Thanksgiving, then Right Back to Work

We had a great time visiting Carrie and Mike in Virginia for Thanksgiving. Thursday we all cooked together. The food all turned out so wonderful that we all had to go to bed pretty early considering it was a mini vacation. Friday, Carrie showed us where she works. She's an equine vet so we got to see lots of cool things vets use on and for horses! And Andrew got to be pulled from one room to the next as if he were a horse being taken into surgery.


After a little turkey chili, Andrew and Mike decided to test Angus and Roy's invisible fence collars, to make sure they are safe...

They experieced minor shocks and we all experienced lots of laughter.

Saturday, we arrived back in Memphis and thanks to Jess and Drew got home from the airport.
After checking on the cats and relaxing for a minute we decided to go check out our new house and begin a "minor" project. The floors turned out great so we headed to the kitchen.
We had discovered last weekend that the fridge (as pretty as it is) combined with the additon of the washer and dryer would leave little room for exiting the house through the back door (we'd be lucky to get 8 inches!). So after a little thought I asked Andrew if the smaller pantry could be widened a few inches so that fridge could slide into it and then later we could finish the walls around it. So we tried it.

It began like this:

And then we began to pull off the panelling, door frame, etc. Once we got to the old plaster and lath, we ripped that off too.



With some electrical help from our brother-in-law, Paul, it now looks like this:



Aaron came by and helped Andrew get the washer and dryer into the house and we can still get out the back door!! We'll have to finish off the wall around the fridge with drywall and Andrew is going to add a cabinet above it. Oh yeah, and we'll have to run the waterline through the crawl space so the it reaches the fridge in its new home! But all this will have to be put off until we get a couple other major projects done.

Today was also a big day because we spent the morning and afternoon moving! With the help of Joe, Jeremy, Warren, Kate, Polly, Amanda, and Corey we almost got everything out of the old house!. Now we'll set up the bed and sleep!

Continuing on the floors

Yesterday and today we continued polyurethaning [is that a word?] the floors. It takes about an hour and a half to do the whole house and we got super stoned off the awful polyurethane fumes, which was not actually as fun as it may sound. So the first coat looked something like this:






And Andrew got to wade in polyurethane again.



And the second coat looks even better...
After having dinner at Los Compadres with Joe, Amanda, Corey and Kate and their kids, Oliver and Polly, the gang came by to check out the floors before we started the third coat while Oliver slept in the car. It was great to have friends over to see our progress!

Then we began the third coat. We're hoping to get a fourth coat on tomorrow before we leave for Virginia to spend Thanksgiving with Andrew's sister, Carrie and her boyfriend Mike. Yay! A mini vacation will be great. We get to relax for a few days and the floors get to completely cure!

So Happy Thanksgiving to all. Enjoy spending time with your families!

And the work continues...

We woke up bright and early, well okay not so early. I headed to Starbucks for some caffeine and Andrew went straight to the house. By 10:00 the caffeine was starting to hit.
Andrew began the final run-through of the entire house with the finishing sandpaper and wonderfully powerful sander and then began the touch-ups with the palm sander while I swept the house by room, again. Around 1:00 Andrew and Jeremy were on their way to Home Depot to return the sander and to pick up polyurethane. Who chose to go with the oil based gloss because the oil based brings out the wood color a bit more and the color of the polyurethane richens over time. I headed to a baby shower for my little sister Bridget to celebrate the upcoming arrival of my first niece! Andrew continued sanding while I was gone. I arrived back at the house just in time for another sweeping session. Then the mopping began. Lots of mopping. We mopped all the floors several times to make sure we got all the grit up and the headed out for some fresh air and dinner. When we arrived back an hour later, the floors were dry and ready for the first coat of polyurethane. And so we mopped the floors with polyurethane...

And we mopped...















And mopped...















Until we backed our selves right out of the dining room door.




(Andrew really likes this picture of himself: "It looks like I was wading in it!")














Oh, but I almost forgot the treasure find of the day. While I was away, Andrew decided to open the odd grate in hall wall. It is a grate that appears to have at one time been the in-take vent for the old central heating system or perhaps the old furance. We're not sure which, but it is odd because it is under the attic stairs. So Andrew opened it because it looked like something was in there. And so he found:



Lots of bags filled with tuperware! Yay. All shapes, sizes, and colors. Now why these treasures were inside the old intake vent, we'll never know, but I sure can't wait to pull them all out and use those suckers!!!

Day 2 of Being Home Owners

Day 2 was long, but we got a lot done. We searched the house for hidden remnants of carpet and and found them in the hall closet and at the bottom of the attic stairs. Andrew ripped those suckers up.


With all the carpet removed, we were ready for the sander. While Jeremy and Andrew went to Home Depot to pick it up, Sarah and I hacked at the kitchen floor.



Then the sanding began. It lasted for many many hours, but we sanded all the floors of our 1489 square foot home!

















Sarah and I even got to man the sander. Which was very fun, so I highly suggest you try if ever given the opportunity.























But mostly, Jeremy and Andrew sanded while Sarah and I tried our best to get all the sawdust up by sweeping the floors thousands upon thousands of times. [The next time we re-do the floors (har har) we'll definately invest in a shop-vac.] We did get a pretty good upper body work-out. Honestly though, we spent most of our time standing in dusty rooms talking, which I'm sure was great for our lungs.
And even though the boys worked hard, don't worry, they did get some rap time in:



We also found a spot on the wall that
easily exposed the many layers of
wallpaper on our livingroom wall. Which I thought was pretty cool. It's generations exposed (at least until we rip it all down).


Even though we were all completely exhaused by the end of our 12+ hour day, it was a lot of fun and we got a lot done, yet again! So we went home and collapsed in bed. From what Andrew says, it took me about two and half minutes to fall deeply asleep!

Let the fun begin!

We signed an hour's worth of papers and paid a small fortune, but we got a set of keys!!
We immediately began work this afternoon.
FIrst we pulled out the carpets: living room, one bedroom, and breakfast room. I'm still not sure why you would carpet a breakfast room, but by the looks of that carpet- someone did it a long long time ago.
I've also discovered a very solid reason for never ever carpeting anything:
Absolutely disgusting. This is all the dirt and nastyness that gets stuck in the carpet of a bedroom over the years. Who wants to breath this!?! Not us. So we ripped up the carpet and the padding and promptly placed it on the curb. Oddly enough though, someone actually stopped and picked up all the padding. So beware future carpet buyers: you might be unknowingly getting used padding. Yuk!


So now our living room looks like this:

Yay. Happy hard wood floors!
We then moved on to the kitchen floor.


This, we were not expecting, but if you look closely you can see the hard wood begging to be released from the layers of linoleum. We're working on it.

So it was a very productive day. Maybe we're crazy, but we're looking forward to tomorrow!
But first we're off to Neil's so Andrew can play a little music and I can relax at the bar with the girls!

Thanks to Joe, Corey, and Jeremy for all your hard work today. We couldn't have gotten so much done without you guys!

Closer

So tomorrow's the big day! We close on our wonderful (yet needing lots of TLC) home. This is all very nerve racking. They say buying a house is one of the most stressful things you do. I now believe them. (They said that about gettting married too, but that was only stressful the week before so I was beginning to doubt "them.")
Earlier this week we had to make a quick insurance provider switch because our long time insurance company- State Farm- refused to cover new wonderful old midtown home. I have since heard of several other folks who left State Farm as a result of the refusal to cover their midtown homes (from my understanding it is the knob and tube wiring in the attics and basements that kills the State Farm coverage). But our wonderful mortgage guy, Mano, came to the rescue! He hooked me up with a brand new, wonderfully enthusiastic insurance agent and we even switched our cars! (this was mostly due to the better-than-State Farm-and-Progressive rates and of course the discounts!!! I love a good discount!)
So tomorrow's they day. We have been assured by our real estate agent, our mortage guy, and our closing attorney's assistant that everything is taken care of and all will go smooth tomorrow. Now, it's not that I'm negative or pessimistic, I'm just nervous. Maybe it's the waiting. So for now, we wait. Tonight I'll pack some more odds and ends (although I think Andrew might lose it soon if I pack anything else- I'm getting dangerously close to packing the few things left in the kitchen-he'll be too busy to cook anyway right?- and the small amount of clothes I haven't packed yet. But now my nerves are taking control and I can't sit still! I must pack or go crazy.