Hammering Away

Its been a month of working on the little things. You know, like replacing the knobs on one set of hall closets because one was stripped. Painting the flag on the mailbox neon orange because it was so faded that the mail person was not seeing the flag when it was up. He/she sure doesn't miss it now!

We have had the electricians out to do a few things. They have finished wiring the shop for the trailer voltage. Now it can be used as overflow housing for guests. LOL. But I did get a shock when I went in there today and flipped a switch. That will have to be looked at when they come back to replace the doorbell and figure out why one wall of outlets in the living room is not grounded (found during the inspection).

We also decided what exactly we want to spend the big money on for "phase one".

We went and picked out floors for the girls wing of the house...their bedrooms, bathrooms and hall. At this time we put off the rest of the carpet areas as the carpet is new and anytime you do work you find problems so we thought it would be smarter to start smaller in preparation for the unknown things that would crop up.

Since the company also had a granite shop, we picked out a remnant for Mouses little bathroom while we were at it.

So the brown Charles Bronson movie sink is now...

...a nice little granite instead of that molded marble look.  And look, when we removed the mirror we found yet MORE wallpaper. This is going to be  a fun room to tear down.

On her floor we got rid of that carpet. Really, who puts carpet in a bathroom? So we had that ripped up....

and found our first surprise....

..within the rectangle of wooden carpet tack strips, underneath the toilet was a huge carpenter ant nest. Eggs and all. What is it with me and ants??? They were coming up under the wax seal around the pipe. So I poisoned the snot out of them and called the exterminator who was nice enough to come out the next morning. This would be our first extra expense. But its the same guy that has always done the house and he was excited because they have treated the bathroom three times over the years and never figured out where they were coming from. Now we know. Underground around the pipe. This should be a fixed problem from this point on.

Now we have a nice tile floor in browns that goes well with the granite. The pictures didn't really turn out well as the flash whites it out a bit.

In Songbirds room we started stripping the wallpaper.

And we found unfinished drywall underneath.  Are you kidding me?? Who does that???? So this paper has been up since the house was built in the 70's.  So first expense in this room was...

..something to help me get the under layer of the wallpaper off of the paper of the drywall. Not going real well.  Next expense will be hiring someone to come out and seal and texture the wall so I can paint. I need to check under all the other papers in the house too. If those need the same thing might as well get it all done at once.

Her bathroom tiles are a grey to match the blue molded marble tub and counters. She has so much counter tops that we chose not to replace them at this time. Hers are also the least obnoxious of all the bathrooms.

All this is occurring over a full week.  I moved the girls into the upstairs as we had to remove everything from the rooms - including the closets.

It was fun watching it all come together but I spent the week with an asthma cough. The adhesives (and lets face it, the pest control poisons) just about did me in.

But the end result...

Well worth it.

And guess what? See that door in the hall? Well behind it is a linen closet I didn't even know was there until they laid the wood in it! Bonus.

All our materials for these floors were from discontinued or rock bottom close out prices.  It limited us on what we could chose but I don't think that was so bad. I love the hand scrapped look floors for the girls rooms as its is a little more forgiving when it comes to showing scratches that the high gloss stuff already in other parts of the house.  I'm not in love with the brown tiles in the small bath but the grey tiles look really great. All in all I am happy with our first big project.

Now its back to working on wall paper. I have been dragging my feet as not only is it not fun, I'm also really afraid of that phone call to get someone out here for an estimate on texturing them. In a perfect world it wont be much and I'll have them do the painting also.

I never have lived in a perfect world....