progress

Well... it's been awhile, and we've been insanely busy with the house as well as lots of other things. The finished product in our heads of what the downstairs WILL look like eventually is still a little ways off, but not too much! We've just been finishing priming yesterday/today...

Major things still to do downstairs:

-PAINT! (obviously a huge step)

-have the bartop countertop come in to Lowes and then install it

-prepare the floors

-INSTALL the laminate flooring (though I think we might pay someone to do that, because honestly, we just want to be able to live peacefully in our house).

We're living here now... moved in last weekend to a 95% finished upstairs... but the downstairs is still a construction zone. Hence the lack of updates. But here are some pictures of the painted and carpeted upstairs, as well as rebuilding the stairway:

master bedroom. forgive the boxes.

office

"green room"/guest room.

A much more exciting update will come soon, with painted walls (and hopefully a bartop?) downstairs!

wall removal

So this past week - Gabe, Aaron, and Drew took out the wall for real, put up huge beams to hold up the second floor, moved the electrical wiring around, and put sheetrock over the beam, among other things... and then this weekend Gabe and I painted. As in, painted the entire upstairs - 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a hallway - a coat of primer, and 2 coats of paint. And baseboards too. Pictures of that to follow, but for now: the great disappearing wall...

cut-down studs that were the original wall

Gabe and Aaron putting in the first beam!

second beam:

beam in place, with temporary walls still there:

one wall being removed:

AND GONE:

Gabe posing on our future bar!

electrical work:

sheetrock-ing:

Soon to come: pictures of the finished paint job upstairs (and carpet, once the guy installs it this week)!

so far

Here's a quick list of what we've done up until now (though I'm sure I'm leaving out some steps):

-Ripped out all the carpet and padding, vinyl flooring, and wood floor in the entryway

-swept up the insane amount of dirt that had seeped under all this flooring

-went around and de-stapled the entire floor where the carpet/padding was (so, everywhere but the kitchen). Like 1000 staples, probably.

-cleaned, with a toothbrush and sponges, the bathroom floors/caulk around the edges of the floors

-cleaned the inside and outside and top of bathroom vanities, kitchen cabinets. Yes, the top of the cabinets. Let's just say I thought they were supposed to be beige until the rough part of the sponge revealed that they were in fact supposed to be white like the rest of the cabinets.

-built shelves in the garage to hold all our stuff

-got like 10 different paint samples and tested them out... and finally decided.

-vacuumed the cracks between the walls and floor at the baseboards

-began filling in all the dents, holes, and cracks in the walls upstairs, sanding them, and then dusting them off to get them ready to prime.

...so much more...

And the big project - Gabe and his contractor, Aaron, and another guy they work with, Drew, have started taking out the wall! It already looks and feels so much more open... or it will, once the temporary walls holding up our second floor are down...

Because pictures (and videos) say a thousand words, the wall project:

Gabe being visible in our living room from the kitchen. Success!

The temporary walls to hold up the second floor

current view from the dining room into the living room

Gabe and Drew adding the temporary walls:

Other projects/endeavors:

These pictures don't do justice to how unbelievably crooked the bottom wall of this staircase was. Or maybe you can tell?

So...

Other stair issues: they were covered in carpet (and padding, and a million staples) and now they are not!

sanding:

finished product:

The infamous de-stapling, and vacuuming:

aren't my safety goggles hot?

current master bedroom:

2 of many paint samples for downstairs. Going with the one on the bottom!

and finally, the geese neighbors: