Carpeting!

The nursery, stairs, and upstairs hallway were carpeted just before Christmas.  The Guest Room's carpet wasn't ready until just before the new year.
But, before the carpeting could be installed on the stairs, the old carpeting had to be torn out...

Looking Down

Looking Up

Mmmm....mint green and salmon pink

 Ahhh!  Much better!

What a difference!

It is really coming along nicely.

Looking towards Guest Room

Standing in front of Guest Room doorway

It doesn't look like the same upstairs anymore!

Close-up of the hall and stairway carpeting

Hall Closet

 We used some leftover Pergo flooring from my Craft Room

With the trim added

Nursery

As soon as the carpet installers left, I went upstairs and rolled on the nursery floor.  LOL!

Guest Room

Where We Stand

I've been playing around with our camera's panoramic function.  I haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet, but I wanted to post some pics of our progress.  These were the best of the bunch.  ^_^*

Nursery

Guest Room

Hallway

When we have finished these rooms, I will break out our tripod and take better panoramic pics to show you.

Last night, I was finally able to decorate the Christmas tree while Jim was outside staining.

I still need to add the tree skirt.  We also need to find a decent tree topper.  We looked for one last year, but didn't find one that we liked.  We'd like to find a star that lights up instead of an angel with a tree stuck up its butt.  LOL!  We put the tree in our dining room this year since the library is still full of stuff for our upstairs projects.

Stocking Feeder for the Birds

If we get around to putting lights up outside, I'll take a picture of them.  I'd like to at least get a picture of our Christmas tree from outside.

Mutiny! I'm Taking This Blog Back!

After Avonlea was born, we decided to split our 2 blogs between us.  I would write mostly on Bloggle Baby, and Jim would take over Blue Century Home.  Unfortunately, it turns out that Jim isn't much of a blogger (as is quite evident); so, I'm reclaiming this blog.  ^_^

Since we've made quite a bit of progress, and it would take me forever to give each piece justice, I'll just do a quick recap of the past 3 months.

We utterly failed at finishing the nursery before Avonlea was born.  In fact, we are still working on it.  However, we have made some significant progress on the upstairs.  The walls and ceilings are painted, trim is completed in both bedrooms (except for the closet baseboards), carpeting is picked out and ordered, and we have finished staining all the stair parts and hallway woodwork.

Here is a picture of Jim holding Avonlea in the nursery before the window trim was up. 

Our sliding 5 panel closet doors that we bought way back in April-ish.

Our 4 panel door

The windows with custom-made window sills

The trimmed-out Guest Room

This is a picture of Jim ironing on the veneer for the landing.

The stair landing balusters lined up in our garage for staining.

Jim has spent a lot of time and effort on building the newel posts.  I would post pics, but I'll leave that to Jim. He wants to write about how he built them, and I don't want to give away any spoilers.  All I will say is that I think they look great!  :)

As I've mentioned earlier, we have ordered the carpeting for the upstairs.  We have chosen Shaw Stainmaster carpeting.  The hallway and stairs will be a medium brown with a leaf pattern.  The nursery will be a light beige and the guest room will be a light grey.  Jim wanted to go lighter in the hallway and stairs, but I was adamant not to go too light.  I don't feel like having to constantly clean the carpet (especially on the stairs).

Hallway and Stairs:

Style: Lasting  Color: Amaretto

Nursery:

Style: St Amien II  Color: Bridal Veil

Guest Room:

Style: St Amien II  Color: Mineral Alloy

Right now, they are scheduled to install the carpeting on Dec. 22nd.  If all goes well, Avonlea might have her nursery by Christmas.  ^_^*  Well, almost...her closet won't be completed by then since we want to try something fancy besides just a single rod for clothes to hang on.

Look at those colors!

Once all of the wall spaces and cleilings were freshly primed, we formed color-teams to fill them in. Amanda worked hard to find the perfect colors for the rooms. After a few weekends of painting, and with my parents' help, our project spaces are looking more finished than ever.

We have a charming nursary in light Sage Green, which will eventually be decorated with songbird theme.

Also, We have a comfortable Lilac Time purple/grey/blue guest room, where you may stay when you visit. This photo also shows the custom windowsill we built. The windowsills are designed to be an easy transition between the window caseing and the baseboards, as the large windows are so low to the floor.

The interconnecting hall is in traditional Lyndhurst Timber, and will look remarkable with the stained wooden handrail and built-in shelf.

Painting by numbers

It sure seems like a while ago that we were doing all this painting. During the first weekend in September, my parents came to help prime all of the drywall we had recently finished finishing. Mom and Dad are a great team, and they white-washed the bedrooms and hallway in no time.

Dad and Mom working diligently. 

While they were upstairs working with white primer, Amanda and I were out in the garage working with white paint on our surplus of window and door casings and baseboards . As Amanda had a limited number of comfortable maternity clothes, she also wore a blue disposable coverall. Incidentally, she looked like a blue M&M with a paint brush. 

Jim and Amanda pretending to work while no one was looking. 

Soon enough, our working construction zone was gone. Evidence of the rough original studs, electrical wiring and insulation was only barely visible along the bottom edge of the wall. All of the measurement notes, chalk lines and repair work on the drywall had been replaced with a fresh clean coat of while primer. We now had a 'blank canvas' that resembled two bedrooms and a hallway! 

How refreshing, it looks better already! 

Mud Fight!...Well, not really.

The mudding for the drywall has been progressing.  Both the Nursery and Guest Room might be complete by the end of today.  Jim and his mother are currently upstairs mudding as I type.  I'm not much use to them at the moment since I am now 32 weeks pregnant.  I'm not allowed on ladders, and I can't bend over easily; so I would just be able to mud in the middle.  LOL!  I would just be in the way.

Here is a shot of them that I took this morning in the Nursery.

After the bedrooms are complete, all that is left to mud is the hallway.  We want to have everything mudded before we start to prime for paint.

Jim has continued to work on the new hallway closet and built-in.  We went to Building 9 to see if we could find any discount doors and drawers for the project.  It was a success!  We managed to find a 3 panel door we liked for $30, matching cabinet doors for $10 ea, and $5 for a drawer front.  Sorry, no pictures yet of the doors, but I do have one of the closet framing.

The bottom part will be cabinets.  The middle is where the fake drawer will be, and the top will be open shelving.  That is a peek into our Master Bedroom on the left.

We have also finally installed the fire-rated drywall for the attic stairs.  I actually screwed it in place while Jim held it up.

Because an old house always has a trick up its walls, we recently had to replace our kitchen light over the sink.  The previous owners had installed a fluorescent workbench light for over the sink at some point.  The kitchen isn't one of our top priorities at the moment, so we just left it like that.  Well, one of the lights burnt out  and wouldn't work even with a new light bulb.  After a bit more fiddling, we decided to scrap the whole thing (it was ugly anyways) and traipsed over to Lowe's to peruse their clearance rack.  We were delighted to discover that they had a 3 pendant light fixture on clearance for $25.  Score!  The fixture didn't include the glass pendants, so we had to buy 3 of those.  We ended up still paying less than what the original price of the fixture would have been, so we're happy.  Oh, and in case you were wondering...Yes, Jim did have to fiddle with the wiring since the previous owners did it wrong.  Surprise!  Surprise!   Not!

Here are some pics.

 Of course, now the rest of the kitchen looks really sub-par with these new stylin' lights.

Haha!  Oh well!  Don't worry, Kitchen.  One day, your time will come for a remodel. :)

Colors, Colors, Everywhere!

Now that the drywall is completely up and the mudding is nearing the end...at least in the 2 bedrooms...I've been stalking the aisles of the local hardware stores for paint samples.  It was a grueling competition for the color swatches, but in the end, there could be only one!  Well, actually 6 if you count the 2 bedrooms, 1 hallway, and 3 ceilings.  ^_^

Here is a taste of the culling

These were the finalists for the nursery.

(Yes, that is an Ugly Doll in our color selection.  We just really liked his coloration.)

Haha!  I know, we are weird.  Poor, Enishi.  ^_^

These were the winners:

Nursery

Walls: Light Sage (Olympic Paint)

Ceiling: PaleVista (Olympic Paint)

Guest Room

Walls: Lilac Time (Olympic Paint)

Ceiling: Windsor Haze (Olympic Paint)

Hallway

Walls: Lyndhurst Timber (Valspar Historic Paint)

Ceiling: March Ice (Valspar Paint)

Jim and I agreed on the general color for each area (ex: grey-tinged purple in the Guest Room, green in the Nursery and brown in the Hallway), and I then picked out the specific colors.  Jim gave his final approval afterwards.  I think it worked out well.  I used the same method of elimination when I picked colors for the Craft Room.  I would put all the color swatches on the walls and see what they looked like throughout the varying times of day.  If I didn't like how a color looked, down it went.  The method must have worked well because I've gotten a lot of compliments on the colors of my Craft Room.  You can see pics of it in the Before and After Section of this blog.  Speaking of which, I can't wait until I can add the After pictures of the Nursery, Guest Room and Hallway.  Hopefully, I'll be able to by October.

Busy Bees!

Once again, my in-laws came out to help with the house renovations.  Thank goodness!  We could really use it!  LOL!

This past weekend, they worked on finishing leveling the floor in the hallway, insulating the hallway, and continuing to mud the nursery and guest rooms.  They all have done an amazing job, and it is really starting to come together.  The hallway looks awesome!  I'm excited to see the finished product.  We have really made quite a change in that hallway by knocking down 3 walls and adding in a corner closet and built-in.  It is going to look so good!!!  I can hardly wait!  We are still on the hunt for the newel posts, spindles, and handrail for the upstairs landing.  If anyone knows of a place they can recommend, please let us know!  We don't want to spend more than $100 per newel post (we need 2 1/2), yet we want ones that are at least 4 1/2" in width to make them feel more authentic for the age of our home.  

Picture Time!

Leveled Floor in Hallway

Insulation on Ceiling and Walls in Hallway

 (Looking Towards Nursery)

More Hallway Insulation

 (Looking Towards Guest Room)

Mudding so far in Nursery

Mudding so far in Guest Room

One of the nights when we were all eating dinner, we had an unexpected house guest.  Jim looked up to see a  big ol' fat ground hog staring in at us from our front door stoop.  We've never noticed a ground hog before, so it was a complete surprise.  He was just sitting there as if waiting for us to invite him in.  LOL!  He didn't seem afraid of us at all.  After a few moments, he calmly walked off to lounge under one of the bushes we have out front.  Maybe the septic guys destroyed his home when we had the new septic installed...

The Straight and Level

Our second story renovation project(s) have been progressing rather slowly lately. After we installed the drywall in the two bedrooms in May, the next phase of the renovation project began. As you know, I've spent a few weekends cleaning up blown-in insulation and knocking down the old plaster and lathe in the hallway. We have finally progressed past the point of demolation, and we can begin building-up again.


I had been prepared two weekends ago to remove the plywood subfloor and tile in the hall. Once I lifted one of the plywood sheets though I found the reason the subfloor was there at all. Luckily, I did not find a pack of rabid opposum, or a used mail-order taxidermist assistant's kit, or a space/time rift under the subfloor. But the original floor boards are warped to such a degree, that the triangular 2x4 ribs which brace and level the plywood subfloor measure up to 4 inches on the lowest side. I quickly put the subfloor back, then slowly took a cautious second look.

If I were to fix the slanted original floor, I would do what has already been done. Therefore,...
Amanda is taking over this post, since Jim has been too preoccupied with actual renovation to finish his draft. :)
Jim has decided to leave the already leveled part of the floor alone, and we will just build the rest of the floor up to that point.  This means that Jim does not have to remove any of the tile.

The Tile

Jim has since leveled the ceiling but not the floor (will be explained in future posts).

Leveled Ceiling

Don't let the old beams fool you, the new wood is what is level.

While Jim was removing the plaster and lath from underneath the one and only hallway window, he came across an interesting find...

An Old Beehive With Layers of Honeycomb

Alas, no honey.  This was a very old hive from the looks of it.

With the help of Jim's parents, we were also able to finally install the fold-up attic stairs that we purchased months ago on sale.

The Frame

The Stairs Closed

The Stairs Open

It is so much easier to get up into the attic now.  We are both really glad that we decided to do this.  The previous attic access was very small and inconvenient.  No fears, we have purchased fire-rated drywall for the stair's "lid" as per code.

We would also like to share with you the pics of our doors for the nursery and guest rooms.

The pre-hung doors on the left will be the style for the bedroom doors.  I noticed that the original doors in the house (of which there seem to be only 2- not counting the french doors) are both 4 panel doors.  These were the closest match we could find in our budget without actually buying vintage doors.  The doors on the right will be used for the sliding doors in the closets.  These are also styled after vintage doors, and Jim really liked the look of them.  We bought them a few months back when Lowe's was having a sale on custom doors.