Front Bedroom Upstairs – nicole.groudasfamily.com

Finishing up Lights

Alex’s pink light arrived so I figured I’d update quick with her ceiling lights finished. I just ordered a new dimmer switch for her light – it will connect to a smart things hub when we get one, for now it will just be a dimmer so we don’t have to have her light on full blast. I’m interested in trying out more smart switches but we’ll start with her light for now.

Pink chandelier and glow in the dark lights finish out the dormer!

Alex's (ours for now) fan — Alex’s (ours for now) fan

I put up the fan last week I think but it finally has bulbs that work. We’re switching to LED bulbs as we finish rooms and so far I’m really liking them – much better than CFLs for dimming if you get good ones. I tried buying the ‘Eco’ brand from home depot – no good – you have to go with Philips and Philips dimmable depending on the application. The candelabra and regular bulbs by Philips have worked great with regular and dimmer switches including our fancy Maestro dual light/fan switch we like to use. All the closet lights are LED as well. Those have no bulbs, if they burn out (which they shouldn’t for 25 years) you replace the whole fixture.

The new washer and dryer JUST arrived today – can’t wait for those to go in tonight. Finally it shouldn’t take longer than 3 hours to dry a load of regular laundry!

Moved In

This post is long over due but we moved in as planned and we’ve been a bit busy since then! We had a few weekends off between a wedding and then camping but a little house work progress has also been made.

First – the floors were finished, the painting was finished, the electrical was finished (minus a few lights in these pictures but most are now done).

The first piece of furniture was moved in

Not a lot was done in Bella’s room once the floors were finished. Shoe molding was installed in all rooms, a few minor painting touch ups. The closet door still needs to be re-hung but it’s more convenient not having doors on closets at the moment 🙂

Another view of Bella's room finished — Another view of Bella’s room finished

The first night we were in we had no doors hung and with Bella not being a good sleeper in general plus no doors – we were all up at lot. The next day we hung those doors immediately 🙂

Bella's room moved in! — Bella’s room moved in!

Alex's room finished! — Alex’s room finished!

Alex’s room is also missing closet doors – hers actually have to be made still. Initially we didn’t have her light or fan installed yet, her fan is in now but not her light (it comes next week – this is the third try ordering a pink chandelier – they kept sending white ones!).

The other side of Alex's room — The other side of Alex’s room

Ryan made the thresholds for the 2 doors but they haven’t been sanded or poly’d yet (they aren’t actually installed either, we’ll do that after they are finished). But they are made at least! He made them out of leftover cherry flooring.

Alex's door and threshold - neither are finished — Alex’s door and threshold – neither are finished

Another project we did the first week we moved in was outfit the kitchen with some new temporary cabinets and a new counter top (not finished yet)

We won’t be re-doing the kitchen for a while now so this makes it much more usable. We can fit most of our stuff in the kitchen now and I was able to unpack the kitchen once I put my large rolling shelves in the pantry.

The next project we did was the first weekend we had lived here. We went out to boston for a wedding saturday but when we got back on Sunday Ryan and his dad finished the siding on the dormers!

This weekend we promised the girls some family time so we spent most of Saturday doing fun activities with them (a trip to the museum and then to Huck Finn’s playland). Ryan and his Dad spent the rest of the weekend finishing installing the trim around all the windows!

The outside is almost buttoned up for winter. We still have doors to replace but those will be spring projects.

Floors Getting Finished

We are on track with this crazy 2 weeks of finishing up these rooms. Last week we got the painting finished in Bella’s room and all the prep work on the trim in Alex’s room. Thursday we got the priming done on Alex’s trim with a late night at the house.

Friday night I started sanding the floors by edging them with the orbital while Ryan started sanding the trim that was primed. Saturday we took turns watching the kids and sanding the floors (i did the edging and Ryan used the big sander).

At bedtime Ryan took the girls home and I got the first coat of poly on the floors. Today we went over, checked the floors (they were dry!) and again Ryan took the girls home (the fumes are too strong for the girls to be in the house) while I sanded and put on the second coat of poly. One more coat tomorrow morning hopefully if I can get over there early enough. I can take the morning off of work but only the morning.

Blurry picture of the hallway and bella’s room second coat

The cherry floors have so much character and color – we love them and may have to do cherry on the rest of the house if they hold up well.

So far we are on track with the plan. If i can get the third coat of poly on in the morning then we’ll take monday night off. Tuesday night we’ll check the floors and if we can we’ll start painting trim but the girls won’t be able to come to the house until next weekend at the earliest (we’re going to try to air out the house Tuesday-Friday).

Trim is finished!!!

Excluding shoe molding (which is very very last) – the trim is all installed in the 2 bedrooms now! Ryan worked Fri, Sat and Sunday and got it all installed! There is SO much trim! Brad spent last week painting Bella’s room and her trim is just about done (1 coat needed on a few small things, then touchups on the wall paint!). I spent a little time this weekend (nap times) caulking and filling holes then last night finished the caulking (still a lot of holes to fill!)

And on to Bella’s room progress..

Trim painted (the wall part needs a second coat and I think the window sashes and 1 side of 1 door).

We have a crazy plan so we can move in the weekend of the 20th!

Tue – Fill holes
Wed – Sand/vacuum
Thur – prime all trim
Fri – sand the trim AND Sand the floors
Sat – finish sanding and poly coat 1
Sun – sand/vacuum/poly coat 2
Mon – sand/poly coat 3
Tue let it dry
Wed – paint trim
Thur – paint trim
Fri – finish painting?? (trim, wall touch ups etc)
Sat – install shoe molding
Sunday – move in!
Monday – back up day to move in 🙂

The days (Sat-Mon) that the floors are being poly’d are going to be short days for work upstairs so that gives us time to do work downstairs in prep for moving in. We have a wall to build to hang the tv on, things to move to the basement, the kitchen to setup with better storage etc. AND siding to put up IF it’s not raining (looks like rain though).

I’ll let you know next week how we’re doing… cross fingers for us!

Trim work

This past weekend (and last week) we made some good progress on trim.

In Bella’s room I got all the trim sanded and primed except the actual window sashes and the main door (it wasn’t cut down yet).

Ryan made great progress on Alex’s room. He finished the bead board, put in the shelf she has at the top of the dormer. He made door jambs for all three closets and then trimmed them out as well as the small window and door to her room. He got the main piece of baseboard installed all around the room. He has to do the molding that runs along the top still and the chair rail all around plus the window in the dormer. Finally he has to finish out the beadboard area with trim.

By the way i will have to get a closer/clearer picture of those doors trimmed out – they look so great!!!

Archway trimmed out and this was before the third closet was done

Back of the archway, shelf up top and beadboard finished

We have a ton of wild life at the new house, deer, rabbits, eagles (1), hawks as well as the common ones. Just this weekend we had a buck with 2 doe out by the lake and friday we had a mom with 2 baby deer. I don’t usually think to take pictures but I did this time!

Fawn – if you look you can see mom in the woods, the second fawn was also in the woods

I don’t know how often we’ll see them once we move in and Fitz is running around more often but they are really not scared of people and will hang out in the yard even with the kids running around (deer and rabbit). The rabbits really have no fear and have stayed around while I was walking fitz even!

Bathroom done and floors all installed

Work has continued at a crazy pace here. We are still here every night and all weekend – basically until we move in!

The big things recently include finishing the bathroom (completely minus shoe molding which will all be installed at once at the end) and getting the hallway floor installed last week. Trim work all weekend means that Bella’s room is almost all trimmed out and Alex’s room has been started! Here are some pictures!

In Bella’s room :

Baseboard and chair rail all completed (and I caulked it last night too!)

Closet door with chair rail installed too

In Alex’s room the trim has been started!

Beadboard ceiling in the dormer – not complete as we had to buy a bit more beadboard (tonight I think this is getting finished)

The closets in alex’s room won’t have doors but we’ll have to make the jams for them and get those installed.

Our tentative plan now is to get trim all installed by the end of this weekend, get it all painted by the end of next week and spend next weekend (8/6-8/8) finishing the floors. The week after will be finish electrical and shoe molding so maybe we can move in on 8/14. This is optimistic and if it pushes to the 20th we’re good with that. Here’s hoping everyone stays healthy and nothing major happens in the next couple of weeks that derails our plan!

In other news I am all set up at the new house to work from there each day now! I’m in the diningroom for now but I have power, internet and phone and so far it’s working out great!

Lots of updates

It’s been quite a while since I updated and a lot of progress has been made! I’m going to just have to go by pictures in order!

Bella’s room got primed and the ceiling painted!

While Bella’s room got primed (thanks Brad) Ryan started working on the trim in the bathroom!

Next up we handed the bathroom over to brad and he got the priming and painting done on all the trim.

I painted the first coat on Bella’s room – she’s going to have chair rail and white trim paint on the lower half of the walls (same as Alex’s too).

Ryan got the window in Bella’s room trimmed out!

Ryan finished sheetrocking Bella’s closet and I got it spackled.

Ryan installed the door to Bella’s room.

Ryan used the ceiling paint to paint the closet – looks good

We worked hard to get Alex’s room caught up – spackling (me/brad), sanding (ryan), more spackling (me) and more sanding (me) then Ryan and Brad got it primed!

Brad did the second coat of paint on Bella’s room and the bathroom trim. Then on Friday during nap I prepped the floors for the new flooring.

Friday afternoon my dad came over and when Ryan got home from work the two of them worked on Bella’s floor. Ryan stayed late and made great progress Friday night…

Saturday morning Ryan finished Bella’s room.

At naptime Saturday we did the prep work in Alex’s room and he spent the evening and night laying floor in Alex’s room. We were up until 10:30 laying floor while the girls slept downstairs. Then we spent our first night at the new house as a family!!!

On Sunday Ryan got an early start and spent the whole day working on Alex’s room. By dinner he had finished it up!

The best part is we have just enough wood leftover to do the landing outside the bedrooms! Ryan spent last night taking up the sub floor in the hallway (we need the floor level to match the top of the stairs so we have to have only 1 layer of subfloor instead of 2 in the hallway. The bedrooms will be about 1/2″ step up from the hallway to make it all work.

While Ryan worked on the hallway Brad got the first coat of grey paint in Alex’s room. Her dormer will be pink but the main part will be grey (her choice).

And we’re caught up. It’s been a busy few weeks for sure. Usually one of us stays late at the house after dinner and the other takes the girls home to bed. We don’t alternate, it depends more on what the task is that needs to get done and who is going to do it. We’re getting very close to moving in now and here’s the rough plan we have…

Lay the floor in the hallway
Finish the bathroom (install toilet and vanity and mirror)
Install the doors (Alex’s door, Bella’s closet, door jams for Alex’s closets)
Install window trim in Alex’s room
Install door trim in both rooms
Install baseboards in both rooms
Install chair rail in both rooms
Install bead board on dormer ceiling and trim out archway
Sand, prime, paint ALL trim in both rooms

The goal is to have that list above done by the end of next week then next …

Sand and poly the floors (3 coats)
Shoe molding installation in both rooms
Install finish electrical and hardware

Move in!

The hardest part will be giving the floors some time to cure before moving in – once the floors are done we only have finish electrical and hardware and that won’t take long at all but we shouldn’t move in totally until the floors get some more time. We’ll see how long we can wait 🙂 Our goal of before labor day is looking realistic for sure and if the above plan is real we can move in mid-august (1 month)!?? Getting exciting now!

Bathroom Progress

2 weekends of updates – I missed last weekend and we had started tiling! So here’s a recap of progress from the past 2 weekends.

The weekend of the 15th –

Friday and Saturday Ryan got the Kerdi system installed in the shower after sanding the bathroom. Once sanded I was able to see what needed touch ups in the spackle department and I worked around his tiling project (mostly last week). Sunday the tile started going in! We went with a grey porcelein tile and a marble mosaic accent tile to break it up. The same grey will go on the floors too.

I got more spackling done (Ryan and I spackled late Saturday night), some electrical (got the outlets in Alex’s room figured out so now we have 3 working outlets and I just have to wire up the rest of the circuit. The boat also went in the water officially that Saturday so we have been enjoying some breaks out on the Lake!

This past weekend…

We stayed late Friday night again after putting the kids to bed at the house. We spent the night spackling some more – I finished up the bathroom touch ups and worked on Bella’s room while Ryan got one side of most of the corners in Alex’s room done.

We’ve actually gotten more done than this but this is a more recent picture of Alex’s room

Saturday Ryan finished tiling the shower!

The shower looks awesome! We’re waiting to grout until some painting is done (paint comes off tile easily but not grout) 🙂

Sunday I sanded the bathroom walls/ceiling for the final time and cleaned up. Then I got primer on the whole bathroom – it dries in 1 hour to recoat so then I got the first coat on the ceiling! Monday night we returned and I got the final coat on the ceiling so that’s officially done. We’re going over tonight so I can put the first coat on the walls!

Paint colors for future reference:

Behr Ultra paint used Flat Ceiling for ceilings and Eggshell for walls. Colors ‘Swiss Coffee’ for ceilings and ‘Beach Foam’ for bathroom walls.

Once the wall paint is done we’ll tile the bathroom floor. We can’t grout the floor until we get the doors (a few more weeks on those) but we can grout the shower. We’ll also work on trim – we’re going to do bead board in the bathrooms so the bottom half of the walls will be white (Linen White Satin Impervo from Benjamin Moore for all trim just like our old house).

We’ll get another late spackle night in this week probably (one of us not both) hopefully as I’d like to get Bella’s room closer. I bought fabrics for making curtains and matching pillows for the girls rooms as well as the shower curtain and window curtain for the bathroom. So now I have sewing projects too!

Spackle Spackle

The taping and spackling continue. The bathroom is almost done, some of the corners need a side done or touchups but we can easily finish that up this week. Bella’s room I think the taping is done now (maybe one small seam in the built-in area left) and spackling continues in there. Alex’s room we’ve started taping, making good progress there in our 1 hour increments of work time with the kids 🙂

2 walls in Bella’s room we left as the existing walls (plus part of the ceiling) -i’ll have to get a progress pic of the other direction so you can see the patch work and taping there too. We’ll see how well they blend together but the patch is coming out decent for a first coat.

Since last night worked well putting Bella to bed at the new house and working upstairs while she slept we tried it again this friday with Alex and Bella. It worked great. We quit around 10:30 and brought the girls home and Alex loved it. She wanted to do it again Saturday night but we were so exhausted from running errands all day with both kids we weren’t up to another late night spackling.

Speaking of errands – we got a start on ordering the doors (interior) upstairs – we haven’t finished the order but we gave him the measurements and we’re waiting on a final quote with timeline. We also bought the tile for the small bathroom now that it’s getting close to tile time!

Alex learned how to spackle Sunday too…

And both girls helped out in the yard on Saturday:

In other news the lake is completely up/filled! This rainy week we had filled it right up. Ryan got his new stereo installed in the boat and just has to install the speakers then we’ll put the boat in the water!!!

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!

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 …

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

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.

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 🙂

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);

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 🙂