New Back Door and . . .

new front door!!

The debate between Kelly getting a new door for the back door or me making a door was settled when we went up to Coos Bay to the Habitat for Humanity Restore and found a door!!  Whoo!!  Whoo!!

We are going to strip it and take the top two panels out and replace them with glass so I have a window.  And MAYBE I'll make it into a Dutch Door so I can feel the cool breezes in the summer!!

Then, even better than that cool back door, we were given a great door for the front door but we had to take our front door and put it back into the garage from where we got the new old door.

Here is our door Before ~

Then we removed it ~

And replaced it with our fabulous old new front door ~

Is that going to be gorgeous or what when we get it all refinished and the new door latch on it?  And it was FREE!!  It is sooooo heavy and when it landed on my foot while taking it out of the garage where we got it I thought my foot was broken.  But all is well and I don't even have a bruise on my foot!!

We think the door is from the Arts and Crafts era, either the 1920's or the 1930s.  We are so excited we can hardly stop saying, "Wow, what a fabulous front door."

It Was Inevitable . . .

While I was cleaning the last part up in the kitchen at the wall behind and near the kitchen sink, we ran into rotted sill plates.

So, now, we have to wait until we have the sink in the guest bathroom in before we can remove the sink in the kitchen.  Once we get that last piece of kitchen counter removed

we will be able to dig out the rotten sill plate along with the rotten 2x4s.  We are so grateful there was only this small amount of rot in the whole house!!

Then, on Friday the electrician came for a few hours and removed the electrical in this wall that

separated the great room from the kitchen area.  And once that electrical was removed (for the most part) we were able to remove the wall completely.  Kelly then decided to rearrange the kitchen

so we have a more open concept!!  And once all that "stuff" is out of the great room, we will be living in a mansion!!  Well, maybe not, but each day or two the place gets looking better and better!!

See ya next time!!

Getting the Scary Bathroom . . .

ready to re-do the plumbing.  We need to move all of the plumbing including the tub/shower, the bathroom sink and the location of the toilet ~

Now that Kelly has the half of the floor and the rotten sub -flooring removed ~

We needed to get most of the old plumbing and the rotten floor joists out so that we can work on getting new joists in and all the new plumbing in and moving the toilet drain pipe.

Here is what we took out of the the half of the floor that is open ~

and now the new work begins.

Can you see the black tube that looks like it is coming out of Kelly's sock?  Well, we have been discussing for weeks how we are going to find the water supply that comes from the well into the house!!  Bingo!!  We found it when Kelly cut off the old pipe that was attached to that black pipe in the picture.  We are going to put a bandaid on that pipe so that we have water at the kitchen sink again!!  LOL!!  And since that is the ONLY water we have coming into the house right now except to the wiggly toilet in the master bathroom, we think it is a good idea to get it done quickly!!

Until Next Time!!

Drywall is Almost All Gone!! Hoo! Hoo!

We have gotten a lot done this week!!  We are getting the laundry room ready for the decking floor that we are going to put down over the concrete floor that is 12 inches lower than the kitchen floor.  Because it is 12 inches, the step down from the kitchen is really a loo-loo!!

This is in the laundry room wall where we had some shelves to plug up the hole between the laundry room and the kitchen.

These are the "before" walls  in the laundry room before removal.  You can see the old plumbing in the right lower corner.

I got that plumbing all cut off and sealed so that I could remove all that nasty old plumbing on the walls below.  They were so brittle I was able to just snap them off.

This is what it looked like after I got the drywall down ~

These are the walls after clean up~

This is the temporary wall to cover the hole in the kitchen.

While I was writing this post this morning, Kelly got the last piece of drywall off the laundry room wall and look at what was behind it!!  The original outside wall!!

We are going to see if we can get more of this old ship lap for the wall with the hole into the kitchen and then have a nice focus wall in the laundry room.  We are going to keep the door because it is in good shape but we are going to strip the paint off and probably stain it.

Now all we have left are the last two walls in the kitchen and then ALL of the drywall throughout the entire house will be gone!!  We're going to celebrate with a nice dinner out!!

Next week we are going to focus on getting the laundry room ready for the plumber to come install the water heater.  This is the opening from the laundry room to outside ~

I don't know if there has ever been a door there but we are going to put one in.  It is not high enough for a regular door so if I have my way we are going to make a door to fit in that hole.  If Kelly gets his way he'll figure out how to get something already together to put in there.  We'll see!!  :-))

See ya next time!!

We Started Ripping Out the Kitchen This Morning!!

Ok, so we are waiting and waiting and waiting on that @%@#$@^&% electrician!!  So, thought we would go ahead and start the kitchen demo this morning.

Here is how it started out this morning ~

Then we got all the stuff off the counters and started digging!!

Just disgusting!!  How can people live like this?  

Well, we had to stop not too long after we started cutting stuff out because Kel hit some live wires behind the wall with the Sawzall!  Yikes!!  Luckily he is okay but we now have no electricity in that end of the house - oh goody back to a million extension cords until that @$#%^&&#$@@ electrician shows up again.  This is getting old, I'll tell ya!!

But here is the part we did get done all cleaned up ~

We are pretty fortunate, the electrical boo-boo is our first big faux pas in this process and we hope it is the last!!

It's a Visit to the Scary Bathroom!!

Well, we made our way back into the scary bathroom again.  I keep putting this room off because it is so nasty!!

First we had to move all the insulation out of there to the other bathroom.

And then we started tearing into the floor.

Got down to the subfloor and found that it is also bad so it is going to have to totally come up too.

We have no idea why this wall was built this way, but I am going to pull down these boards and use them to make a nice looking step into the Studio to replace this one~

We are still only getting the electrician once a week so I am hoping that all of the electricity is complete before the end of March!!  What a pain!!  Luckily it is much warmer now and so we are not having to run the little floor heaters as much!!  Our electric bill will like that!!  :-))

Oh, My!! It's Been Crazy Around Here!!

And wayyyyy too long for a post.

So, we got the hallway wall down next to the master bathroom and found some mold on the bathroom drywall.  We actually have been very lucky as we have not had that much mold, especially since this house was empty with bullet holes in the windows allowing all that moisture to come inside.

This is the new bathroom wall for the time being!!  Privacy, what privacy??

We also got the wall down on the backside of the bedroom closet that is noe going to be living room as soon as the closet is removed.

We got my bed moved from the large bedroom that is now going to be my office into the small bedroom and is going to be part of the Guest suite (my bedroom and bathroom unless we have guests.

This is the wall between the master bathroom and the master bedroom.  We are knocking out the bedroom closet and making the bathroom larger with a closet in the bathroom.  The master suite area is Kelly's area so he can have some privacy and some room.  I tend to take up most of the house with all my quilting and crafting stuff!!  Now we just need to frame in the new wall and new door into the bathroom.

This is one of the temporary electrical junctions that the electrician has placed so we can still have some electricity while he is working on the new lines.  The electrician is coming over one or two days a week and so at this rate we are not going to have a full house of electricity until well into February if not March!!  It has been so frustrating because the electrician keeps putting other jobs in front of ours and then finally told me a couple of days ago he was doing us a big favor by even doing our job!!  Ya gotta love small towns with very few tradesmen and not really great tradesmen.  So, all in all we have the best guy for the job but he is very busy!!  We feel lucky and have decided to quit complaining about how long it is taking!!

Here is the closet side of the wall that is being removed to enlarge the living room.  The walls in the living room have all had 2 layers of drywall!!  What the heck??

Now here is the inside of the scary bathroom.

Next post I'll show you what the floor is looking like in that scary bathroom.  We do know we are going to need to remove the flooring and the sub-flooring, but we are hoping the floor joists are in good condition!!

See ya next time and I won't wait so long to post an update!!