Dec 22

We’ve been making progress since I have last posted though, we’ve had to take a little break of a few days to finally do some Christmas shopping, which, thankfully, we were able to do almost entirely online. It’s been awhile since I have posted, but I’ll just publish a few photos in non-chronological order.

Mom has been working on the trim at least a little bit each day and on Monday we got the bookcases moved into the living room.  The miter saw is still in the living room, but it’ll only be a few hours more of work before we’re finished with the trim and can start decorating in preparation for our party on Saturday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glenn had to totally redo the electrical in the kitchen and hallway, but not we have light and we also replaced the fixture in the kitchen with one that was brushed-nickel to match the other hardware in the house.  Wow, the photos I took of the light turned out pretty cool!

The venetian plaster in the back bathroom has been sealed and is now finished.  Venetian plaster takes a lot of extra work and time because it requires a lot of different coats and you have to wait for each coat to dry. However, thanks to the extra effort venetian plaster looks fantastic and we may end up using it in a couple of other rooms.

 

 

One of our biggest priorities now is to get the hallway bathroom semi-functional for our guests. We’ll paint the walls in the bathroom with the same paint we used in the laundry room, you can see a sample of the color in the above picture.

 

 

 

 

 

Today we got the water/ice system for the refrigerator hooked up!

 

The original water line had rotted and we also had to replace the water filter. The fridge had been delivered exactly 363 days ago, so at least we can say that we got the water system hooked up in less than a year!

 

 

 

Our growing collection of Christmas cards

 

Well, now I’ve (reluctantly) have to get ready for a ballet performance of the Nutcracker that we’ll be attending tonight…should be interesting…

Moving Appliances and Skating in Forest Park

It seems that during this renovation in order to get a job accomplished it requires a series of steps in order to finally get the job accomplished. Noah and Mom were up ‘til 2:30am painting a second coat on the laundry room walls. We had to paint so we could put on the trim so we could move in the washer and dryer so we can do LAUNDRY!!!

We haven’t cleaned a load of clothes here at the house since before we left for Florida and that was back in October! It’s pretty exciting…as soon as the dryer and washer get hooked it’ll officially be LAUNDRY DAY!

Wow, I guess when you eat 2 long-johns for breakfast you start writing in all caps with exclamation POINTS!!! You may think that the picture of Lydia to your left has nothing to do with laundry, but Lydia’s pretty tired of wearing stinky clothes too…and she does wear clothes….

We loaded up our comfy leather couch to deliver it over to my Grandma’s place. However, to move the couch we had to move the chairs that were blocking the washer and dryer which had to be moved out of the way so we could move the boxes that were on top of the couch so that we could move the couch unto the dolly! Whew, all in one breath!

             

Picking up breakfast…I think that we’ll need some Wheaties too…

 

The dolly made it fairly easy for us to get the couch to the front door, but we had to lift it to get inside the doorway.

Mom was getting the trim placed in the laundry room while the rest of us worked on getting the appliances out of the garage.

 

Installing the anti-tip device                                                Measuring for the trim

The next appliance was the most difficult of all and that was the refrigerator. When we had moved it out to the garage a few weeks ago it barely squeezed through the front door and it was so heavy that it required all 5 of us to move it. However, this time we’re going to take our time and do a few things to the fridge first to make it lighter and thinner.

We duct taped the sides of the door way to minimize the chances of the fridge getting scraped up.

 

 

Grandma and I worked on getting everything off of the refrigerator and freezer and moving the food into the kitchen.

Removing the doors                         We also had to detach wires and a water hose for the icemaker

 

 

Then once the fridge was on the dolly it was smooth sailing

Re-attaching the wiring and also hooking up the water to the ice maker…which was a project that happened a few days ago.

The entire line for the ice maker had to be replaced because it was rotten and we also had to remove the old filtering system and replace it with a new one. It’s been at least half a dozen years since the icemaker’s worked, so getting this set up finally is pretty exciting.

The trim was finished in the laundry room so we could move the washer and dryer in. We were pretty excited at how the white trim and the white appliances popped off the pomegrante walls.

When we setup the washer we found that both of it’s shut off valves were leaking and will have to be replaced.

This evening we went to Webster Groves to have some fun…Grandma and Glenn came along and also Noah’s good friend, Aaron.

We ate dinner at Dr. Jazz’s which is designed to be an store that you saw in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  We found these two guys on a park bench who needed a meal so they ate with us too.

 

 

 

After dinner we drove to Forest Park and went ice skating.We didn’t start skating at the rink until 11pm so we stayed until it closed at midnight. We were all pretty tired so it was a quiet ride back home.

Mortar Mess, Shoe for Trim and Leak in the Kitchen Sink

We started mopping the floor a little bit and using some special haze remover solution, but the tiles still look they are covered my mortar and look dull. We’ve been contacting the installers because they were supposed to clean the floors before they left. I’m not sure how or when it will be resolved.

Mom picked up some more trim boards that are called the “shoe” and will cover where the 1x4 meets the floor. They were already primed so I had to put a coat of paint on that,

There was a “leak under the kitchen sink” (that seems to be a bit of a cliché) and the flooring inside of the cabinet had become wet and has collapsed. We’ll have to replace the floor with some new plywood before we can fix the leak.