Home Renos 2.6

Well after a long week of John working every single day and night due to being on-call, we have finally been able to start working on the living room again today.  We started off by ripping up the carpet in the dining room to finally see what would be underneath...

The staples around the outside to keep the carpet down.

The floor!

The dining room done!

Overall, the floor doesn't look very bad, which we are thinking we can leave for the time being before sanding and varathaneing.  There are a few staples which John had to pull up (and will likely have to as we continue to pull the carpet up), but overall it looks good!

After we worked on the floor, John started fixing the one large crack in the ceiling, in hopes that he can fill it in and then repaint it and it won't be noticeable.  Here are a few pictures of him working on it.

 Once we did this, and I came back from a chiropractic appointment, we went out to buy a few things for the   living room.  We went back and forth about buying a new light for the dining room and had decided to wait until later....until we got to the store and started looking at them and then decided on one and bought it!  It was the one that I really wanted too!  It took us about an hour to put it up when we got home, with only one set back, where we had to take the whole thing apart and place one of the wires in the marrettes that slipped out.  Once we got it up, it looked great!

John trying to figure out the instructions, which didn't help at all.

The last thing we did today was start changing the electrical outlits and light switches and face covers.  We only got the ones in the dining room done, here is what they look like!

Home Renos 2.5

We've had a busy week and haven't had much time to work on the living room.  Finally on Thursday, John was able to get the second coat of grey done.  He also decided to take the painters tape down.  Unfortunately, a lot of the paint underneath the paint peeled off along with some off the wall, so now we are working on patching those spots up, which may take a few days as we need to do a few coats to build them back up.

On a happy note, last night and today I painted the accent wall and fireplace in the green.  They look great!  When I started the accent wall, all I could think was "I love this colour!" and kept stepping back to look at the wall.  It is the perfect shade of green for the wall and really gives the room some colour and brightness.  So without further ado, here are the pictures of the accent wall and fireplace....

Completed accent wall

The other half...the lighting in this picture is a bit better to tell the colour

First coat on the fireplace

Completed fireplace!

Home Renos 2.4

Today started off going to church and an unsuccessful shopping trip for new shoes for John.  We came home and were on the edge about painting because it's been a long weekend and we sort of wanted to rest.  We decided to get the taping done before lunch and see how we felt after we ate.  Here is John hard at working taping the ceiling. 

After lunch, I took a short nap and John decided to get started on painting.  By the time I came upstairs he already had the dining room finished and was half done on the living room and had decided to switch our colours around.  Yesterday we decided to get rid of our accent wall idea because we did not think it would work, but after painting today, John thought that it would look better.  So in the end, we painted everything grey today except one wall, which we are going to paint green, although we haven't picked the green we want to use....stay tuned!

Here are the pictures of the day.  It has totally transformed the main level!

John hard at work while I was taking a nap
(just as it should be! :P)

All of John's handy work.

By this time I had come and helped.

The white section here will be green. 

Home Renos 2.3

A lot has happened since my last update on Tuesday, and most of it involves painting!!  What this whole project was suppose to be from the beginning.  YAY!

Thursday night, John finished the first coat and some of the second coat of the primer with Paul's help, while I was at the Met.  It didn't take them very long to complete and when I got home the house looked like this:

Had a couple of spots like this to finish plastering

So from the last picture above, he didn't quite get all the first coat done, but it was 8:45pm and we hadn't had supper yet, he was allowed to not finish.

Friday night, John finished the second coat of primer in the living room, while I painted the corners in the hallway and front entry, which John followed with the roller to complete the first coat.  There was one spot in the closet that still needed to be plastered, so he worked away on that too.  We were up until 10:20pm working on it and didn't get supper until 10:30pm.  It was a long night.

Saturday morning started a bit later, but we finished up the second coat of primer in the hall and again John had to do some more plastering in the closet.  Here's some pictures of the completed primed walls and ceilings.

While everything was drying, we headed to Canadian Tire to buy our paint.  We brought down all our paint samples and changed our colours picks before we left.  I have been picking paint samples for weeks now and last week, every night before we would go to bed, I'd bring them all out and ask John which ones he liked more, which he would reply by saying we've picked our colours and that he didn't want to see them.  So much for having a decision made!  I will admit, I'm glad we looked at them again, because this way we got to see them in the room during the day, made a big difference.

Once we got home, we started painting the ceiling.  John did most of the painting, which I went around with a small sponge roller and rolled out any drips on the walls and moved things around.  It didn't take very long to paint and once the first coat was done, we had lunch, watched two Star Trek episodes and came back up to do the second coat.

After supper and a Star Trek movie, we came up and inserted all the pot light covers and put the hallway lights back up.  Unfortunately we were not able to get started on the walls today, so you will all have to wait until tomorrow to find out our wall colours!  Here are some pictures of the completed ceiling with the lights up!

The hallway and front entrance lights are a bright
white and the living room is a soft white, that is why
the colouring looks so off. 

Home Reno 2.2

I've taken a little break from updating on the home renos, with having to go back to work on the 2nd, it has left no one here to take pictures of the progress, plus there hasn't really been a lot of noticeable progress.  Since the 2nd, John and Paul have been working on mudding and sanding the ceiling.  They've been going pretty steady at it, although they took the weekend off.  Here is the final product of all their hard work!

Today when I got home, I had a wonderful surprise, John had already started on the first coat of primer!!  Yay!  The painting is in sight :)

I will admit that yesterday I had a bit of a "I can't take this much more moment" when I walked into my kitchen and looked at the state it was in.  While I know that this reno isn't going to take a year and a half like the basement, and so I can live with it, especially since this has only been a week and a half (even though it's felt much much longer...), I am realizing that living with renos 24/7 in your main living space, with the dirt carrying everywhere in your house is a lot harder than when it was contained to the basement.  You constantly have to look at it and be in it, while with our basement, we could just shut the door and pretend that it wasn't in a bad state at all!  But thankfully God has been keeping me sane and positive throughout this and I know that in a few short weeks we will be back to normal with a newly painted living room and wonderful hardwood floor.  

Here are some pictures of the painting that has taken place so far!  Our goal is to have the main floor painted by the end of the weekend, with only the trim left to do!

Home Reno 2.1

We've been busy the last two days, due to last night's festivities, I was unable to get a blog out, so I'll update now on yesterday's and today's progress.

Monday Dec 31st, 2012

John finished ripping down the drywall from the ceiling in dining room and cleaning up the mess, while I prepared the veggies and dip we were taking to a party that evening.

We both finished up around the same time, took a short break and then headed to Home Depot to pick up the drywall, rent their van and bring it home.  We did that in like 40 minutes, which was nice.  After we got a bite to eat, we got to work on putting up the drywall.  It was slow going.  We couldn't get the first piece to fit in properly and I'm not strong enough to hold an 8 foot piece up on my own while John looks around to see what needs to be fixed.  After 3 hours, we had 3 pieces up and called it a day.

Tuesday Jan 1, 2013

Despite being up late, Paul was over shortly before 9am and the boys got to work on the ceiling.  I was told I would be called "when their pride was striped", so I got to do house chores and take pictures all day long!  The guys made some pretty good progress today.  They completely finished drywalling the ceiling and every got started on the taping and mudding!  I'm glad I'm going back to work tomorrow, so that I'm not around for the sand which will begin soon!!  Here are some pictures of the day's work

John and Paul hard at work.

All done!