washer dryer room – nicole.groudasfamily.com

Wrapping Things Up

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!

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!

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!

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.

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.

Once that was done I could put up the ceiling fan on the porch!

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.

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 finished

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

Kid-Free weekend again

We are on an every-other weekend schedule going out to work on the house and this weekend Alex stayed with her grandparents so we could go out by ourselves and make more progress! It was a productive day and a half for sure.

Saturday Ryan worked on trim all day – starting with the master bedroom, putting up window trim. We need to buy more window apron trim but he got what we had up and the windows look great!

3 without aprons (plus we need aprons for the back bedroom and master bath)

Next up he worked on baseboards. He couldn’t finish the uptairs hallway shadow boxes and chair rail because the door for the master bedroom needs to be installed, and before that it needs to be stripped, so we packed it up and brought it back and Ryan will strip it here and we’ll bring it back ready to install.

Had to cut the old baseboard down to match and then put in a new piece.

Notice the blue rug at the top of the stairs is gone! Floor looks great underneath. We didn’t take it off all the stairs just this section so far.

Baseboards continue around the linen closet and down the hallway on one side.

And partially around the washer/dryer stand

This is the door to the attic trimmed out (no pic before) and technically there’s baseboard on the right side of it too…

I focused on ceilings and electrical this weekend. First I hooked up smoke detectors so we now have all the smoke detectors hooked up and connected! I also put a light in at the top of the back stairs and a bunch of the covers for the HVAC in the ceilings (and recessed lights have covers now)..

Light at the top of the stairs in the back and smoke detector all hooked up 🙂

Covers on HVAC and another smoke detector (had to do upstairs and downstairs but didn’t bother taking pics of all of them!)

Washer and dryer outlets and put the trim piece on the drain/water thing.

The washer/dryer stand is just about ready – we have to put a piece of trim around it and water proof it, then we’ll bring up the washer/dryer and then we can put the last door in place at the top of the back stairs.

On Sunday we worked a few hours on the master bathroom. We had our neighbor clean up the ceiling in the bathroom and start sheetrocking a bit (just one section) on Saturday. Ryan put in the ceiling fan/light box Sunday morning and then we ran all the rough electrical in there (outlets and lights).

Fan installed, just need to hook up that wire.

We drew out the plans for the vanity and the shower so we’re ready to finish the rough-in plumbing hopefully this week. We’re going to order what we need for the bathroom this week too (need the vanity placement so we can plan the light boxes exactly).

So the master bathroom has been started, trim work continues nicely and electrical is going along. I replaced a bunch of the switches with the nice rockers we are using and started putting in outlets in the upstairs hallway.

The next trip out we’ll have Alex so probably getting more trim done and I’ll get a bit more electrical done during naps and such.

OH – and we got the built-in doors hung – they need a tiny bit of sanding down to close nicer and then touch up painting in place, then we’ll put knobs and magnet pieces on and they’ll be done…

Insulation

Our last chunk of insulation is done! If you don’t count the windows – we’ll have to insulate around the windows ourselves with cans because their sprayer was broken but we weren’t charged for it so no biggie. Either way – we are very close to ready for sheetrock now!

Coming up the attic stairs we had them cut it back for more head room

under the master bathroom windows (just the small space) had to be done

Hopefully this weekend we can finish prepping the hallway and get the windows sprayed – then we really are ready for sheetrock!

Small porch

Work on the house continues this week. Maribeth and Dan came out for a long weekend and worked away on our small porch off the bedroom. They stripped all of the old paint and it looks great! Can’t wait to get this thing sanded and painted so it looks nice. We’re going to put new out door carpet in there, a new ceiling and call it done (once painting is done). Of course the door has to be stripped and refinished as well.

Posts and details all stripped, ceiling just scraped since we’ll cover it with a new one.

One small section to strip on that top right!

Ryan got a bunch of things done the last few days. The vent for the upstairs dryer is installed.

He worked on the back porch demo, we ran a wire from the switch to the basement when we did the back hallway so that wire is now fed up to the ceiling in the porch and we just have to get it to a new light so the back porch will have light again. All of the aluminum around the porch was removed and he recycled it with a few trips (getting rid of one last radiator as well!). A couple trips to lumber yards – got the decking we need this weekend, got some crown for the livingroom (our contractor is here today putting up more crown!). With all the errands needing to be run (we were sending our truck back to NY with Dan and Maribeth so it all had to be done), Ryan didn’t want to start demo in the late afternoon. Plus the heat/humidity was crazy yesterday.

Today he has cleaned up the little porch, the roof and gotten ready to start the demo in the master. Here is a before pic of what he’s starting with – the windows are already all new, so it’s just taking the plaster/lathe down. We’re saving the ceiling in the cupola since we won’t need a light there (doing sconce lights over the windows in there), we’ll just sheetrock over that ceiling. The big ceiling has to come down though (yuck). We borrowed this negative air machine so looking forward to seeing if that contains the dust mess.

Demo and cleanup/prep work today and tomorrow. Friday starts the porch project!

Wednesday Wrapup

Just a quick wrap-up on what Ryan finished up yesterday. With Alex’s help he dry laid the tiles into the pattern we were thinking and of course we were short one mosaic tile 🙂 No biggie. Once Alex was in bed he mixed up some mud and did the pattern so it would be dry today and he could do all the cutting and finishing around the pattern today (after a trip to go get that missing tile).

Tiled until he ran out of mud – pattern almost complete!

And here’s a picture of the washer/dryer stand:

The stand is VERY sturdy, the top isn’t screwed down because we have to install a drain through it, then there will be a lip around the edge of the box and our baseboards will wrap around. We’re going to use redguard to make it water proof for the emergency drain instead of getting a pan (which is tough for an oversized washer. And since it’s for emergencies and red guard will make it water proof we’re not worried about it.

Ryan is back from home depot and getting ready to tile. I like working from home so i can see the progress! Oh yea and big news – the trim we had made to match our existing just came in this morning! So we can finish the trim in the front hallway now and we have enough hopefully to do the whole upstairs when it’s ready!

Back Bedroom

Ryan has a couple of weeks off and is hitting the upstairs hard! We have a crazy ‘list’ written out and we’ll see what he can get done so far he is on a roll as none of these jobs are easy!

Monday he jumped right into demo and got the back bedroom completely demo’d and cleaned up. It still has some final work left like removing nails, cleaning the last bits of insulation from ceiling but it went well and Ryan did it all himself.

The bedroom is now rectangular, no more diagonal cut for the door!

Tuesday he pruned our front tree in time for the dumpster to arrive. Then he loaded the dumpster with everything from the back bedroom. Next he started working on the back wall, he had to shift part of it back towards the 2 staircases so the washer/dryer will fit in there (then he has to shift the washer dryer over to make more room). He got the 2 doors reframed out again.

Wednesday (not over yet) he framed out the door to the back bedroom and cleaned some wood out of the basement (into the dumpster). Then he finished up the washer/dryer stand (finished picture tomorrow!)

The start of the washer/dryer stand we had to shift over.

One big goal by the end of these 3 weeks is to have both bedrooms (ours and this back one) ready for insulation/sheetrock completely. That means we have some cleanup and electrical to do in the back room, flooring too. And in our room we haven’t even started yet!

Tomorrow the plan is to tile the front entry (yay!) since our contractor just finished installing the closet door for us. He is now getting a start on crown molding in the livingroom (he has to make the base pieces).

I won’t even get into EVERYTHING else planned however we are renting a lift Fri-Sat so we hope to get the exterior painting finished and the siding off the back of the house with that. And by we I mean ryan 🙂 Going to be a busy couple of weeks!