The fence fell down, now the fence shall stand tall!

So, when we bought this house, the poor cedar fence had fallen over.  Plopped right on it's side.  Joint Problems (I can relate! Sad thing is, I think I can relate more to this dilapidated fence than I can to most people lately!) So, it's time to resurrect the poor thing.  Here are some "in-progress" pics....

Had to bust out the power tools to saw down some weed trees first!

View from the side-yard looking towards the street.

This is the side door off of the kitchen.  Hmmmm, no steps? no worries, there will be some there soon. 

This is PJ texting while digging fence post holes.  Hmmmmm.  

PJ loves when I ask him to pose for pictures!

Tah Dah! Fence is up.  Now Shadow and Dakota will have a fenced in yard! The yard kind of slopes to the right and it just MAKES it look like it's crooked, it isn't really crooked, okay?!  I think I shall stain the fence a dark brown color.  I think it shall be beautiful!  Good job PJ Gravis! you're my hero!

New Butler's stairs for our Butler!

So this is the Butler's stairwell off of the back of the kitchen.  It goes all the way to the attic, whereas the front stairwell only goes to the 2nd floor.  We're getting all new treads and risers in this stairwell, from basement to attic.  Very exciting.  Can't Decide whether to paint the wood (Fir) or stain it a rich, dark brown color.  Any suggestions?

kitchen tile, electrical and knee surgery, oh my!

Sorry for the delay in posts everyone.  Things have been a bit busy lately.  We finally finished the kitchen tile....

Travis from Arc Blu Electric did an awesome job saving the ceiling wallpaper when he cut through the ceiling in the dining room for the new overhead light that will go above the dining room table.....

We met with Out of the Woods to go over some pre-final decisions with the kitchen cabinets.....here's an example of the antique black rough edge granite counter tops that we're going with.....(our cabinets will be white though)

Les and PJ started chiseling the plaster off of the chimney in the master bathroom so we can have exposed brick behind the pedestal sink........

And then at the beginning of this week I had to have arthroscopic knee surgery to remove lots of torn cartilage!  This was an unexpected surgery and really throws a wrench in a couple things, but ultimately I should be in a lot less pain in the long run. So there you have it....thats a re-cap of the last two weeks.  We hope to have more pictures up soon.  Thanks!

Attention to Detail

We have new house numbers and a new mailbox, courtesy of my sister Heather!  Adds a nice classy look to the house

I know those things we need are in here SOMEWHERE!

We needed things out of our storage unit.  Unfortunately, they were at the very BACK of the unit.  Go Figure!

When we moved out of our old house and put our belongings into storage, we had no idea how long we'd be "homeless."  Needless to say, meticulous packing of items into the storage unit was not something we focused on!!!

New Tools for the Gravis household

Look how happy these guys are after buying a new tool set.  Wait a minute, new tool set, that wasn't in our budget.  hmmmmm.

"Now PJ, this is how you use an impact driver" Tyler Hollon

A few more pics of the tile install process in the kitchen

Jessica has found an alternative use for tile board seam tape.  A Headband.  Nice Job Jessica, how crafty are you?!

Kitchen Progress

Well, its been a very long few days, but finally our kitchen tile is starting to take shape.

Ever wonder what 1700 screws looks like!:

The floor is starting to take shape:

Because of some new plumbing, we had to (unfortunately) drop the ceilings a bit in a couple of places, but I think it will look ok, and it was better than the alternatives!

Meet our new best friend

Master bath shower dilemma....

So we need to figure out a solution for a master bathroom shower.

Glass doors?  Maybe, but they're A) Expensive and B) they're difficult to stay clean looking. 

Walk in with no doors?  Possibly.

Here are some examples of ideas I found on the web.  The dimensions of our shower are approximately 4x6ft.

Any suggestions?

Kitchen Tile part 1

This weekend we laid tile board in the kitchen.  It took forever.......!

Why work in the daytime, when you can work at night with no overhead lighting?!

Weekend work (aka why I need Ibuprofen)

Just a few pics of our kitchen tile...

If only I could have used a forklift to unload it into the house!

We were able to lay most of the backer board this weekend, and hopefully tomorrow I will get the tile set.

purchase order anyone?

So we've gotten to do a little shopping lately...

American walnut reclaimed hardwood floors purchased.  Check.

Claw foot tub faucet and supply lines purchased.  Check.

400 square feet of kitchen floor tile purchased. Check.

Pot filler faucet purchased.  Check.  

More photos and less carpet

I got sick of seeing the carpet that makes the whole house smell like dog pee, so what better thing to do on a rainy cold day than enlist friends (thanks Jessica!) to help get rid of it!

 There floor also had a layer of OSB under the carpet, so it was removed as well.

A few more shots of the HVAC work that is in progress and moving quickly

Updates

So this week the HVAC sub-contractors have been at the house installing a 2nd AC unit, new furnace and duct work.  The duct work that was in the house when we bought it was routed inefficiently and so they've rearranged the duct work, heat registers and cold air returns to make the whole system more efficient.  Because of the size of the house, there is a furnace in the attic, which heats the attic and 2nd floor and then there is a furnace in the basement which heats the basement and first floor.   There are also 2 AC condensers for the upper and lower halves of the house.  Our first natural gas bill was $11.  I have a feeling it will start getting a bit higher than that real soon!  Below are some misc. pictures from the last week. 

Here's the new 1/2 bath in the back of the house.  Well, okay, it's the framed in walls for the new 1/2 bath! In order to save space, we'll have a pocket door for the bathroom instead of one that swings in or out.  The blue rectangle that you see on the floor is where the kitchen island will be. 

This is our first botanical project! Jessica and Tyler bought PJ a Japanese maple for his birthday and then we re-planted it in a bigger container and added some other plants.

I was conveniently at work when this claw foot tub had to be carried from the first floor to the 2nd floor.  (It used to be in the bathroom on the first floor that we removed/relocated to make the kitchen bigger) PJ, our cousin Colby, and friends Jon and Tyler carried it up the stairs.  Actually, PJ, Colby and Jon thought that it wouldn't fit up the stairs, so they were scheming to take out a 2nd floor window, load the tub onto the mechanical lift that we've been using to paint the house and bring it into the house that way.  Tyler (who's our contractor by day and friend by night) stopped by to help.  He said "let's just see how heavy it is" and then when all four of them picked it up, to scurries to the stairs and tricked them into carrying it up the stairs.  Apparently Colby got pinned against a wall and couldn't help anyway.  I'm really surprised they lived to tell this story, actually.  Anyways, the room it's in right now will be the master bathroom.  The door to the left goes into the closet and then on to the bedroom.  We're keeping the main door (not pictured, but to the right) because you have to walk through the master bath to get to the laundry room and we wanted to keep access to that and the sun porch without having to walk through the master bedroom. 

This is the sun porch off the back of the house on the 2nd floor.  It has some pretty gross carpet on the floor, which was glued down on the original fir floors.  This is PJ pulling the carpet up. 

I made PJ pose for a picture, he loves it when I make him pose for pictures.  He almost loves it as much as he loves painting the whole house!

Joint compound and liquid nails.  No further explanation needed. 

So we had to remove the lath and plaster that covered the underneath of the front staircase so that the stairs can be repaired.  The upper part is where we found the dead mouse.  Sick!  Notice the awesome wall paper?