The Bathroom is Completed!!

Before, March 2009

After, January 2011

This is behind the door.

The only thing that is still from the original bathroom is the toilet. The pedestal sink was from Craigslist. The cupboard door is wood from a high school teacher's fallen barn. The room looks amazing and couldn't have been completed without the help of friends and family. Thank you Dad, Jon, Jim, Mom, and Maggie.

A Little Bit of Everything

This weekend we progressed with the "little bits." Kevin worked on the window casing and dry fit the window molding.

He also finished the door frame for the bathroom. I think it is safe to say that once the door frame is done being painted, the bathroom is finished! Anything else is "cosmetic." Yeah!!

We also painting the closet leading into the back bedroom.

We Have Worms...

and that's a good thing :)

Kevin bought us a VermiHut Worm Bin for Christmas, something that I have wanted since reading Stewart's, The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms. We are very excited to cut down on the food waste and have great fertilizer for our house plants and garden. So far, though, the 200 red wigglers are getting acclimated to their new home.

Shoulda But Didn't

Ya, so I shoulda cleaned the brick before putting up the insulation. Before the drywall. Before painting. But... I didn't. So, that meant that I had to protect all of our hard work from the soot and debris that came splattering off the chimney as I cleaned. I won't say it is sparkling clean, but I won't worry about smudgy fingerprints or getting clothes dirty from brushing up against it.

Working on the Floors

We had the ambitious thought that we could tear up the rugs today in the back bedroom and start sanding. The tearing up part wasn't hard at all. Even fining a sander to rent wasn't so bad either. It is deciding how far to sand the floors down that has us slightly befuddled. There are surface stains that would probably come out with fine grit sand paper. But there are quite a few water stains and one random size 7 footprint that need to go away.

While we were tearing up the rug, we thought we might as well take it out in the closet too. This was an easy decision because as we were pulling and folding the rug, clouds of plaster dust and construction debris from at least two different projects were poofing up into the air! This meant, though, that we also had to pull off the floor molding and will have to move it down to accommodate for the lack of rug! Then I got the idea that the "old" paint doesn't match the new and there were marks in the wall from construction stuff...so now, we have to attack designing/figuring out the entryway into the back bedroom and paint/repaint the closet.

Here are the colors of the back bedroom. (These are pretty true to what is there--a moss green and "soft candlelight".)

I was having fun pulling up the padding. It just kind of pops off the staples...you know me, the simple things in life keep me amused.

Attic Insulation

Once the insulation man told us that we could use a lot more insulation in the attic (at least another 8") Kevin has been hard at work rearranging the pink popcorn, moving it to the eaves and hard-to-reach-with-a-roll kind of spots. A couple nights with sore knees and bloody spots on his head from stinking roofing nails... But the good news is it is almost complete. The bad news is, he found a place where one of our chimneys is leaking :(

Picture this: Kevin's little GTI with 8 rolls of insulation! (I wish I had gotten a picture of that!)

(da man emerging from the attic cave)



(before)



(after additional insulation)



(water stains from leaking chimney)




Oh, and Rudolph came to visit...

8 hours of baking

There was merriment to be had on the Summit this weekend! People were covered in flour, the air smelled of gingerbread, Christmas tunes were filtering through the speakers, and tummies were filling from quality control sampling.



The list of cookies and other deliciousness made:

many dozens of gingerbread + frosted
shortbread
70 finger cookies + the few that were sacrificed for quality control
lemon yogurt cake
chicken Parmesan
yummy rugelach (apple butter and cinnamon & sugar)
oven pancake

Weekend well fed/spent!