Time

I'm having to come to terms with my poor time estimation skills. I'm learning that I frequently underestimate the time it takes to complete tasks. This house has helped me to realize this as every task has taken exponentially longer than anticipated. Today we Hung a new side door, made a cut in a kitchen cabinet to accommodate our fridge, and FINALLY finished ripping out the floor. I had the great help of a construction guru as well. So we are one week away from move-in... nowhere ready. We'll get there. It's just difficult to see where we are at in renovations. It looks as if we haven't made much progress. But, just in case I sound sad here- we CAN'T WAIT to move in to our first house! :-)

All Star Team

This weekend was another weekend of great progress. (Oh, if only Richard and I didn't have work and school during the week!) We had an all-star team helping us this weekend, and we just wanted to give a HUGE thanks to all of them:

Monica Murrell (aka my "monkey")

Stacy and Randy

Cory Green and Kate Thompson

                Rick and Chase Kenny

Thanks to these guys we were able to finish ripping up the rest of the flooring, paint the ceilings in all three bedrooms and the bathroom, prep all the bedroom walls for painting, and even get the first coat of paint down in the guest bedroom! What on earth would we do without you guys? THANKS!

I couldn't fit pictures of everyone (or of the house), so, be sure to click "view my gallery" on the photostream at the bottom of the page to see more pictures from today and previous workdays.

Mailbox

We have a mailbox now! I installed the mailbox tonight... took me an hour to get it up. We'll take a picture tomorrow. Other than that, I went over some holes and replaced them. This.weekend we're going to have to make some real headway. To be honest, we've started feeling the stress and overwhelming feeling associated with the need to move in 2 weeks. We need prayer and help!

Gettin it done

Today, we were so lucky and blessed to have two of Richard's brothers working with us. Chase and Rhett spent all day ripping up vinyl flooring in the kitchen. I could not believe what we found--5 layers of vinyl flooring! It was like digging our way back in time, all the way to 1960. There was literally a style of flooring for every decade. Hilarious! The house had only had 3 owners, so I guess each of them decided it was not worth the work to pull up what was already there.

Anyway, this project was so HUGE for us. Richard said multiple times that now he can see light at the end of the tunnel. Today helped us to see that with alot of hard work, we can really turn this house around. We've still got some flooring to pull up, but we are much farther along now. We made so much progress today thanks to Rhett and Chase!


I started on the lawn care-and after I finished the backyard and came around to start the front, I looked up and saw those two HUGE, beautiful trees in our front yard. And I also saw that they were now completely bare.

Richard and I don't own a rake or a leaf blower.

Across the street, there was a gentleman, Mark, who was working on his lawn most of the afternoon, so I walked over and introduced myself to him. I asked if he had an extra rake that I might be able to borrow for an hour or two. I told him that I'd bring it right back over tonight as soon as I finished with it. Mark went to his shed and pulled out two rakes, and said "you can just bring them back tomorrow when you're finished." I'm laughing now because he had a perfect view of our yard and those HUGE trees-allowing him better perspective on the project at hand. We ended up using both rakes... and yes, I will still be raking tomorrow.

Black Friday

Richard and I endured our first Black Friday shopping experience together today! We may not have experienced it to its full extent, seeing that we slept until 10:30--definitely missing any early bird specials. We had a truckful at Lowe's by the end of the evening, complete with all of our painting supplies, backsplash tiling for the kitchen, ceiling fans for the living room and guest bedroom, and even some new tools for Richard.

A Different Kind of Work

I went over to the house by myself today for the first time (first day of my Thanksgiving break!!!). It is such a great feeling to finally be working on the home, as opposed to talking and making lists of everything that needs to be done. At least now we can begin to check things off our list! My task for the day was more cleaning! I started with the bathroom ceiling, which had these strange, unidentified gooey spots on it. One of Richard's coworkers suggested that it might be nicotine. Regardless of what it was--it was a chore to clean, but it came off with some hard scrubbing. Then I took down all the old blinds and curtains, and vacuumed everything in the bedrooms--the ceiling fans, baseboards, windowsills, walls, etc... (I'm loving my little shopvac!) It was a full day of work, but I thoroughly enjoyed it It has been very refreshing, even in the few short days that we've had this home, to have another goal to work towards aside from all of my studying for school. I think this home is going to be a great thing for me. :)

ps. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BROTHER!

Clean Sweep

So first thing we set ourselves to doing on day one of homeownership was cleaning the filth!  The home we purchased was, unfortunately for the home and for the previous owner, foreclosed.  Thankfully for us its not in too bad of shape and could be move-in-ready after a bit of cleaning.  We, of course, want to paint and do some moderate renovation to the kitchen.
So the tasks for the day were to tackle the bathroom (unarguably the nastiest part), some general cleaning, and to safeguard our newly refinished hardwood floors with cardboard.  The sellers had removed the carpet to find hardwood in most of the house except the dining room and kitchen which is covered by 4 layers of vinyl!  They refinished them for us and they look beautiful.  There were some pet stains... but now they're "beauty marks." :-)

We also started ripping off the laminate backsplash in the kitchen.  That was Lindsey's first demolition project... which she obviously enjoyed.  Additionally I started to remove the cabinet doors.  Lindsey wants to refinish these later.

So... still have some more cleaning to do.  Maybe we'll bear the Black Friday madness and get some supplies for the projects to come!

Closing Day

There seems to be much excitement coupled with anxiety surrounding closing day.  Well, today was that day for us.  We met the lawyer (which I found odd that the first day you meet is on the CLOSING day) and the seller at 3:00pm and had all the papers signed by 3:30.  It took 30 minutes to close and thats even with my detailed questions to assure my knowledge of the contracts.  I always thought it SHOULD be a simple process... ours was, which now makes me wonder why closings can and seemingly often go awry.  Anyways...

We went to dinner with some friends to celebrate then packed up some sleeping bags and headed to the house.  Oh, and you can't go the first night without a bottle of champagne to celebrate! (To which we thank the Teeter).

Needless to say, our newly finished wood floors are pretty, but not comfortable to sleep on!

Now... now the fun begins...