the window cab on.Tuesday progress – siding 1/2 way upSiding all the way up on the next dayEverything is scraped and primed now!
On Friday I got the front stairs sanded and stained in anticipation of rain this weekend (there wasn’t any of course) 🙂
The color is supposed to match exactly but it doesn’t – I’m pretty sure the deck used to be reddish like this and age just darkened it.
Also last week our contractor finished the front hall closet door – got the knob installed and the door fits very nicely now!
Closet door done!
We had our neighbor help with demo cleanup and room prep Friday and Saturday so with that help and our time Saturday and Sunday we got the Master bedroom and back bedroom ready for insulation. Wiring is just about done (i’ll finish securing some wires tonight) and rooms are nice and cleaned up.
Master bedroom – light is wired, outlets are wired (from existing outlets) and rooms is ready for insulation and sheetrock!Ryan framed out the new door that goes to the master bathroomA few wires for me to secure tonight but otherwise this room is ready!
The back bedroom is a step behind the master bedrom, only because the light isn’t wired yet. The outlets just need to be secured (and existing wires need to be put into new boxes) – then that room is also ready for both insulation and sheetrock! These 2 rooms are moving along quickly. We are leaving baseboards in these rooms and sheetrocking up to them. Then we’ll just put the baseboard caps on.
Back bedroom – all cleaned up and ready to go!Another view
I got the attic all cleaned up (the side that needs insulation still). I have some stuff that goes in the garbage but otherwise the attic is ready for insulation too!
Attic cleaned out
A productive weekend, we also had a yard sale on Sunday to get rid of some stuff from the attic. Now I just have a trip to the library to get rid of some books and everything else stays/goes with us 🙂
I’m hoping to have a few nights this week to complete some projects. It’s our last week here officially so I’m hoping for it to be productive! After that it’s just weekends!
Friday and Saturday we rented a lift to complete some up high projects around the house. First up Ryan got a coat of paint on the shakes on the driveway side and the molding up under the soffit. Some sections of that molding aren’t done yet but they are easier to get off a ladder so we waited – wanting to take advantage of having the lift. Ryan then painted all the green that he could easily get with the lift that was left (again what’s left we can get off a small ladder on the porch roof).
Red shakes done – green around the windows done! Almost finished with painting 3 sides!
Next up Ryan moved to the back and removed both the aluminum siding and the original siding from the back side.
This took about an hour and a half to get to this point!
That was all on friday, Saturday it was a second coat of red on the shakes and moldings, then he installed the last 2 windows in our entire house that we plan on doing! Our contractor is going to reside that back side (hopefully very soon so we can insulate) – so we’re done with that upper section, leaving just the back porch for us to deal with. The flashing for that porch was fine so a little ice shield to keep water from getting behind it until it’s sided and we’re good to go for now.
Last 2 windows installed! The attic one is just a vinyl window
We attempted to get the lift to reach the small section of green by the electrical wires that i couldn’t reach by ladder last year but it wouldn’t reach 🙁 So we’ll have to pull out the bigger ladder to complete that green paint. Finally we started pulling aluminum off the back porch which didn’t really need the lift but we ran out of actual projects that needed it!
Porch with most of the aluminum off. This siding is in decent shape, we’re going to patch the missing piece of sill and sand/paint the siding/trim as is. Not putting a lot of work into this porch as it really should just come off the house and have a garage attached!
Sunday we returned the lift, went out to breakfast and then I spent the day packing while Ryan was on Dad duty. I got our bedroom packed and ready to empty and the back porch emptied. These are the next 2 demo projects although the back porch is only getting partially demo’d. During naptime Ryan got the front area grouted so that tile job is done! The front hall just needs trim and paint to be completed!
Grouted!
Maribeth and Dan came out Friday night and spent Saturday morning stripping paint off the little front porch off our bedroom. They are back to it today and it’s coming out great (pictures coming soon!).
Today is a day of getting lots of small stuff done. We were hoping our contractor would come today and finish the crown in the front livingroom (he did the cupola crown over the weekend) so we could move our furniture down there and it wouldn’t be in the way but he has another job holding him up at the moment. The plan is to demo our bedroom Tuesday and Wednesday. Then get electrical done Thursday.
Cupola has crown! Just needs caulk, prime, paint!
Friday will be the start of the porch project – that is very exciting — a finished porch coming soon! I’ve had a hole in my porch for so long now! I wrote a list of everything I can see that needs to get done still and while it’s huge it seems manageable with the next 2 weeks of Ryan’s time so I’m excited. He’ll need a break next week for sure but hopefully putting up trim or doing some smaller easier tasks will be okay!
No more progress this weekend, Saturday we took the day off to relax all day and Sunday Ryan had to work and I started Alex’s Halloween costume at naptime so no house time. I do have pictures from our Friday progress finally though…
The peak! The soffit and windows are completely done, just need to do the green on the siding and the red on the shakes and moldings!Same below, the trim around the door etc is done but green on the siding has to be done under the porch.
Railings are all primed!!!!
I’m very happy with 4 days of progress and we got to relax a bunch. The weather really held out for us and we got everything done. Now if we get good weather again we can finish painting, if not it will at least be in better shape for the winter than last year. And back to the bathroom tiling project!
Ryan was out stripping paint until 9:30 last night, he’s crazy but determined and got the whole soffit completely stripped! That alone made renting the lift worth it!
Soffit ready to go this morningA closer look
I didn’t get pictures at the end of the day but the day went like this…
Ryan and I up in the lift together got all the prep for the whole soffit done (filling holes, sanding, caulking). Then we primed the whole soffit and the last window. Once that was done we moved on to the shakes, we scraped them down a bit and sanded them. Then primed the shakes yellow (they will be red but I don’t have red primer).
While the shakes were being primed I got the attic windows installed again – they look great in place!
Once the shakes were all primed we grabbed the paint and got the paint on the whole soffit and window as well. We finished JUST in time to return the lift by 4pm. While Ryan returned the lift and came home, showered and picked up Alex, I got the rest of the yellow trim all painted (above the porch and below the porch). So all that’s left is the green on the siding and red on the shakes. We will probably hold off on the red until we can rent a lift again, we’ll just do the shakes and all the red moldings with a lift I think.
And bonus… our neighbor came over and worked all day priming the railings so that got done too!
So much painting – a great end to a great vacation week. The weather was beautiful (which was unexpected) and since we didn’t get a rainy day we didn’t tile yet. We’ll see how the weekend goes, we’re looking forward to relaxing for the end of our vacation, maybe hitting up a pumpkin festival and doing some shopping. Can’t wait.
Pictures to come later – I was cleaning up paint chips until after dark so I forgot to take pictures!
