DIY progress...

Thursday, Feb. 18
I had a chance to spent a few hours over there and managed to get a first coat of paint in the playroom. (pic to follow)


weekend of Feb. 20 (this is all Chris and Richard)
and
weekend of Feb. 27 (Chris and I worked on this, while Grandma Mary and Sarah took great care of all the kiddos)
Here is a quick iphone "before" picture of their first huge project. Their initial goal was to cut down the tile where you see the tape lines and lower the mantle. This is in the room that we will be using as a TV/Family Room, and there was just no good place to put a TV as it was. Once they cut the tile down, they realized there was a brick wall directly behind the current dry wall. This meant there would be no place to hide unsightly electrical wires once we hung our TV. Lucky for me, Richard and Chris are beyond your average "do it yourselvers" and they went ahead and "firred out" the wall. (I just asked Chris how to explain what they did and he told me they "firred it out", but I wouldn't know what that meant if I was reading this, so I'm going to go ahead and say they framed a new wall that sticks out a little more in the middle where the TV will be.) They also ran the wires that we will need, so it's all ready for a TV.
Before, with their tape lines:


During:


When the dry wall guys were back on Monday, they finished it out for us.


Their next big project was in the kids' bathroom. Which, for at least a few months, will be our bathroom as well. The new stairs caused the kids' bathroom to lose 9 inches, which means the tile was torn up a few feet in. Chris and Richard used the tiles that were saved during demo and put them back down. Here's the floor after they laid the tile back down.


and here's the floor now, after Chris spent a ridiculous number of hours scraping out old grout and then re-grouting it. I am in awe of how clean/new it looks!!


Next on their to-do was yet another floor! We decided to put a cork floor in the playroom. Initially, it was going to be carpet, but when we started to think about the functions we really need in a playroom, carpet did not fit the bill. You can't push a toy car or train on carpet, or put a puzzle together. Paint and other craft messes don't clean out of carpet so easily either. We needed something smooth, but not too hard and something that would be easy to clean. It didn't take a lot of research to come across cork. (and then I remembered that my friend Gretchen had done it in their basement playroom about a year ago, so I was able to drill her and find out that it should be the perfect solution for us!)

So...Chris and Richard installed the floor in just a couple of hours. I don't have a picture, b/c they covered it up so that the ceiling dry wall did not get it all messy. Here is the image I took from the website, (ifloor.com) Following that is the paint swatch. It looks gray and boring on here, but it's a really nice soft gray/blue. It's Benjamin Moore Quiet Moments.




Here's a picture (again, iphone) of the playroom wall painted, with a piece of the cork next to it for reference.



And that leads us to baseboards. Of which, Chris and Richard purchased and painted enough to cover the whole house!


Weekend of February 26

Took the french doors off new dining room and pulled down the trim (plan to reframe it w/o hinges b/c we are going to leave door off)
Painted window and door trim in dining room- 2 coats
Painted dining room
I wish this picture really showed off the color. It looks pretty boring here, but it's just the perfect soft neutral. We'll be doing this same color (Benjamin Moore Clay Beige) at 50% intensity in the entry/hall.



Painted the kitchen (1 coat) Benjamin Moore Bennington Gray
(also replaced all of the knobs/pulls, which is hard to see in this picture)


Put shelf liner in a few doors/drawers in the kitchen
Took toilet out of kids' bathroom
Cleaned toilet

If you are wondering who had the honor of cleaning the toilet, that would be Chris. But, before you think I got off easy, check this out:



Yes, that is our refrigerator. And here is what it looks like now. I used a Magic Eraser Bath Scrub and WOW- I was sooo impressed. It didn't make it any less disgusting of a job, but it did make it much easier. After using the Magic Eraser, I went back over with a regular sponge and water and then wiped it out again. In order to REALLY get it clean, we took every removable part out to clean it and the space around it. Even these ledges here came out.


And because that is just too gross to end on, here's a sneak peek of a project in the works! We're turning an Ikea sideboard cabinet into a vanity for the kids' bathroom!

Timeline/Progress Part 1

This was going to be one REALLY long and boring post lacking any fun "after" pictures. My goal was just to record some of the things we've done and have had done professionally in the last 2 weeks! However, an hour into writing it, I realized it's just way too much for one post and way too boring w/o after pictures! So, I'm breaking it up and will do separate posts for separate weekends. (However, Part 1 is still not going to have any pictures, sorry!)

A quick update on the overall progress. It's been dry wall and more dry wall for the pros. It hasn't been drying as quickly as it was expected to, so they've had to bring in heaters on some days and wait longer between layers. We met with our contractor yesterday and he thinks they will be finished Monday!! That means the floor guy will start on Tuesday- he'll be putting new hardwood at the foot of the staircase, on the stairs going down into the back room and then putting end caps on the main stairs. (There will be a carpet runner in the middle of the stairs.) The finishing work will also happen this week and then next week, they'll just be cleaning up!

So, what have WE been doing??? Before I go into details, I have to say how wonderful it is to have at least one half of our family living 2 hours away. 3 weekends ago, Grandma Mary was here all day Friday and Saturday so that we could be over there working!! Last weekend, Chris and our brother-in-law, Richard spent two very long days working over at the house last weekend. (Sarah and I had the much more difficult job of taking care of four Children. See here.

Then, Mary came back AGAIN this weekend!!! We are sooooo lucky!! So, here's what we did with some of that time!

weekend of Feb. 12:
finished the paint in Aidric's room (including closet)
cleaned the blinds and windows in Aidric's room and rehung the blinds
cleaned the walls in several rooms to be painted (with TSP)
primed the hall, playroom, kitchen
made my 100th trip to Benjamin Moore, to consult with Kathleen, the best Benjamin Moore color helper EVER
tested my 10th "neutral" in the hall
finished painting the trim and closet/shelves in the downstairs bathroom
tape/mud on ceiling in playroom (where Chris had scraped the popcorn the weekend before)
I know there was more- but, this is all I can remember right now! I promise the next post will be more interesting =)

it's looking a lot like HOME

It's amazing the difference dry wall makes! They just started yesterday and already we have a bedroom, bathroom, closet, home office and most of our laundry room!

Our bedroom, looking into the bathroom (behind the bathroom is the walk-in closet)


Same thing, just camera to the left a little.

Same thing, but camera to the right. You can see Chris's office where he and Aidric are standing- he's going to have a 10 second commute to work =)



The laundry room.

I'm 99% sure this is it!

The color scheme for our paint on the first floor!


(huge thank you to Mollie for putting this "color strip" together for me!)

Going from left to right:
Providence Olive (guest room that is to immediate left when entering home)
Clay Beige (hall, entry, going up the stairs)
Rockport Gray (one wall in kitchen and playroom- which is across the hall from kitchen)
Slate (living room) Actually, the slate is a Restoration Hardware color and I had it color matched with Benjamin Moore paint. The color number is 1476 if anyone cares, but I don't know the name!

orange

Nope. Not painting anything orange. We have an orange tree in our new backyard! How fun is that? They are the sweetest, juiciest oranges too. I'm really looking forward to fresh squeezed orange juice!

pints of paint

Kate, as the only commenter on this blog thus far, not only do you get a vote, I'll take your advice! I 100% agreed with you once we took the swatch over to the house and looked at in the natural light there. It was definitely too pinky. So, this is the next sample to try out.

Clay Beige by Benjamin Moore



I also picked up some samples and pints of the following to test out in other areas.

Living Room- Restoration Hardware Slate


Our bedroom- Benjamin Moore Gray Cashmere:


Guest Bedroom- Restoration Hardware Gravel:


I have no exact use for this one right now, but I liked it and I was a roll, so I bought a small sample of it too!
Restoration Hardware: Graphite



Juliet's bedroom- Benjamin Moore Wispy Pink:




Any comments/advice always welcome!!

Sneak Peek

Stairs!

They actually went in last week, but I forgot to update here.



And these are two of the paint colors we're choosing between for our entry, hallway, main living room downstairs...

Benjamin Moore Carlisle Cream



Benjamin Moore Bar Harbor Beige