Progress After the Long Weekend!

Hi All!

Well, believe it or not, I think that we're finally making some progress--and all it took was a long weekend.  After working for a little bit on Friday night, most of Saturday, all of Sunday, and about half of Monday, here's where everything stands!


Laundry Room:


So really, nearly all of the work is done here. Everything that could be done this weekend, was done!  That's kind of a big deal.

This is where we last saw the laundry room.  Don't worry, I gave the floor a serious scrub.  Bleh.  

Here are the new (to me) washer and dryer, installed and ready to go!  Plus, that awesome Homart utility sink.  I seriously love that thing.  

Cabinet one--up!  Putting them up with two people was really much better than taking them down by myself.  No feet were injured in the making of this photo. 

Boom!  All three cabinets up!  Notice the level up top there? I'll have you know, that Kurt didn't even put the level on anything except the cabinets.  Let this be a lesson to you, dear brother.  

Even with the drill, we had to go back and tighten the screws in the rest of the way by hand. 

TA-DAAAAA!!  Man, this just feels so much better!  I really think that it just makes more sense to have all of the cabinets on one wall above the washer and dryer.  

You may have noticed, there's a bit of dead space at the end of the row of cabinets.  There was one more small (read short height wise) cabinet, but it was too long for this space.  This lead to the question, what the heck do you do with 19 inches of dead space that doesn't look weird?

It seemed like a hanging bar was a pretty obvious choice!  Getting the guys at the hardware store to understand what I was looking to do was surprisingly difficult, but eventually I got exactly what I wanted!  Simple.  Functional.  Matching.

I don't want to hang the drying bar yet, since I want to wallpaper the wall to the left in the photo below.  Hopefully the rest of the wallpaper samples arrive in the next day or two.

This will hang up at the top of the cabinets once we're ready to install it! 

In other news around the house:  Kurt made me make a list of every single thing that needs to be done.  I really didn't want to make the list--which is saying something, because you know that I love lists!  It just seemed like, if I committed to actually writing out a list, I'd get overwhelmed.  The good news is, I gave him the list and he said "Oh, it's not that bad" and then promptly reorganized my list, and started giving me tasks!  It's funny how people are different.  Now I've become super motivated to complete tasks so that he can cross them off the list.  :)  There's no joy for me in crossing things off, but if he likes it, then it's worth it to me!

With that spirit in mind we knocked out a few more things!

Kurt hung this (second) new light in the upstairs hallway.  SO much better than the weird bare bulb that was here before!  (Don't worry, I've since replaced the one missing bulb.)

Kurt got busy painting the handrail for the stairway.  I'm so thankful he did--not having a handrail was really a hazard.  

I've learned it's a good idea to let him do the finish work.  He's much more patient that I am with these things.  

We also hung the handrail back up, but of course, I didn't take a picture of that.  You know how I am.  Forgetful. Plus,  I was still drunk on pizza at this point.  I swear I ate half of a large pizza.  That's what happens when I don't eat till 4pm!

There were a bunch of other little things we did that hardly seem photo worthy.  I'll just list them, for curious minds.  Everyone else can just scrolllll ooooon dooooooown.  (we've been watching game shows on Sunday nights.  I couldn't resist!)

Painted the trim in the laundry room
Second coat of paint on the cabinet doors and cabinets
Scrubbed cabinet handles, so they're ready to be put back on the doors!
Went and bought all new screws to attach the doors, and the handles.
Put everything in the laundry room back together so that it's fully functional.  Yay!
Sanded the master bedroom
Vacuumed the floor
Started staining the trim in the bedroom
Waited impatiently for the trim to never dry (never may be an exaggeration)
Worked on stripping the rest of the stairs (this is going to take a lot more time)
Applied two coats of stain to the master bedroom floor (pics to come!)
Cleaned the kitchen
Ripped up the carpet in the dining room (Sorry mom!  Again, pics to come!)
Made tasty pretzel roll buns


Ok, so maybe it doesn't look like that much work all listed out, but I'll keep working on it!  Like I said, I'm ready to start crossing things off of the list!  (Mostly to get rid of the list-it is stressful for me to have that thing floating around out in the world on paper ;)

We've got a lot left to do, but we've come a long way, baby!  Tonight we've got some work on the schedule, and I'll try to remember to take some pictures of other progress around the house.  Ya'll are probably tired of looking at this laundry room. :D


K



Nick Lowe-You're My Wildest Dream