Walking on the Ceiling

This is a post that I've been meaning to write for a few days, but we've been so busy that I just haven't gotten around to it.  You'd think that being on Spring Break would give me more time to do things like blog, but I had more homework to do over Spring Break than I've had all year.

Anyway, not this past weekend, but the weekend before we decided to start working on the ceiling in the family room.  It had some pretty nasty "patches" on it and had pillowed pretty badly so we knew we needed to bring it all down and put new drywall back up.  But first we had to pull down all the old.  Saturday morning we started pulling down the ceiling.  It was dusty and dirty and we found a huge mouse nests in one corner....complete with more mouse poop, so that was fun.  But we finally got it all down.

We also had to lay down quite the path to get the old drywall out to the garage and the new drywall in.  We wanted to protect the floors, but it involved tearing my living room apart.

Then, we had an issue to work on.  Because the ceiling joists weren't close enough (they were 24" instead of 16") we also needed to fix that, but we didn't want to have to replace all the ceiling joists.  Instead we put up some metal channels running perpendicular to the original joists that were 16" apart. And, because that room with it's vaulted ceilings is always cold, we also decided to put up some additional foam insulation between the channels for some additional R value.  That took a good part of the day.

FInally, we were ready to hang some drywall.  Thankfully our friend Jason came over to help and we had rented a drywall lift from Home Depot (it was the best $35 we could have spent).  It was a slow process, and we needed the extra hands.  By the time we got finished, it was nearly midnight and we were all exhausted.  But, we had hung all the drywall except for the last row--it was the highest point, but it was also only about 1/3 of a sheet, so Landon and Alan took care of it the next day by themselves.

Anyway, there is now a whole new ceiling in the family room.  It's been taped and mudded and sanded.  At this point, it needs just a little more work and it will be ready for paint.  And it looks so much better than the old ceiling.  Even if it did nearly kill us.

I Lost an Hour, How About You?

This weekend was another busy one, but not at the house.  Landon and I took the weekend off and went back to Lexington for a quick visit.  We had a blast catching up with some of our friends there, taking in a Kentucky Basketball game (the Wildcats beat Florida), and getting some wedding stuff done--we finally registered at Kohl's.

When we got back yesterday afternoon, we spent the evening doing our taxes.  It was our first time filing as a married couple and we had enough "major life events" happen in 2012 to make things complicated.  We got married, both of us lived in two states, and I went back to school.  We finally got it all sorted out (and we'll get a nice refund) but it took awhile to figure out how to do it all correctly.

Because not much went on at the house this weekend, I don't really have much to share with you.  I did finally take down the Valentine's Day Table decorations and replaced them with some Easter Decorations, but that was about it.  I can't wait to get a new table and finally be able to make some fun tables runners, but I'm not going to spend time on that now since I have no idea what the dimensions of the final table will be.  Still, I think it turned out okay.

And, yes, I went with balls of yarn again as part of the center piece.  I just like that I've finally found a use for all the tiny bits of yarn that I dyed with Kool-Aid a few years ago.  There isn't really enough of any of the colors to do anything with, but they make pretty little center-pull balls that look good in my white bowl.  Maybe one day I'll use the yarn for something, but for now, they can decorate my table.

Also, since this is kind of not a real post, I figured I'll end with a picture of Malcolm enjoying the new cat hut that we brought back from Lexington in order to try and relieve some of the congestion at the old cat pyramid.  So far, it seems to be working.

It's Getting Hot in Here

So I told you on Tuesday that we had replaced all the insulation in the attic above the main room (where we had to replace the ceiling).  I've had the pictures forever, but I haven't showed them to you yet.  They aren't super exciting since I had to stay away (we discovered doing the baffles that I'm super allergic to fiberglass insulation), but I did get a few.

The insulation in our attic is all blown in, which is different that what I'm used to.  The house I grew up in had insulation that came in big rolls, so this blown in stuff is new.  It was also very messy when they took the ceiling down.

But we got the new ceilings up, and rehung the walls.  It was right before we moved in that we decided to go ahead and replace the insulation that had come down because it was getting cold in the main room, especially at night.  So we bought what seemed like a ton of packages of insulation, picked up the blower machine from Home Depot, and went to work.

Landon got to go up into the attic to blow it in, which meant he got to suit up.

The blower was actually outside the Master bedroom window, and we ran the hose in the window, out into the hallway, and then up into the attic.

I tried to get a picture of the insulation being blow in, but the attic was dark and I didn't want to get too close, so this was about all you could see.

It also didn't help that the main room was at the other end of the house from the attic access, hence the never ending pink snake.  Landon is down there somewhere blowing the insulation in while Alan was outside feeding the packages into the machine.  Overall, it didn't take too long to do the entire main room.  We still have to put some back over the Master suite where we had to replace some of the ceiling, but that won't be too bad.  We actually discovered that this insulation isn't as itchy as the old stuff, and it settles pretty quickly.

But it is nice that the main room stays warm now, and we are always one of the last houses in the neighborhood to have snow on the roof when it does snow (which it has done a lot this winter).

Ceiling Feelings

I promised you yesterday an update on the Family Room, so here it is.  First, a look at where we were.

The fireplace with the sad mantel and no surround.  

And a very sad, rotted three panel door.

The crown molding is interesting.
We found out it was covering up drywall issues between the ceiling and the wall.

And the other end of the room.  

Now, not much has gone on in this room so far.   It was kind of on the back burner until we got most of the rest of the house done.  We did replace the three panel door with a nice big slider back in the fall.

But other than that, not much has gone one.  A little bit of drywall work where we move the two doorways around a little bit (to give us a little more useable wall space) and to close up the hole where we put the new door in.

We've also taken down the "mantel" and cleaned up the drywall around the fireplace--after we got it cleaned and inspected to make sure it wouldn't burn down the house if we used it.

But the biggest remaining issue is the ceiling.  It has some old damage from where they once had faux beams and then took them down.  Like everything else in the house that was fixed, it looks awful.  It's hard to see in pictures, but it has to get fixed.

The other issue is that the rest of the ceiling is pillowed a little bit, which is noticeable if you get it under the right light.  The guys have decided that the best thing to do is to just cover it up with more drywall, but that is going to require "furring" it down a few inches, and then hanging new drywall over the whole ceiling.  It's vaulted to 12 ft, so that will be a job.  We might need a few extra hands.  But it's the easiest way to fix all the major issues going on with the ceiling.  Every ceiling in this house has been an issue, but this one might be the worst.

A Day Late....

But hopefully not a dollar short.....Things this week are running a bit behind due to a busy weekend.  Sunday, which is normally the day that I write up all the posts for the week, was spent driving to Cincinnati to meet my brand new niece Coraline.  New babies trump new blog posts--sorry.

But I'm back now, and yesterday I had a chance to take some pictures of the progress in our Master Bathroom and Family Room, and I thought I'd share with you.  First, the Master Bathroom.

Here is where we started:

This was the odd vanity area that was technically part of the bedroom.

And the actual bathroom.  The shower is behind the door.

It was the world's grossest shower.  Awful!

 So here's where we are now:

The new shower.
Back where the old one was, but much bigger and nicer.

The tub where the old extra vanity was.  

Looking back into the bedroom from the shower

And a close up of the paint color.

So here's what we've done:  First we took down the wall the separated the "extra vanity area" from the actual bathroom to make it all one big room.  We also closed off the entrance to the closet and moved it to the bedroom.  That will allow us to put the vanity on the wall where the old closet door was.  In order to do this, we also had to move the door way to the bathroom over a bit.  We added a tub where the old extra vanity was, enlarged the shower, moved the toilet over a little bit, and are putting in a pocket door.

The floor tile is down, but you can't see it in the pictures.  My Dad came up one weekend and did the tile for us, which was a huge help.  Landon painted the walls for me a week or so ago.  It is a nice blue-grey that goes well with the shower tile and coordinates with the wall color in the bedroom.  In fact, I took a picture looking into the bathroom from the bedroom to try and capture that.

So you can't really see the wall color in the bathroom from this angle, but it at least gives you some idea of what is going on.  And, in case you were wondering, the rest of the bedroom looks like this:

The vanity is living in here for now, until we're ready to put it in (soon) as is a bunch of other stuff.  The pile of pint stuff is extra insulation that will get blown into the attic above the bedroom and bathroom once we are done cutting holes in the ceiling.  We've already had to replace the insulation over the entire main space (I'm showing you those pictures later this week).

So that's what's been going on the bathroom.  As soon as we get the bathroom done, we can actually move into our bedroom!  And since this post is already pretty long, I'm going to save the photos of the family room for tomorrow, so stay tuned.