Considering how long it has been since I posted last and how much house stuff we’ve been working on, I’m not even sure where to start! My last post was about us taking on the big task of flipping the stairs. My in-laws came over Easter and completed the actual physical flip. I would say that all went pretty smooth. The only thing I worked on was sanding, staining, and applying poly to the skirting. If you can recall (it’s been a long time), I went after the skirting with the heat gun the same time I did the upstairs hallway, which was over a year ago. My how time flies and projects pile up!

Taking the stairs down.

Putting the stairs back up in the other direction!

Now that the stairs face the other way we have a list of “projects” that need to be done in order for the main stair project to be completed. The walls going upstairs need dry wall in spots as the plaster is missing, the floor needs to be extended out by Brendan’s bedroom door, the old “kitchen” walls need mudd after taking down the rest of the wallpaper (I HATE taking down wallpaper btw), then comes texture and paint on all the walls, the wood floor needs to be refinished,  and last but not least a new railing and two newel posts. Whew! Did I miss any thing? I’m sure I did. In fact, I can already remember a few other things. That just means I’ll have to write another post or two!

Out of that list I would say Shane has accomplished quite a bit. I spent a Saturday afternoon taking off the last of the wallpaper so Shane could get working on the walls. My mother-in-law gave me the trick of using the back of a light switch cover to scrape off the paper after you sprayed it with vinegar water. This worked so much better than an actual scraper or some other tool. (Thanks Lori!)

Take note of the ceiling behind me. We are ripping it out and redoing the entire ceiling with stained beadboard.

As of right now Shane has almost all the dry wall patched in on the walls and most of it has had the final sanding. The area by the windows needs the last coat of mudd and sanding. Once that is done we will have our neighbor come texture. He is the one who did Brendan’s room. Have I mentioned that he is absolutely awesome?! He is!

Looking down from the top of the stairs.

Shane also has the floor extended out by Brendan’s room. This was of course a top priority, along with creating a temporary railing.

Speaking of the railing, it really is a bummer that the original pieces are garbage. There is just really no way to keep what is already there. The height of the newel post and railing are very low and not acceptable with kids living here. Shane and I have been exploring our options. We checked out the local hardware stores (yuck), searched ebay, and have called a guy for estimates who works with the old wood. I am really hoping to go with this guy as I have heard great things and seen his work (beautiful)…not to mention we would get the old douglas fir. What it will come down to is cost. I am not willing to put out a fortune since we don’t want to live here forever.

Brendan wanted to be in the picture.

Along with staying busy on this project we have also been getting ready for  Baby N. The nursery will be in the second bedroom upstairs, across from Brendan’s. This is the only room that still has the cracks, missing texture spots, etc. I swear I was fine with just touching up the room with new paint, but I decided to try my hand at mudding! I managed to get one wall done in double to triple the time it takes for Shane to get one coat done. Not only that, but my layer was way too thick (I thought it looked good)! So this last weekend we decided to skip skim coating the entire wall. Instead we are going to have our neighbor texture this room when he does the other areas upstairs. The room of course won’t look as great as Brendan’s, but we figure it will at least match up with the rest of the house’s heavier texture. Now I have to add, that our texture isn’t really that heavy. The painter, Andy, who did it claimed it was the finest he could do, an orange peel. Well when we had the awesome neighbor do Brendan’s he said he could go finer than that. His turned out to be what we were after.

The white wall behind the crib is the one that we put mudd on.

It sounds like we have been working non-stop on our house, but the truth is we really haven’t! We tend to go in spurts; especially with the weather here in ND being gorgeous the last couple weeks. With that in mind, we started many projects outside, but I’ll do a separate post on those! We’ve also been able to visit family. Here is a picture of Brendan having fun in the lake at my in-laws.

Yes, it was that warm out to play in the lake!

Some other random house stuff I’ve accomplished is refinishing Brendan’s bedroom and closet doors. We cheated and had both dipped. I can’t even tell you how nice this was versus stripping them ourselves. All I can say is that I have no desire to ever strip any thing myself again! Along with getting his doors done I had to get the hardware cleaned up. Pretty easy task using the boiling method. This last weekend I also boiled the window hardware for Brendan’s room. It now sits on the windows waiting for Shane to install it.

Brendan's bedroom door.

Life changes make blogging difficult. With the transition to working on my own, I’ve been putting more time into work than into our house. I’ve also lost a bit of a desire to get on here often and blog. I’m not sure why, but I’m just being honest with the readers and lurkers out there .

Just because I have been putting less time into house projects doesn’t mean that I haven’t been getting anything done on that front. As Casey mentioned in her last post, we are working on flipping the stairs. In the early 1940′s, the owners of our house flipped the stairs around 180 degrees. This allowed them to put a second door in the porch and have an apartment upstairs. But, when the house isn’t used as two separate living areas, it requires you to walk through the main floor bedroom (the “master” bedroom at that) in order to get upstairs. On the plus side, it does encourage us to keep our bedroom mostly clean when company are over.

Getting the stairs flipped is a pretty decent sized project for us. We first ripped out a wall in the old apartment “kitchen” (which was about the size of modern walk-in-closets) and the plaster and lathe on the underside of the stairs in a closet that was added beneath them. This is where the stairs will now start. Then we pulled up the part of the floor that was added above the current stairs to make the room square. After that, I spent a week scraping the linoleum off of the douglas fir.

That is where we are currently. Since the amount of floor in there is pretty small, I ordered a belt sander to hopefully get the floor finished. I’ll need it anyways in a few spots that a large drum sander couldn’t get to anyways. Three weeks from now I have family coming up to do the actual flip.

Other than the stairs, Casey has been working on finishing some of the trim we’ve had on the backburner for months. And we also resealed some of the basement that has had water infiltration issues for a while (which was also likely due to clogged gutters).

We are thinking about moving out of our house and into the country in the next year or two. I grew up in the woods and I want Brendan to be able to enjoy it as much as I did. That is another reason for my disinterest in posting on here. We are at a point now where we aren’t going to start any projects that won’t increase the value significantly (flipping the stairs is likely to be a huge added value to buyers).

Once we figure out what exactly life has in store for us in this, I’ll be sure to do my best to post an update

When we’ve told people we are flipping the stairs and explained it based off pictures we’ve gotten a lot of blank looks. So Shane came up with some diagrams. I hope this shows exactly what we are doing without getting confused!

Main Floor Before (now)

Main Floor After

Here are some more!

Before

After

Finally, here are the last two. These are of the upstairs.

Upstairs Before

Upstairs After

I should note that Shane did these around the time we bought the house, before all the flooding. So on the main floor where it says, “Office” is actually our bedroom.

For Christmas this year my husband and I received a Dremel Multi-Max from my in-laws. At the time I figured it was more of a gift geared towards Shane. Shortly after taking it of the box  and using the tool I found I was wrong! I have gotten so much use out of this particular tool. In fact, it motivated me to get my butt moving on the wood work upstairs. If you recall this was a project I started over a year ago. (Yikes!)

I worked for two days and I got the baseboards, doorways, bathroom door, newel post, and top of the railing done. By done I mean sanded, stained, and one coat of poly applied. Here is a picture of the newel post, some floor boards, and Brendan’s door frame. The Dremel made sanding so much easier, especially in the hard to reach spots (like the sides of the door frames). Brendan even liked it. He kept grabbing it and telling me to turn it on!

All in all I am very happy with how every thing turned out. Of course I am technically not done as I still need to do the other two coats of poly. However, in my mind I’m done (sorry honey)! The only negative is that the railing and newel post will soon come out. Shane asked me why I bothered with it. I guess I wanted to have the satisfaction that I got it done. It has also been nice to walk up and see the newel post looking nice. I’m not sure what we will do it these pieces once they come out (which is very very soon). I hate to toss it, so maybe sell? Not sure.

The reason they have to come out is, because we have started flipping the steps. This is a major project that has to be done. I don’t recall if we have ever explained the steps, but a previous owner flipped them to make an apartment upstairs. If we ever hope to sell this house this is something that has to be done. The original plan was to start this project this Summer. With me being pregnant and due in June I pushed the project to now! Who wants to be in the icky mess with a 2 1/2 year old and newborn and be stuck living on the main floor in our full size bed?!

Here is a teaser picture of the stair flipping. Shane or I will write another post about this project soon.

Has your staircase ever been in the way of your next project? Ever want to throw your kids down in the basement and make it so they can’t get up again? (joking — please don’t call social services…). I have just the solution: a portable staircase. A staircase that can slide in and out of place.

Wanting your own portable staircase? It only takes a few easy steps to have this showstopper.

Step 1: Add a bit more support to areas you think the staircase might be helping support/stabilize.

Step 2: Add some supports to the actual staircase itself. While you are at it, add some “skis” to the bottom of the supports to allow it to slide easier.

Step 3: Disconnect stairs from landing (reciprocating saw = your new friend).

Step 4: Prop up the lower landing with some wood shims (whatever you can find in the junk pile) and attach some more “skis.” You are now finished. You have a portable staircase:

Step 5 (optional): Work up the courage to look at the various creatures that have inhabited this perfect hiding place

You’re lucky this isn’t high enough resolution to see all the dead millipedes…

This is so not house related, but I couldn’t resist putting these up. Mr B. (aka Brendan) is finally starting to smile for the camera, so we have been having fun taking pictures. The last picture shows you how desperate my son is for a desk! He somehow managed to squeeze in this doll size one and play!

Flash was a bit close, but oh well!

Shane and I haven’t really done any thing on the house lately. At least nothing on our House Projects list. Yes, we have a list. Shane made it for me and it is pretty detailed. He has every room on it and every little project goes step by step! The list is great and very helpful, but Shane really made it to point out how many projects I have started and need to finish!

One of the projects I have wanted to finish is the wood work I started upstairs. I really thought I would have it ready for stain this weekend, but I have yet to even plug in the sander! In my defense, I will tell you I managed to bring the sander and the sand paper from the basement upstairs! I truly planned on starting the wood work, but decided to wait when I realized I had no extension cord up there to plug in the sander!

I decided tonight while on the way to Menards that tomorrow I will accomplish some wood work, but I am being realistic! Instead of making my goal the entire upstairs I will work on a few pieces on the main floor. In our dining room we have two small trim pieces that need to have the paint picked out,  be fine sanded, stained, and then poly. These pieces are not done, because the originals were thrown out by the demo guys. There is also the bottom piece of the window in the kitchen that is new and just needs stain and poly. This piece was also thrown out. When the work first began on our house almost a year ago we stressed to every one who came in that the wood work needed to be kept. Sadly, not everyone cared and/or listened.

Other than that, there really isn’t a whole lot I plan on doing. Of course there is always cleaning, but I won’t bore anyone with that! As for fun stuff, this weekend Shane and I are taking Brendan sledding. Brendan LOVES the snow. I swear he would stay outside all day and play if we let him!

As for some small stuff we have completed in the last couple of weeks, it really has been piddly! I unpacked some more of our boxes last week. The majority of it was pictures and knick-knacks. Pretty sad that we have lived here for eleven months and have yet to unpack every thing! There is still an attic space full of boxes, but a  lot of it is baby items and scrap booking stuff. (Wow, I love the word “stuff” tonight!) Since we unpacked, we managed to put up some pictures upstairs. Until now, it has been bare and really hasn’t felt “homey” up there. Now it definitely does and it even helps distract you from the unfinished wood work!

The last thing accomplished was hanging up vintage, glass towel bars. I purchased these from the antique store in town almost a month ago and they have been patiently waiting! Shane surprised me two nights ago by getting out the drill and screws. I am still unsure of how I really feel about the glass bars. I loved them when I first saw them, thus why I purchased them! But I kind of liked them better not on the wall! Pathetic, I know!

Well, that is all for now. I hope every one has a great weekend whether it is relaxing or staying busy working on your home!

The leash has tightened.

Seems you can’t open up a single news site without reading about the big upcoming, cinematic release of “New Moon.” I don’t know much about it. It supposedly has vampires in it. And since the young women seem to fawn over it, I’m sure it is jam packed with romance of some sort. What vampire movie is complete without romance?

The wife is a relative new-comer to the series. She started reading it less than a year ago. Although she may be a Twilight-newbie, she is hooked.

Do you know what happens when a wife is counting down the seconds to a new movie, and she wants to go with her husband? The husband goes.

Honey, payback sucks. If they ever come out with another “WarGames,” I’m moving the leash from my neck to yours and dragging you with. Mwuhahaha!

Brendan’s room is finally done (almost)! Our neighbor Ron did an amazing job of redoing the walls and the paint colors turned out great. I will admit that I painted the ceiling the same color as the window wall and it was way too dark. So I ended up having to reprime and repaint. I opted to go with the lightest color from the same color swatch that I used. I’m loving it! Here is a picture pre-carpet.

The carpet install went pretty smoothly. It didn’t take Lowes very long and they were pretty nice. Brendan is definitely all boy and loves to play rough. We did go with the thickest option for this reason. So far I am very happy with the results.

Sorry about the picture being sideways. I am not too computer savy with how to fix this. Trust me I tried! So I will have to have Shane do it later!

My only complaint about the carpet install was that it scratched up our wood work. After all the hard work I put into refinishing it I was and am still bummed. Lowes did come take a look as a small piece was also chipped, but did state it was unavoidable. So now we have to sand all of the woodwork and repoly. YAY! Not. So this is on our to do list. It will probably stay there for a while as I am burnt out on working.

Besides fixing the woodwork, we also need to finish some areas of the window frame, strip the closet and bedroom doors, and touch up some paint. With the doors we are hoping to have them dipped and avoid the headache, but we will see! All in all I am very happy how Brendan’s room turned out. Shane and I discussed it last night and his room is by far the best room in the house. I do think it was all worth it as Brendan looks at his room every morning and says, “Nice room.” Sometimes he replaces nice with the word cool! Last night as Shane was installing his windows Brendan was telling his Daddy thanks for those. It definitely makes it easier to put all the work into it when your two year old sure seems to appreciate it!

Since I made the post on 10/25/09 about our big changes, things have been insanely busy. How long ago was it that I last blogged about Brendan’s windows? Over a month… ouch.

While I’ve waited for the glazing to harden on the last window, I did replace the storm windows in his room. While I like the new aluminum storm windows better than the old aluminum storm windows, I’m not proud of the fact that I gave Menards the wrong measurements and the storms had to be mounted to the exterior rather than up against the normal storm window stops. It doesn’t look bad, but I don’t like to make stupid mistakes like that. And because they were custom sized, they couldn’t be returned, which is why I installed them on the outside trim.

It took me a few days of 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there to prime and paint the window frame that is exposed to the elements. Once I finished that and let it dry, it was time to get the windows in place! We have to create new window stops as the ones that were there consisted of about 3 pieces for each part that should have been a single piece. Lots of seams. So for now, we have windows that more sitting in place than secured in place.

We have two pulls for these windows, but it seems we “misplaced” the screws for them. So for now, you get a shot with my arm in place.

These windows also did not have sash locks. I’m guessing that as the wood rotted, they pulled loose and were thrown. We are going to have to buy a bunch anyways for the rest of the windows in the house. For these windows, I’m pretty certain that I’ll have to dump some wood hardener into the screw holes on the upper sash as that board had quite a bit of moisture damage (it actually sags about 1/8-1/4″ of an inch in the middle, used to be much worse). Speaking of that, any suggestions on how to deal with sash locks that don’t line up equally? Should I buy a jig saw and cut an 1/8″ thick board to match the foot print of the sash lock for the upper sash to get it to the proper height?

Also, on a different note, thank you Todd at Home Construction Improvement for your suggestion on my Office Progress post regarding using a 12″ blade to fix the visible drywall seams. I ended up using a 10″ blade as that was the largest I had, but it worked wonders compared to the 8″ I was using initially.