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.

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!

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!

It feels like this week we have accomplished a lot. Some of the work we’ve done ourselves, but a lot of it we hired out (such as the foaming). In one of my last posts about Brendan’s room I mentioned the painter not showing up and how disappointed I was. I’ve since decided that every thing happens for a reason.

Shane and I have been getting to know our neighbors and I have to say it’s great! I’ve always wanted to be the friendly/neighborly type.  On to my main point. The gentleman across the street, Ron, is a painter! After talking with him about the projects we have going on he offered to come take a look at Brendan’s room. Well every thing worked out and he started Brendan’s room today!

Before

We had lots of plaster cracks and Ron really knew what he was doing. We know from talking with him and looking at his work that he has the experience. I am very excited in case you can’t tell! They are done for the day, but will be back tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday.

After

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I know I posted the blue color I was going to paint in Brendan’s room, but here is a picture of the two colors I decided to go with. The blue is going on all of the walls except the window wall. The tan is going on the window wall and up and on the ceiling. Do you think the brown color is too dark? This room gets a ton of natural light, but I am still struggling with if I should go a step lighter.

After the walls are finished in Brendan’s room we only have the floor left. I don’t think I posted on this, so if I have I apologize. Shane and I ended up going the carpet route. We tried many different ways to uncover the wood floor and in the end the wood floor was pretty much shot. Our options then went to ripping out the floor and putting in a new, old wood floor or carpet. Carpet was cheaper and required less work. Shane, Brendan, and I headed to Lowes to pick out carpet and we got lucky! The carpet I had picked out a while back was on sale and had two different promos going on.

The installers were here yesterday to take measurements and now they are waiting on us to decide what color we are going with. All in all it has been a very exciting week! I see an end in sight for Brendan’s room. Then it’s on to our room….but not for a while! Here is a random picture to end the post on. We have been making an effort to have more family time and do some fun activities. Last Friday we took Brendan to the races. He LOVES the races.

Thanks to every one who posted a name for our new dog! We did the same thing on facebook and a friend on there came up with Joey. We decided to go with this name, because Brendan can easily say it and he says it so cute!

We took Joey to the vet the first week we had him. After getting checked over the vet concluded Joey is 3 years old. However, because we will never really know, the vet decided to go with at least 2 years. The vet also gave Joey a clean bill of health.

Shane was a little worried that Joey wouldn’t be easy to train. Our neighbor, who is quite taken with Joey, also made the statement that Joey would be difficult, if not impossible, to train (upon learning that we adopted him from the humane society). I have to be honest, I was a little offended! Joey has shown both of them though that he is very intelligent. Shane was able to teach him how to sit in one night. I was pretty impressed. Now they are working on down (not off).

I’ll try to remember to post some pictures of Joey and Brendan soon. Good night!

In June we adopted a Siamese cat from the Humane Society. Brendan loves cats! We named him Toby and he was Brendan’s best buddy. After a while we noticed Brendan’s eczema was getting worse than normal. We ended up having him tested for allergies and sadly, he was positive for cats. Toby was adopted out to a great couple last month. Brendan has done a great job adjusting.

Last week Shane and I started looking at dogs. We knew we didn’t want a puppy, but rather an adult. We went back and forth a lot on breeds, but in the end it was mutually decided we wanted a Doberman. Shane managed to find a breeder 30 minutes from his parent’s cabin. Like I said, we weren’t interested in puppies, but the adults they were getting rid of. I was all set to go and check them out, however, they come at a high price. A price tag of $2,000+ to be exact. OUCH!

So we headed back to our humane society and spent some time with a terrier mix and two boxers. The boxers had a sad story. The female boxer you could see had puppies, but there was no puppies there. The pair was found wandering and it was thought they had been bred together and then dropped off once the puppies were old enough to make it. The lady also said that the mating pair were longing for each other. They were of course separated and put in two different kennels.

On Saturday Shane mentioned going to the humane society and taking the dogs out for a walk. We got there and the boxers were being quarantined and treated for something (can’t remember the name). I headed to the small/medium dog room and that is when I saw him! A 1 yr old, male, Miniature Pinscher. We took him out and he was perfect! An hour later and we were taking him home.

Today is day three of having our min. pin. He really has the greatest personality. He loves to play, be outside, snuggle, and best of all…he is great with Brendan.  He is also very social. He greets new people nicely and likes other animals. He is getting along great with our neighbor’s dog.

I am really bad at coming up with names. When we named our two Siamese cats, George and Toby, we just knew the names fit! So far I haven’t found our little doggy a name. We tend to like actual “human” names. I’m asking for every ones help for name suggestions. We’ll let you know what we end up naming him! Thanks!

As of late I have no motivation to do any thing! My to do list is a mile long, but I can’t seem to start working again. Maybe the reason for this is, because I managed to meet my self created deadline for Brendan’s woodwork. I have every thing except the door frames and bottom board of the window done! I just finished picking out the paint in the door frames today and my plan is to have them sanded and stained tomorrow. In all honesty I could have the last board on the window done as well. However, I’m getting lazier with picking out paint and I want make sure I do a good job. I’m hoping that I can convince Shane, who has the patience I don’t, to work on it this weekend if he can find time.

The next step in redoing Brendan’s room is having the walls skim coated, some spots fixed, textured, and painted. The reason I boogied on the woodwork was so the painter could come and do all of this. He was suppose to be here 3 weeks ago. I tried to get a hold of him a couple days ago, but so far I have yet to hear back. I think quite highly of our painter so to say that I’m disappointed is an understatement.

There use to be a small door here to get to the "attic" space. Shane took it out and patched it up.

Thanks to every one who voted and commented on our carpet vs. wood floor poll. We ended up deciding to go with the wood floor. We had a few different tips from other house bloggers who have dealt with linoleum and the tar. I tried them all. The one technique that came the closest to working was putting a towel down and soaking it in boiling water. I do believe it would have worked, except for the fact that our floor is a soft wood, douglas fir. The wood ended up gouging pretty bad. Shane has since tried using a floor blade we bought at Lowes. So far it seems this will work. We are waiting to officially start the floor until I get every thing out of Brendan’s room.

On a different note some other small things we have done with the house is touching up paint in the kitchen and bathroom. I figured I was quite capable of doing this! We also had the house sprayed for bugs inside and outside. Yay for this! I was pretty excited as it only cost us $75 and it is guaranteed for 2 months. I HATE bugs.  Shane has been working on Brendan’s windows, but I’ll let him blog about that. Um, what else?! With the nice weather the last couple of days I’ve been outside working on landscaping. I took out a tree yesterday! Now I need to figure out what to do with it!

This last week I’ve been focused on getting Brendan’s room finished and ready for the painter. So in light of that I took a look at his closet. The closet ceiling had been sheet rocked at some point in the past, right over the plaster. The job looked horrible and you could tell it was done by an amateur. I knew the dry wall had been put up to cover something; why else would it be up there?! But never the less, I decided it needed to come down and be redone so it looked decent.

Once the first few pieces of dry wall was off I discovered the plaster was in bad condition. As I continued to take off the remaining dry wall the plaster caved in, er fell off, exposing the lathe.

It was at this point you could see there had been a leak and the previous owners cut a hole in the lathe, fixed the leak, and put in insulation. Oops, wait a second. How did  know there had been a leak?! I figured that out, because the lathe to the left of the hole was completely rotted and covered in the “m” word. What’s the “m” word?! Yup, you guess it, MOLD! My little project of taking down the dry wall turned into a big project that took us two days to complete. Two days doesn’t sound so bad but when you look at how many hours we put in you realize it was in fact a big, long project.

Since this was my project it was up to me to rip out all of the lath, deal with the nasty insulation that rains down, and of course clean it all up. As of day two I was so frustrated and crabby I decided to take it out by hitting the remaining plaster with my pry bar as hard as I could. All that did was knock off a few little chunks and put insulation down my shirt. At that point I had it. I went to Shane and whined. I wanted him to finish ripping it out and I would clean the mess. My whining worked and he finished the demo stage, as well as doctoring up a rotted out joist.

Once the closet was all cleaned out, Shane put up new insulation. I have to admit that while this was an unexpected project I’m glad we did it. I’m sure I seem crazy since this was a closet and I could have just tried to make the existing dry wall work, but there is a reason for my madness. While it may just be a closet, the right side of the closet is used as a small play room for Brendan. There are shelves full of his books and toys all over the floor. Brendan loves to go in there, shut the door, and play. I’m sure to small child it seems like a fort. Now with this in mind, Shane came up with an idea that we might as well change out the closet lighting  and get it up to code since we’re down to the rafters/joists. It currently has a single incandescent, exposed bulb literally an inch away from the angled ceiling. In our closet the electricians had to put in a florescent pull light to replace the existing one to get it up to code since they worked on wiring in there.

While I like the original lights it does scare me because it gets super hot and its butted up to the ceiling. Shane came up with putting in a light on either side of the door and instead of a pull chain, wiring in a light switch. I love this idea, because the light switch will be low enough for Brendan to control, yet high enough so it doesn’t seem off if we ever do sell this house. Now that I have written a small book  it’s time to get ready for church. Happy Sunday every one!