early in the week mathew spent his evenings outside painting the repaired exterior. he knew rain was coming and wanted to get everything sealed before it started.
photo taken from the upstairs kitchen.
the rain started this afternoon and now mathew is putting in late nights at the office.
countdown to grandma: 9 weeks
saturday was a steady work day. progress with few photos.
(left) second entrance, exterior before. (right) mathew caulking siding gaps after scraping old paint.
mathew spent most of his weekend outside on the ladder, (right) and up on the roof after a small scaffold was made. i spent most of saturday stripping interior trim paint.
on sunday mathew started by prepping areas that i would work on. (left) drilling a hole for wiring to come through the wall from upstairs. (right) mathew removing paneling in the stairwell leading to the garage.
(left) i spent sunday making this built-in cabinet pretty again. (right) mathew working above the second entrance.
i added insulation. strange stuff with plastic instead of paper.
(left) my cabinet with new gypboard. (right) late night painting. the neighbor came by and asked “when do you sleep?” it didn’t feel that late but it was COLD. mathew should be wearing a sweatshirt…
it was a late night, and mathew’s birthday! we had dinner after 10pm and vegan ice cream for dessert.
this is what our 6th wedding anniversary looked like… but i’m not complaining, i was working till after 8pm myself. i think it’s amazing how hardworking mathew has been, how much he loves working on his house and how motivated he is to have my grandmother move in.
countdown to grandma: 10 weeks.
look at what mathew did to my carefully painted wall! he needed to get to some wiring for downstairs and we also needed a way to insulate the last wall upstairs.
inside the crawl space were these really old wooden “Shell Aviation Gasoline” boxes, and i was thinking they could be lost treasure or some cool vintage artifacts… nope, just bits of broken plaster and construction debris.
and downstairs, more new holes! this was actually where the old ceiling medallion used to be. don’t worry, we’ll plaster over it.
and part of the never ending wiring project included the alternate entrance. this is where we’ve got rotten wood from a leak and mathew found dead termites… he replaced a lot of the wood and made it more weather proof. (right) i’m not sure, but i think this is a light well between our house and the neighbor’s house that i’ve never seen before!
(left) i don’t know what mathew is trying to show us here… (right) even though mathew’s only wearing a t-shirt as he’s finishing this door frame, it’s getting COLD out!
here i am attaching gypboard to patch holes that were made in the wall. i even added some insulation near the alternate entrance. mathew’s goal for next weekend is sanding, prep and plaster!
so, we need a new refrigerator for our kitchen upstairs. and if moving in an upholstered chair was challenging, imagine how difficult a refrigerator will be! mathew has been pushing for a smaller, 10.3 cu ft model and i’ve been pushing for a 15.5 cu ft model, both are energy star models. mathew said that if i created a life-sized model of the refrigerator and successfully moved it upstairs then we could buy the larger one.
my brother justin was in town and offered to make the refrigerator model for me.
as you can tell, we never made it up the stairwell. the 28″ width worked at the bottom but the 31″ depth wasn’t going anywhere. at one point we thought it might work if we took the doors off the actual fridge. luckily justin had the sense to measure at different points at the top of the stairs and found that it actually narrows as it goes up. nothing over 27″ was making it upstairs without a crane and removing the living room window…
so, this was a time-consuming but convincing way to decide on which refrigerator to purchase. and in the end justin saved us $260! (the difference between the two models.) thanks justin, for saving us time too!
we’ve seen a lot of family over the last month or so, which has been great, but hasn’t helped us to make much progress on the house. as of last weekend, we are no longer accepting any invites of any kind in an effort to finish the downstairs remodel. that means weeknights and weekends we will be working on the house. mathew is serious about getting my grandmother moved in by the end of the year.
countdown to grandma: 11 weeks.
here’s what happened last weekend…
on saturday my parents came to help with paint prep, sanding and painting in the downstairs living room.
(left) the primer is white so the room doesn’t look that different yet… (right) on sunday we started working on the foyer. i stripped paint on the outside of the living room door trim.
(left) months ago mathew had agreed to refinish a teak table for mark’s new cafe. since we’ve got too much on our plates these days, he had mark and his girlfriend atsuko help out with the sanding and polyurethane.
mathew started demo on this corner of the foyer. there was a leak that damaged the wall and trim. mathew spent the rest of the day reworking bad/dangerous wiring.
here is the picture rail covered in many layers of paint. i uncovered lots of white, beige, red and gold! but this paint wasn’t coming off as easily as upstairs and the trim in the corner was damaged beyond recognition so we’ve decided to replace the picture rail in this small room.
sorry for the boring post…
last weekend it was time to plaster the final wall in the downstairs living room.
mathew sands the plaster used for filling holes.
say good bye to the modern art…
plaster begins. and voila! [there are no “during” photos because i was running around fetching water, mixing plaster, rearranging the ladder and platform, and scraping buckets… but we’ve done this so many times now that you get the idea…]
(left) touch-up plaster on the ceiling and above the picture rails. (right) the window trim i stripped and sanded last weekend.
more trim stripping.
mathew attaches the window trim.
(left) and even more trim stripping. (right) window trim in place and a reflective new plaster wall (to the left of the window.) you probably don’t know it, but this small bit of wall, to the right of the window, is possibly our most dramatic change in the entire house so far. there had been a leak at the upper right of this window, causing water to leak into the wall (for years?) that eventually broke through the plaster leaving a huge ugly hole. of course i don’t have any “before” photos… but if i did you would be seriously amazed by the change that has taken place. either way, mathew did a really great job on the repairs and the new plaster in this room.
