Sanding the floors...

Halfway done:


Chad liked this picture because he looks tough:




Taa-da!! All sanded:
Scraping the ceiling.. it's snowing!

This was a MESS.

The before pictures of the floors and ceiling

Here is our yucky popcorn ceiling in the living room:



There was a funny cut out in the floor in front of the kitchen, so Chad had to take out all the boards and re-do the floor:

We moved all the stuff out of our house and crammed it in the porch:

Here is another view of the porch:

Look at that hottie, after sanding some drywall:

The house without furniture:

The kitchen floors, before:

The office floor, before:

We had the help of some good friends who were encouraged by the mere mention of beer and brats. Moving is a pain, but it only took a few hours with help!!! It was especially helpful given that Chad's back was not fully healed. Thank you to Adam, Matt, Holly, Zak and James!!

The new lights, and sanding drywall

Before Chad hurt his back, we were able to make some progress on the kitchen.

Our new recessed lights are in! There is now more light in the kitchen than in the entire rest of the house combined:



The new pre-set dimmer switch is the best:

Sanding drywall is the pits! Look at the dust!

The drywall, and the lights:
The beginnings of the new back entry:

And then, a snow storm:

An Unexpected Set Back

Chad hurt his back at the gym. Major bummer. He was doing squats, and was fine afterwards, but the next day, he couldn't even walk. Something major was pulled.

Of all the setbacks I was planning for, this was not one of them. Our plan originally was to refinish the floors this weekend, but that is not going to happen.

Instead we are going to be in a music video for our friend Mike Gunther. So that's not a bad trade-off I guess. I've never been in a video!

We went for a walk in the winter snow on Monday. We met a neighbor lady who told us an interesting turn of phrase. She said that this was a good opportunity to exercise our patience. She was totally right in that patience, although totally slow and annoying, is an activity that requires effort and exercise. So that is what we are doing. Holding tight. Recovering.

Why do a DIY Remodel?

(Another interlude for a Carrie Bradshaw moment..... )

Everything you have heard about remodeling is absolutely true. Over schedule? Check. Over budget? Check. Discomfort while living in chaos? Check.

So, why do it?

The NYTimes article got me thinking about this question. Is it really to prove that us young, ambitious go-getters can have more house than our wallet can afford? It is just being too cheap to pay someone else to handle this project? Is it the enjoyment in seeing a project that you have labored over finally come together? Or is it the pure utility of what you get at the end?

Partially this project was a test. To see if it is worth it at the end. To see if we could figure out how to do everything. To see if we could work within budget and our schedule (that test failed, btw, but I pretty much figured as much -- atleast there are no disasters yet).

The question is still not adequately answered for me. I am very impatient, and also not very handy. These two qualities do not fare well for my handy partner. He atleast is finding some satisfaction in doing the work (while also being overwhelmed by it), while mostly what I find is impatience. I am trying to be more patient.

Time will give a better answer to this question. I'm hoping that it's going to turn out like the story that my friend Holly told me last night. She was talking about a trek she took in Laos. The climb was impossible, draining, and a test of her mental and physical strength.

But in retrospect, it was the best thing that she did there. Let's hope this damn kitchen project turns out like that.

Now the New York Times is writing about home remodeling blogs.

Check it out. They even call house blogs "smutty":

"Like all things smutty, so-called yuppie pornography — glossy magazines like Metropolitan Home and Architectural Digest, in which the houses of the rich are offered up to the longing gaze of middle-class readers — has found its way onto the Internet. And like all things smutty on the Internet, it is dirtier there, more amateur and thus more satisfying to the jaded connoisseur."

And now, to continue this break from home improvement, some pictures from New York:

We have walls

The electrical is done, save for the overhead lighting, and the drywall is up.

Chad says, "tell them we need to do all the mud work, and taping, but it doesn't have to be perfect, because tile and cabinets are going to cover most of the walls. We need to move the gas this week to service the new stove location. Not that big of a deal, but routing the flexible copper gasline through some tricky spaces can wear at your nerves. Oh yeah, that's a good one. Oh man, don't write that crap. Emily, stop. "

We figure we have 4-6 weeks left with this project. I am looking forward to being done.

We are taking this weekend off for a trip to NYC. And then, back at it.

The drywall:

We've reached a standstill

Progress has been slow for the last two weeks. Chad and I both got sick, literally, and then sick and tired of working on the kitchen. Kitchen remodeling depression, you might call it.

Chad has been working on the wiring, and he started working on the back entry way, pictured below. I had to ask him to focus on the kitchen, but that was after he had ripped out the floor and the stairs to the back! The back entry is a verifiable mess, but I would prefer to tackle that after the kitchen. Jeez. I didn't even get a chance to take good before pictures, I snapped a few in progress pictures below.

The Floor Is Back In -- Hallelujah

So, Chad took out all the wood floors in the kitchen. He wanted to clean up the gunk inbetween the floor boards, and he also had to patch in the new entry way to the kitchen. He also needed to take out the floors under the cabinets, and use that extra wood to patch in the new entryway. All that meant that it was easier to just take everything out and put it back in again. What a hassle. This took an entire weekend.

The floor is partially back in...



Detail of the new entry way.

Plywood goes under the new cabinets. The white square shown below is where the stove will go, we are going to tile that with a tile that matches the backsplash.


The fridge will go to the left in the picture below, that will also get tiled

The floor is back in!

It sucks not having a kitchen.

I was planning that no friends would want to come over to our house during the kitchen remodel. Last weekend, we quite successfully held a movie watching evening. Chad and Zak spent all day putting in the new floors, and at the end of the day, I think they were too exhausted to consider relocating. I made a salad with grilled chicken, grilled bread, mozzarella and tomatoes because I was sick of eating out, and afterall, we have a grill.

Here's to entertaining during the kitchen remodel:


This weekend I got really fed up with eating out. I had to take a stand. We have no stove. I can't cook anything decent via the microwave. I needed to do something! So, while the boys watched the superbowl, I cooked up some food for the rest of the week. A big pot of chili, some roasted veggies, pumpkin bread, wild rice, and a chicken casserole-thing for the week.

I am hoping that we can hook the stove up soon. Not having a kitchen is really starting to drag me down. I was figuring that this would happen, but I still was not prepared for the inconvenience of not having a kitchen -- oh, and having the rest of the house in chaos too -- for multiple weeks. Hopefully some home-made food will help just a little. I'll hang in there.

Meanwhile, Chad has been spending so much time working on the kitchen, he is making great progress but overall it's just a ton of work. Our friend Zak has helped a ton, which we really appreciate. I called Chad tonight and he said that he was "farting around" -- which besides being a very odd turn of phrase, he never does. I think he is starting to feel like his life is being swallowed by this project as well.

I have confidence that at the end of all this, we will be so happy that we decided to take on this project.

Probably the biggest thing that has happened as a result of this new feeling of being under-nourished and over-worked is that we are willing to put a little bit more money into some of the finishing touches that we were not planning on spending money on before. For example, we originally were planning on spending $350 for a low to mid line dishwasher. But we found that Bosch, and Bosch makes the best dishwashers, and it was discounted (but still more expensive than the $350 we were originally planning to spend -- it was $500). However, our life is in shambles, our time is forever gone, to hell with it, we are going to spend an extra $150 to get a kick ass dishwasher that will hopefully last a long time and run as quietly as a winter night. It's just not worth it to disrupt our lives so totally and then end up with a final product that is merely "good enough." We're investing so much time, I want the whole thing to be special.

We're feeling that way about the countertops too. The choices are still between soapstone and laminate, with soapstone being around $2000, including shipping from Vermont, and laminate being in the $300-$1000 range depending on whether or not we get it installed. We still have to view some samples of soapstone and get further details, but when it comes down to it, we might go for it.

I hope we are making the right choices because we can't get our time or $$ back!

Send us good vibes because it sucks not having a kitchen.

We bought a dishwasher

I realized yesterday that it has been almost 10 years since I have had a dishwasher. I am so excited to finally have someone else wash the dishes! We found a great deal on a Bosch dishwasher at Appliance Smart in St. Paul. They sell discontinued and scratch and dent appliances. I believe the one we got is an older model, since it was in packaging and was a little difficult to find online. It's stainless steel, though the picture below is white, and supposed to be very quiet. Have a look for yourself
Consumer Reports rates Bosch at the top of their brand list of dishwashers, especially when it comes to quietness. Some of their models are so quiet they even have a beam of light that shines down on the floor to let you know that the dishwasher is running. That's amazing, and maybe partly a marketing scheme, but it got me.

The other interesting thing I read in consumer reports is that the average cycle time on a dishwasher is 2 hours. I haven't had one for so long, I forget how long it takes. Having a quiet dishwasher in a small house for two hours will be very nice. Consumer Reports basically said that in low-mid range models, your dishes will be clean, but in top end models, they will be cleaned quietly. We did spend a little more than we were planning originally, but I think it will be worth it in the end.

Chad won the stainless steel debate -- I was pushing for white appliances since we weren't planning to upgrade all our appliances. But I totally caved. Score one for Chad.

Other cool features on this dishwasher include:

• SENSOTRONIC™ An advanced scanning eye examines the level of soil in the wash water and automatically deletes a secondary fresh-water fill if not needed
• Stainless Steel TALLTUB™ Top and bottom racks can be adjusted for improved clearance, and if you remove the top rack altogether, you’re left with an incredible 22" of usable space.
  
  

Workin on the floors

We moved the doorway to the kitchen, so the wood floors between the kitchen and the living room are cut out. That means that Chad has to patch them so they look seamless between the two rooms.


Markings on the floor show what to keep and what to cut. The old stuff comes up, along with some of the underflooring:

The view looking into the living room:

One very long day in pictures