Finished....finally!

The repair/remodel of the room that started months ago is finally finished! Finished!! I can't tell you how good it feels to have everything done  and to finally be able to get our house back in order. The guy we hired to repair the wall and ceiling (after water damage from a leak) was slow to come and finish the last little bit of work. Gregg finally texted him last month and told him, "You have to come finish up. I may have cancer treatments starting in the near future" and to Rick's credit, he came over the very next morning and finished everything that day. He did a really good job for a great price, even if it did take him way too long to finish up.

Then we had to paint. That took almost a week of careful prep work before Gregg and I could even get started on the actual painting. The last people to paint the room did a really crappy job, and the last owners left lots of scuffed places and nail holes. We finally startaed putting on actual paint on Sunday, and yesterday, we finished. 

Such a great feeling, and we're really pleased with how the room (and the coffered ceiling) turned out!

 

Busy October

This week has been filled with the sounds of sawing, drilling, nail guns, and hammering. All of the furniture from the room being worked on is crowded together in the rest of the house, which makes me feel a little stir crazy. Other than that, the renovation is going really well and will be done either this afternoon or tomorrow. * There's no way we'll be able to paint before I go back to work. We plan to pick a couple of paint colors we're interested in and buy small samples to try on a wall before we commit to one. Then there's the pre painting prep work, then the actual painting, etc. If we're lucky we may be able to finish by the end of next weekend. 

The timing of all this isn't the best, because my sister-in-law and niece will be visiting for a few hours on Thursday afternoon. Our niece Melissa will be flying in from across the country to visit family next week, and Thursday is the only day that works for them to drive down from North Carolina to see us. The house will still be in some disarray, but it can't be helped. They of course understand, and I don't feel too bad about it, but it isn't ideal. 

Then on the Sunday after that (the 20th) I'm having a postcard writing party. (It's been planned for over a month now, since before I knew about the room remodel). Luckily, one of the friends who's coming offered to move it to her house when she heard about all this work we're having done. We should be finished painting by then, but if not it's good to know I have that option. 

Speaking of postcards! I ordered 400 total, 200 to the swing state of Michigan and 200 to the swing state of Georgia. That's a lot of postcards. Especially since the three suggested scripts are somewhat lengthy to print out (they recommend printing everything so it's easily readable). Here are the three scripts they recommend as being the most effective in getting out the vote: 

1. Hi (voter's first name),

Thank you for being a voter! Who you vote for is private, but whether you vote is public record. Please vote in the Tues, Nov 5th election!

-- (first name)

2. Hi (voter's first name),

Thank you for being a voter! Your friends and family may need your reminder to vote. Please ask them to vote in the Tues, Nov 5th election!

-- (first name)

3. Hi (voter's first name), 

Thank you for being a voter! When will you vote in the Tues, Nov 5th election? Please plan ahead!

--(first name)

As you can see, any of these is a lot to print out on 400 postcards! To make it so that my friends don't have a mountain of work in front of them, I've been chipping away at the lists a little bit each day. So far, I've managed to complete over 250! My goal is to get to 300 by the time we meet up. With four friends and me, that will only leave 20 for each of us. I'm grateful that they're willing to help me write them, and also that they're chipping in for half the postage costs. I bought the first 200 postcard stamps, and it came to well over $100. 

October is turning out to be really busy with all this going on. When I get back to work on Monday it's going to be really busy there, too. It's just one of those times in the school year. The great thing this year is that since Gregg's (mostly) retired now, he'll be home a lot and can continue with painting while I'm at work. 

Maybe November will be a little more relaxing!

* The work so far looks really good. I thought about sharing a picture of the progress, but decided to wait until it's done. We're really pleased.

More home improvement

I'm on fall break this week. It's nice to be off work, especially now that it's getting cool outside. Lots of pleasant dog walks are happening at the moment. 

Speaking of lots of things happening.....this is my den right now:

Demolished wall!!!

The ceiling in there had developed a crack that started to leak during the last storm that rolled through. It was a bad leak, and the crack got bigger and bigger. Then, it quickly became obvious that water was running down behind the wall, too, because the boards by the window started to warp. Not good.

 Here's a picture I took this morning before work commenced:

There's a place where the roof of this room joins the main house (the room was an addition to the original floor plan) and some sort of flaw there was letting the water in. That will be fixed first, then the wall with the warped boards will be repaired. And we decided instead of just patching up the damaged part of the ceiling, we're going to go ahead and redo the whole thing.

Something like this is what we're going for:

                        

Coffered ceilings

We're getting those same recessed lights in the "coffered" ceiling, and the old, clunky ceiling fan will be replaced with a smaller, simpler one. We've hired the same guy who remodeled our porch last summer to do the work. He seems to do solid work, and his prices aren't unreasonable. 

As soon as he's finished, we plan to paint the room a fresh new color. I'm hoping we can do that next weekend and have everything done when I go back to work on Monday. That may or may not be possible, though.

It always comes in threes

It's been quite the week in this house. Let me tell you how my time off has gone so far:

We decided to repaint the bathroom, since we both had grown to dislike the coral color we painted it last year. The weekend was spent matching color swatches to the tile, picking out the paint, gathering (and purchasing) supplies, and finally, a lot of careful prep work. We sanded walls, taped corners/edges/windowpanes, and covered everything in plastic drape cloths. Last time we didn't prepare carefully enough, and it showed. We were determined to do a better job this time! On Monday morning, all the preparation was finally done, so we started applying the first coat (primer) to the walls. An hour or so into said application, I started to drip sweat. I had an uneasy feeling....and went to check the thermostat. 

The air conditioning had quit working. Horror (mostly on my part) ensued. 

All work on the bathroom came to a screeching halt. I called around until I found an HVAC repair service that could come out in two days, on Wednesday. The office person I spoke to assured me that if a technician had an opening sooner than that, they'd call. Of course I told her we'd take what we could get, especially with the holiday coming up. 

So.....we had no air conditioning. In South Carolina. In July. Add to the fun the fact that the entire main bathroom (our only source of a bath or shower!) was draped in sheets of plastic and tape. It looked like one of Dexter's kill rooms. 

Y'all. I nearly cried.

But the fun didn't end there, oh no! After setting up fans around the house and opening windows, we sat down to watch some tv for the distraction. As soon as we turned it on, there was a weird flash, and the screen went dark. 

For no apparent reason, the tv had just up and died! We couldn't believe it. There's something else we'll end up replacing sooner or later. *

That was Monday. We were fortunate in that Monday night the low temperature was lower than it had been in weeks...67 degrees. It could have been so much worse. Then we got lucky again and early yesterday morning the HVAC place called and said they had a technician who was free to come by before lunch. Hooray! It ended up being a relatively simple repair, and our unit is still under warranty for defective parts, so for less than $200 we had a/c again. And had only been without for 24 hours. What a relief!

Well, back to business, right? We finished the coat of primer in the bathroom and were waiting for it to dry...when we noticed water seeping out around the toilet. A lot of water. It was immediately obvious that we were going to have to find a plumber. F*ck! 

At least this time I wasn't too worried. We have another half bathroom we can use, so there's that. But it was sure aggravating after everything else that had happened. 

A plumber came out this morning. It was a really, really simple fix and ended up taking the guy maybe 10 minutes. It was also very cheap, something I've never had the privilege of saying about a plumbing repair before. Again, it could have been so much worse. 

Moving on.......

Last night we stayed up until after midnight, painting. It's all done now save for a few minor touch ups, and today after the plumber left it was dry enough that I could finally take a long, hot shower. We're really pleased with how the paint job turned out, too.

Tonight I'm grateful for a working air conditioner, a non-leaking toilet, and a finished home improvement project. 

This paint color is called "River's Edge".

*We're not in any hurry to replace the tv. There's a smaller one in the spare bedroom that will do just fine for now. 

Home improvement

The past few days have been exciting, because we hired a guy to partially remodel our screened porch! The bottom third of it is now enclosed and painted, and there's waterproof plastic "wood" on the bottom all the way around, to solve the problem of lots of moisture and pooling water at ground level rotting the old boards. He also installed a new, sturdier door with a doggy door already built in for George and Poppy. He just finished this afternoon and is currently cleaning up and getting ready to leave. He's done a good job, and we love it! It's so much better than before! We got a really good deal on the work, too, because Gregg's known the guy for a long time. There's several more projects that need doing around this old house, so we'll definitely be calling on him again!

The dogs will have to get used to a new doggie door in a new spot. They're not too sure about these changes (and have been less than thrilled with the building sounds going on outside over the last few days).

Of course, treats held on the other side helped convince them to give it a try! :)