Wow.

Well, this entry has been a long time coming. As one might imagine, we have been ridiculously busy, but are well on our way. The wood paneling is all out. The tile has all been cleared out (well...almost...there is still a small amount in some delicate areas). The ugly, ugly backsplash in the kitchen is gone (the cabinets are still green, but no longer attached to the walls...all in good time). The masonry walls are all furred out and the house already feels warmer.

Kitchen cabinets are out! Backsplash is gone!

We finished running all the wiring, which ended up being a much bigger job than we originally thought. However, we now have ceiling fan boxes in all of the bedrooms, and all of the outlets and switches are ready to be wired into place. We have found some very strange things as we have been working on the house, and a large box full of exposed wires in the attic was one of them. Wait until you hear about some of the patching jobs we have discovered! But the electrical was somewhat of a nightmare. Literally, for Lee. He woke up in a panic on at least two separate occasions and started telling at me to stay away from the wires. After asking what he was talking about, he started asking where he was...and thought he was in the attic. Yes, my poor husband is having dreams in which he is stuck in the attic working on wiring (and I am there trying to mess it all up/electrocute myself. Truly, not very far off from reality). Poor Lee.

Right now we are in the midst of putting up drywall (almost all is up) and mudding. Oh, drywall mud...it just takes forever. And then a little longer.

There were 33 small recessed lights throughout the house, none of which can be within 3 inches of anything. Almost all of them were directly next to beams in the attic. This meant that new holes needed to be cut for the lights or they needed to be removed. All of those holes also needed to be filled with a patch and then covered with mesh and drywall mud. We did a pretty good job, except I patched one hole before the light was moved. Not too bad to only have to take one down and redo it! That was a "duh" moment for me. Fortunately, almost everyone can be blamed for some small part--Shane said to patch ALL the holes, Lee did not move the light, I patched the wrong hole, and De mudded over it. But...I DID put the patch in the wrong hole, and the was a chalk line running over it indicating where the light should be...I choose to blame lack of sleep.

I realize this is rather short, but it has been a very long four days working on the house, and I still have some things to do around the house that I am actually living in. I promise that there will not be such a delay before my next entry. More soon...there is much more to tell...

Nothing but the best...

See title of this post. Note date on book.

There was a creature incident on Thursday, but I have decided not to blog about it because I am genuinely afraid that my brother will never visit me if he reads about it. I will provide verbal details to those who are not squeamish about things with eight legs. Let me assure everyone that this will no longer be an issue by the time anyone is actually able to stay in the house. The hole above the stove in the photo below may or may not have been involved.

(It was.)

On a less dramatic note, we took down the cabinets. In doing so, we took down the hood over the stove. Typically, when there is a cabinet above a hood, there is a large vent in the cabinet so that the fan in the hood functions as a fan. This was not the case. Instead, the hood was just attached to the bottom of the cabinet. Did this stop the previous inhabitants from using the fan? Of course not! There is a large greasy circle on the bottom of the cabinet. The photo is on my cell phone, I will add it to this post when I upload the pics to my computer.

I did not spend much time at the house during the week, but Lee and his Dad worked to get our new electrical box in. I have to say, it is beautiful. Here are some photos of their progress:

Lee enjoys making holes in the wall.

Messing with all those wires, and who gets shocked? Me!!

They also cleaned the furnace. Apparently there was so much crap in and on it, that after Shane got half of the fan cleaned the furnace became unbalanced and needed to be taken apart. Eep! This was fixed and the furnace is working. It looks practically new!

We did not work on Wednesday, and we spent Thursday and Friday evening taking down the cabinets, putting together Lee's table saw, and other small tasks (scraping some thinset off the floor...thinset is used to adhere tile to the floor).

On Saturday we made our fourth trip to the dump. The turquoise bathtub in the hall bath is out! I was a little sad to see it go (but only a little...). We removed a bunch of the leftover tile, began removing drywall in preparation for wiring, and Grandpa continued working on the yard.

This photo is not blurry. It was really that dusty.

Have you ever mopped a ceiling? This was one of the odder experiences I've had. Nadim stopped by on Saturday and helped De and I clean the living room. I think spraying a hose in your house is stranger than mopping the walls and ceilings. That said, it looks SO much better, and the dust has been cut down dramatically on that end of the house.

Practically sparkling.

For some reason, Nadim agreed to come back on Sunday, but this time we let him knock some holes in the wall. We removed the drywall from two of the rooms so that we can furrow out the wall to insulate the house a bit better (there are several masonry walls where we will be doing this).

Fun times at the Haywoods. Feel compelled to help yet?

Today (Monday), I cleaned our Waste Management bin!! There was mold. It was pretty gross. Lee and his Dad worked on wiring all weekend, and are continuing to do so. There are now grounds leading to most rooms, and the lights are ready to go in two of the bedrooms. Lee also managed to add some more insulation to some of the pipes while he was in the attic.

Poor Lee...

After eradicating the mold, I took down the closet doors in the bedrooms, removed more stinking wood paneling from over the closets, and started sweeping up the drywall mess in the office. There are plenty of odd jobs to take care of at the moment. Anyway, once again it is late. I will add some more photos once the cell phone pictures make it onto my laptop, and I have some wood paneling before and after photos to add. We are making progress!

So it begins...

Truthfully, it began a little over a week ago. Remodeling, that is...the "buying a home" thing is an entirely different and much longer story. I wanted to start a blog to keep others up-to-date on what we are up to as we work on our new home (and, might I add, our FIRST home!). Who doesn't love looking at "before and after" photos?

I have been taking notes in anticipation of forgetting everything before beginning the blog, so here are the highlights so far:

Day 1 (12/30): For those of you who don't know, our house flooded. Twice. Once about a year ago when a pipe burst in one of the guest bedrooms (referred to as Riley's room, for our dog most assuredly needs her own room). A second pipe burst just after Thanksgiving as we were trying to close on the house (in the other guest bedroom, which we are calling...guest bedroom). I believe that this is the main reason why most people think we are crazy, as we continued to try to buy the house AFTER a pipe burst and flooded all the bedrooms...and the dining room...and part of the living room...anyway, enough background. Job numero uno was insulating the pipes in order to prevent any additional bursts. Lee and I spent Day 1 as homeowners crawling around on our bellies in the attic, moving around pieces of plywood so that we could access as many pipes as possible. So far so good, no additional floods.

Day 2 (12/31): On the second day we purchased insulation for the attic. There is virtually no insulation up there, aside from what was added in order to appease the underwriter of our home loan. We are still waiting to put in the insulation, as we have a number of things to do in the attic before we fill it with scratchy pink fluff. We did not get much else done as this was New Year's Eve, and there was a party to throw. :-)

Day 3 (1/1): We introduced ourselves to our neighbors, and warned them of the noise that they were going to have to endure in the immediate future. The neighbors have been very understanding--I think they are thrilled that someone is occupying the house, and that there may soon be one nice and normal paint color on the front of the house rather than 4 patches of sample colors. Lee tore up the tile in the living room, and several friends stopped by to check the place out. The living room tile was deceptively simple...

Lee tearing out the first tile


Living Room complete!

Day 4 (1/2): Kitchen and dining room tile was MUCH more difficult to tear out. Lee worked at that as I tore down wood paneling. Discovery #1: a wrecking bar was a great Christmas present for me, contrary to popular belief. I have gotten more use out of it than anything else I received. The entryway in from the carport looks SO much better without the wood panels and arches! I still find it mind-boggling that someone would have done that to the poor house.

Kerry removing the wood paneling in the carport entry

Day 5 (1/3): I continued tearing down wood panels while Lee tried to organize some of the mess by stacking tiles that were still intact and sweeping to create some pathways. I started tearing out the hundreds of nails in the wall from the wood paneling (and am thankful that the previous owner did NOT use glues to attach the panels!! Phew!).

No more wood paneling!!

Day 6 (1/4): Tore down the last large wood panel! The thermostat was attached to it, so we waited to hear Lee's Dad's expert opinion before tearing it down.

Day 7 (1/5): Appropriately, we rested. Sort of. Lee had parent-teacher conferences at school and we decided that there would not be enough time to do much work after he got home.

Day 8 (1/6): Nails, nails, nails...continued to remove them and we also mapped out the electrical outlets and switches in the house in preparation for rewiring.

Day 9 (1/7): Lee tore out ALMOST all of the tile, with some assistance from Ben (Thanks, Ben!!). There was still some under the refrigerator and some tough pieces in the bathroom. For another day.

Day 10 (1/8): Holy cow. Loaded about 5 tons of tile into Shane's trailer and made 3 trips to the dump. Grandpa got to work on the front yard and started raking the leaves that have amassed over the past several months, and also made a trip to visit poor Riley, who has a rough couple of months ahead of her. Could not have done it without the help of Lee's Mom, Mr. Campbell, Grandpa F., and Lee's Dad (to whom we will be eternally indebted after all of this). Yowzah, I am aware of body parts that I did not know existed! Purchased wheelbarrow 1. It was the wrong one. Exchanged for wheelbarrow 2. Photos to follow.

Day 11 (1/9): De and Grandpa removed the Jumping Cholla in the backyard. I don't know how familiar you are with Jumping Cholla, but it is one nasty, evil species of cactus. They had become very overgrown in parts of the yard, and present a bit too tough of a challenge for poor Riley dog. The yard looks infinitely better already. We started to mark and cut the drywall along the bottom 16 inches of the walls where we need to access the electrical outlets in order to do some wiring. I did manage to electrocute myself briefly, as I thought the power was off to an outlet that was in fact powered by the circuit breaker in the backyard (as opposed to the one inside the closet in the master bedroom...). All is well, nothing but a little zap! Needless to say, I am working a bit more cautiously around the outlets...

Grandpa's shoe...

I also put together wheelbarrow 2. This took an embarrassingly long amount of time, which I will not specify. To my credit, I was tired after spending an embarrassingly long amount of time trying to tear down the tile lining the shower in the guest bathroom. The wheelbarrow also had the wrong type of tire, but we decided to keep this one. It is a lovely blue.

Assembling our fashionable blue wheelbarrow

Hell.

Lee and Shane tore out the old electrical box in the closet and put in a new one. Hopefully they will finish getting that set up tomorrow afternoon, and then we can start running the wires to the outlets. Anyway, this ended up being quite a long first post. To bed with me! More soon...