Paint and floor!

Well, after demo comes paint. Well, first Cody patched walls, pulled nails, and then the masking started. First the windows so the trim and ceilings could be sprayed white.

And then the REAL masking started.

We masked the windows,


the trim,

the doors,

the ceilings,

did I mention the trim?

More windows,

and of course the fireplace.

Everything got painted... the doors,

the trim,

and then the colors!

That is sure a pink closet!

Hmmm... those walls sure look orange...

but the Sage turned out very nicely!

Morgan was very excited when her paint was complete.

And the colors turned out lovely in our bedroom!

The Orange dried a lovely earthy gold. Here is the hallway looking into Morgan's room.

And the office looking into the living room...

We were still a little unsure about the "Pumpkin" (as we dubbed the color) so Cody set-up a demo of the floor and trim. I was much encouraged!

Now to the floors!

At this point we really classed up the neighborhood by storing the hall bathroom in the front yard. Good thing our neighbors are forgiving! lol

Keith showed up again and he and Cody got cracking on the floors.

I saw a lot of this end of Cody that week!

It took a few days but the trim got finished and the bathroom resumed it more usual place. The neighbors were extremely pleased! =)

Once the trim was in we started to move in. Cody and I are very pleased that the landlords left their two stained glass lamps. The Dragonflies now grace our bedroom.

On to the finished photos...

Well, there are still a lot of boxes but it is very close to being finished anyway!

The office from the living room!

The Living room window side. This is the room seen from the front of the house.

Cody's plants are much happier inside again.

The hallway into the living room...

I really like Cody's antique Love Seat/Chairs combined with the wall color.

A little funky but cool!

This photo is a little washed out but here is Morgan's room finished with chair rail, and loft bed. She loves it!


Another view. Cody put his rainbow kite on the ceiling and bought her the cute little flower floor lamp. She has the coolest bedroom on the block!

Now Cody can get a little much needed rest.

The Tiny Dog also feels that he has worked very hard.

The next entry will be: The Basement!

Demo

The demolition started immediately thanks to Kieth. As soon as the truck was unloaded he started pulling up the hideous, filthy, green carpet. I have few pictures of it because the carpet was gone before I got home from work. Throughout this process Cody's plants travelled throughout the house keeping the "homeyness" to the sub-floor, primer look.

Below is the view from the office/3rd bedroom just to the left of the front door as you walk into the house. The living room is straight ahead and the front door is to the right from this view.

This is a view of the master bath from the master bedroom. I don't know if you can see it very well but there is 1 1/2" of various flooring stacked on top of each other in the master bath. It will be the next "project". By project I mean we are going to have to strip it down to the studs and first layer of sub-floor. It should be awesome.

Here is the lovely fan that was located in the master bedroom.

And the cute mallard duck theme that was going on in Morgan's room.

And here is the view from the living room into the office/3rd bedroom.

Another view of the living room from the doorway of the office.

And here is the 30' dumpster after about 3 days of demo...

We found a great deal on Baseboard on Craigslist. We weren't planning on replacing the baseboard except that the original baseboard was actually casing and was incompatible with the flooring we were installing.

There were trash cans overflowing and dustpans of various sizes in every room for the first two weeks.

And this was the point where the tiny dog started to get uncomfortable.

The doors had to be washed and repainted so they lived in the front yard for a week or so. The furniture is currently still in the same place.

After the carpet the ceiling fans had to be removed. All 5 of them. The grey sheen is a combination of 15 years of dust, tobacco tar, and general grime.

I am such a cruel mother! Here is Morgan demonstrating the hall bath as it had to be left intact until the last moment so we could remain living in the house.

And here is the kitchen. As you can see Critter is not too worried about all the ruckus. We were worried about him but he just loved the mice being readily viewable, as they were located right next to his litter box in the basement.

Next bit of demo was the removal of the popcorn ceilings.

I found this task very difficult as I really needed a ladder. Luckily Cody was the perfect height to complete this task in one day.

He was a bit tired though! (He's so good!!!)

We kept looking at the fireplace. Painted several times, we saw potential for a beautiful centerpiece in the living room.

Unfortunately we tried several paint strippers over several days (including a 12 hour soak with Naval Jelly) with only this result.

So Cody called his buddy Mike for some special equipment, got suited up...

Set-up screens throughout the house...

and he proceeded to sand blast the heck out of the fireplace. This was the end result of day 1.

And after two days (did I mention how good he is?) this is the result! We are very pleased, though this project set back the move-up (from the basement) date a week.

The tiny dog was extremely worried at this point.

He often adopted this pose, sitting on the landing to the basement and resting his head on the step into the kitchen.

At this point I will mention the backyard. It hadn't been touched in over 15 years. I can't even begin to explain how the trees and bushes were overgrown. All I can say is that this was about the view from anywhere on the patio or yard.

This was the view from the Master Bedroom window.

There were some beautiful mushrooms located under the Cypress tangles though!

And Morgan was quite the trooper through the whole ordeal. She was very helpful and was always disappointed if she didn't have a job to do. She pulled lots of staples, sanded and washed walls, scrubbed the fireplace, swept, and stayed up very late most nights.

And of course Cody was amazing! He has done 90% of the work to the house unaided and had few if any complaints. So I fed him roasted chicken.

And we will see you in the next installment... paint!