And it's up!

As the settling in continues - the murphybed is up!  It was not without its drama, but with only two minor injuries caused (sorry about that bump, Max ;)), it counts as a win!

Last week Dar helped me construct the majority of the bed, following the plans that came with the hardware from Rockler.  Over the week, I stained it and put on the first coat of poly.  I completely forgot to take in progress pictures - so here it is right before the attaching:

And here it is after it was attached to the wall!  Well, sort of attached.  I apparently have amazing studless walls - in the entire span of the bed, I could only find two studs.  The plans recommend attaching at four points, so I'm going to attach a board to the two studs I could find, and then attach the bed to that board as well.

It's tilted into the case at the moment - once we put the mattress in I can attach the stops that will prevent it from going back so far.  I need to still paint the legs, and put on another coat of stain.  But - as soon as we put the mattress in it will be usable - so big step forward for settling in! 

Feb theme

Yeah, I know, February is nearly over so why am I bothering?  Well, better late than never.

January's theme was get-it-out Jan.  It was pretty successful, even though it has bled into Feb.  We got rid of:

• extra green marble tile
• two pairs of boots
• a pair of sneakers
• a pair of snow pants
• unnecessary construction leftovers
• Dad's iphone
• some random clothes
• an entire drop ceiling

Still to go - a spare tire, a pair of skis and boots (anyone?  Bueller?), a few more random items to ebay, and a thrift store dropoff. 

Getting rid of things always makes me want to organize and declutter more, and especially with repurposing the upstairs we've moved into...."settle-in Feb".  There's a murphybed in progress for the guest room/game cave, as well as plenty of little projects to organize and store things better.  I finished one of those little project last night - we added another level of pan storage to the kitchen.

A small change, right?  But it had a large effect - the kitchen seems much more open now that the pan clutter isn't so close to the counter.  (Yes, I had eggs for dinner.  Don't judge.)  It also gave us enough hanging room that some of the clutter in the random pan cabinet could be hung, allowing us to put away more random items (salad spinner, I'm looking at you) and not have them out on the counter/shelves.  Onwards!

Up and running!

The new ceiling fan came in, and after switching the light attachment it worked fine.  Perhaps the old one just wasn't completing the circuit?  But it's up and working!  I hung the curtains (I've now hung the one in the dressing room 3 times, thanks to my inability to get those stupid wire "rods" from Ikea taut enough), and we moved in!

There's plenty more to do in the room itself (some molding to patch, some to put up, a floor spot to stain and seal, outlets to swap) and a ton to do in the rest of the upstairs, but so far it really looks great!

Fell at the last fence

We're so very close.  The last coat of paint is on, the brick is done and looks great, the ceiling fan is hung - and stopped working after 10 minutes.  I checked all my connections and everything was still attached, but when I used the tester it seemed like power was not exiting the remote unit, so perhaps the remote unit fried itself?  I hooked the fan up directly to the ceiling without the remote, and the fan worked when connected but not the light.

Argh.  There was some angry kicking of cardboard boxes, I confess.  Jaimee's ordered a new fan, so hopefully it'll be working tomorrow....

Shockingly, progress continues

The house does tend to get angry about large projects, and this time it vented its spleen by having the dishwasher spring a leak - soaking the joist below, a bit of the floor, and half of the island back.  The joist and the floor should dry without damage, but the island back is mdf and will need to be replaced before it molds.  I'll tackle that next week.  It looks like the water supply line just worked itself loose; has that happened to anyone else?  Dad?

But, there was a lot of positive progress, even though some of it was expensive.  The electrician came to center the light fixture box, leaving us with one junction box that I think we can easily disguise and a trustworthy attachment for the new ceiling fan (which should be arriving soon).  We booked a mason to fix the chimney as he was very reasonable in price and could do the work today (I think he was so reasonable because he was grateful to get a last minute job that he could do even though it's freezing since it was inside!) 

It also turns out Jaimee is much better at sanding joint compound than I am.  And applying it, really.  Thank heavens.  Because of her hard work, the walls were ready to be painted as soon as the ceiling was sealed.  I tackled the sealing with satin polyurethane, and Jaimee started painting once the sanding was complete.  The ceiling is sealed and the walls have their first coat!

It's hard to easily see the color, but this room is sort of a sky blue.  Tonight we'll will tackle the second coat - and begin the extensive cleaning required to get rid of all the demo dirt.  Weirdly, I find the cleaning much more fun than the sanding.  Or perhaps that's not weird at all - after all, you can see progress when cleaning!

This is the tedious part

After hours of working last night, we got the small room painted

and another coat of compound on the wall repairs.

This is the part of home repair that always drags on and on for me - the wall patching.  Ugh.  Can't wait to be done with that!

Damn, that's nice tin

By the end of the night, Jaimee and a friend had gotten all the loose paint off and knocked the plaster off of the ceiling to expose the brick.  It really looks great!

The mortar in the brick has some holes and gaps, though.  I bought some concrete fix stuff to patch it, but I'm not sure that's right.

 

I drywalled off the area above the cabinets we built in 2008 - pics later.

We spent some time cleaning up but need to do more tonight, as of course the dust is now everywhere.  And apparently Loki isn't smart enough not to eat paint chips.

Sometimes painting a ceiling ends in ripping it down

Or does that really only happen in my world?

R2 officially moved out yesterday, and she was so very efficient in the process that she was moved in, we helped her unpack and setup the kitchen, and we were still home by 2:30.  With a whole afternoon free, we decided to dive into the painting, starting with the ceiling (of course.  I learn.).

Once the first coat was up, I mentioned that I wanted to remove two cabinets that were residual from the room's original purpose as a kitchen.  Jaimee dove right into the demo.  When the cabinets were out though, guess what we saw?

Yeah.  Tin.  Above a drop ceiling.  Beautiful tin.  But - why was the ceiling dropped?  Is the tin just too messy?  Best check it out - 

It looks great - solid and beautiful.  Better than the tin in the kitchen!  We paused for discussion - do we do the exhausting demo and painting work that would be involved to expose it?  Or do we just close it up and leave it?  Now - many many posts ago when I removed the first set of cabinets in that room to make it a better space for Erin, we did discover that the ceiling was dropped.  We didn't explore it much then though, as the small area of ceiling exposed there was the *only* part of the ceiling that was battered, holy, and not patterned tin!  We just closed it up.  But now...we see so much lovely tile...

 And Jaimee loves the demo...

So we tore the ceiling down.  The ceiling that we had just painted.  By the end of the night, the entire drop ceiling was down, and Jaimee had started knocking off the loose paint.  Side benefit to this - the ugly florescent fixture that was in that room is now gone!  And oddly there were two more florescent fixtures hiding under the dropped ceiling.  They were only connected to each other, not to a power source.  I guess they change directions after hanging them - but why they weren't removed is beyond me...

Jaimee has the day off today and will continue removing paint.  Stay tuned for the next exciting installment!

Um. So much for timely posting.

I'm trying to get better.  I swear it.  Somehow the last half of the year got busy - Jaimee moved in, I got a dog (Loki) who takes up a bunch of time with training and play, the holidays were the usual month and a half of scramble...  He's cute though, right?

Anyway, things did happen.  I just didn't quite FINISH any of them, which is why no real posts about them.  I put up a backsplash behind the stove.

 

Why is it not done?  Haven't caulked the top line and the corners.  There has also been a request to extend it further, and I haven't done that yet either.

I made a light (translation - hung crystals from my dad's mom on an Ikea light) and hung it in the dining room - which caused the electrician to come again because I hated it being off center, so I had him move the ceiling box (and now we have a junction box in ceiling where the old one was).

Why is it not done?  Haven't finished patching around the old ceiling box and painting the junction box cover.

I also made and hung a light in the kitchen.  No pics yet - because it's currently level only by virtue of some fishing weights taped onto it, needs an extra cover for the wires to the ceiling, and persists in hanging at an angle through the kitchen instead of parallel to the walls.

Additionally, I've spent time making the basement a more workable area.  This got a big leg up when yet another part of the main waste line had to be replaced in a hurry, and as part of the process the plumbers kindly lowered the basement sink drain for me (allowing it to actually be at a normal person's height, not up 2 stairs).  I installed an old kitchen sink as the new basement sink, which is a huge improvement.  We had to get a new faucet though, as the old one turned out to be leaky.  I built a platform for the washing machine, making it much easier to load and unload it (thanks to 2 and Jaimee for the muscle to get it on the platform!).  Jaimee also helped me do some organization in the basement, and it's actually getting functional! Progress pics soon.

BUT.  R2 is moving out this month (I miss our little family already.  Luckily it's just expanding geographically!), so there will be a bunch of painting and rearranging to be done.  I'll try to be better about posting about that.  I'm also trying to have some themes for each month so I feel like there are mini goals that I can actually accomplish and feel good about.  Small wins.  January's goal - purge.  Not in the puking sort of way (how do people actually do that?  so gross to me), but in the get-it-out-of-the-house way.  We've had a pile of stuff that needs to be eBay'ed, a pile to donate, some to Craigslist, and stuff to just throw out/recycle.  

The basement jumpstart was a big motivator - it's just so much more pleasant to be down there - and I've gotten rid of a bunch of random construction bits.  I've sold some stuff on eBay, have listed more, and am hoping to do an electronics recycling drop-off this weekend.  It's a bit late, but anyone else want to join the Jan purge for motivation?