WALL-AH!

Big exciting news — WE HAVE WALLS!

Big smiles for drywall!!!

Our family room, which looks so much bigger than it did before!

Our kitchen!

To the left will be the broom closet, the middle space is for the refrigerator, and the big one on the right is going to be our pantry. The shelf above the fridge nook is a little display area – maybe for cookbooks or my grandma’s china.

Kitchen ceiling – all the circles around the outside are the can lights, and the three little squares in the middle are for our pendants above the island.

Did you notice anything missing in the family room? We had to take out the beam that separated the eating area from the family room. We loved the beam so much, but it looks so much bigger without it! We’re going to see if there’s something we can do with it, maybe in the basement in the years to come.

And there’s the cutout for our first floor access to the laundry chute!

And we got new concrete board for our shower and the niche.

      

It appears that there was a little incident with our bedroom door, haha! The baseboard spring door stopper was broken, and there was a hole in the wall from the handle smashing into the wall. We asked the guys to fix it, and they did…and then apparently they opened the door a little too quickly and broke it again. Whoops! We bought the hinge door stoppers and installed them on that door today so we hopefully won’t break the wall again 🙂

We are so excited to finally have walls!

And in non-house related news…tonight we discovered that there is a community center and a pool super close to our new house! It’s a 5 minute bike ride, and we are SO stoked. Last summer, when we had a life and did fun things, we really enjoyed going to the pool – hopefully we will get to check this one out before this summer ends!

And finally, happy early birthday, Diane! We LAVA you and we are so grateful for all the food that you’ve brought over while we have been working on the house. Tanti auguri, Diane!

Plane and Sand

    

No, we’re not taking another trip to Mexico…we’re planing down the joists in the kitchen and sanding all the woodwork. Almost as exciting, right?

Here’s Lu planing the joists, getting everything nice and level for the drywallers:

And here’s me sanding. I sanded all the doors upstairs (we have NINE. Who needs that many doors?), the baseboards, and the trim around the windows.

Hallway of retina-burning yellow paint and lotsa doors! We are planning to paint the trim white and the hallway gray. Does anyone have a light gray paint color they would recommend?

Lu did an AWESOME job turning this:

Into this!

Elyse did the usual outside work of mowing the lawn. I took a picture of part of our backyard from the upstairs window because we haven’t shown this angle before:

We’ve also been having some luck starting to kill the tree that is growing in our foundation. My mom mixed up some earth-friendly weed killer: vinegar, epsom salt, and Dawn dish detergent. We sprayed yesterday and then again today, and the previously bright green vine is now brown! And our whole yard smells like vinegar. And my car too. Yay.

One of my FAVORITE things about the house went from an idea to reality this weekend – we got a two story laundry chute! Before, our laundry chute went from the upstairs linen closet to the basement. Now, we can also throw stuff down from the first floor! We’re planning to hang a little picture on a hinge in front of it so that it’s hidden. How awesome is this?!

Elyse spackled up some little holes in the drywall…

          

Lu and Domenic put in the last of the ductwork and insulation! That duct on the left was originally a cylinder, but it didn’t quite sit flush…so instead of buying a new one, Domenic hammered the hell out of it.

And we did some prep work to get ready for the drywallers, who are scheduled to start this Wednesday! We marked some spots that need patchwork and cleaned up a lot.

And we started planning out where the niche in our shower is going to go.

Hopefully our next post will be of our WALLS! And again, if anyone has suggestions for a good color of light gray paint, let us know! Thanks in advance!