It's Not Over Yet!

First of all, THANK YOU to everyone who came out on Saturday and helped us move!! We really really appreciate you guys helping us out!

As for our house....we're still not done yet! I'm not able to update our blog as often (at least until we have our internet hooked up a week from today), but I'm going to continue blogging for a while. Besides all of our unpacking that we're doing, we've been able to get our two end tables put together, our sofa table assembled, and all of our bedroom furniture put together and placed in its place. My dad also got both of our new bathroom faucets installed today (I'll post pictures soon).

Lastly, we have tentatively set the date of our open house...so mark your calendars for Sunday, October 4th from 2-5pm. We'll have appetizers and drinks :) Please feel free to drop in and out as you can.

-Laura :)

T-Minus 2 Days....

...until we move! AHHH! We still have so much to do....so I have come to the realization that it just won't all get done...and that's okay!

Today we worked on getting the remaining new light fixtures installed. None of them were easy and almost all of them gave us some problem of some sort. We only have two ceiling fans to install tomorrow and then we'll be done with all the lighting (except for the kitchen nook...which we're still debating over which light to go with).

Oh...and we also got our new dishwasher installed today! We now have a completely functioning kitchen again!

Tomorrow is going to be busy (but then again...when are we not busy). Not only do we want to finish up a few things at the house...but we also have to finish packing at my parents house.

Here are a few pics from today!

Our new dishwasher

New lighting above the kitchen sink

Entry lighting

New lighting in the basement bathroom (I ran out of bulbs...hence the reason only two lights look lit)

Pretty sunset in front of our house (too bad the power lines are there)

We're Almost There!!!

I can't believe how fast this week is going by. We only have two more days to work on the house until we will be moving in. Today, we pretty much finished the kitchen. All we have left to do in there is install the lighting above the sink and above the eat-in kitchen area and have the new dishwasher installed (which will happen tomorrow between 11-2). I love our new kitchen. I can't believe how much different it looks.

Tom is still working hard at getting the tile finished in the upstairs guest bath. It is a very tedious process and he hopes to be done with everything but the grout before we move in on Saturday.

My mom and I got all of the remaining shelving put up in the closets and the laundry room. I can start moving stuff in :)

Tomorrow is lighting day :) We hope to get all of the remaining new light fixtures installed around the house.

Here are pictures from today.

Before

After!!

Before

After!!

Flooring...DONE!

I am happy to finally say that ALL of our flooring is done!! The rooms that we tiled....done...the carpet...done....and the hardwood...done :) What a difference it has made. The house finally looks like it can be moved into (which is great seeing that we move in 4 days!).

We still have a lot to accomplish this week including installing the last two kitchen counter tops, exchanging more light fixtures, installing the two bathroom vanities, finish tiling the bathtub surround and much more. I hope we can get this all done :)

Here are some pictures of the finished hardwood!

Hardwood!

Today was day one of two days of hardwood installation...and it is going GREAT! The installers arrived around 9am this morning and got to work. The living room and the dining room are almost finished. They should finish tomorrow :)

Here are some pictures of our new hardwood!

Before

After!

Before

After

Busy Weekend

This weekend was a very busy weekend. We got a lot accomplished :) First of all, thank you to my parents and Jonathan for their help all weekend! We got one of the kitchen counters installed (the other 2 will be installed once the hardwood is in), the kitchen sink set into place, the kitchen track lighting was installed, part of the tile was put up in the upstairs guest bath, two more doors got hung again as well as door knobs put on, we got the new shelving unit installed in the guest bedroom, and we got some of the other shelving that we had taken down put back up.

Tomorrow starts the beginning of the end of the major part of our renovation....our hardwood is being installed. I can't believe we move into our house in 5 days! :)

Here are some pictures from this weekend:

Our new sink and kitchen counter tops

The new track lighting in the kitchen

After day two of tiling in the guest bathroom upstairs

New shelving in the guest bedroom

I Love a Good Deal!

So...I feel very lucky to have found a lot of the great deals that I have come across for things for our house. I've bought every faucet on clearance, got a deal on our kitchen counter tops, had mail-in rebates on every gallon of paint, got an excellent deal on our kitchen sink, and so much more. Lately, I haven't been able to find many good clearance items and thought my luck had ended...UNTIL the past few days :)

For starters, we had looked at putting the nicer Levelor brand plantation blinds in all of our double windows. I was just afraid that the cheaper brand that has a plastic rod across the top would not be able to hold up the weight of a wide window for a long time. The Levelor blinds run about $82/each. Somehow, I found two sets of blinds in the right width and length on clearance for half price at Lowes this past weekend. They had apparently cut the wrong size for another customer, so they had to slash the price. Lucky for us :) THEN, today I stopped in Lowes just to see if there was anything on clearance that I needed, and the exact bathroom vanity that Tom and I had looked at buying for the basement bathroom was on clearance. One of the decorative feet had broken off, but is fixable by glue...and the part that looks damaged is the part that will go next to the wall...which means no one will ever see it! It was regularly priced at $449, was marked down to $331, but they ended up giving it to me for $100.....yes...that's right...$100!!!!! We'll be able to get the cabinet and counter top for less than what we were going to pay for the cabinet alone :) I've posted the picture of the vanity below.

In other news, our carpet was installed on Monday, but after the installers left, we saw all of the damage they caused to the baseboards. I can understand a few marks here and there, but there were even places where they dug into the raw baseboard. My mom had to go through and re-paint the baseboards in all of the rooms where they had installed carpet. They also used some metal tool to twist on and off our brand new brushed nickel doorstops...and destroyed them in the process. So...today, we convinced them to not only reimburse us for the cost of new doorstops and paint, but they're also giving us back most of our installation cost! YAY!
As for our brand new windows that are already collecting water in a couple of places and showing rust spots...the installers came out today to look at them...and have no idea what's going on. So, they referred me back to Lowes, and they have a rep coming out tomorrow to look and see if it is maybe a manufacturing defect. I just hope they can fix them without having to do any major work.

As for the rest of the house, we're coming along. We've put up all of the backerboard in the guest bathroom upstairs and have done one layer of mud between the drywall and backerboard. We have to sand this down and do one more layer of mud and then we'll be able to start tiling.

We are finally getting to the end of this renovation. Thank you for all of your love, help, and support through this process. We've set our big move-in date for August 22nd, so we hope to set a big open house for sometime in the month after that. We'll keep you posted!
Thanks!

Here are some more pictures!

Backerboard in place in the upstairs guest bath

To fit the new tub in, we had to completely cut out this corner of the drywall....I had to mud it, tape it, and mud some more. I think it turned out pretty well :)

This is just one of many many spots where the installers damaged our baseboards while installing the carpet.

The vanity we bought for the basement bathroom.

My garden :) See the BIG squash gourd

We Have Carpet!!!

Today was an exciting day at our house.....we had our carpet installed. We placed the order for our carpet on our anniversary, June 7th....and 2 months later....we finally had it installed. It looks great and is sooooo soft! The house is finally starting to look close to finished :) One week from today we'll have the hardwood installed and we'll be on our way to moving in!

Besides having the carpet installed today, we also replaced all of the cabinet hardware in the kitchen and the master bath. I also got some new recessed lighting covers installed in the master bath. We also did a little bit more touch-up painting in a few places. We thought we were done...but the carpet people left soooo many marks on the baseboards...so we're going to have to spend even more time fixing those.

We have a lot to get done before next Monday...so wish us luck :)

Here are pictures from today (I've uploaded a ton today).

Before (the color was a lot darker than what we painted it even though it doesn't look much different)

After!


BEFORE


After!

Before

After!

New recessed lighting trim in the master bath

New knobs and hinges in the kitchen

New knobs and hinges in the master bath

Oh...and someone hit Tom this morning on his way to work. Guess he'll finally get that new bumper he wanted. He was fine...her car was okay...but her car was pretty much totaled...GO HONDA :)
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Preparing for Carpet Installation!!

This weekend was all about trying to finish up the projects we wanted to get done before having the carpet installed. We got the rest of the tile knocked out around the bath tub in the master bath. We got all of the beadboard nailed into place and the toilet installed in the downstairs bathroom. We still need to install a few pieces of the baseboards and top trim, but we're waiting until we pick out the vanity we're going to put in there. Tom got all of the tile laid down in the upstairs guest bath (all it needs is grout). We also got all of the hardibacker nailed into place around the bathtub in the upstairs guest bath (thank you Jonathan for your help!!). We also got the walls re-painted in the master bedroom, dining room, and living room that needed another coat of paint. My mom and dad were a BIG help this weekend-- thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Tomorrow we are having new carpet installed in all three bedrooms, the stairs, and the basement! I am very excited about this :) It feels like the light at the end of the tunnel is finally becoming visible!!! One week from tomorrow, we'll have the hardwood installed-- which means...we have a LOT to get done this week!

Here are some pictures from this weekend.

Tile in the upstairs guest bath

Hardibacker board around the tub (we're tiling around it this week)

The master bath tub....we had to knock out the tile

The basement bathroom

Problems we're having with our windows already :( rust and water build up are not supposed to happen...but they are. We have the installers scheduled to come out on Thursday to look at the problem...hope its not a big deal to fix it.

Beadboard!!!

Today's big project was working on the basement bathroom. First of all, we replaced the door frame on the inside of the bathroom (I took a "before" picture but forgot to take an after picture...so I'll post that tomorrow). Then, we started working on cutting the new baseboards, beadboard, and top trim for the top of the beadboard. It was an all day project. We got all of the beadboard cut and ready to install, but we want to put one more layer of paint on the walls (I think we're on layer #6....the walls were REALLY damaged).

After seeing the pretty new beadboard with the new baseboards and tile, we started considering the idea of buying new cabinet and vanity top. The cabinet we pulled out of the room had some water damage on one side. We're still trying to figure out what we can budget...but once again....it looks like a small project has turned into a little bit bigger project...which is turning into a big project. lol

We also got the master bathroom rolled for it's second layer of paint. The master bathroom is now finished in terms of paint :)

Tomorrow we're going back and re-painting some of the walls in the dining room and master bedroom where some of the paint left funny marks where we touched up the paint. Thankfully Behr paint is reimbursing us for the new paint since it messed up the first time (I would hope they would since we bought 40 gallons of Behr paint!). Tom finished all the cuts for the floor tile in the upstairs guest bath, so we're hoping to get most of those laid tomorrow night as well.

Here are some pictures from today!

My dad cutting the baseboards

Basement bath before

...and after! (This isn't the finished pic...but its a preview of what it'll look like)

Tom got the backboard down in the upstairs guest bath

A Look Back at Some Before and Afters

I thought today might be a good day to go back and show some of our before and afters from the renovation. Lately, I've been showing what all we've done...but I've been leaving out the before's. Enjoy :)

Kitchen Before

Kitchen in Progress

Guest Bedroom Before

and After!

Basement Bathroom Before (but after the wallpaper)

After (still more work we will do)

Basement Before

After (just needs carpet)

Master Bath Before

Master Bath After