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 roomAnother 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 progressanother 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.
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 openingAnother 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 🙂
I’ve been very neglectful in updates because I didn’t have pictures and I haven’t been there for 99% of the work that’s been done… partly because Ryan’s dad has done so much for us! One afternoon he went over and demo’d all the exterior walls because we had decided we’d do that and spray foam… next day they were done and in the dumpster already… amazing!
Another afternoon it was the bathroom floors (with all the tile) – all removed and cleaned up!
Ryan and his dad have been hard at work getting all the framing done – including adding firring in a lot of the new closets to allow for more spray foam/higher R value and to cover the joists to get barrier. We’re going to go with an inch of closed cell then filled with open I believe in a lot of the areas. It will be a big investment but worth it in the long run.
Wiring/electrical continues when I have time. I’ve got the last bedroom ceiling fan/light installed and working along with a light in the small attic space and one closet done. There’s a lot to do left – just in Alex’s room alone I have to do light in the dormer, light in the other closet, smoke detector, outlets (add new and run a new feed in general), cable run. Pretty much repeat that for the other rooms and the bathroom I haven’t even started. Plus i need to do a subpanel still.. currently we’re just running lights off the old feeds that fed the whole upstairs (it was a 3 wire). I have no outlets upstairs currently wired.
Framing, demo, electrical – the upstairs is coming along. We’ve got a tiny bit of framing left, electrical to do, then it will be spray foam and sheet rock. We’ve done planning – got the master bathroom layout decided and I convinced Ryan on built-ins anyplace I can fit them 🙂 Ryan’s dad actually came up with a great idea for built-ins/desk in Bella’s room – we exposed extra space at the back of the room that we’re going to put some cabinets and shelving in for her. Here are some pics…
The framing for the master bedroom dormer wall – the two sides will be built-in cabinets with some shelves on top and the closet itself is ready to go once it gets a light!Our new master bathroom wall – that’s a small closet to the right, we will have a tub on the right hand side when you walk in, the vanity will be straight across from the door and the shower and toilet will be to the left – where they were originallyBella’s room… that little nook will have 2 cabinets with space between to form a desk (with a top of course) – then some corner shelves in the corner you can’t see – behind the closet. Storage storage storage! That’s the space above the livingroom past her room – we hope to cathedral the livingroom ceiling some day and use that space!Alex’s room – Dormer is open, closets on the sides of the dormer will have doors.Another view of the left side – that door way to the left is the entrance to the small ‘attic’ storage space we will have unfinished – it was original to the house like that so we are maintaining it and going to use that space for storing decorations etc.
It’s exciting to see so much progress. Now I just need time to work on electrical.
The weekend before christmas I got to work on the house a bit! Suzanne watched the girls on Sunday and we got some wires run – fan boxes installed in 2 of the 3 bedrooms (and hooked up to switches!). The benefit right now is that we finally have light in those rooms (previously no lights)!
We’ve decided to take down all the exterior wall sheetrock so we can properly do spray foam, we had done enough demo that it’s not really that much more. In the master it’s 1 wall, in the master bath it’s 1/2 of a wall, in Bella’s room it’s 2 walls (the most) and Alex’s room it’s one small wall. Because of the dormer walls and bathrooms already being demo’d – it’s not much more. This way we can do the outlet wiring a bit easier (mostly I just need to confirm the wiring is good and add some outlets to the dormers).
No pictures but progress was made. I’m looking forward to resuming some work – maybe Friday (holiday).
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and is ready for the New Year!
The weekend before last we spent all day Saturday working on filling our dumpster … so bathroom demo time! We got a good portion of the upstairs bathrooms demo’d and I took up carpet tacks and trim off of 2 of the bedrooms upstairs when there was no room in a bathroom for 2 people 🙂
Door frames removed from closets – this one is ready for a dormer!Back bedroom – I got most of the trim and all carpet tacks up in here. Not a lot to do in this room hopefully over all.Master bathroom – toilet and sink/vanity removedSmall bathroom – sink and toilet removedLooking from master bathroom through wall to smaller bathroom (where sink and toilet were)
We’re going to get the boat out of the water this week and get it ready for winter (clean it out, get it winterized and covered). Friday we meet with the HVAC guy that did the blower test on the house to get a quote on heating system options and plans. That’s our first thing we need to get done – heat – before it gets cold!
Even though the blog has been quiet it’s been an eventful 2 months. First off – our second little one arrived almost 3 weeks early (like her sister) – June 11 – Isabella Georgiana. She was 6lbs 10oz and was healthy as could be. She’s 6 weeks old now and growing like a weed. Her sister just adores her and that particular transition went better than I had hoped!
Also in June we closed on our Nashua house – it’s officially in new hands now that will hopefully love and appreciate it as much as we did. We’ve actually been in touch with the new owners a bit via email answering questions.
Around the same time we found a new house that we couldn’t pass up – it’s 2.5 acres on a lake, very private property (surrounded by trees) with large yards. It’s a cape cod style house – 2 floors, 3 bedrooms upstairs with 2 baths upstairs (one master). It was built in 1974 and has never been updated so it has some work to do but nothing like our last project!
Our first night owning the house and we had already unloaded a trailer full 🙂
This weekend Ryan started right in on some projects! First he mowed the lawn, our trailer makes it easy to borrow his dad’s mower so he had a rider and it still took quite a long time.
We won’t move in right away, we’d like to get the upstairs renovations done before we move in so that is done and we have a finished space to live in, no moving beds around. We will spend nights there so we are moving in to certain rooms – the kitchen for one is a future renovation so we’re moving in there, and the livingroom and diningroom will be a livingroom and bedroom most likely while we do renovations. The garage and basement will store tools and other items and we’ll keep one storage unit for sure while we work on the house.
The first project Ryan did was tear up the carpet upstairs, it’s hot up there but he got all the carpet and most of the underlayment up. He’s going to finish that up today.
Master bedroom – sans carpetBack bedroom sans carpetFront bedroom sans carpet
I’ll do some more posts with more pictures (before pictures) of the house and what we plan on doing. Upstairs though we plan to put in 2 dormers (master bedroom and front bedroom), adding closet space to the master and light to the front bedroom. We’ll replace the doors and trim and windows throughout. We’ll add ceiling fans and add a new heating and a/c system throughout. We’ll put down new wood flooring throughout and we’ll completely renovate the bathrooms.
Once those projects are done we can move in and start work on the downstairs projects more. There’s some structural work that will happen very early on and other downstairs projects that will happen because it makes sense at the time to do things all at once but the kitchen, livingroom, bathroom, washer room downstairs will all wait until we move in.
