Paint colors; Inside & Outside

So so so so many choices!
From left to right:
1st floor man cave
1st floor main area (none of these worked)
2nd floor office
Exterior

Exterior options

Chris painting (from left to right) exterior options
number 1-7

We took our favorite exterior options (#2 &
#3) and painted them around the house!
In the sun & shade, plus on the old &
new siding!
We chose #3 - shown on the right here!

Some of our first efforts on the 1st floor color.
We wanted a light gray....darker than the white trim but
lighter than our cabinets. Harder to find than you'd
imagine! This includes living room, dining room,
 hall bathroom, kitchen, family room and our master bedroom!
I struggled mightily with this choice!

2nd floor color options - we wanted an off white that would
show off the trim but not be too bold. This paint is for
the foyer, front stairwell, upstairs hallway, guest rooms &
the hall bathroom. Bottom row center is the winner!

Gray, gray, gray.
I painted lots of color options on this wall
in the kitchen! We wanted to be as sure as possible we were
making the right choice! We went with the color on the lower
left (its repeated on both sides of the door).

We are rocking the man cave like it is
a transplant from our condo! It will be painted
brown & have virtually the same furniture :)

The winning man cave color is on the right.
The one on the left looks too much like a dirty diaper :(

Chris showing off the office window with the color
options. The darkest one won here :) Its in the center

I DIYed the basement laundry area wall....because it is in
the basement & it doesn't matter! The middle color won!

I wanted to go bold & fun. One might think this is too
dark of a color for a basement; I went high gloss to
bounce the light around the room. Our basement has some
above grade windows which give it some natural light,
which helps!

In case you care to buy any of these colors, we used all Benjamin Moore paints. Here is a list of what we bought & where we're using it:

Exterior: Deep Royal

1st Floor + Master Bedroom: Whitestone at 50% strength

2nd Floor + Foyer/Stairwell: China White

Man Cave: Whitall Brown

Office: Van Deusen Blue

Laundry Area: Old Navy

Insulation Station!

Who knew how incredibly fast the insulators would work?? Not me!

Welcome home - to a hazmat situation!
Apparently it is not good to expose your
skin or lungs to spray foam insulation....

On Friday around 12 noon I went to the house with a wonderful friend, Tanya, who drove in from Iowa. I gave her the exterior tour because it was clear the door was blocked by plastic sheeting. I tried to open the door & shouted hello through it; but the sheeting was taped over the door! Thankfully, this gentleman appeared & let us in. It was time for them to break for lunch he told us. Perfect; given how long Tanya had driven, I didn't want her tour to end at the mud pit yard!

Chris' office was almost done when the guys broke for
lunch. All done in the afternoon.

By that time (12 noon on Friday) the insulators had sprayed the foam throughout the 2nd floor! They worked so fast!

Chris & I went back together on Saturday & the insulators had completed the entire 1st floor Friday afternoon! Lickety split I'd say! (how do you spell lickety? lickity? Spell check doesn't like any of it. Hopefully you get my meaning despite any spelling shortcomings :)

Upstairs bathroom will be toasty!

Yahoo! Our bedroom is good to go!

The only other areas that need insulation are the attic, basement & crawlspace under the future family room. Those areas don't get sprayed; they get the old school batting insulation which apparently takes longer to install. They should be done by tomorrow at noon, meaning we'll have the insulation inspected Tuesday afternoon! Zoom! 

I think Willa was quite impressed with our 1st floor
insulation!

I love the old kitchen exhaust fan we kept -
the Air King! Our bedroom is insulated!

Next up? DRYWALL! Eek! We're chugging along!

Water Service Upgrade

Dig dig dig

Everybody likes good water pressure for their shower, right? With that in mind we updated & upgraded our water service pipe to accommodate the addition of the master bathroom and a dishwasher to the mix of water using appliances in the house.

Well, we didn't need that hole after all.
Fill it up!

The City rips a hole in the street to give access to the valve that hides under the parkway. I guess this is where our water will be turned off if we stop paying our bill....yikes! It is also where the water department turned off our water when we had a pipe burst earlier this year. Yes. With virtually no pipes in the entire house.....the one pipe that could possible burst, did. Hello water spraying all over the few things we stashed in our destroyed basement. Not ideal. At least that pipe is now a thing of the past :)

I think our neighborhood was kept safe
with this use of 2 orange cones.
Here we go digging the 2nd hole in the
driveway.

Back to the present: the city decided they couldn't run our new water service from the first hole they dug into the street (because it might damage our beautiful parkway tree - I don't want that - I like the tree a lot. Also because it would be running too close to our sewer line. Yuck.) Soooooo they dug a second hole in the street and tore open part of our driveway for good measure. There is no reason to have just one hole in the street/on your property when you could have three. Am I right? Insert visions of dollar signs here as the costs begin to increase :(. Oh well, nothing to be done!

Keeping our parkway tree safe with orange fencing.
Lots of orange happening today.

There are the 2nd & 3rd holes that were dug. Why just dig one when you can dig three??

I was sad to miss this action, I was in Colorado with my big sister & littlest niece (which was abundantly awesome & wonderful - wouldn't have missed that trip for all the house stuff in the world :), but between my Dad & our contractor- I was fully informed of the progress. Thank goodness they were willing to send some photos too!

The little machine fit perfectly in our driveway. The 3rd hole
is right behind the digger.

Sweet bricks! Price was right: free!
Well, given the chunk of change we paid for the water
service upgrade.....maybe not exactly free.....

Bonus of the multiple holes dug in the street (which we are on the hook to pay for :(? A pile of very good looking red bricks! Thanks Dad for scavenging for me. I think I know where I get my love of trash to treasure!

Ta da! Here is what all the fuss was about:
our new water service in the basement!

The Guts

The guts are almost 100% in the house! By guts, clearly I am referring to all the very important pipes, conduit, cords, insulation & ducts. Another way to say guts is to say, the incredibly important, expensive, but ultimately hidden bits of the house that make it work like a house should in 2016! We didn't necessarily know how far our house would be gutted.....but all of the old guts were taken out of the house. Or at least 99% of the guts. The 1% will stay hidden in place, but not be used.

So here are some photos of the guts. We are really looking forward to our inspection as passing it will signal a huge next phase of our project. Once the guts pass their inspection, the finishes begin being installed! Drywall, tile, hardwood, paint, trim finishes, cabinets, vanities; all the things we are excited about as they bit by bit pave the way for us to move in! 

Water closet in the master bath

Mini ducts for the SpacePak hiding in the
master bedroom closet wall

Plumbing & electrical for the master
bath vanity wall with the SpacePak ducts

The SpacePak ducts for the family room
hide inside the built in bench in the sunporch
this room required some creativity :) Please
note the pink/salmon paint on the bench lid
leaning on the left wall!

Also note the floor covering where I'm standing
that was hidden inside the built in bench! So
many funny things hide inside our house!

Plumbing stuff in the trench in the basement floor. Yes
there is still an open trench in the basement floor. I
didn't say the guts were all the way there yet!

Early December Framing.....errrr.... Demo Progress

December has meant lots of progress on the framing of our house, well really - the framers have been busy continuing to demolish our house! How can there be more to remove/destroy/take out?!? We feel like Christmas came early because we see progress every time we visit.

Check out the photos to see what's been going on......

Loving seeing the framers there each day. Sometimes there
are as many as 12 of them working at any given time.
Zoooooom!

This is a view from the old 1st floor master bedroom (future
family room) looking up to the wall that will become the
mudroom. I'm trying to show that the exterior siding is still
hiding under the walls; reconfirming what we knew - the
back room was an addition to the home in the 1960s.

I realllllly like the sweet broom one of the
framers made out of a hockey stick :)

We got even MORE wood delivered!
I would be thrilled, except more lumber
at this point means more $$$. Ah well.
This is all part of the experience.

Dumpster on the left, giant pile of rubble on the right. Why
isn't the rubble in the dumpster?!?

The 1st floor bathroom used to be here;
the walls, even the studs, came down. The floor
including the subfloor has been removed.
It would be really hard to find more to
remove here!

We officially have no plumbing

Ew, right? But it is also great - because the old saying "out with the old, in with the new" applies here!

So strange to see so much of the house gone, we continue to be surprised by the amount of items removed - we keep thinking there is nothing left to demolish. We keep being wrong!

The 2 part white pipe sticking out of the
basement floor used to run up to the 1st &
2nd floor bathrooms....gone!

Without the plumbing coming through the middle,
the (creepy) basement is starting to look a bit bigger!

This is the view from the future kitchen, through
the 1st floor bathroom and into the future
man-cave. No more plumbing running in the wall in
the foreground.

1st floor tub has been gone for awhile, but
now you can barely see where it used to sit!
No pipes to give you any idea of its location!

This is the moment I am thankful we have a porta-potty in the backyard!

Demolition Days 2 & 3: 1st Floor Bathroom and Kitchen

 Man, this is an incredible part of this process! Chris & I have been so excited to get over to the house every time we know guys have been in it smashing stuff apart. We missed visiting last week Friday because we were out of town - so this post covers 2-3 guys work over the course of 2 days! They were busy busy busy! 

Check out the photos - perhaps you will have the same reaction we did; which was "holy f-ing s*@#!!" We said that out loud an awful lot. Though, to be clear, we are so happy with this stage of the project. The guys are conscientious & have left the house in as much order as possible (aka, piled/bagged garbage, swept up each day, left 1 functioning bathroom :).

Where did the 1st floor kitchen go?!?
You can now walk through the wall into the 2nd bedroom closet
(look for the butterflies used to decorate the closet wall)! 

We are so happy the (maybe) tin ceiling has survived this far into the demo.
We hope it will survive & be our future mudroom's ceiling.

1st Floor bathroom has officially been gutted!

1st Floor bathroom has officially been gutted!

Well, this is where the blue bathtub used to be....that is the basement floor showing through!
Everyone loves a hole in their floor; right? Its the hot new thing!

View from the living room into the dining room & through
the wall into what was the 1st floor kitchen and will become our mudroom.

The blue bathtub is in pieces on the 1st Floor 2nd Bedroom Floor...
This is the sight of our future kitchen!

Something about a toilet & sink in Chris' future man cave is really amusing.