Day Forty-seven

Unlike the fabled city of Jericho, this weekend saw walls going up. To refresh your memory, here's what the laundry room used to look like:

But now we'll be able to do laundry in style with finished walls to go with our elegant tile! It's almost cozy in there now.

Not to be outdone, one of the other little rooms in the basement--the one that isn't the furnace room and isn't the bathroom--got a new ceiling, making a complete replacement of the old tiles.

The upstairs bathroom also got most of its finishing touches, so we're about ready to declare this job finished.

The cabinets got unveiled and an initial sanding before we begin the staining phase. Don't they just look smoother than a couple days ago? It's nice that we have this huge garage to be able to work under cover from the elements, although the open door can let in a cold breeze.

Finally, the studio's all cleaned and ready for its new wood floor, which should arrive by midweek. Prizes go to anyone who can guess what's missing from this picture. That's right, a bathtub! Also, if you're keeping score at home, here's a picture of all the paint that's going to be applied to our ceilings and walls in the coming days.

Day Forty-five: Status report at the 1.5 month mark

We made some good strides this week. The biggest one was the delivery of the kitchen cabinets, right in the middle of the estimated delivery time. There's a good bit of sanding and staining to be done, but for now all them are safely shrink-wrapped. We expect the appliances to arrive in bubblewrap. The tall cabinet will be a pantry next to the refrigerator.

With the hardwood for the studio and kitchen floors due to arrive on Tuesday, work turned to the ceiling in the basement. Not only have the 1980s tiles been replaced with drywall, but we've added three electrical boxes for overhead lights that will really brighten up a windowless space.

The finishing touches are being applied to the upstairs bathroom. With a vanity in place, this week we got the countertop and installed the hardware. Now we can wash brush our teeth!

Finally, the decorative tile for the downstairs bathroom have arrived from Mexico...well technically from a company that sells Mexican tile. With the laundry room floor down there also, we're certainly developing a theme. Salsa anyone?

Day Thirty-eight

So it's been another good week of progress on projects across the board. We've settled on which hardwood to put in the studio and kitchen, and it should arrive on Tuesday. The kitchen cabinets can come any day now. We'll need to stain them, but we're becoming pros at stuff like that. 


The ceiling in the basement has crossed the Rubicon. The old drop ceiling is gone. The wood supports that held it up are gone. There are new, clean cross beams for the drywall and the first few panels of drywall have gone up. There's more to come and then painting and undoubtedly other parts that we don't know about, but things are starting to look good.

The bathrooms also are really rounding into shape. Upstairs the expertly stained vanity is in place and so is the shower hardware. The countertop has been measured and should be in place next week.

The downstairs bathroom has morphed nicely from a blue tub and cement. The floor was arranged in a holding pattern before being cleared for a landing. And at the end, yes, that is the tub broken into several pieces. It simplified the removal and hauling away.

Finally, the studio's walls are all patched, primed, and ready for paint. That should happen before the floor goes in back there.

Day Thirty-one: We're counting down to moving in

This has been a week of consolidation and steady progress. The walls upstairs are all prepped for painting. The main floor bathroom is awaiting only the vanity and then countertop. The laundry room and its Spanish tiles are looking great. 

Oh, and not to be discounted has been the removal of a ton of junk. Having never gone through something like this, it is truly astounding how much material can be taken out of a house without knocking down all the interior walls and tearing up the floors. I guess there's something about seeing it distributed throughout a house compared with seeing it in a heap at the end of the driveway. Must be the law of conservation of mass/matter or something. 

That concludes the high school science section of this exam. So let's move onto the visual acuity test.

Can you tell the difference between these two ceilings?

If you said "One has a ceiling" then you'd be correct. We've opted to replace the drop ceiling tiles with sheetrock. There are aesthetic reasons for this and more importantly a big practical one--we think the tiles absorbed 25 years of creosote from the wood-burning stove in the basement. Out with the smelly old and in with the clean new!

The downstairs bathroom continued to lose key pieces now that the upstairs bath is functional and we have a working utility sink in the laundry room.

The studio upstairs also has lost something--multiple layers of paint and wallpaper. Not quite as dramatic, but we consider the excavation to be our version of Pompeii.