Long overdue update

We are steadily working on the house. All that's left is some tiling, grouting and the trim. Once the trim is up it needs to have the finish coat put on and boy do I have a story for you...

David came home one evening he said "I was at Bob's house today and the painter was hand brushing on the polyurethane on the doors so I quizzed him all about it. He said it only takes him a half and hour to finish each door. So I have decided this is how we are going to finish the doors for the house and it will only take YOU a week to do this."

That was about three weeks ago and needless to say the doors have yet to be finished. So, based on me getting the work done we will never move into the new house.

Mom and Dad were here for Thanksgiving. They did help me stain the doors and we ate well while Mom was working in the kitchen. We have become very tired of eating out all the time!

Michelle loved having Grandma and Grandpa help her feed the horses each morning and evening. Grandma even helped her measure Cherokee for a blanket, although she drew the line at actually sewing him one!

Happy Thanksgiving

Well, turkey day is here and we are in the new house! Working, that is. David and I spent the morning at the new place while my mom and children prepared the Thanksgiving meal. David worked on tiling the tub deck and I stained doors. We came home to a house filled with wonderful aroma and enjoyed a delicious meal. Thanks Mom!

I would like to let you all know how thankful I am to have you as friends and relatives. The past year has been focused on the new house and at times there has been disappointment regarding our cancelling plans. Thank you all for your understanding and patience. We miss visiting our relatives and our friends. Thanks for reading our blog and making your comments. Many blessings to you. Love, Mindy

Another look at the kitchen

Progress is continuing on the house. The upper kitchen cabinets were installed and the drawer and cabinet pulls were put on. It's beginning to look like we have a real kitchen. David began installing the appliances yesterday. The trim for the microwave is not going on correctly and the dishwasher is white rather than stainless steel. Other than that it was a productive day.

Granite...CHECK

The guys from Milan Stoneworks arrived and installed our granite for the kitchen and the master bathroom. They were so efficient. The counters look wonderful! Thanks guys! We're one more step closer to being done!

A maze of doors

We began a new project last night, staining the interior doors (two are completed). They look nice and they'll look better when they are all stained!

Floors....CHECK!

I finished grouting the floors last night. What a wonderful feeling!!! As you can see from my silly face I am ecstatic. The tiles in the girl's and the master bathrooms were soooo much easier to clean than the other tile. I'm glad we did these rooms last. They were like dessert after eating an icky dinner!

Sanded and sealed

Last week Tanner sanded and sealed the hardwood floors. Here are the master bedroom (grey walls), my office(blue walls) and the playroom.

Cici, Callie the Calico Kitty

Happy birthday to me! Meet my birthday present to myself. This is Cici. She was found at Asburry park by my friend Suzi who spent two hours attempting to rescue her and four other kittens. She captured two. On Halloween, she asked me if I wanted a kitten. When I let her know I only wanted a female she said one of them was a calico female. (I had decided my next cat would be a calico long before this conversation.) Wednesday, I visited Suzi and brought the kitten home. The kids are ecstatic, David and Allen (our other cat) are not. I took her to the vet, they said she is about six months old. She is leery of the dog, other than that she seems to be right at home.

Autumn sunshine

This beauty is surrounding the driveway to our house. The trees are so golden that the glow and during all this rain I have a little spot of sunshine to drive through.

Changing the light fixture

Last Friday while preparing the floor in the laundry room for grout, I changed the light fixture. (The original one did not shed enough light.) I took all the proper safety precautions disassembled the original light then I installed the new one with very few problems. Once completed, I turned on the light creating a very bright room! About thirty seconds later ALL the power in the house went out! I wondered what I could have done and, of course, David was out of town hunting. Something always happens when he is hunting. To find out if this was and outage for our area I called a neighbor, no answer. I called a friend who works for the PUD, no answer. So I shut the house up and left, still wondering what I could have done. I drove to a neighbor's house to find her also in the dark. Yippee! I am not a home wrecker!

Grout is a four letter word

The main part of the house is tiled! I have no idea how much square footage there is but I do know that it's alot! David's job is done and I'm in the midst of mine, grouting. The kids are helping me. Our usual grouting "session" begins with vacuuming the tile and grout lines, I mix the grout, after the grout has been on the floor for thirty minutes, the kids begin the initial wash. I finish grouting in time to help with the initial wash. We then go get a snack, come back in an hour and begin the final wash (Ha Ha). It's not really the final wash because I have to go over the tile with a vinegar and water solution to remove the shiny epoxy remainder from the tiles. I keep telling myself this is all worth it because the grout never has to be stained and we'll never replace it!

Staining trim

We have been extremely busy the past two weeks working on the house. I was able to find a couple of minutes to update you.

I stained all the trim wood for the house with the exception of some of the baseboard. I am working in the "poker room" in the shop and have filled it up. The baseboard trim is in twenty foot lengths so I can only stain five at a time as that's all that fits on the sawhorses. Once they are dry I stack them, bring in more and stain again.

The hardwood floors are have been in for a couple of weeks. Tanner and his crew will be sanding and finishing them this week. The pictures with hardwood are the master bedroom and Michelle's bedroom. David did a great job, they look super!

The cabinets are slowly being installed. The correct ends arrived about two weeks ago so the island and the bookcase could be installed. After that, David was able to install tile.

Here's David and Mike working in Susannah's room. My office floor is completely in. The playroom and all the kid's rooms still need the closet floors finished and we have not begun the flooring in our bedroom. I'm sure that will be this weekend.

I can post pictures again!!

Here are some pictures of the house over the last few weeks. I'm so excited that I can post these again! I spoke with Lisa this morning and she informed me that the blog is not the same without pictures. So here they are. One is of the dining room and the other is Richard's bathroom. The grout is still not in yet. I have been staining the wood trim this week and David has continued to work on the hardwood. Our septic was installed yesterday. Hopefully by the end of this weekend we'll have a working bathroom in the shop.

Update 10/9/06

The outside painting is done. We still have to put up the cedar shakes but David's on another project now, flooring. He tiled all last week after work every night and a lot got done! The kid's hall, Richard's bathroom, the dining room, part of the kitchen (we're still waiting on cabinets to go in) and almost all of the living room are done. There would be pictures but I'm still having problems posting pictures, any suggestions all you techies out there?
This weekend was spent installing hardwood in Richard's bedroom, Susannah's bedroom, the playroom and my office. Mike Gregor was over Saturday and the two guys with Richard's help got three of the rooms mostly completed. Sunday David worked on the office with my sporadic help, that room was a battle for him! Today the hardwood floor guy is over and finishing up the rooms (installing the floors around the vents and installing the vents). It is looking good!
I was going to begin grouting, but after speaking with our friend who is a tile installer I'm a bit nervous to work with epoxy grout. Apparently it is difficult to clean the tiles properly and I need a lesson, or maybe I need to hire someone to do it for me!

Siding....CHECK

We can check siding off our list! We finished it up this weekend and got the house primed. We will be painting the outside Wednesday! After weeks of temperatures in the 80's and 90's it cooled down to rainy 60 degree days. Boy was I nervous that fall had come to the Great Northwest! It warmed up to the 80's again so we kicked it into gear and got a bunch of outside work done.

I'm having a problem uploading pictures to the blog site. I will post some as soon as I get this "technology" figured out.

Cabinets

The cabinets are in the process of installation. The company will be making new doors and replacing the other ones. We have found a few adjustments we need to make. These will come after the installation is complete.

Already repainting!

David absolutely did not like the purple paint in the dining room, so it is now rust. I'm glad I took a picture before because I liked the way it looked. Here's what the dining room looks like now.

Bad House Day

Some people have bad hair days. Well, David and I had a bad house day. The cabinets arrived today. With anticipation I walked into the house to see them and the first thing I noticed is the style of the doors is wrong. I wanted a shaker style door with a straight edge both on the outside and the inside of the frame. While the cabinets look nice, this is not the door I was expecting to see. David rushed over to cut the expansion lines in the concrete and first discovered the back porch is not square. (It's off by three inches.) Second, he frantically pulled the forms from the concrete, struck the chalk lines, got the saw, pulled the starter twice, and the rope broke. The lines won't be cut tonight.

Here's some of the rooms

Things are coming together at the house. Lights, outlets and switches are being installed. Rooms are getting ready for flooring and we are NOT ready for school. How can we stay at the house til 9:00 each night when the kids need to be in bed at 8:00? We have been eating around 9:30 each night lately! I really like the light fixtures I choose. I forgot what they looked like when I picked the paint colors and they go together very well. (Almost like I new what I was doing!)
The pink/brown room is Michelle's
The tan/purple is the dining room
The green/purple room is Susannah's
The green room is Richard's
The blue-green room with the light fixture is the powder bath.

Frozen Mike's and plaid

Last weekend I had help from Dad, Kim, Laurie, Mariah, Bryce, and Trisha along with my family painting the inside of the house. We were expecting cabinets the following Tuesday so we busted some paint cans and frozen Mike's hard limeade open and got to work. Fortunately, more painting was done than drinking! We started in the kid's area then moved west. I am fortunate to have the help of friends, thanks a bunch!

The "S" is Susannah's mark. She painted that in every room she worked on.

Paint

Here's Dad busy pariming the siding. I think it could be a full time job! We are working on the east side of the house and are about done caulking and priming.
The paint crew (David and Dale) came in and painted the ceilings yesterday. I originally bought a color which was too yellow so back to Portland I went to buy "Dover White."
I am debating on the outside color of the house. I am leaning toward the color on the right.

Getting dirty

We have been caulking and priming the siding the past few days while David is getting the porches ready for concrete. This evening the kids bathed in the primer. Quite a site! No pictures though, I was sticky with caulk so I was not going to touch my camera!

We're hungry

I looked out my bedroom window this morning and this is what I saw... Three hungry horses. Apparently we did not feed them early enough
so they were letting us know.

Siding

David has been working long hours on the siding, look at the progress he has made! He has had some help from friends and the kids have helped a bunch. The siding will be painted as you can see some of it has already been primed. I have been busy with the last of the tax returns for 2005 (extensions are due today) and catching up with plumbing book work. Last week was Vacation Bible School so not much got done in the office!

More drywall

The drywallers put the first coat of mud on the walls. It looks nice in the house, I'm hoping the inside of the house will be ready for paint while my dad is here. If not, there's plenty of other work to do! We listed our house with an agent the other day. I hope to get the yard cleaned up with Dad, he does such a nice job. We have always joked that we should put our house on the market after Dad has been here since it always looks so nice. Well, this time we're doing just that!