Wow! I just wrote a list of all the things that got accomplished this week and it really surprised me as I looked back on it! We got tons of things done....way more than I thought we would.
Bill had to leave town and go to Vegas for a few days this week on business, so we were kind of planning on a lower productivity kind of week without him....but I'm happy to report that we were very productive.
Here is the list of things done:
[x] Roof complete
[x] Plumber hired
[x] Electrician hired
[x] Venting re-routed
[x] Started on the stripping of an Antique Door
[x] Bought paint/Painted the upstairs ceilings and biggest bedroom
[x] Framing of office doorway completed
[x] Picked up 4,000 pounds of flooring from store
[x] Yard work and more power washing
[x] Dump run
[x] Wallpaper stripping in powder room
[x] Front door ordered
[x] Railing ordered
First....roofers. I don't think we can actually take credit for getting this one done, but those roofers were amazing! They showed up bright and early on Wednesday morning and had the roof completely finished by Friday evening. They were awesome. We would totally hire Pro Roofing again for any roofing needs. They even went above and beyond the call of duty.......Wednesday as Sarah and I returned with our second load of flooring in the back of the truck, they all stopped what they were doing and helped us carry 28x 50 pound boxes of hardwood flooring into the house. It only took about 15 minutes of their time, but it saved Sarah and I about an hour of our time and some sore tired muscles. We surely appreciated it! AND...the roof looks amazing. It really is the first step in making this house into a huge transformation.
While Bill was gone, Sarah and I worked on a number of things, but the two biggest things we accomplished were getting all that flooring home....three separate trips to Home Depot and filled the truck as heavy as we could all three times...in total 78 x 50 pound boxes and 2,000 feet of underlayment for a total of 3,900 pounds of hardwood flooring. We also worked on getting all the wallpaper off the powder room. That took longer that we thought, but was actually a pretty rewarding job. It felt good to see all those wallpaper shreds on the floor.
When Bill got back he started in on the remaining few structural things that needed to get done in the house. He framed out the doorway in the office in preparation for a beautiful 9 foot antique door we purchased. Last Saturday we went to a store in Seattle called "Second Use" and happened upon these beautiful 9' tall sliding bar doors. And, miraculously they were exactly the size that we were looking for. They need some love in the form of stripping some old paint and stain, then refinishing. Sarah and I got a little start on that project this week also. They are going to be gorgeous!
The other project that Bill tackled was getting a vent re-routed under the sub-floor. Ethan was a huge help! They worked on it together and crawled around in that nasty, spider and rat infested (not anymore) crawl space until the job was complete.
But, this job brought about one of the highlights of the week. As Bill took out the old duct, he could hear a LOT of rattling around inside it. It sounded like it was full of something! We were very curious to find out what might be inside. We took the old section of duct work outside to dump...none of us wanted to be faced with an unpleasant surprise inside with nowhere to run....haha. So we went out to the deck and proceeded to empty the contents of the noisy duct. Here is the treasure......
It got us curious....small child? Dog? Rats? Or do "The Borrowers" really exist? One may never know, but here is the evidence.
Lastly, we made a huge step forward. We actually hired a plumber and an electrician. I know, this doesn't sound like a big deal...but trust me...it is. We must have called 8 different plumbers and a few different electricians. A few of which said they "might" come by...didn't. Two of which said they would come at a certain time....didn't even show up. Not cool. In total we've spent 2-3 weeks tracking down subcontractors but we are now under contract - both will get started next week!
It feels like we made really good progress is week, but more importantly we were able to get the ball rolling for even more forward movement coming up in the next few weeks. We are looking forward to less tearing out, and more making things new. Should be a great week!
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