Month: September 2011

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Hiyah!

Lots of progress has been made on the house this week:
• New furnace has been installed
• Brick patio has been redone.
• Our beautiful new windows and patio door have been installed.
• Electrical wiring done in the 2nd bedroom and ceiling light added
• Power washing, caulking, and primer put over nails (to prevent them from rusting)
on the exterior of the house has been done.

I’d post pictures, but I’m so exhausted I don’t want to get off this couch to retrieve the camera. I’m hoping the house will be cleaned up a little bit in the next couple days so I can take better looking photos to share.

We’ve had some rain in our forecast (YAY for our brown lawn!) the last couple days so they’ve held off on exterior painting. That’s the last big project for our contractors, then the rest of it is left to us.

Have a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend!

XO
~MBR

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A Post Not Related to the House!

Time to change up our posts for the time being.

This past weekend, Aaron and I gained another niece. My little sister (Sid #4) gave birth to her 2nd precious daughter, Selena Angeline LaMarche. Congratulations to Mom (Colleen), Dad (Nate), and big sister (Naleen)!

This year marks Vermont as our holiday trip. It’s such a bummer we live so far away that we can’t do both North Carolina and Vermont in the same holiday season. 😦 Anyhoo, we’re looking forward to our visit to VT whenever that ends up being and getting to meet the newest addition to the family.

Eek! Can’t believe I’m talking about the holiday season already?! Typically the first half of the year drags by, then once August comes and goes the remainder of the months whiz by?

XO
~MBR

 

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Labor Day Weekend – truly laborous

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So here’s another update on our house renovation project. The contractor put in the new cedar trim around the windows. The windows should be installed this week and then they can get started on the exterior painting.

Speaking of painting, Mary-Beth accomplished a lot this weekend with the interior. She completed the living room, hallway, and stairwell walls with the lemon edge semi-gloss. It looks good and it’s safe to say she’s better at painting than I am.

As for the big project this weekend, we decided to go ahead and knockout the kitchen floor this weekend after seeing some good deals on porcelain tiles. At 69 cents a square foot, we only spent about $112 on all the materials for the floor. I borrowed some tools from my buddy (as always… it’s safe to say that most of the tools in the garage are actually his).

I started by pulling up the vinyl squares since I didn’t want to deal with the solvent method and the smells it comes with. After that was done, I laid down the underlayment which would allow a stable surface for the mortar and tile to go on. All that was just Saturday. I had to go pick up more tools Saturday night so I could screw in the boards and cut tile.

Sunday morning consisted of screwing in the boards and laying out the tiles. It actually took me all day to cut tile since I was doing one tile at a time. Better safe than sorry. After dinner I mixed the mortar with the drill mixer and we proceeded to lay down the tile one piece at a time. Eventually we found our groove and M-B would focus on squaring the tiles while I laid down the mortar. By 9 pm we were finally finished laying down the tile.

Who knew how much of a toll this work would take on our bodies. Today as I woke up, I realized just how sore I was and felt muscles ache in places I had never felt before. Soon enough M-B and I will treat ourselves to a trip to a spa so we can rejuvenate our bodies.

So much for a relaxing 3-day weekend. Me thinks that we won’t have a get-away weekend until ski season comes. After all we got great deals on all this gear. I’m excited about wearing my new helmet with speakers built into it. 🙂 No more RENTALS!!!

– AVR