A little late but I’ve back dated the post. Alex is now 6 months old!
She is 14 lbs 9 oz. 25 1/4″ long and her head is 17″ diameter. She dropped JUST below the 50th percentile for height and weight. The nurse didn’t tell me what she was for head this time. The doctor said she’s doing great (I was concerned about the drop in growth) but he said she most likely had just had a growth spurt for her 4 month appt and hasn’t hit her 6 month spurt yet.
What has she been up to this month? Rolling rolling and more rolling! She rolls all over and squirms around in circles to get to toys etc. Also new, she’s been trying to sit up by herself! Also new is she’s working on learning to eat food – so far she’s had oatmeal, banana and avocado. Next up is sweet potato.
oh hello, you didn’t know i could sit up on my own? tada!i love this one, look a squirrel!she definitely hasn’t mastered the sitting thing 🙂
Well they cost a small fortune (especially after we added some more to our design) but both cabinets and counters have been ordered! (Home Depot was having a 10% off sale!). It took 2 trips to home depot (our first appt started late then we got booted so I had to go back over to finish up and order the cabinets).
We went with Martha Stewart cabinets from HD in their ‘Maidstone’ style with Maple cabinets in ground nutmeg with rum highlights for coloring. They come standard with slow close doors, drawers and full extension hidden drawer hardware. We got pull out drawers/shelves for 3 of the base cabinets.
So on Friday (actually thursday night this started) we were discussing final plans and looking at fridges. We decided to look into counter depth fridges, not loving that a standard fridge would stick out so far. They are significantly more expensive though but we actually found a really nice one on craigslist on sale for less than 1/2 it’s original price and barely used. We’ve never actually purchased anything off of craigslist but this seemed like an okay scenario (ryan talked to the woman). So friday night, after Alex’s bath we put her to ‘bed’ in her carseat and headed up to Epping, NH where we got a new (to us) fridge! We also got some lights she was willing to sell pretty cheap since she was trying to clear out a bunch of stuff.
What fridge did we end up with? This monster: Kenmore Elite Fridge/Freezer combo with trim kit. It’s a full size fridge and next to it a full size freezer. So it looks like a side/by/side but it’s 6 feet long 🙂 So a little kitchen re-design was needed, plus we wanted to make it look fully built-in so we’re doing floor to ceiling cabinets around the fridge on that wall. It’s large but awesome. Ryan even managed to clean out the fridge good last night so we are already using the fridge!
So this weekend we bought a fridge and some lights, then we bought cabinets and a counter. Work wise I’ve been working on painting windows since we had some decent weather. First I primed the inside of all the window sashes (4 windows), then I got 2 coats of exterior paint on them. The nursery windows got a coat of interior paint on them as well.
Windows getting painted.
Windows are ready for winter now and attention can be refocused back to the kitchen!
(This is from LAST weekend, finally have pictures but it’s written from last week’s point of view).
Aimee, Jason, Jason and mom all came out this weekend. Jason came to work, the rest to play with the kids. So while Ryan and Jason worked (although I did do some electrical and cleanup), Aimee, Mom and I played with Little Jason and Alli-boo.
So while we played with the kids, some actual house work got done. Jason did the rough in for all the drains for the new master bathroom we’ll be putting in as well as got ready to do the little bathroom upstairs (we have to demo it before it can be done completely) and the laundry room next to that.
New drains for master bathroomNew drain on the left, the drains on the right will go away once we demo the little bathroom.
While Jason did the plumbing, Ryan put in the new kitchen window (which is where i light was so i had to put in a quick temporary light over head but at least we have a switch now!). The window is smaller overall but before it was 2 small windows with separation, now it’s just 2 casements together same amount of light.
New kitchen window!
While they worked, the carpenter was here and finished up the siding on the driveway side of the house so it’s ready to be painted!
One side of the house has all ‘new’ siding!
It’s nice having work get done while you’re doing other things. We like this carpenter, he does good work and after our horrible experience with the painters, it’s nice working with someone who knows how to work. FYI the painters haven’t shown up in weeks or stopped by when promised.
I’m still working on the post about last weekend (we got a lot done!) but I haven’t taken pictures yet so I will hold off on that. Hopefully tomorrow i’ll take pictures since this weekend we’ll be making more progress!
In the mean time we’ve been getting things ready for this weekend, doing plans, finalizing decisions because this weekend we will be making at least 2 of our huge purchases. Appliances (the 10% off sale ends monday) and Cabinets (10% off sale ends Wed).
So the kitchen layout has changed a bit, we fit in more cabinets and we’ll find out this Sunday how much these changes will cost us! Then I also planned out the electrical because this weekend we hope to get the lights installed (recessed and boxes for pendant lights etc). I can also get the electrical outlets for the fridge and microwave installed since that wall is demo’d. Actually the fridge outlet will be what is currently the microwave outlet, just shifted a bit.
For fun I also grabbed some 3D shots from the program i’m using for these layouts. Keep in mind the cabinets are generic and appliances are not accurate looks wise, just size wise.
Kitchen Cabinet layout with details for ordering the cabinets.The electrical layouts (for lights/switches) in the kitchen.The kitchen as viewed from the back of the house ‘entrance’ hallwayThe kitchen as viewed from the diningroomThe kitchen and diningroom as viewed from the livingroom – a very open layout.
We actually haven’t finalized on our cabinet look yet. We are going with Home Depot/Martha Stuart cabinets but are going back and forth between ‘painted’ cabinets (they use a shrink wrap, not a paint which is making us very wary) and stained cabinets. If we go with stained we’ll do a tile floor, if painted we’ll probably refinish the wood but there’s some major patching between kitching/diningroom that will have to be done that won’t be fun. Decision will be made on Sunday!
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) 🙂
Alex has been exhausted after daycare each night this week (her naps are too short!). But she’s a trooper and I get about 30 minutes of play out of her before we head upstairs for bathtime, quiettime and bedtime. Last night while I was snapping some pictures of her grabbing her feet she decided to show off her rolling skills, she rolled from her back to her front (which she has been doing) but then she continued on and rolled to her back again! And I caught it in a series of photos.
she likes to start her rolls with a foot grabthere she goesand going…and she’s overhey mom, look what i did!guess what, not done yet!it starts with a flopand i had no idea the roll was coming!whoa!really mom, this is no big deal, i’ve been doing this at daycare for days (probably) 🙂she probably would have continued on but i was in the way at this point
Tonight, each time I set her down for second she proceeded to immediately roll to her belly! And then she’d look for me and smile up at me from her belly – she knows she did something great 🙂 Then she got tired and whiny each time she was on her belly. We skipped bathtime tonight because I kept her up a bit late (i wanted to eat some dinner for a change). Still down by 8pm so I had plenty of time to upload pictures and blog 🙂
With rain coming today this may be the progress that’s made. Luckily it was good progress. Ryan made window caps (we couldn’t fit our entire window cap like we made for the lower level windows but he made some nice caps that fit perfectly and since it’s the second story I think it looks great! Then he finished the siding up around the caps, getting the last piece in last night just as Alex and I got home.
Last piece going onThe right side is finished
As you may notice, the crown molding was also finished up along the roofline! The carpenter we hired and the carpenter from our painter’s crew worked together and managed to get all that molding up (around the porch and then the roof) in just 2 days. We liked the carpeter’s work and we’ll probably hire him in the future for more exterior work. Unfortunately, aside from the carpenter (subcontractor) of the painters’, we haven’t seen any other painters around. They still have some sections to strip and then painting to do. The owner was supposed to stop by last friday but Ryan never heard anything from him. If i have time today I will call the office again but that’s never helpful since it’s just a receptionist. I doubt they’re coming over the next few days with rain forecasted.
It went slowly, one panel at a time but this weekend I finished the last curtain panel for the nursery! I still want to make tie backs (for now I’m using ribbons), but they give great coverage and make her room dark enough for naps!
These are simply a brown fabric with beige dotted vertical lines and a white lining on the reverse. We’re using spring rods for now because we didn’t want to cover the trim up although if the rods fall down easily I may do some mounted rods on the inside of the windows instead of the springs (babies like to grab things!)
Second window has curtains now!And tied open with ribbons to let in some light for photographs 🙂
So a bit of the story with this painter. We hired him to strip and then paint a few sections of the house including:
The soffit and frieze board on the driveway side of the house
The soffit and posts on the porch, all the way around (top part of the posts since we are re-doing the lower sections)
The siding next to the side door
The shingled section in the peak on the driveway side (he didnt have to strip this section, just sand/prep for paint and then paint.
The quote is not tiny, mostly it’s for the stripping which is understandable and it was very clear that everything was covered except for the shingle section since that wasn’t getting stripped he didn’t write that part out explicitly like the rest.
Well they stop by the first day of the job and I talk to the owner (who did the quote) and turns out he didn’t realize we needed the whole soffit of the porch done, he thought it was just the posts and the board the posts touch (or something like that) so he wanted to get back to me with a new quote. At the time i didn’t have the quote in front of me so I didn’t argue but was concerned about how much more this would cost.
So I get the new quote and the wording ‘soffit and frieze board around the porch’ is the exact same wording as the original quote so we mention this to him and he admits he just screwed up. He asks if we’ll work with him, it would be cheaper for him to have his guys remove most of the wood instead of stripping it and put up new wood. Fine, as long as they can make it look very close to the original, that is fine with us.
So they get to work, they have 1 guy stripping the posts (and man is he slow) and another guy starts taking apart and rebuilding the soffit around the porch. Well it became clear pretty quickly that a) the stripping is going to take forever, the guy only showed up sometimes and he was ridiculously slow at stripping (he had the wrong type of scrapers mainly and he kept dinging up the wood). I mean it’s nothing compared to the work I did stripping the soffit outside our gym. ho hum.
Then it became clear that the carpenter he hired is not a finish carpenter, he can’t do moldings well, not only does he waste tons of material cutting things wrong, he leaves corners with gaps and broken tips and he puts up the moldings in small sections because that’s all he can manage by himself. One corner in particular was really bad so we complain about that and the owner decides to get another carpenter he hires sometimes to come fix it. Meanwhile the first guy is still working on other sections.
In the mean time, they started this job in August (13th), they worked that first week then showed up sporadically the second week then stopped coming until this past week, right when Ryan was off and needed to do siding on that side of the house (we had anticipated that the main work would at least be done and they at the worst would be painting at this point – nope).
So Ryan and the guys are stepping on each others’ toes and Ryan is catching them doing all manner of stupid things and ends up helping them (when he needed his time to do siding etc.). Finally the owner basically fires the first carpenter and wants the second carpenter (who admits freely that he is not a finish carpenter and it took him so long to do that one corner of molding he doesn’t feel comfortable doing the larger molding by himself). He however knows a real finish carpenter and we decide to just hire this other guy to put the molding up and the painter’s carpenter can help him (the painter is paying him to put up the molding so that works out). So we will be out an extra thousand probably when this is all done but the large molding is coming out SO much better and we are finally happy with the work.
The stripping is still taking forever! The same kid (whom we found out was hired at the time of this job starting so this is his first time doing any type of construction and no one is overseeing him!), is still working on stripping the porch. They replaced almost everything but he’s got to strip the moldings at the top of the posts and the moldings in the front of the house/triangle/peak. The soffit along the driveway hasnt been touched yet and has a large section to strip as well. No idea when this project will get done.
Today however Ryan got a few more pieces of siding up and the window installed! He’ll be continuing siding this weekend and next week before he goes back to work on wednesday.
And now some pictures, we walked around the house today after everyone left.
The last window is in on this side!The peak, they had to replace some rotted wood and the first carpenter put in the small molding. Ryan agreed to put in these small blocks to save the carpenter from having to do these outside angles on the molding which saved probably a day of labor.The large molding is done – all around the porch, they just have to do the one at the second/third story of the house next week.They even did the peak because there was no way to meet up the new trim with the old. Notice only 1/2 of the peak is stripped, the kid started this in the morning and must have got bored because he then swapped to doing other parts instead of just finishing it for some reason. This whole triangle I could do in an hour easily, took him 3 to do half of it.The painters showed up one day this week and started priming the molding that was up, Ryan mentioned to them that the stripping still had to be done and would mess up their paint so they stopped. I hope painters are coming next week now that it’s almost ready for them!The back corner. We are so happy with this now, thank goodness something is finally working out.
So this will cost us but it was worth it to find a local finish carpenter that does good work on historical houses and he’s not slow about it either. He also brought his dog (he brings here everywhere) and she hung out in the back yard and even met Fitz for a bit 🙂
Ryan is working on the siding this week. 2 problems with this, our painters/construction crew took a couple weeks off and decided this week to start back up full time so they are kind of stepping on each others’ toes and annoying Ryan in general with the quality of work. I’ll wait until they are completely finished before I do a post on all of that, so far they have fixed the couple of things that were really bad but in general, having a single carpenter trying to put up long lengths of boards or moldings is not easy and they did not staff this job correctly. Ryan and I could easily have done everything they plan to do in just a single week with just the 2 of us. They finally seem to have a second carpenter here (although they do not work together) and Ryan has been helping them here and there so things get done correctly (one guy wanted to use 2 pieces for an 8′ length just because it would be too hard with one person so ryan helped so we wouldn’t have that break).
All well, we’ll see how it comes out. Anyway so on Monday Ryan got up some frieze boards and got the siding started. Problem was that the first side to do was full 16′ lengths of siding and doing that with one person is very hard so after a few hours we decided that I would take 2 hours off on Wednesday morning to help him finish up the long lengths and he could focus on the smaller stuff.
Tuesday he removed the rest of the siding on the left side of the window we still need to replace and got the front porch section cleaned up that we are siding up to (aluminum siding still to remove and some trim). Then he almost fell of the roof after slipping on some debris the contractors were leaving all over the place so he quit for the day and took a break.
Wednesday was a much better day, I started by sweeping up the roofs. Then we got the long sections of siding done with the two of us. Ryan spent a good deal of time helping the carpenters with their jobs and trying to make things easier for them because angles and moldings are definitely not their specialty! He then got the section of 12′ pieces of siding up on the far right.
I’m pretty hopeful that we can get the siding finished up by this weekend. Ryan also has next monday and tuesday off if he needs them but i think he wants to do some other stuff by then. Oh and this weekend we have our neighbor’s daughter coming over for a couple hours to play with Alex which frees me up to help finish up the siding too.
Wednesday afternoon progress – the carpenters are done for the day (they are waiting for some moldings to arrive) and Ryan is still siding that far side.a closer look at the siding done so farRather than strip the siding on the porch the painter asked if he could replace the siding with new – we agreed and even paid for the siding (they are losing a lot of money on this job with how much work is going into it since he did not estimate enough time for stripping everything).
Ryan was able to get the far side almost up to the top of the window before calling it quits yesterday. Today he is working around the carpenters again (they are doing the moldings right above him) but he’s gotten the 2 smaller sections about halfway up and the last 2 12′ pieces done (the last piece has to wait for window caps). He thinks he can finish up that side minus the caps/last pieces of siding this afternoon before he has to pick up Alex.
Tomorrow will be the window on the left and siding over there.
