Kitchen Tile

It took us most of the weekend (and I'm still cleaning up parts of the mess) but the kitchen, back mud room, half bathroom and pantry are tiled. It almost feels like the kitchen area is completed. Well, except for the paint, trim, doors, outlet covers, light fixtures, cabinets, appliances and window treatments. Almost.

It's Official: We're Crazy

I can't come up with any better way to tell the most recent project story but from the beginning:


2 years ago we bought the first project house. We worked hard and sold it about 13 months after we purchased it. All great....until we had to pay taxes on the profit we made. Thankfully, we had owned it for over a year (so it wasn't too painful). However, it dawned on us that had we lived in the house during that year we would have (honestly and legally) paid less in taxes.


Fast forward to the current project house. When we decided to purchase it and do some major renovations we both thought the exact same thing, "hey, we could easily live in this house for a year." We then got extremely aggressive with selling our nice, new, large, no-projects-to-be-done home in Edwardsburg and (as luck would have it) we sold it last week (we know a good Realtor:). This past Thursday evening, with the help of some good friends and family, we moved into the new project house.


Question #1: Is the house completed?
Answer: No. Not even close. We have a small "dorm" refrigerator in a guest bedroom and some non-perishable food in a dresser. We have a bed. We have a working toilet, shower and sink....and of course, internet. We do NOT have any interior doors - not a one. And (as of 15 minutes ago) we have one working television. We also have drywall dust in every square inch of this house.




Questions #2: How long before the house will be done?

Answer: We are working in phases. The first phase (main level of the home) should be done within the next 6-8 weeks. We'll then begin working on other phases (basement, new garage, landscaping, new roof, etc). We never really know exactly how long our projects will take - but we move a whole lot faster when it's our residence.

Question #3: Seriously...you are choosing to live like this for a little bit of extra money?

Answer: Have we met?!

More updates to come.

Floors

The last two days have been all about floors for us. When we purchased this home the house had carpet (beautiful blue carpet) throughout most of the living area and vinyl flooring in the kitchen and bathroom. When we pulled the carpet up, there were oak floors underneath. They needed to be sanded and stained badly. I had my heart set on a black stain for the floors. Trent wasn't entirely sold, but I convinced him - and I'm glad I did. The dark stain turned out great (sorry - my photos don't do it justice). Please disregard the flesh colored walls...they are obviously going to be a different color.

Unfortunately, the wood floors cannot be walked on for the next 24 hours. However, they have a nice new coat of color on them and (better yet) we have one more item crossed off our "to-do" list.

Moving Along

Things on the project house are moving along. We spent the weekend priming the walls, starting to paint and getting the first bathroom close to completed.

The tile used is so much more gray in color than these photos show with gray'ish/blue paint. The toilet and vanity go in tomorrow (which will save me numerous trips to fast food restaurants to use their facilities).



The oak floors are being sanded and stained today (clearly they need a little attention). The plan right now is to try something a little different and go with a black stain - although I have another hour to still change my mind.

We're moving as quickly as possible on this house...and we're tired.

New Smell

The best part about the drywall phase: the new smell. The project house no longer smells like a mixture of nursing home and dead mice - it smells brand new!

We made several changes (moved the stairs to the basement into another room, added a half bathroom, added a pantry, added lots of new lights and outlets and opened up the living room into the kitchen). It's still tough to visualize exactly what the finished product will look like, but in my head it's spectacular.

Crunch Time

This is a photo of what you do NOT want a project to look like 10 hours prior to hanging drywall. On our last project house, it took us about 6 months to get to this point. We started this project 17 days ago.

Around 8pm last night we were able to admit that we were not going to get everything done (electrical, plumbing, framing and insulation). Thankfully, Trent's dad (Kevin) came over and worked until 11pm helping us out. My observation after he left: "wow - your dad works fast!" Trent's response: "yep." We were a group of few words last night.

The good news is that we got it all done (note: installing insulation at midnight is not high on my list of fun things to do). The bad news is that we aren't 100% certain that we remembered everything. I guess we'll find out in the coming days.

4 Days, 6 Days, 2 Days

Above is a photo that shows the work we completed in 4 days. The day we purchased the newest project house, we got started immediately. 4 days after we began our work, I left on vacation with a friend...Trent continued to work.

The following photos show what he accomplished (totally on his own) in 6 days!

And these photos bring us up to date with the last 2 days.

In case math isn't really your thing, we have been working on this project for 12 days - and it's coming along very well!!