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!

I am struggling with what I should do in Brendan’s bedroom. I ripped out the carpet with the intent of refinishing the hardwood floors underneath. However, the black tar paper is not wanting to come off. Shane and I have tried using boiling water,  scraping, and the heat gun. None of these methods worked very well. I have gotten a total of 6 tiles done and they aren’t that clean.

So after getting frustrated I decided I would just put new carpet in. I picked it out and about died when I tallied up how much it would cost me. I went to Lowes and I’m looking at $600 for the carpet, premium carpet pad, tacks, and installation. After talking to my mother-in-law she had me rethinking the carpet. She’s voting for hardwood.

I love our hardwood floors in the house, but I’m still unsure about having them in the bedrooms (especially in Brendan’s room). Brendan loves to play on the floors. He is all boy; crawling around on the floor, wrestling etc. I like the idea of carpet just for the fact that it would be easier to play on. But I could do the hardwood and find a nice 8×10 rug that is thick. I’ve looked at a few rugs and it looks like it would cost me around $200-$300.

To sum it up I need to make a decision and I could use some help! Shane helped me create a poll.  Your answers and comments would be greatly appreciated!

[poll id="3"]

Hello. It has been a long time since I posted last. I’ve been busy trying to wrap up my many projects and starting some more! Last week I decided it was time to get off my butt and get moving. In other words: I was finally motivated.

The first thing I did was putty the wood work in the bathroom with some help from Shane. From there I stained and applied the first coat of poly. It looks amazing. Crazy how having it all stained can make such a big difference.

Next I started sanding the hallway and the newel post. I’ve got some more to do, but I am making progress. I hope to have this done in the next two weeks.

The new project I started was Brendan’s room. I called our painter, Andy from Exquisite Painting, to come work on Brendan’s room at the end of July. He will be fixing a few of the major cracks in the plaster, skim coating the walls and doing an orange peel, and then painting. For paint I have a light blue that will go on all of the walls except the window wall. On that side it will be a light tan that will also go up on to the ceiling. My mother-in-law suggested that since I have navy curtain panels on the window.

With Andy coming to paint I realized I needed to have the top of the woodwork stripped and stained before he comes. I made the mistake in our hallway of doing this after he had painted and it made such a mess. Eventually I’ll have to go back and touch up the paint and have Andy edge it on the woodwork so we have a straight line. I am rather proud of myself, because in two days time I have heat gunned the tops and sanded them. They are ready to be stained, but I am going to wait until a few days before he comes to finish it. The reason for that is, because I have put myself on a deadline for all of the woodwork! My goal is to have all of Brendan’s woodwork sanded and ready to be stained in two weeks. If Andy is behind schedule and can’t start until the beginning of August I will extend my deadline to 3 weeks. Tomorrow my plan is to strip and sand the window.

Now today after talking with my mother-in-law I went ahead and ripped out the carpet in Brendan’s room. I debated about doing this, but it was stained with urine from the previous owners dogs (nasty) and in order to finish the wood work it had to come out as I couldn’t get to the bottom of the baseboard. Underneath the carpet is linoleum and then tar on top of the wood floors. Eventually we will have to scrape and heat gun it off and redo the floors like we did in the bathroom. This linoleum is different than the stuff in there and hopefully will be easier to remove.

Before I end this I’d like to thank every one who gave me some encouragement when I was feeling overwhelmed with every thing! Also, thanks to Liz for the rug we won!

As I mentioned in our last post, we won a rug from Liz over at A Constructed Life in conjunction with CSN Rugs. We received the rug just a few days later. With this gorgeous weather we’ve been enjoying, our posting has almost been non-existent. We’ve got a few things to catch up on, but for now, I leave you pictures of a rug we won that looks like it was meant to be in our house:

Brendan approves:

Like I said, it was meant for our house! I couldn’t have picked out a better color, size, or style myself.

Thanks again Liz! If I can ever get back into posting regularly, we’ll have to do our own little giveaway.

I’m not used to winning many things in life. Once in high school, I talked a friend of mine who worked at a gas station into giving me the code to get a free car wash. After getting my ’91 Chevy all shined up, I went back inside and bought a lotto ticket. Scratched it off, and sure enough, I won $5. So I gave it to him as a “thank-you.” Technically, I should have given it to the owners for stealing a car wash, but what can you expect from a 16 year old?

Anyways, on Monday, Liz over at A Constructed Life in conjunction with csnrugs held a contest for a free rug. Normally I don’t enter these, but I decided to live life on the wild side and put in a comment for the rug. Sipping my Sobe this morning, checking out a few of the blogs I normally visit, I saw that we won the rug! I’ve been a little out of it this morning and had to re-read it to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind.  I might read it again later to make sure, but as of now, it looks like we won. Wahoo!

Thanks Liz and csnrugs!

I feel like I just got my house some what in order after having it pulled apart for 5 months  and now the mess starts again! Our basement is unfinished except for the bathroom down there.  It’s been in our “house to do list” to eventually finish it. The plan is to make an office/bedroom, storage, furnace area, and family room. Shane decided last week to pick up the sub-floor while we had a vehicle to do so. This last weekend and week he has been staying busy putting the floor in and framing the bedroom/office. He’s almost done except for framing the last wall. We apparently have two old knob and tubes there that Shane thinks goes to the upstairs bedrooms. The problem is they are too far down the wall so we will have to move them. Shane’s Dad is an electrician so the plan is to have him come and help and possibly rewire.

Once the last wall is framed in we will have the room foam insulated like we did the bathroom when it was demoed out. I am very excited to have this room done. My goal is to see it done by August as that is when our son’s birthday is. Brendan turns 2 and my grandparents are planning on making the trip for his party! Of course, it’s not me doing the work, it’s Shane! I’ll let him add the finer details of what all he’s doing in the basement at the moment. I will say this though. I hope he hurries, because the basement is trashed and I can’t even stand to look down there!

On an update with the rest of the house, its trashed! I love to have an organized and clean house and ours is any thing but that. Every room has unfinished woodwork that needs to be completed and windows that need to be cleaned. When my mother-in-law was here she confided that just looking at all the work we had left made her head spin or something to that effect!  (I can’t remember exactly what she said) Basically it’s overwhelming. My game plan is to pick a room and finish that room before moving on the next. I came up with this about two weeks ago and have yet to start! Shane and I have both super busy with work and Brendan. I also think it’s harder to want to work on it when the weather is gorgeous.

As for outside I have never really talked about the outside of our house. The actual house needs to be repainted We were planning on doing this next Summer, however, we will be building a new garage (hopefully). I also find it overwhelming when thinking about having to paint the entire house all at once. I am trying to convince Shane we should start now on one side and see how much we can get done this Summer, without feeling rushed. The yard itself isn’t too bad. We’ve planted some peonies and other plans around the house’s foundation. I’ve also taken out 3 trees that were planted in odd spots. I’d like to take out one more in the front, but I have yet to do it. I’ll try and get some pictures of the yard taken and posted!

Now that I’ve written this my head is spinning and I’m overwhelmed with how much we have to do! Of course we could stop starting new projects and finish the other ones first! But who wants to be inside when it’s Summer and nice out?! Well that’s it for now.  I hope every one has a great weekend!

Today I’ve managed to keep myself busy ripping apart the upstairs kitchen. I don’t remember off hand if we posted any thing on this room.  It’s a small room upstairs that was converted into a small kitchen. Shane and I used this when we lived in the upstairs during college. This was way before we bought the house! Here’s a before picture.

Last week we sold the cabinets and counter tops so Shane took all of them down last night.Last night Shane took down all of the cabinets. It looks so empty not having any thing in there any more.

This morning I decided to be destructive  *cough cough* I mean productive and continue taking apart the room. It took me approximately half an hour to rip down all of the wainscoting. When I was done I had a huge mess on the floor.

I was dreading having to carry it all down the stairs and then outside. Before I could start I was given the idea of throwing it out the window and from there loading it into the truck! I was a little nervous at first, but once I got into the swing of things I was chucking boards super fast out the window. I did manage to get a small board stuck in the gutter. Sorry honey!

The top window that is open is the window I used to throw out my mess.

My mess!

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I’ve been looking for a clean solution to having a dynamic connection string for a LINQ to SQL data context. My primary desire for this is developing/debugging an application on a test database. Sure, you can always go change your connection string in the app.config file, but I tend to forget to revert it back before deployment.

After doing a bit of research today, I realized that if you open up the project’s property pages, click on the settings tab, and then click on ‘View Code’ on the top, you’ll access the “base” partial Settings class. In the constructor, add an event handler for the SettingsLoaded event handler:
[code lang="csharp"]this.SettingsLoaded += new System.Configuration.SettingsLoadedEventHandler(Settings_SettingsLoaded);[/code]
Then you can set up the event handler in a similar manner:
[code lang="csharp"]///
/// Dynamically update settings for development when a debugger is attached
///
void Settings_SettingsLoaded(object sender, System.Configuration.SettingsLoadedEventArgs e)
{
if (System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached)
{
// Adjust the connection string as you see fit
this["yourConnectionStringName"] = "Data Source=yourDevHost;Initial Catalog=yourDevDatabase;Persist Security Info=True;User ID=yourDevUser;Password=yourDevPassword";
}
}[/code]

We are finally getting to the home stretch in the burst pipe restoration work. Our main contractor moved all of his tools out of our kitchen for the first time in almost 5 months. We have a 100% functional kitchen to use now. You have no idea how good it feels to say that.

We haven’t started the “decorating” phase in the kitchen yet, but here are some non-cluttered pictures of our kitchen:

Things to note in the pictures:

• The ceiling is a tile wallpaper that was painted with a (much too expensive) copper looking paint
• The refrigerator door opens too close to the wall. We’d do that different if we could
• The upper cabinet to the left of the fridge is awkward as it has a shelf thing on the door. Hard to get to stuff in there. We’d do that different if we could.
• You can’t see it, but our appliances need a good buffing

I also installed a vanity sink top and faucet in the basement bathroom. We don’t post a lot about this room as it doesn’t have any historical character. It has a fiberglass tub/shower, a new toilet, washer and dryer, and a new sink. Eventually we’ll make it a bit more charming, but for now, it is function over form.

Things to note in the pictures:

• The pine trim will be painted white (gotta do whatever you can to make it feel as bright a possible in the basement!)
• The door needs to be stripped and repainted

Also, my office is finally getting put together!

Ignore my fancy desk chair. I know you are all jealous. It is mine, all mine. Ignore the mess on the desk as well, I haven’t quite gotten to the organization part of assembling the room yet.

In the office, we’ll be stripping all the trim eventually. For now, we are going to take a breather from stripping wood. I haven’t made a post about it, but we’ve stripped I swear close to a mile of trim in the past two weeks. We are sick of stripping wood.

Also, one of the benefits of moving our furniture to the main floor is our basement is slowly becoming more manageable:

Still a disaster area, but not nearly as bad. Once we FINALLY close on our loan Friday (yes, it has been almost 5 months since we were supposed to close!), we’ll probably start tackling this mess.

As you can tell, this post is making for lots of lost time! So to continue jumping around, I’m going to show you our new and old baseboard trim. In our upstairs bathroom, and downstairs kitchen, the original baseboard was long gone and we didn’t want to put the cheap stuff back in. So we had ordered some douglas fir and our contractor cut it to the almost identical profile as the original stuff.

New trim:

Old trim:

Ignore the dust. We have given up on keeping the dust away until the contractors are gone. As you can tell, the old baseboard trim is much tighter grained. It also has a coat of polyurethane on it, which the new stuff hasn’t received yet. These are also both stained different colors. The old trim picture is actually a non-original color. We tried to match the old trim with the original color.

Speaking of the dust, we also had our air ducts cleaned yesterday. I’m glad we didn’t dust prior to that as it put a layer of fine dust on top of *everything*. The guy came here around 2PM with their fancy air duct cleaning trailer. He didn’t leave until 6:30PM. Around 6, I asked him how many houses had ducts as bad as ours. He said he never saw one as bad. He had to unclog their machine 5 times. He showed me what was clogging it up. It was literally a 3″ thick layer of pure dust. Yum.

Yesterday we were able to start moving furniture onto the main floor. I can’t begin to tell you how nice it was to finally do this. Shane came home over his lunch and moved the couch, buffet, dresser, and room dividers in from the porch. Brendan and I spent the majority of the day rearranging furniture and then playing on the couch. Brendan seemed to have a blast! He was laughing almost the entire day!  All that’s left now is to hang pictures and lights. We also need to finish setting up Shane’s office. Hopefully tonight we’ll finish.  It looks like a rainy today so we might be stuck inside. So I might start unpacking our boxes that are left from when we moved in upstairs.

While I was busy with furniture yesterday the kitchen counter tops were being installed. They look amazing and I couldn’t be happier with the kitchen. Now if we could only use it! Still no word on when the electrician and plumber will be here. Tomorrow our painter will be here to refinish the bay window and closet door.After that he’ll be painting the kitchen ceiling and back entry. He will also be doing touch ups through the house as a courtesy. After all of this all that’s left is the cleaning work and the rest of the wood work being installed. I did find out yesterday that the duct work and duct cleaning will be done next week at the earliest. After that they’ll come back in to clean carpets upstairs and steam clean the tile floors in the kitchen and downstairs bathroom. I have to admit I’m not happy that we’ll end up waiting again. We’re just so close to being done that I’m getting impatient.