What a mess!

It's late...I'm tired...this will be short.

Yesterday, I moved the furniture from the dining room upstairs to the guest bedroom/staging area in preparation for beginning the demo. This leaves me with plenty of room in the dining room to store things from the kitchen.

Today, I finally started demo on the kitchen. I started with scraping the ceilings in the sun room and half-bath.

Then, I moved on to tearing out the wall where the frig will go.

Later this week, I'll finish scraping the remaining popcorn from the kitchen ceiling, mud the ceiling, sand it, and hopefully get it painted before the weekend. After that, I'm planning on installing the new lights!!

Good night

A little side-tracked

Well, that big weekend I promised everyone...it, um, well, you see...

Needless to say, it didn't happen as I had originally planned, but then again most things typically don't for me these days. Instead, I decided it was time to go ahead and get gutters installed on the house because I was worried that the new doors that we had installed this past Spring would start to rot like the old ones if I didn't get gutters installed soon. The purpose of the gutters being that they would divert the runoff from the roof instead of dumping it onto the ground in front of the doors, and then splashing back up onto the threshold and frame of the door and eventually causing it to rot. However, before the gutters could go up, I needed a way to handle the additional drainage from the downspouts. To make a long story short, I ended up renting one of these

yep, ain't she a beauty!? You're looking at 1015 lbs. (yes, a HALF-TON) of solid, honest-to-goodness, earth crunching, root tearing, mud slinging power! That's right, I rented a 24" trencher to dig a 110' long, 4" wide, 12" deep trench from the house, across the backyard, and down the slope towards a small stream. What would have probably taken me a good 2 days to dig by hand, ended up taking me only an hour and a half with this baby. If you have any need to dig a trench anytime in the near future, I highly recommend renting one of these!

So with the drainage and gutter work done (oh yeah, they installed them today...I would recommend these guys for anyone looking for gutters), my focus is back to the kitchen and downstairs. This weekend, I plan on removing all of the popcorn ceiling in the kitchen and sun room, tearing out the base mouldings, and hopefully reconfiguring the walk-in-closet in the kitchen so that the frig will fit in there. I'll post pictures as they become available :)

Everything including the kitchen sink...

With the master bath now complete, and a little one due in March of next year, my schedule for completing the kitchen/half bath/downstairs/stairs/upstairs landing remodel just got seriously compressed!

So, without wasting a second, I started on what I am currently referring to as "Phase 2 - Everything including the kitchen sink." That's right folks, take a good long look at her, because in a few short months, she's going to look completely different...and no, I'm not referring to my lovely, pregnant wife Suzanne, rather our ugly, outdated, and cramped kitchen! Here's a picture for you to ponder...oh, what will he do, what will he do?

O.K., o.k., I know, the suspense is killing you right?! Well, for starters, I'll be installing this (yep, all 37 boxes of it!)

throughout the downstairs, including the kitchen, sun room, half-bath, back hallway, family room, dining room, and foyer. And as if that weren't enough, I'll also install this up the stairs and in the upstairs landing. But before I can do that, I have to scrape the popcorn ceilings in the kitchen, sun room, and half-bath, and also tear out the existing kitchen cabinets. Things should start rolling later this weekend...I'll try and post an update late Sunday night!

Next Project

So I started a new project back in June of this year that is slowly taking shape...if rumors are correct, this one will last a lifetime and be the greatest project that I've ever accomplished!

Stay tuned...

Look familiar???

Interesting similarity...no???

Suzanne's Toyota Prius

Start Button

Suzanne's new dual flush toilet
Flush buttons (1.6L and 0.8L)

and so it ends...

well folks, that's a wrap!

On Sunday, I grouted the wall tile and sink backsplash. Lesson learned...don't try and grout an entire room before going back and wiping down the grout lines. Unfortunately, this lesson was learned the hard way. By the time I grouted the wall tile, shower surround, and sink backsplash, just about all of the grout had dried to a nice haze. When I started to wipe it down with the sponge to remove the excess grout and smooth the grout lines, I realized that I had waited too long and the grout had started to set-up. I scrubbed furiously at the first patch of wall tile and realized that it was going take a ton of elbow grease to clean up the tiles! So I called in the reinforcements. Yep, that's right, I put in the call to Suzanne, who was relaxing downstairs doing her Sunday crossword puzzle. To my astonishment, she came willingly (sucker!). Well, we worked our butts off scrubbing the grout from the tile as best we could. All in all, it turned out o.k., but never again will I grout that much square footage before going back and cleaning the grout. Thanks Suzanne, you were a life saver on this!

Today, I came home from work and installed the dual-flush toilet, mounted the towel bar behind the toilet, hung the two bath robe pegs behind the door, and installed the hand towel ring next to the sink. That pretty much wraps it up for the master bath. I have a "punch list" going right now that includes installing the toilet paper holder (you may notice the roll sitting on the window ledge in one of the pictures), cleaning the tiles where I have some grout that didn't really come off during the installation, and a general overall cleaning to get rid of the dust from the grout (man, and I thought sanding drywall made a mess!!).

For those of you who didn't get your fill of photos, you can check out the entire collection of bathroom remodeling shots here (http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=1994rry7.2dld117z&x=0&y=-3jhnh2 ). Thanks for tuning in and for posting your kind words of encouragement! Check back in a couple of weeks and hopefully I'll have some updates on the upcoming kitchen remodel (oh boy!)

In the short rows

I know, I know...I haven't updated the blog in almost two weeks now. But it's not without good reason. Suzanne and I spent last weekend up in NYC visiting Ray, Sandi, and Dega in "Da Bronx". To kill a little time while we were there, Suzanne and I caught a little band called "The Police" at Madison Square Gardens. The visit with the Ungers was excellent, as always, and the concert was icing on the cake...I've waited almost 20 years for this show, having grown up a Police fan, and I can honestly say it was well worth the wait.

Speaking of waiting...I finally got back to working on the bathroom this weekend. Yesterday I started working on putting up the wall tile and got everything except the backsplash around the sink done before quitting time. This morning, I was back at it, and in less than an hour, I finished setting the backsplash. Tomorrow is going to be a big day. My hope is to get everything grouted and get the toilet installed and functioning. No more late night trips stumbling to the hall bath for Suzanne hopefully!