Some more unpacking!

We had a great weekend, we went back to my parents' house, spent time with family. My dad got us looking into spray foam insulation instead of fiberglass for our renovations, it depends on the price (if we can afford it) but we're looking into it now.

Back home on Sunday I started doing some more unpacking (really just moving things around) and we put furniture up in the "office/guest room". I left room for a mattress which we hope to go buy tonight, so we're ready for guests at easter :)

The goal is to get the large red room downstairs cleared out after easter to start demo in there and the bathroom. That way we're doing 3 rooms at once and can maybe afford the spray foam insulation that way. We definitely don't want to do one room at a time with that stuff. So we'll see how this all goes. We'll continue to work on the blue room until we demo the rest after easter.

And in sewing news - both bridesmaid dresses are hemmed! I also strung the pearl necklace for my sister and knotted it. I just have to add the clasp now so I'm very excited! Next on the list is to finish the flower girl dress maybe this weekend and adjust the straps on my dress.

I love spring! (except i wish the sun would come out today...)

Allergy shots...

So it has been determined that allergy shots would be a good course for me since I suffer from allergy attacks (while taking allegra every day) about 80% of the year. Because pollen season is about to kick in, we are starting very aggressively and I go twice a week for 4 shots! Tonight will be my second time going.

I hate needles, i hate shots, but this isn't so bad (yet anyway). The nurse is quick and efficient and the pain is minimal (although the pain isn't what bothers me).

In stitching news - I stitched the rabbits (they just need eyes and tails) on the baby sampler I'm doing. All that I have left is to chart out the baby name/details and stitch those, then figure out how I want to frame it!

In sewing news, I hope to hem my bridesmaid dress tonight and the second one tomorrow night. I marked mine and determined I need to take 5 inches off! So tonight I'll finally cut it (around the 4 1/2 inch mark and try out my rolled hem foot I bought for my machine.

In other news - well there is no other news :) Time to get some work done and have a very busy evening later!

Demo update...

We had a very productive weekend with help! My husband's parents came out (surprised us!). It was wonderful. His dad is a demo maniac and basically did 3/4 of the demo himself! By dinner time Saturday night the room was completely demolished (ceiling too). Sunday we finished the cleanup and pulled out the old wiring.

We did hit a few unexpected things that will be a little more work but all hopefully manageable. Plus after demo we found that most of the walls are 2x4's, just the one interior wall is 2x3's so that makes things easier.

Now it's time to start putting things back together, we won't be putting up drywall as soon as we had planned as we have some extra framing to do but I'm optimistic that we'll have the wiring done by easter for my dad to inspect and then we can do the drywall after that.

That was pretty much our whole weekend. I did get my craft room set up though, even though i haven't used it yet. Maybe tonight i'll get some sewing done... except this nagging headache all day may put me to bed early :(

Happy Ostara!

With stitch night last night I needed to start something new - it has been too long since I stitched! So I started the sampler I'll be using for a coworker's baby sampler (born last august but I was busy with wedding stuff so I gave myself until the baby's first birthday).

Here is the start of The Rabbit Sampler by Elizabeth's Designs:
Stitched on Silkweaver's Everglade on 28ct Lugana. It's the perfect piece for the first day of spring. It's also an extremely quick stitch! All I have left is the bunnies and the baby's details (i'm replacing the alphabet with name/date/weight). I love the colors and the stitches, I can't wait to finish this piece up!

Now i'm going to head outside for a short walk to downtown (have an errand to run) and I really want to enjoy the beautiful weather just a bit :)

Demo has begun!
We're starting with the blue room... first we removed all the trim (trying to save most of it), then had to open up one of the walls just to see what we were in for.
Behind this wall are 2x3 studs. This house is old!
Here is step one of stripping the trim down. We did two coats of stripper and got down to the wood. Still need to do some serious sanding to get them paintable. This is the side trim for the doorway.
And here are the windows, we removed the trim and the weighted windows. The plan is to redo the windows and possibly keep the weights (update them a bit and add insulation though).

yea this will be a big project, but so far we're just taking it down and putting it back up (with insulation). Hopefully we won't hit too many surprises.

Surprise #1: The wood floor was laid down after the baseboards so the baseboards really can't be removed without being pretty much ripped apart. So much for saving the baseboards. Maybe we'll have better luck in the other rooms.
Surprise #2: The studs are 2x3's instead of 2x4's. Not sure what type of things we'll run into with this.
Surprise #3: The walls are 2 layers of plaster board or something EXTREMELY hard to break through. Demo is going to be a slow process!

Unpacking...

That's what my life mostly consists of. This weekend we moved everything out of the blue room so we could start the demolition in there. This meant moving more stuff upstairs and strategically arranging things all over.

Sunday I finally organized both the kitchen and diningroom. All our food/dishes are in cabinets, hopefully in spots that will fit them for a long time to come :) It was a tight squeeze but I got everything put away (including my new wedding china finally).

So step one or two of unpacking is complete. Next on the list I think is putting clothes away! That's a tough one since we're lacking in the closet space for hanging up clothes!

More info on demolition to come with pictures...

Whew! That was crazy but our furniture and most of what we own is now in our new house! Things are no where near organized and unpacked but I've started!

It was so great having the whole family over for the weekend, and room for them all to stay with their dogs even! I really love our house! I got it cleaned up (and mopped) Thursday so the floors looked great. I also cleaned out the cabinets with a wet rag. With no electricity all day I had just water (at least warm water) at my disposal. Worked out great.

Unfortunately days of being on my feet moving and packing and unpacking stuff really wore my feet (and hands out). My feet were hurting really badly and swollen, so were my hands. I had to take it easy a couple of times.

Saturday we got all the furniture moved in, leaving mostly just the basement stuff for me to move. We also did some small repair projects around the house with everyone's help. It was wonderful. My soon to be brother-in-law is a plumber so he fixed up some leaky pipes for us, helped put in a new toilet and new sink faucet. My dad puttered around and unlocked doors, fixed a light, showed us things for our future work with the windows and doors. He couldn't sit still, always doing something.

Then some great news, we took a peak under the aluminum siding and the original siding and trim are under there! Under the porch they're in good shape too! So this summer we'll be checking that out and repainting under the porch (and the porch). We're very excited, although we have no idea what kind of condition the rest of the siding is in yet.

Our new washer and dryer came on tuesday, the washer is all hooked up in the basement. The dryer we are going to move upstairs hopefully this weekend and get hooked up. They sure are purrrty!!!

And it's back to work for me this week. Working some long hours to meet some deadlines friday but looking forward to this weekend when we plan to actually start some demo so we can insulate the walls in the back room!

6 day weekend coming up!

Just have to get through a long day of work today. I took 4 days off work this weekend to facilitate everything we need to get done around the house. I'm so very excited!

Thursday the electrician is coming and I'll mop the house and clean the kitchen while he's there.

Friday I'll mostly be moving things in.

Saturday the family is coming and we'll move all the furniture in and be officially moved in (cable gets switched too!).

Sunday is for visiting with family, unpacking and relaxing.

Monday will be unpacking for sure and I'll go over and clean the apartment.

Tuesday my new washer/dryer will hopefully arrive! I'll unpack and figure out how to hook them up!!!

I couldn't be looking forward more to a busy 6 days! It's all really happening finally. So you probably will not hear a peep from me until next week :)

Our House:
I'm sure I'll have more pictures to share as we start working on the house. This one was taken the second time we went to look at the house. We've already made some improvements (cleaning being number 1). The outside improvements will have to wait until Spring/Summer. With my sister's wedding in April I'm thinking June will be the earliest we do any real outdoor improvements.

Even doing all the work ourselves, the current estimate for just supplies for all the work we want to do inside the house is up around 60,000 dollars! That includes a kitchen remodel and putting in a master bathroom.

This is why we need to redo the kitchen eventually:
Number one - no room for a dishwasher! We're going to have to cut out some cabinets to put one in pretty soon and eventually we'll redo the entire kitchen, put in an island, new cabinets, new appliances etc.

First project however we're starting small - we're redoing a back bedroom:
This bedroom will be our home gym for now. Maybe in the future it will be a library or something but for now a gym. We have to redo the electrical throughout the house so this will be my first try at that, we need to put in new windows. Take down the plaster, add insulation and then dry wall.

We're so excited!

February Goals Recap:
1) Make favors for sister's shower [Done]
2) Bustle sister's wedding dress [Done]
3) Hem my bridesmaid dress [not yet]
4) Make flower girl dress for sister's wedding [almost done]
5) Make ring bearer pillow insert for sister's wedding [Done]
6) Stitch something (bead Barnabee's Quest maybe) or start baby sampler [not yet]

March Goals:
Keeping this really really simple since there's so much to do with the house:
1) Hem bridesmaid dress
2) Hem other bridesmaid's dress
3) Finish flower girl dress

Now that the shower is over, it's just wedding stuff left to do and I've gotten a start on those things. Even if I don't get it all done in March I'll have time in April but April weekends are getting pretty packed already.