Busy Busy

We’ve been working on the house so much that we’ve fallen behind on the blog! I published a post about trim that I actually wrote early last week and forgot to finish. We’ve made a ton of progress since then. Let me re-cap. To get things caught up I’ll jump back about a week and a half. We got a used stove and refrigerator from Dean’s with the help of Sarah’s family. Having more than a cooler was pretty nice with how hot it’s been recently. I took off work Wednesday through Friday because we had a party planned for Saturday. My friend Matt came down on Thursday and helped us a ton.

In the bathroom we stripped the sea-foam green stucco from the walls, which left the rough drywall paper. So Sarah and I plastered the walls and ceiling with joint compound, then she and Matt B sanded it and painted it. I scrubbed the tub, installed the mirror and light bar, and put up a towel hook. Unfortunately the light bar isn’t working, so that’s still on my to-do list.

Preparing to Paint

In the living room and dining room we got everything cleaned up and taped down plastic over the floors and windows. I took down the ceiling fan and broke out the paint sprayer. Between the cloud of paint, the speckles on the outside of my goggles and the fog on the inside I couldn’t really see what I was doing, but the paint sprayer was awesome just the same.

Painting with the sprayer

I ran into a problem halfway through the first room. The inlet hose on the sprayer briefly left the paint and I couldn’t get it to maintain pressure. It would spray for about five seconds and then start dribbling while the compressor ran noisily for thirty seconds. Matt B came to the rescue and suggested I prime it again. That did the trick and I was back at it. Something to note: don’t leave it on maximum pressure. We wound up with drips of paint on the walls and I went through a five gallon bucket in a room and a half. Oops! It didn’t take long to blast through the two rooms though. The good news is that the blue trim and almond walls are now a blissful white.

Living room painted

Taking down the paint, the room looked amazingly better. It honestly started to look like a place we could move into. Friday we did touch ups with rollers and really got everything smoothed out. Then we cleaned up the yard while Sarah planted her seedlings in the garden. With everything swept off Saturday morning we threw a nice outdoor barbecue for friends and got to show everyone how far the house had come. Sarah’s parents and brother brought down the first load of kitchen cabinets. A friend of the family was remodeling her kitchen and gave them to Sarah’s uncle, who then discovered his ceilings were too low to use them. So now we’re getting them, but we have to take all of them, and there’s a lot.

Sarah’s sister Nicole found a great deal on ceiling fans, and Rob got them installed earlier this week. We got the rest of the caulking done and are planning to get everything taped up today and tomorrow. Then we’ll paint the kitchen and bedrooms on Saturday. Saturday morning, Dean is helping us pick up a dishwasher from our friend Jenn. Sunday we’re off to Sarah’s grandmother’s to get the rest of the kitchen cabinets.

If everything goes to plan, we’ll get the cabinets installed and pack up the condo next week, so we can hopefully move the following weekend. We’re checking items off the list and trying to get everything coordinated, but it remains to be seen if we can keep on top of it all.