We officially have a working bathroom upstairs. No longer do we have to trudge down two flights of stairs for that middle of the night bladder call. No longer do we have to drag Brendan down to the cold basement to take a bath.

Here is our finished Douglas fir bathroom floor:

And with the essentials mostly in place:

Sorry about the 3 different shades of yellow on the walls. Every picture was about 10 times too dark so I had to brighten them all up and it resulted in the walls looking like they were repainted between each photo.

Now all we need is the window trim to be put into place, the bottom trim to be put into place, the outlet covers installed, and some sort of medicine cabinet/mirror installed. After that it is just decorating.

All I care about is having a functioning bathroom within reasonable walking distance from the bedroom!

I always love seeing people’s gravatars. What is a gravatar, you ask? It is the little picture next to your comments. If you don’t have an official gratavar, you just get a boring blue image with Gravatar’s logo. So, I now ask you, will you set up your gravatar? Go to http://www.gravatar.com. You register with the email address you use on your comments, upload a photo, and you are done. It will take a few minutes for it to show up. Not all blogs support it, but many do. It is always nice to put a face to a name!

Let me illustrate:

But things are getting done! We spent last night in a hotel. A hotel that will be home until Friday. We won’t lie, it is nice not having to wipe the dust off of everything twice daily, or having to worry about if the rain is going to leak through the ceiling. It is nice not looking at half done wood work.

The floors upstairs are officially sanded. If you had seen them before the sanding, you would have never guessed the potential. When the old linoleum in the hallway was taken out (not by us), the floor was really badly gouged. I thought it was going to show those marks forever. I could swear they had to be at least 1/8″ deep. However, when we stopped by last night to look at the progress, I almost wondered if they laid down new floors. They were perfect. Absolutely, 100%, undeniably, perfect. And you remember the bathroom floor differences between the new and old wood? Invisible. That’s right, you cannot tell where the old meets the new. I was sure that there would be a huge difference.

Of course, I didn’t think to grab the camera from the hotel (had to bring it with to capture the big man having a blast swimming).  Just trust me on this one: the floor looks amazing. The stairs do too.

On other fronts, if you haven’t watched much news recently, our general area is under water. Thankfully it appears Grand Forks’ new flood walls will keep the Red River at bay. Sadly, Fargo is in for a massive flood fight. We ended up not getting flood insurance for two main reason: it seemed too late to make it within the 30 day window (which proved correct), and the insurance only covered the furnace and hot water heater. None of the finished bathroom would have been covered. We decided that if they predicted the water getting close to the top of the dikes, we would literally yank the water heater and furnace and haul them upstairs.

And as Casey hinted to in her last post, we do have some water downstairs. That corner that I had foam boarded is leaking like a sieve. I’m sure the idea would work great in new construction, but our walls are like Swiss cheese apparently. I’ll be ripping the foam board off and getting it all sprayed with the foam like the bathroom. Which, speaking of the bathroom foam, I have been monitoring that corner as it had leaked extremely badly before being foamed, and all was dry under the drywall except for a 1-2′ section under the washer and dryer hookup box. I have a theory I’m pretty sure is correct. I don’t believe the foam is allowing it to leak, but when the plumber installed the hookup box, he chiseled the foam out in order to fit it. The problem is that he took it all the way back to the concrete. That foam most likely pealed the sealer/paint off of the concrete leaving it bare. I have a solution that I am going to try to avoid having to tear out the drywall (but I’m open to suggestions). I plan to drill 4-6 holes in the back of the hookup box, and stick a foam can nozzle in them and force as much foam behind the box as possible. After that, I’ll caulk up the holes with white caulking to make them as unnoticeable as possible.

Hopefully I’ll post some stress-free, non-house pictures from the hotel poolside tonight.

Sorry that its been a while since we’ve posted any thing about the house (flood insurance doesn’t count)! Every day seems to fly by and I can’t even tell you what all we did…

Our painter, Andy, has finished painting every thing except the living room and dining room. If you remember, this is the area that requires the most work and time. Last week he finished the main floor bedroom which has ended up being my favorite room so far! I love the paint color and Andy did a great job getting rid of the cracks in the ceiling. If you remember, this is the crackle room that had to be sprayed with some nasty chemical. Andy also completed painting the upstairs. I chose a cream for that area and in all honesty I am still not sold on it! However, there is no going back now! I am hoping to put up wainscoting on the ceiling and stain it down the road. (Far far down the road honey! )

This is a corner of the main floor bedroom after the walls were painted:

This is the upstairs hallway which was painted a cream color:

Last night Shane and I found out that our kitchen cabinets will be here tomorrow! I am very excited, but laughing at the same time. When all of this mess started the upstairs bathroom was suppose to be the first room completely done so we could live upstairs and close off the main floor. Well two months later, the kitchen will be the first room completely done! Once the cabinets are in then the countertops will be ordered and those sould be in within 2 weeks. I am so ready to have my kitchen back.

Floor update! The floor guy showed up yesterday unannounced. I was still in bed and woke up to him outside my bedroom door. I was not happy. Anyways, in the end the guy left. Now he is scheduled to be here next week to start sanding all the floors (uptairs and main floor). Once he gets the upstairs done then we can finish the bathroom up here.

Basement update: The basement has water in it. We have decided to take out the foam board Shane put up and have his friend come spray foam the walls of what will be his office. I’ll let Shane make a post on this, but I figured I might as well mention it.

Well I’m out of time! I need to get back to stripping Brendan’s door I started…oh wait! I forgot about the stripping and all the wood we’ve been working on. Shane and I finished the window trim for the upstairs bathroom and are now working on the kitchen window. I’m hoping to start sanding and completing the upstairs doors next, but we’ll see. My newel post is still waiting to be sanded, but it’s not going any where!

There I think I’m really done now!

I’ve been trying to decide if we should purchase flood insurance for our house for this spring’s incoming flood. It is around $300/year (paid upfront) but it doesn’t kick in for 30 days. The nasty flood of 1997 that took out the entire town started breaking through the levies around April 18th. That is around a month away.  After that flood, $300,000,000+ was spent on a huge permanent dike and increased levies. They are supposed to handle up to around 60 feet. This had me pretty comfortable. That is, until I read an article in the paper this morning where they are talking about potentially adding sandbags to the top of it. As of right now, there is a 2% chance of the river breaking 60ft. Small chance, until you consider the talk of a potential major storm next week that could make that number jump up, maybe to a 10% chance.

Thoughts? Too late to take out the flood insurance?

All I can say is if they start talking about 20%+ chances of 60ft or more, I’ll be spending a weekend pulling out the water heater, furnace and anything else I can out of the basement if I don’t have flood insurance to cover it. The only thing that would be damaged would be our newly refinished bathroom, and the electrical panel. That is assuming the water doesn’t go much higher than the ’97 levels, where it stayed below the main floor.

Looks like we are going to have a wet spring this year:

With flooding expected on the Red River this spring, the city of Grand Forks has taken the first step to access state resources to help minimize the damage. The city has declared a state of emergency to allow Grand Forks to prepare for high waters.

Flood controls are in place to protect Grand Forks from a flood crest of up to 57 feet. In 1997, the river reached a level of 54.3 feet. The National Weather Service has projected a 50 percent probability of the river reaching 47.6 feet and a 10 percent probability of reaching 50.3 feet.

The National Weather Service is scheduled to come out with an updated forecast on Friday.

Thankfully Grand Forks has a fancy new multimillion dollar dike that should keep us dry. Being a few blocks away from the river makes you a bit nervous none-the-less however. That would be the last thing we’d need, finish fixing the water damage to our house to have a flood come wash it away.

So today we are in a major snow storm. I really didn’t expect anyone to show up to work as it is nasty out. Schools were closed last night already and now today half the town is closed. Imagine my surprise when I heard the door open and close at 9:15! Our painter, Andy, was here to start the kitchen and bathroom. He was able to get the kitchen done and his helper got the downstairs bathroom ceiling painted. The main contractor, Roger, who has done the majority of the work also showed up!

Anyways, to sum it up. Tomorrow Andy will be back to start the upstairs since we need that done in order for the guy to come do the floors. His helper will finish up the bathroom downstairs. When he is done with that, Roger will be here patching in the tile, installing our pine baseboards, swapping out the toilets* and hopefully moving the washer and drier in there! Can we say finished basement bathroom any one?!?! In case you can’t tell, I’m very excited!

*I should probably explain about the toilets. In the upstairs bathroom we had a new one and the one in the basement bathroom was in the house when it was bought. In all honesty I hated that one, probably because I wasn’t used to it. Well all it took for me to change my mind was a plumber telling me it was old enough to be original to the house. So now I’m putting the “old” one in the upstairs and moving the new one down!  Funny how that works huh?!

To make my post complete here is a picture of the kitchen as of today:

Here is the actual floor plan for the kitchen:

Counter tops:

Cabinet door style:

And this paper will be applied to the ceiling (and then painted):

When I get home tonight, a couple rooms are going to look a lot more finished. Last night, the painters textured the kitchen and the basement bathroom.

The kitchen pre-texture:

The bathroom pre-texture:

Today, pending no cancellations due to the blizzard (hey, I’m at work…), both of these rooms should be painted. I cannot put it into words how nice it will be to have these painted. There is something about a layer of paint that just makes things feel more “done.”

On a different note, when the painters were working on the main floor bedroom, he had to do some skim coating to smooth out the transition from painted plaster to areas of the plaster where the paint fell off. Well, the painted plaster happened to have a crackle chemical in it. This caused the skim coat to crackle. So yesterday he also worked on applying some nasty chemical to remove the crackle and then primered the room. I’m not sure if he plans on getting anything done in there today, but I won’t complain if he does.

While I’ve been scraping away at the popcorn ceiling texture on the main floor, the upstairs bathroom has been progressing quite well. Drywall has been taped, mudded (is that a word?), sanded, textured, and finally, painted. After living with boring, bland, and/or dark colors, we decided to liven the room up a bit. With yellow:

Okay, it isn’t quite that yellow in person, but it is yellow none-the-less. Once we get the dark woodwork, and the white claw foot tub, toilet, and pedestal sink in here, it won’t be quite as blinding. We hope.

The part on the light fixtures that hold the shades are new, non-lacquered brass. These will be aged to match the fixture better in the future. Casey also had to have her antique toilet paper holder installed, even though we don’t have a toilet in there yet.

Hard to notice is the hole to the left of the chimney. This is where a cabinet will be built for towels and toiletries. We will also have wood corner trim running along the edges of the drywall next to the chimney.

As I mentioned in my last post, removing painted on popcorn ceiling texture is one of the worst jobs I’ve done. Non-painted texture? That stuff is a walk in the park.

In the last week, I’ve removed popcorn ceiling from the upstairs bathroom, and from the main floor living/dining room. The former was not painted, the latter was.

Removing the non-painted (or lightly painted) popcorn ceiling is as follows:

1. Take a large putty knife (8″ or so) and knock off the bigger popcorn
2. Take a spray bottle or a garden sprayer and get the stuff as moist as you can without having it drip all over
3. Let sit for 5 minutes or so
4. Take the large putty knife and scrape off the goop
5. Have a beer

Removing the heavily painted (and possibly multiple textured) popcorn ceiling is as follows:

1. Have a beer
2. Schedule a back/neck/shoulder massage for the day you plan to be done (add a day or two overage)
3. Have a beer
4. Find an ice scraper (the kind you use to remove ice from a driveway, about 6-8″ wide and with a 4′ or so handle), and sharpen up the edge
5. Attempt to scrape off as much of the large popcorn as possible
6. Take a garden sprayer and moisten the ceiling. It will only penetrate the areas you knocked off in the last step
7. Wait 5 minutes
8. Spray the ceiling again
9. Wait 5 minutes
10. Spray the ceiling again
11. Wait 5 minutes
12. Scrape away. You might not even get down to the plaster (or drywall) at this step. If not, repeat 6-11 again
13. Have a beer
14. Call it a night and repeat 1-13 over again until you finish it

If you can get your entire ceiling down to the plaster/drywall without settling for an inbetween, mad props to you. For the first area, I went down to the plaster. Of course, I didn’t think of the obvious things I’d find doing so. Things like cracked plaster, bad patch jobs, etc. If I had a few weeks to work on this, I would have taken all of the texture down to the plaster. However, the painter is here to work on it today or tomorrow so I had to settle for what I could. 90% of the ceiling is just scraped down as much as I could without breaking through to the plaster. It will be heavily textured again, but only about 50% of what it was before. Ideal? No, but it will work for now and will look much better than previously (hopefully).

Still no pictures. Sorry. I take the pictures, but I tend to write these posts away from the camera and computer. I will do my best to get them up here soon.