Friday Night!

We have an uneventful weekend planned; mostly school work, sleep, and trying to finish clearing out the rest of the furniture and boxes in the dining room.

As we pause for the weekend, it's nice to see the week's progress on the remodel. Most of the electrical in the kitchen has been installed. The sleeping porch has been framed out, ready to become a closet.


The front steps are in and nearly dry. The cement contractor is coming tomorrow (Saturday) to put the finish coat on the cement so the steps should be done and usable early next week.

The paint stripping team has made good progress on the box beam ceiling in the living room. Since we realized the trim work around the French doors is not original, we've decided to replace some of the more complicated pieces rather than take the time to scrape the paint.

Cement is In!

The new cement stairs have finally been poured. Finally. (Sharon didn't get a picture of the finished front stairs before they covered them up so the dog wouldn't walk on them.)





















Our new furnace is also in, but with so many gaping holes in the house, it doesn't make much sense to turn it on. Though, it would be nice to have the house be warmer than 53°F.




We now have quite a few exceedingly unattractive vents on the outside of the house. We're not happy about them, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of options at the moment. We're definitely in the market for something more attractive.

Finally, A Lucky Break

The crew finished demo-ing the upstairs sleeping porch and underneath the ancient linoleum they found a fir floor! Finally, something we won't have to pay to install! (We didn't get this lucky in the kitchen.)We were originally planning to turn this enclosed porch into a bathroom until we learned it would cost $50K. Since it was too rich for our budget, we decided to instead convert it into a closet. It's going to be huge and awesome!

Dedicated to Tax Day

Since we are both unemployed, we are having to spend down our savings and sell stock to pay our bills, we're definitely feeling raped by the tax collectors. Especially when you read so many articles about huge companies paying NO taxes. Today was a massive day of bleeding. These comics appeared at Economicrot and fit our current mood.

Paint Stripping Contractor

We've been quite satisfied so far with the paint stripper we hired. His name is Jimmy Cookman (503-493-9187) and he works with Pasqualle's (recommended by Bungalowcious). Because we know folks will ask, we are paying him around $9,000 for bringing these large rooms to a stain-ready state. Plus, we are paying out-of-pocket for dipping doors and easily-removed windows, which will probably be another $2000.

So far they've been working for two weeks to do the entryway and the front portion of the living room. Jimmy has lost a crew member, so we think they're moving rather slower than he was originally hoping. Today they got started on the living room ceiling.

Tile Decision

Sharon really liked the tile sample from the New England Art Tile Co., but the tile seemed too yellow to be blended with the almost-white reproduction subway tile. It was disappointing.

Then we thought we might buy a decorative tile panel from Pratt & Larson, but it turned out to cost more than $1300 (installed). It was sort of a bad day because Sharon had just finished bookkeeping and had realized how much we have overdone it on this job and we called a halt to that particular plan. It was just too much for a backsplash that neither of us loved.

Therefore, it turns out, we're actually going to end up with a more period solution. We're just going to lay 3"x6" reproduction subway tile in avalon white (the historic white) in the brick pattern.

This Week's Progress

Jeff and Sharon have been sick, but there has still been a ton of activity for the week.
Success has been declared in the front of the living room. The woodwork was brought from the almost-black color to the slightly-stained wood. Our paint stripping team tried quite a lot of techniques to get the wood back to bare wood, but this is the best they could do. We'll have to choose a stain that works over this.

The entryway is basically done.

We have new ductwork. And the new on-demand water heater is installed.

Most of the plumbing is in and the kitchen is framed up.
We've chosen a siding color.