Day Three of the Project

Day Three was more demolition before the new walls could be roughed in. This is the shower area of the guest bathroom - I am so glad that we decided to demo both bathrooms. When the workmen took all the tile down they found mold all behind the tile. It was much worse in the guest bath then in the master - but it was in both. At least we will be getting rid of all the mold in the two shower areas - as well as making the house more B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L.
All the tile is gone from over the jetted tub and ready now for the new Duroc (which a type of drywall that should be used in bathroom). It is moisture resistant and mold resistant and much better to use than just regular drywall.

After all the demo was done the guys started on the new framing - new kitchen walls ----------

Oh - all the old gray rock is off the fireplace and ready for the new framing around it!

New framing for the utility room - we made a major decision in regards to the laundry room - we decided to move the hot water heater out into the garage. This will give us room to put the washer/dryer at the end of the utility room, which gave us more room in the walk in closet for the master bedroom. It is going to cost us a little more money because we have to move some plumbing, but I think that we will be so much happier in the long run with the functionality of the space.

This is the new master bathroom - well, at least part of it. We took down the wall that separated the toilet and shower area from the sink area and just have a half wall to block the toilet now. It will open the space up and I hope it won't be as hot in there after all is completed.

Finally - this is the wall to square up the corner in the bedroom and where the new built-ins by the fireplace will be.

It's all coming together- but we still have a long way to go!

Day One and Two of the Remodeling Project

Well, I was in such a hurry that I wasn't paying attention when I was downloading the photos and I have them backwards. So, you really need to look at the last picture and work backwards!

This picture was taken this afternoon about 7 o'clock ----------------------

This one was taken this morning about 7 am before I went to work. It is amazing how much can be done in a day!

This one was taken yesterday afternoon - I'll post more pictures tomorrow!

Moved out!

Well, we are at Melissa's. All our stuff is packed up and put back into storage (which is a pain) and the little that we need to make it through the next month has been moved to Melissa's house. Dan and I have tried our best NOT to "junk" up their house and to keep our stuff to a minimum, but there are some things that we have to have.

Dan and I are really very tired tonight - we worked really very hard today to get everything done. So, this is going to be very short and sweet. Tomorrow night I'll try and post some pictures of the house with everything packed up. I am planning to go over to the house every afternoon after work and take pictures so we can keep an accurate record of the project.

So, until tomorrow, I hope that you have a great day!

Not yet!

Okay - I know that I said that I would, hopefully, have pictures to post this week of destruction in the house- well, that just didn't happen this week - and it isn't going to happen next week.

Dan had a meeting with the builder on Monday. Let us just say that I was not the happiest of campers when I got home on Monday and found out that the construction would not start this week. Dan said that Mark would be at the house on Thursday to meet with us - so I would have a chance to let him know how I felt.

Tuesday was my birthday. After work, yes I worked on my birthday, we went over to my mom's for dinner. Before we left the house the UPS man showed up with my present from all my girls. I think you all remember that my girls had given me a NOOK for Christmas a couple of years ago but then this last year between Thanksgiving and Christmas it quit working. I had called the them and wouldn't replace it because it was past the warranty date by 2 days. Anyway, I haven't had my NOOK now for over five months. Well, when I opened my present I had a Kindle instead of a NOOK. When I called the girls in Atlanta to thank them, the NOOK came up and Crystal said that NOOK couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't have the same problem again - soooo, I got the Kindle instead. I'm excited - it looks like it will do some things that the NOOK wouldn't do.

Wednesday was just a typical day. Thursday the contractor came with the men that will be working on the house. Mark explained that he had to schedule his crews two weeks out and that he would be having his scheduling meeting the next morning. He would call Dan and let him know, for sure, when we went on the books. He knows that I want the work done as quickly as possible, but I also want it done right. We shall see. After our meeting with Mark, Dan and I went out to Tower View for dinner.

Then it was Friday, glorious Friday! Melissa and Justin came over Friday afternoon to spend some time in the pool - Dan had fixed Chicken and Dumplings (a recipe from Southern Living - it was okay) and we ate by the pool. Saturday morning Dan and I went out to Main Street for breakfast before the kids came back over for Justin to help Dan move the big pieces of furniture - then it was back in the pool for a quick dip before the rain storm moved in.

This morning we were awaken by a huge thunderstorm and lightning strikes right outside the house - literally. I was hoping to sleep in a little today - but that was not to be. Oh well, we were able to get all the little things (the small boxes and baskets) moved and I got all the laundry done. I was also able to balance the checkbook and get all the bills paid for the month. Now, I'm all ready to move all the rest of our stuff to Melissa's next week (you know, work clothes, makeup, etc.).

Now, I have taken some pictures of the "before" of the house. We have packed all that we can pack and have put everything we can into storage - so at the end of the blog you will see just how empty the house is right now. I'll explain some of them when I get to them.

The first picture though is one of a bird nest in the palm in the front yard - a mockingbird built the nest and we have four little babies. We have had several rain storms (and I do mean storms) in the last couple of days and I was a little worried for the babies - but momma bird seems to take good care of the babies and the nest has survived the storms.

I hope you can see the nest in the picture, but it was taken through the front window as I don't want to go outside and disturb the nest.

Now, to the house.

This is the guest bedroom - you see the suitcase on the bed - and the shoes lined up on the floor? This is where Dan has decided to keep the little bit of stuff he has kept out.

As you can see the kitchen is already starting to come apart - but my Mother's Day flowers are still beautiful!

Not much is left in the living room/dining room. The entertainment center is staying right where it is for now - we are going to cover it up with some heavy plastic, because the only thing they will be doing in that room will be scrap the ceiling and move some electrical. We will put new flooring in the room, but for the most part the structure of this room will stay the same.

And the bedroom is pretty much empty except for the bed. As you can tell, we are living on just what we have to have.

Well. I think that I have bored you enough for this week - so I guess I'll close for now. I hope that you all have a great week ahead and I'll talk to you next week.




P.S. If you read the blog yesterday you would have seen some errors - see what happens when you don't proof read? I've gone back in this morning and fixed it (I hope). If there are any other errors - please forgive this older lady!

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all of the mother's out there in "blogville". I hope you all are having a wonderful day. The flowers above are from one of my daughter's in Atlanta - aren't they beautiful? I was so very surprised to receive them at about 10:30 last night, especially since they were delivered to the wrong address. They were delivered to the next street over from us and we were lucky enough that these people were still here (had not gone back up north yet) and that they brought them to me last night. Anyway, it doesn't matter how I got them, I think they are beautiful and I am very appreciative of them - thank you Kim!

I guess you are wondering about the remodeling project - well, things are moving along, just not at the pace that I would like. We did finally close on the home improvement loan Friday (not Tuesday), but it's okay that it was 3 days late - it saved us two percent on the loan. So, I'm not complaining. Dan is meeting with the contractor Monday morning at 9 am to go over the last minute details and Mark has told Dan that he will start the following week. He has also said that once they start they will not leave until the job is finished - so none of this working one or two days at our house and then going to another project for a couple of days. That is one of the reasons why he will not start on us until the following week - he has to finish up a project that he had started waiting on the bank to do their thing with us. Anyway, Dan and I have spent the week continuing to pack stuff - we are really down to the bare essentials to live on now. We still have furniture to move and I think we will be working on doing that in the afternoon's next week when I get home from work. Dan has pretty much moved all the boxes that we have packed this past week - so it is pretty much just furniture that is left.

Some things we are not going to move - like the big entertainment center - we are just going to take the top part off the base and then cover it with plastic. The only thing that will be happening in the room where it is sitting right not is the ceiling scrapped of the "popcorn" and a new "knock-down" texture put up and a new light fixture will be hung because that room will become the dining room. Of course, there will be new flooring put in, but the installation guys can worry about moving the entertainment center when they come (that's part of their job right) and that sucker is HEAVY! It was the one thing that I could not help Dan unload off the truck when we moved into the house (remember, it had been up in Atlanta at my mom's when we were on the road and we picked it up when Dan took Mom back up to Atlanta back in September of last year). Anyway, there are some pieces that the contractor has said we will not have to move out of the house - like the beds in the bedrooms - we are just going to cover them with really good quality plastic sheets to protect them. At least things are on the move and we should have more details of when things will be occurring on Monday when I get home from work.

Dan and I did go back into Sebring yesterday and I think we have decided definitely on some of the furniture pieces for the living room - like my recliner (and the material to have it upholstered in) and at least one of the other chairs in the living room and the two chairs for in front of the fireplace - we still have not made a definite decision about the one other chair over by the sliding glass doors, but I think we have a chair that we can use for a little while until we are sure about the chair that we want. We also found the end table to go between our chairs in front of the fireplace also yesterday. So we are making progress on that front. We will probably go ahead and order the pieces that we have definitely made a decision on next week as it takes 4 to 6 weeks for them to come in. That should be just about the right time frame IF all goes as it should. We shall see.

When we got home from Sebring yesterday - our youngest daughter was here at the house in the swimming pool. So we were able to spend some time with her and then Justin came over later and we grilled out and then took a ride on the boat. Justin had not been on the boat since Dan had gotten it back and it is running so much better.

So, this is a picture of one of my four legged daughters - Samantha sitting in my lap on the boat- hard and fast asleep.

This, of course, if my Dan. He is a happy man when he is able to be out on the water - even if all he is doing is riding around on the boat and not doing any fishing.

Here are both of my four legged daughters - Samantha and Jessie. At this point we are riding in the front of the boat and they are not real crazy about that position. They really don't like all the wind blowing on them, but once we moved to the seat behind this one - they just lie down and go to sleep. They do like being out on the boat also (really, I think they just like being with us - doesn't really matter where we are).

This is Melissa - my youngest daughter with Samantha just as we were starting out on the lake. Samantha was just getting ready to give her a little "kiss".

This is a picture of my son-in-law Justin. Actually, Melissa took this picture with my camera. She likes to fool around with the camera and she took this one - I think it's a pretty good picture of the boy.

Thought I'd include a picture of the lake - it was a really nice day out yesterday afternoon - not too hot by the time we were out there, but then again - it was after supper.

Probably next week I'll post pictures of the house "before" - it should be pretty empty. I certainly hope that the project goes as planned - I'm sure that we will run into some glitches, but hopefully they will not be too bad.

Melissa and I have 22 more school days (not that I'm counting). Then we have that workshop that we will do after school is out. You might be wondering why I am still going to do that workshop since I am not going to be doing any more teaching - well, I do want to renew my certificate one more time (just in case, heaven forbid, I HAVE to teach any more before I reach Social Security age) and since I can renew for 5 years and I will be 59 on Tuesday, and my certificate doesn't expire for another 2 years it will work out. I will probably have to take at least one more college class, but I have some certificates from Florida Southern College for free classes for having interns - I think I will use one of them and then I will have my certification complete for another 5 years. That should do me until I shouldn't have to worry about it again. Of course, I am still looking at other options and I think I know what I am going to do - it will use my real estate knowledge but I won't be a real estate agent. Anyway, it is the direction I am strongly looking at. We shall see.

Well, I think I will close for now - maybe I'll try and take a nap this afternoon. I'm really tired for some reason. I hope you all have a great week, and I'll talk to you next weekend!

Doing More Packing

Well, Dan and I are trying to get some more packing done this weekend - after spending yesterday back in Sebring looking at furniture. We just can't seem to find what we want for the living room. We have decided that we are going to just have chairs (no couch/sofa), but we can't find the chairs that we can agree on. Well, that isn't exactly true. We can find stuff that we like, but then we can't find upholstry material that we like.

We have decided, and have found and agreed on, Dan's leather recliner. Now, we are leaning toward me gettting a recliner also instead of the "push-over" chair that I talked about last weekend. Why you might ask. Well, because of the ottoman. We just don't want to take up the additional floor space that an ottoman will consume - so we are going toward a recliner. I found one that I like yesterday, but I can't find an upholstry material that I'm sold on yet, but by the time we agreed on the recliner, we had another appointment we had to go to and I really didn't have time to go through all the material choices. So, that will be another day. Maybe, NEXT Saturday.

Today, I started packing up my closet and the bathroom cabinets. We took some things that we had of my mom's over to her - so that is out of the house. I am also trying to get the laundry done. Just doing all the little things along with the "big" things.

The appraiser finally came last week - and the bank called us on Friday and said that everything had been approved - we will sign the final papers on the loan on Tuesday of this coming week - they have to give you three days to change your mind with no penalty - so after that is done then we will just need to get on the schedule of the contractor. I am hoping that this time next week I will be talking about them knocking down walls and getting ready to put up stud walls again. We shall see.

Dan will call Mark (the contractor) on Monday and let him know that we are closing on Tuesday and then we will get the start date. Looks like I will be moving in with our daughter next weekend also - things will be a little busy around here for the next few weeks, but that's okay. We will need to go by the place where we are getting the bathroom vanity for the guest bathroom and get that ordered next week - and let them know that we have decided on the granite countertops for the kitchen. Oh, which reminds me - IKEA delivered the missing parts of the kitchen Wednesday - so we have all the kitchen now in the garage.

Dan and I are going to take the boxes that we already have boxed up over to the storage room this afternoon - after he gets up from his nap. I need to see if we have any more boxes over there - and pick up some suitcases (might as well use them to pack up the clothes in - instead of boxes). You have to store them anyway - they might as well have stuff in them - right?

I have 27 days before the end of the school year (that is school days - not calendar days) - then Melissa and I have the workshop for four days the middle of June. Then it will be operation "Decorate", because I would hope that the construction part of this project will be complete. I am hoping (you notice, I said hoping) that Dan will be able to do all the painting while I am gone to Leesburg for the week long workshop. Right now we plan on ordering the blinds for the dining room and the big window in our bedroom the first week in June - that should put them here just about the time things are finishing up and we should be able to get them put in right away. The blinds for the kitchen and the guest bedroom are stock and we can buy them right off the shelf. I know that we won't have ALL the decorating done right away - we will be "tweaking" things for awhile, but it will be nice to have the majority of the decorating done by the end of the summer - at least - that's the plan.

We have been talking alot about where we were this time last year - what with the all the bad weather that has been happening in the US. This week, last year we were in Sam A Baker State Park in Missouri - right outside Popular Bluff - where it is now flooded. The campground is under water. Dan has a cousin that lives close to the campground and she sent up pictures of the park - it is amazing. Then there is all the damage that has been caused by the tornades - all those families are in our prayers as they try to rebuild their lives - keep all these families in your thoughts. There is so much heartache out there - and we take so much for granted.

I will close for this week - the clothes dryer is calling me. You guys take care - and I'll talk to you next week.