Just Amazing!

The main floor drywall is DONE!  By 10:30 this morning the guys were finished up and outta there!  What a RELIEF to have this done.  Yes, we could have saved some money by doing it ourselves...but there is no way on earth that we would have had the entire 1700 sq. ft. main floor done in less than 2 days!!  That is crazy!

Finally it's starting to look like a house again!

There is a reason that one wall is still studs  :)  

Don't worry...I've got a plan (mwa, ha, ha!)

Oh..I just love drywall, lol...

I just can't believe how different it looks...and it's only going to get better

We're taking tomorrow off for my Cousin's Wedding...then it's back at it!

WOW!!!

So today was the HOTTEST day of 2012 so far I'm pretty sure...and doesn't that just make sense?  It was day 1 of drywall hanging - and NO AIR CONDITIONING IS ALLOWED WITH ALL THE DRYWALL DUST!!  The guys got here right at 7 a.m. (ewwww...I don't want to be up and moving yet at 7 a.m....but I drug myself up since this was such an exciting day!)  It was absolutely AMAZING how fast these guys can work...I think I may have gone in to momentary shock while watching them, lol.

When I came to check around noonish they already had all of the ceilings done...

 

Look at how much better that looks without old insulation falling out of the ceiling, ha ha!

Front Bedroom

View of the Kitchen area...it looks SOOOO different!

The laundry half of the "clutter" room.  Kade walked in here tonight, came back out and said

"Our laudry room is so cute" lol.  I would have to agree with him on that one too!

Master Bedroom Bath & Closet

View of 1/2 Bath/Mudroom/Clutter Room from the Kitchen. 

I just can't believe what all they got done today...absolutely AMAZING!!

On a side note...a little damage has been done to my Grandma's old sewing table base that I was using for the sink base.  :(  I guess to much moving it around - the back support bar broke.

 

Hopefully we can figure out a way to still make it work...I just loved it together with the sink top I found.  Remember how cute they look?

 I still love it :)  We've just GOT to make it work!

 

It's not SUPER obvious where the break actually is!

Since the guys were working upstairs on drywall, we worked in the basement.  The bedroom wall was originally a 2x4 wall with cedar boxing in around the post.  We knew we weren't going to be happy with that.  The light switch for the bedroom and the outlet were both on that post...so you had to walk into the room about 6 feet before you could even turn the light on.  Pretty annoying if you ask me!  So we removed that wall and will rebuild it with 2x6's...completely enclosing the post and moving the switch to its proper location.  It's going to be so much nicer!  Ya know...sometimes I do wish that we could just skimp on our work, lol, we probably would have been done with the entire house by now if we didn't want to make everything perfect!

 It looks HUGE without that wall there...not that a 16x18 bedroom is small even with the wall up, lol

We finally got the old insulation out too...I can't wait to see how the basement turns out!

The guys will be back around 8 in the morning to finish hanging the drywall.

How come we can't work at the same pace that they do?

Drywall Time!

The day has finally come!  We went to get the drywall late this afternoon so that we'd be ready for the drywall hanging guys tomorrow....I can't wait to see what a difference it makes to have the drywall up!  I couldn't believe how HEAVY the loads of drywall were.  We DID get the help of the Harmans again...Mike & Johnny went with us to pick it up...this way we had 2 trailers to bring it back with...and we filled them both to the brim!  Well...I guess there's no BRIM on a trailer...so let's just say we filled them to the MAXIMUM WEIGHT CAPACITY!!  It was interesting to say the least!

Oh and one more thing....WHY IS IT SO HOT OUTSIDE???  lol.

 

Here's the load we had with our truck....notice that they had to stack pallets so they could get the drywall up high enough over the wheel wells, lol.

Here's the load Mike had on his truck...(and Carl Becker...how did he end up helping unload drywall??  I thought he just came over to Mom & Dad's for dinner, lol!!)

two wide of course....his truck could pull more than ours could!

It's in the house!!  Yeah!  

11 buckets of drywall mud...do you think that will be enough?

Thanks so much to Mike, Jeff & Johnny Harman for all of your help delivering and moving in drywall....your muscles are greatly appreciated  :)  Also thanks to Kade, Dad & Carl!

DRYWALL STARTS TOMORROW!!!   CAN'T WAIT!!!

Scrappy!

Today I asked Dad to go with me to take all of the scrap metal to MAW Salvage in Fosterburg.  I just love going there, lol, I'm so weird!  Seriously though, think about it.  Where else can you go take your JUNK..and get money for it?  We're talking rusty old crusty metal = MONEY!!  We've saved all of the wires that Kade has pulled out, old pipes, the old furnace, duct work, etc.

Threw the aluminum cans on there too since we were going.

It really doesn't look like that much stuff!

$200 WORTH OF TRASH!!!

You've gotta love that!

Drywall Ready?

Well, we've been workin' hard upstairs finishing the new insulation, cleaning up, and getting ready to go get the drywall.  Hopefully we can do that in the next couple of days.  Hoping for a little "Harman Help" on that one!  Why does it have to be so hot right now?  Ugh

Here's a little tour of what the upstairs looks like now...6 months into the renovations...

Kitchen area on the left, the new 1/2 bath, Mudroom and Laundry in the middle (behind those new walls) and the Dining Room on the right.

View of the Kitchen when you come in from the sunroom.

 View of the Dining Room if you're in the sunroom doorway.

View into the Master Bedroom from the sitting area.

Master Bedroom

Entryway...not much room there...but it's better than walking straight in to the stairway wall!

Middle Bedroom.

Front Bedroom view from the hallway.

Front Bedroom.

Front Bedroom Closet (one of the only things we didn't change on the main floor!)

Front Bedroom - insulation between the bedrooms.

View out of the front bedroom and down the hallway.

Thermostat  :)

Hallway - that's the other closet that didn't change on the main floor.

The doors are being replaced though!

View from the Master Bedroom through the sitting room and into the kitchen.

The doorway farthest away goes in to the garage.

So that's it for now....time to go get some drywall, the hangers are coming Thursday morning at 7

...this oughta be fun  :)

Do I Feel A Chill?

FINALLY...the day has come....

It's time to hook up the GeoThermal and get it running!!!
We HAD to be ready for them today or else we would have had to wait like 4-6 more weeks!!!  The temps are just getting a little warm to take that risk!

Josh & Kenny figuring out the wiring.

Notice Kade is looking on from afar...they were all trying to figure out why it wasn't working...

Maybe this will work??

FINALLY - - she's up and running (and yes, I just called our GeoThermal a "she", lol)

WE

HAVE

AIR CONDITIONING!!!

It's unfortunate that Kade won't let us keep it on, lol.

Time to finish up some insulation, etc. upstairs and get the drywall hangers out here!

More Walls!

Had a little bit of a scare this morning...lol...went out to get in the truck and go to the new house and saw our resident groundhog out in the yard.  Well...it was what I THOUGH was our resident groundhog.  Apparently now we've got not one, but two living in our back yard.  They're really quite the little stinkers...they've been eating my sweet potato vines that I have in my planters....gerrrr!  So I see the second groundhog run into the resident groundhogs spot under the chicken shed...then I could hear some "unhappy groundhog" noises coming from under there.  I decided I should grab my phone, flip it to video and see if I could catch anything interesting.  So I got pretty close...maybe 6 or 7 feet away...squatted down and started recording...here's what I caught...

 

ha ha ha ha!  That scared me!  I had to get up and get away backwards...

I couldn't take my camera off of the action, lol.  I'm such a dork!

 

So today we got some of the basement framing done.  We worked on the bathroom wall that houses the plumbing.  We've GOT to get that done so Turney's can come back next week and finish hooking up our GeoThermal!  Who needs A/C???  It's only 104 outside!

Action shot of Kade nailing in the studs  :)  We'll try and get that plumbing in tomorrow for the tub.

Why is it that EVERYTHING goes so much slower than you think it will go?

Basement time?

Oh yeah...forgot we needed to be getting some work done down in the basement too! (Ok...finishing it all completely...getting some work done...same thing right? ha ha!)  Old insulation is piled high on top of Jenga (that's what we call our pile of hardwood flooring that we saved from upstairs)  I pray that thing doesn't just topple over some day....yikes!

We really need to get that mess out of here.  I just THINK about fiberglass insulation and I'm itching!

Time to start framing up the basement bathroom!

(which by the way is going to be the biggest bathroom in the entire house!)

Gotta figure out how to build it around the support beams and the new plumbing...

this could get interesting  :)

My "Real" Job

Had to do a little bit of my "real" job this morning for Live Your Life, ink.  Drove up to Godfrey to put down a floor vinyl for a Wedding that's tomorrow night.  This bad boy was about 42" square.  I just love the way it looks on the dance floor....

Congrats to Adam & Carley!

Take it from me...14 years will be here before you know it  :)

Ahhh...Flowers

Today we took a little road trip to Zimmerman's Greenhouse...close to Vandalia, IL.  It was a trip that I hadn't made yet.  Mom, Angie and I jumped int he truck around 11 and took the little over an hour drive to go see what all the fuss was about....

Well....let me tell you...the fuss is definitely about something!!!  Now mind you...we are all three flower lovers...(like seriously...I think we have an illness, lol)  It was soooooo hot....who goes to a greenhouse when it's 100 degrees outside??  It's like we're asking for punishment!

But just look at all of these beautiful flowers!!!

I've never seen such gorgeous begonia's....LOVE them!

The shade house...still going strong in the middle of June.

Wonder how many we can fit in the truck  :)

Look at this one....GORGEOUS!!

I LOVE yellow & purple flowers together!

These planters were just huge...like 3.5' tall.

Wish the new house was done...I can see two of these on the front porch :)

Seriously...what do they do to their begonia's?

This was one of my favorites...how cute is this.  It's probably about 2' wide!

So between the three of us we FILLED the truck bed and cab, lol.  There was NO more room in the Inn.  We're going to have to make this trip again for sure.

Oh, and we had lunch at this cute little Amish Country Store just up the road from Zimmerman's.  What's better than a homemade hot ham & cheese sandwich for lunch and then buying bulk foods at the same place??  FUN!