Progress Is A Beautiful Thing!

 

 

In the span of a weekend, so much can be accomplished!  It was a very productive weekend on the homestead.  Michael and Gary managed to get the giant hole in the bathroom floor sealed up, the French door installation completed and the drywall in the kitchen put up.  My friend, Diane, is going to give me a lesson in mudding as she’s done this many times before.  But, alas, we need to wait for drier and a bit warmer weather.  It’s been a colder than average start to summer this year here in southern New Hampshire.  I’m not complaining as I’m a person who just doesn’t function well in the heat, but it makes paint and joint compound tough to dry.

 

I am such a softy, I actually cried when I came from working in another room to see the first sheets of drywall going up.  For quite a while there, it felt like we wouldn’t get to this point, I’m so thankful that we are getting to these steps which make the final homestead an actual probability.  Gary told me it would be a good day when I saw the drywall going on, and he was right.  I still have to pick out the tile to go on the back splash, and we have yet to order our countertops since the cabinets aren’t in place yet, but it feels much closer to the reality now.

 

 

 

They also got the French doors installed.  Michael got the lock set in place yesterday and it is set, we just need to add the drywall and trim to this area.  It lets a wonderful amount of sunlight in and is so pretty.  I’m loving the character it is adding and is allowing for the airy feel I was hoping for in this room.  Long way to go, haven’t painted a thing in there yet, but right now the room is still holding the cabinets and all the tools and equipment so will be one of the last rooms we are able to actually paint.

The other huge thing that happened this week is that the 6 trees we wanted removed are gone.  It is a very big difference in sunlight on the house, hoping it doesn’t mean we’ll be roasting in there this summer, but oh, the blessed light it adds to the whole interior.  The large oak blocked about 65% of the sunlight for the house and with that gone, so are most of the mosquitoes and black flies. No where for them to hide out of the sun now, yay!  I was there when they took the trees down and I had a big sad spot for the ol’ grandmother oak.  It was a long process for them to remove it and just the trunk alone weighed 11,000 pounds!  The crane was able to weigh it as they lifted high over the garage (GULP!).  I felt sad to be removing her, like I was betraying her somehow.  But when I examined the trunk with the guy who cut it, it was clear that the rot was well underway even into the base of the trunk.  He said it was a good thing we took it down now before it cut a huge line through out house when it came down on its own.  Since my oldest bedroom was right under it, that was not something we were willing to chance.  The loss of the white pines was welcome because they blocked so much of the sky there.  We have sun, and gardening will be a whole lot easier now for sure.  Oh, but the poison ivy…one of the tree crew told me he had never seen so much poison ivy before.  Five of the six trees we took down were covered in old poison ivy vines, and it is everywhere on the property.  Goats, goats, here we come!

Michael was also able to get our vanity in place and the water turned on (isn’t it so pretty?).  This took some doing as the sediment in the lines plugged up the faucet and it took some work to get it on and running well.  He also put a whole home filtration system on so that the orange iron infused water would no longer be pouring out of the faucet or swirling around the toilet. We’ll be getting a water softener system as well to counter act that little problem.  We had one house that had so much iron in the water that we ruined many loads of clothes washing them and having the rust stains remain in the fabric. Not doing that again!

I also have the bathroom almost all painted.  Just a bit of touch up and it will be done.

Now you can see where the shower is going to go.  This is the shower pan, and hopefully the walls will be done soon.  We did run into a problem with the tile.  When the guys pulled up the tile, they pulled up a bit more than they needed to in the end because they were planning on framing the back wall.  The window will be covered over for now until we redo the siding outside.  But they don’t need the framing now, so there are a couple of rows of tile missing that mostly were broken in the process.

I have been able to rescue about 45 of the blue squares and we were able to find some tile that will blend in nicely with the existing tile.  Can you see the new tile in the picture?  Unfortunately, we were only able to find some with white “diamonds” in it, so I’m trying to get enough blue ones salvaged to just cut the white out and replace it with blue ones.  I may have to hunt ebay to see if anyone may have some of it left from an old project. Never know what you can find on ebay.  Worst case scenario, we leave the white diamonds, which will be under a  bath mat for the most part anyway.  We also have a bunch of old plumbing holes (see below) to cover up as well and some broken things there, so it will be interesting for this renovator who’s only done basic tiling to make this look seamless.

 

Below is a better picture of the new tile we’ll be blending in, and the old tile (yuk) before I pulled the blue diamonds out, and then the tiles removed.  We have been able to find new sheets with black or white diamonds, but not the blue glass ones.

So, it was a very busy weekend at the little homestead.  We had a family party to go to for our niece and nephew’s high school graduations (yes, twins in case you were confused), so we had a respite from the work on Sunday afternoon.  A good time was had by all, its fun to gather with them and our brother-in-law’s family as well.  They have welcomed us as their family, and it makes for some pretty fun get togethers, a few of them are wicked funny, and we enjoy the time together.  Plus, the boys get to have some basketball fun contests with their cousins, so it’s all a good time.

I’ll end with a picture of the boys’ den all painted nice and neat…except for the floors, which have now been cleared off and washed and are currently waiting for warmer weather so I can put a coat of primer on them in preparation for their final color.  I absolutely love the color of the walls and how they turned out. I’m not a good painter, so there are plenty of blunders but because I love the color so much, I’m able to overlook some of the imperfections.  My friend, Diane, helped me with some of this, so it’s a labor of love and some laughs as well. And all told, I am doing the best I can, so I’m okay with it not being perfect.  This is a total of 5 coats of paint on the bottom paneling because it used to be red…remember when?

I thought I had a better picture of it all red, but you get the idea from the above photos.  All the panels and trim were deep red and covering that up was a monumental task.  But, I’m so happy with the calming and peaceful feel of the soft gray.  It sure feels like a New England beach to me, how about you?