The Remodel Continues

The past few weeks have been a blur of activity, at least as far as our remodel is concerned. We are excited to get into the space. Living in only half of the house and using our den as a bedroom is beginning to wear on us. Here are a few pictures from last October when we started demo. Then, school for me got in the way and nothing much happened for awhile.

This is the wall between our old bedroom and a room that was a lot of wasted space. part of this wall is becoming a closet and a new door to the bathroom is going in the far right hand corner.

Looking back through the door in the picture above.

This photo is from inside the old bathroom. The opening is new and will be access to a new bedroom. A wall will go across starting in about the corner of this photo, separating the new bathroom from the new bedroom closet.

This is the entrance to the old bathroom. It will remain the entrance from the new bedroom to the new bathroom. The bathroom will have two entrances, one from each bedroom.

The old bathroom.

More old bathroom

Most of the demo is complete.

Not sure what I am doing.

From the old bedroom looking through to what will be a new bedroom.

All of the plaster and lath is gone.

Another view of everything all opened up.

More of everything opened up.

New drywall has started to go up. We missed a bunch of steps in-between the last photos and this step. The wall on the left had the plaster, lath, and blown in insulation removed the whole way down to the yellow wall at the top of the photo. It was put in years ago and had settled leaving nice big gaps in the wall. New bat insulation will keep things nice and warm. The studied wall is new and will be the back wall of the closet in the new bedroom. On this side, there will be floor to ceiling book cases. The new bedroom will be nursery for now. After the attic is remodeled it may become a den

A view from the opposite side from the photo above. This will be a large, custom built closet.

Dry wall is hung and ready to be mudded. We used the last of the drywall we inherited with the house on this wall. It was very warped from storage and didn't hang very well. Good thing we are finishing it in a way the will try to mimic the plaster on the other walls.

There is more work to do and we are actually further than these pictures show. Hopefully more photos coming soon.

So, last weekend Hannah and I signed up to do a Warrior Dash. If you would like to see the course we ran just follow the link in the previous post. Here is before picture, notice how nice and clean we are. The two people in the photo with me are our friends Laura and Kyle. They ran it too.

And, her is the after picture. Notice we are not clean any longer.

You'll also notice that Hannah does not appear in either of these two photos. Hannah decided not to run. She wasn't being a chicken. See, we signed up for this race back in February or March. Since that time, things have changed and Hannah didn't want to run 'for two' as it were. 

Yes, Hannah is expecting! We are both very excited. Her due date is December 28th.

Guess it's time to get going on that remodel... 

This is what Hannah and I will be doing on June 10, 2012.

http://warriordash.com/register2012_nebraska.php

Okay, it has been awhile. Okay, okay, 'awhile' is an understatement. Since it has been a year since the last post I suppose nobody is even looking at this blog anymore. However, that will hopefully change. I, Eric, am quickly approaching the end of grad school and will hopefully have more time to devote to more frivolous things; such as keeping the world abreast of what is going on in our lives here in Nebraska.

So, soon to come:
 - our slowly progressing remodel Phase 2
- our adventures in emergency gutter repair/basement sealing/de-mustifying return air ducts
- Garden v.2012, a.k.a the year bind weed went crazy

Peace,
Eric

New Project

As if I (Eric) did not have enough to do with finishing trim work in our den, starting the second half of our remodel, a garden and an intensive 14-month grad school program, I added another thing to my list. I had been looking for a small garden tractor to pull a trailer, dethatcher and aerator around our yard, and possibly plow snow in the winter. Last week Noel spotted an older tractor on Craigslist and stopped by to look at it. Two days later I was up looking at it and two days after that I returned to pick it up. It does not currently run...hopefully a small problem, but a problem non-the-less. Here is a picture, it is a 1970 Bolens 1253, it also came with a front blade, a disc, and a harrow :).

The Big Reveal

So the long awaited moment has arrived! The moment when we unveil the many months of sweat, hard work, and admittedly, perhaps a few bad words. Of course, as with my one siblings reveal earlier this week, there a few little details left to do. There are some more pictures to hang, touch up painting to do, and a few other things as well; but none that will make a substantial difference in pictures. It was a rather dreary day here and we took the pictures at dusk, so they did not turn out the best. Someday we will take pictures when it is sunny, our south facing windows let in some awesome light! So here we go:

Before: Looking east from the kitchen

After

Before: Looking SE from corner of Dining Room

After

Before: Looking South in Dining Room

After

Before: Looking South in Living Room

After

Before: Looking SW from corner of Living Room

After

Before: Looking West from edge of Living Room

After

Before: Looking East into the Kitchen

After

Before: Looking SW into the Kitchen

After

Before: Looking NE into Kitchen

After

Before: Kitchen looking West

After

There you go! That is what the majority of our nights, weekends, and, yes, arguments, have been about for the last 10 1/2 months. And, it has all been well worth it! We love it! We'll have pictures of the den coming real soon. I promise it will not be another 6 months! It is almost done!

After that the next phase of the remodel involves removing the chimney from the house. Yes, thats right I said removing the chimney. Which involves replacing our existing furnace. Which will be expensive. So, we are going to take a break for at least a few months before starting on that one. 

To family and friends on the east coast, we look forward to seeing you, or at least as many as possible, in a few weeks.

- Eric and Hannah too (who is currently making Peppernuts and Gingerbread Men (People?) Cookies

With Deepest and Most Humble Apologies

Okay, so it has been awhile since we have last updated. We feel guilty about this, really we do. We have just been a little busy. Busy with work, it seems to take up a lot of time, busy with remodeling and just in general busy. Not that this is any excuse for neglecting our family and friends. All that aside we are actually very near the completion of remodeling half our house. So close in fact that by the end of the week there will, hopefully, be reveal pictures of what our finished project looks like! Stay tuned!