Now I Know We Are Crazy!!!

*If you want things to make sense, you might want to scroll down to the post titled "Hooray for New Septic Systems!" and read up the blog.  If not, you will end up reading backwards through time if you start with this post.*

Here is how our Independence Day holiday weekend broke down:

Saturday

Jim and his dad designed and built the scaffolding for the stairwell while Jim's mom and I worked outside with the new planters that I wrote about earlier.  I was pretty impressed with their design.

Here is the scaffolding.

The individual beams across the top in the pic on the left can be removed for people to go up and down the stairs.  I referred to them as the "pregnancy barrier," since I can't get up the stairs unless the final beam furthest from the camera is also removed.  I could probably climb over it to get upstairs, but there is no way I am going to climb back over it to go downstairs.  I don't feel like taking the express way down. 

At some point, Jim's dad suggested removing the other 2 walls surrounding the stairwell.  This has been an idea I've brought up to Jim before, but he has always come up with reasons not to do it.  These other 2 walls are not original to the house.  They are walls previous owners put up when creating the rental space upstairs.  I believed that there originally used to be a guardrail surrounding the stairwell opening and not walls.  Jim's dad agreed with my theory.  Now that my FIL was on board with the idea of removing the walls, Jim decided to give the idea more thought.  This is another "now or never" project, so it does require a lot of thought.

*Pros to Removing the Walls*

~the space would really open up and be easier to move things around

~there would be more light in the hallway

~the hallway is currently super narrow already and would become even more cave-like after we finish leveling the ceiling and floors

~we would be bringing the home back to its more original state

~the area would be airier/breezier

~we most likely wouldn't regret taking the walls down in the long run, but might regret not taking them down when we had the chance

*Cons to Removing the Walls*

~Jim would have to redo some of his rewiring that he already has done

~we risk not finishing everything before the baby arrives

~children might decide to either try to squeeze through the landing spindles, attempt to climb the guardrail, or decide to toss/drop things down the stairs between the spindles.

~this would cost more $ than keeping the walls

Sunday

Jim was still debating with himself whether or not to remove the walls still, so Jim and his dad worked on other projects upstairs including more electrical, framing in a small corner closet with triangular built-in, and framing a future linen closet that won't be fully created until the bonus room/upstairs kitchen is renovated.  Since I wasn't allowed up there still during demolition, I'm not sure of everything they did.  I know of one casualty, though.  Jim accidentally dropped a tool in-between the wall.  It dropped all the way down to the first level, so we won't be able to recover it until we remodel the family room...and who knows when that will be.  LOL!  Poor Jim.  At least it wasn't an essential and/or expensive tool. 

Monday (4th of July)

Decision day!  

Our final decision was to remove the walls!  Yea!  I am over-joyed!  :D  I am so glad Jim has finally seen that it would be so much better in the long run if the walls were gone.

*Happy Manda Dance!*

Jim's parents and youngest brother (Eddie) came out to celebrate the 4th of July as well as helping out with demolition.  They once more closed themselves upstairs via the scaffolding and got to work.  I remained downstairs and went along with my business of updating this blog.  While the guys were destroying things, my MIL was mudding the drywall in the guest room and nursery.

Here are some pictures of the hallway/stairwell.

Before

This is what the hallway looked like when we first moved in.  It illustrates quite well how narrow it is.  The doorway to the right leads to the stairwell.  The doorway to the left is to the bonus room/renter's kitchen.

After the Drywall Removal

Looking down the stairwell

Looking across stairwell

 That is the nursery doorway straight ahead and the bonus room doorway to the far left covered in plastic.

View from the nursery doorway

After the Stud Removal

Looking up from the stairwell

Looking across the stairwell

 That is the balcony door that is open that used to lead to exterior stairs for the renters.

View from the nursery doorway

The door covered in plastic leads to the master bedroom

Looking down the stairwell

If you look to the immediate left of the stairwell on the floor, you can see where the old newel posts and spindles used to be before the walls were erected.  It's sad.  The original guardrail and newel posts were probably thrown out.  :'(  We're currently on the hunt for new newel posts and spindles that are in our budget and look Victorian-esque.  We will need a total of 2 1/2 newel posts (the half is for the newel post that will be against the wall) and about 30 or more spindles.  Current code wants spindles to be no more than 4 inches apart to prevent children from getting stuck between them or slipping through them.  I measured the distance between the original spindle marks, and they were 6 inches apart.  In the meantime, we will close off the hole in the floor with the scaffolding when we are working up there to prevent anyone from falling off the edge.

If anyone knows of newel posts and/or spindles for a decent price, please let us know.  We will end up needing about ~10ft of guardrail.  The guardrail needs to be a total of between 34 to 38 inches in height to be to code.

Here is a picture of our corner closet and built-in so far

The closet won't be very big, but it will be able to hold a vacuum cleaner and other cleaning supplies.  The triangular built-in will consist of a cupboard on the bottom, a fake drawer in the middle, and open shelving on the top.  The shelving will hopefully be too high up for a toddler to try to climb it.  It would be nice if the cupboard doors had glass, but that probably wouldn't be a good idea with small children.  *Sigh, sacrificing for them already.*  LOL!

And, that is where we stand in our upstairs project.

Power Tools

Recently, while slouching around a Sears Hardware I noticed a clearance table with a variety of items. A set of cordless DeWALT tools and softcase stood out amongst the rest. This toolset was being discontinued and therefore the very last one at Sears was on sale. We had collected a few Sears gift cards, so I used them up to purchase the $400 set for about $120.

 We have already put most of the tools to work, and I am pleased with their performance so far. We intend to use them quite a bit in the years to come.

Busy Jim

Since Jim isn't much of a blogger, I guess I'll have to tell you what he has been up to besides work. 

Jim has spent a lot of time on the craftroom shelves.  We decided to save money by buying the wood and cutting out the shelves ourselves.  We've borrowed our dads' miter saw and router, so Jim has had fun playing with those.  I think the shelves are coming out nicely.  Here is a profile pic of one of the shelves.  The other pic is Jim carrying it on his head.

These shelves seem to be taking forever, but they are finally going up on the walls.  Jim snuck a pic of me painting the shelf supports in the garage.

Yea for shelves on walls!

Besides the shelves, Jim has been hard at work on the firepit.  I think it came out nice.  There had already been an existing small firepit, so we just expanded it a little.  We didn't realize until after Jim was done, that some tree branches from my miko tree hang over the pit.  We'll try to trim them back before our first fire.

Along with the firepit, Jim has been practicing grilling on our new cheap charcoal grill.

After finishing the firepit, Jim was supposed to mow the lawn; however, he did something that he wasn't supposed to do which resulted in breaking my wheelbarrow.  We have a cement pad behind our garage that seems to be the remnants of an old shed with foundation.  Last month, my MIL and I had cleaned up all the glass that was in one corner of the pad.  I was under the impression that Jim and I had agreed that the only other thing we would do before our housewarming concerning the cement pad was to bend down the metal pipes sticking out of the ground at the corners.  Well, Jim got over-zealous and decided to start removing the cement blocks around the pad.  The blocks were heavy, so he just lobbed them into the wheelbarrow.  Unfortunately, the wheelbarrow didn't appreciate this method, and the tub cracked in several places.

Jim was mad at himself.

I could have gotten mad at him too for not listening to me, and then breaking the wheelbarrow, but instead I struck a deal with him...I wouldn't get mad at him for this if he doesn't get mad at me the next time I break something.   I told him that he just made more work for himself.

Here is a before and after pic of Jim's wayward efforts.

This pic was taken from the same corner.  : (

Unfortunately, he never did finish this job.  He also didn't get to mow the lawn that day because it rained.

  See, husbands should listen to their wives!

Jim has decided to take part in deforestation and has started to clean our gutters.  We've only managed to do the garage so far. We haven't gotten to our house gutters just yet.

  Jim must have found something smelly by the look on his face in the second pic.

Jim has also removed a dead limb which had a tree swing hanging on it.  We wanted to remove the swing and limb before the party so that no one was tempted to play on it.  We didn't want a big tree branch falling on any of our guests.  We will hopefully be able to put a new swing on a different tree in the future.

Is that a monkey in that tree?  Nope, just Jim.

So, that is what Jim has been up to in the past couple of weeks.  Maybe one of these days he'll write his own post.  ^_^*

Mitering Away the Day

Yesterday, my dad brought his miter saw and helped us get molding from Lowe's.  Thanks, Dad!  Jim read the manual last night, and started mitering the baseboards today.  In fact, he is finishing up the mitering as I type this. We also went back to Lowe's today (we'll all be on a first name basis soon  ^_^*) and ordered the flooring for the craft room.  In the end, I decided on Pergo Premium Laminate Flooring; it ended up being cheaper than carpeting.  I really love the look of darker colored woods for flooring, but none of them seemed to go well with my blue walls, so I actually decided on a lighter flooring called Old Magnolia.  It has a yellowish hue that looks lovely against the cool tones of the blue.  I promised myself that I could get a darker toned wood for the kitchen, dining room, and library when the time comes to tackle those rooms.  They told us we'd have to wait about 2 weeks for the flooring to come in, and then let the flooring acclimate to the room for another 3 days before we install it.  So close, and yet so far!!!
Jim told me about the silver dollar sized black spiders he saw in the cellar when he was cleaning up down there, so while we were out today, we bought a spider trap.  Spiders typically freak me out big time.  Well, basically anything with more than 6 legs kind of makes me nervous, but spiders especially creep me out.  I'll let you guys know if we catch anything.

Here is a pic of Jim having fun with the miter saw:

And yes, that is our kitchen table.

Tomorrow, I plan on painting the trim around the closet and door.  I want to paint the windows as well, but that will have to wait until the weather warms up just a smidge.  The door on the craft room isn't the greatest looks-wise (just a solid plank of wood), but it is perfectly functional.  I was secretly hoping I could eventually replace the door in the future, but there is so much other stuff that has priority right now.  Well, we did a little hunting around in the garage today, and we found an unused 6 panel door hiding behind a huge plank of wood!  Jim took some measurements and it looks like the door will fit the craft room with only a little adjustment.  Score!