Hardwood Refinishing Progress!

As of November 18th, we have been officially kicked out of the house for floor refinishing! Our electrician R was trying really, really hard to get everything patched before the floor guys came in, but it just wasn't possible, even with an extra set of hands. They were able to get all the baseboards off though and got maybe 75% of the patching done before getting the boot.

 

This room is baby's soon to be nursery and you can see the patching out in the hallway and above the light switches that hasn't happened yet.  They did get everything wired for the smoke detector (above the door) and the new outlets (under the window) and the other side of the room is patched as well. You can also get a teensy peak at the sanded floors, I'm so thrilled that they're in good condition underneath all the scratches.

 

This is our master bedroom and you can really see how gorgeous the floors are. The original wood looks pristine after just the sanding and I think there's very little for them to repair or fill with wood putty. The two outer outlets under the window are for power and I believe the middle one is for internet, while the hole high up on the wall is stuffed with cat 5, coax and power for our TV.

Another shot of the master, I'm pretty sure we're almost entirely patched in that room. 

With all the sanding basically complete, E and I had to make the tough choice on the floor color. I was having a tough time picking based off tiny swatches of paper, since stain looks different on actual wood, so the floor guys made us a grid of all our top choices.

It's pretty hard to get an accurate sense of the color based on my crappy phone picture, but these were our final options. We nixed the lighter colors first, we definitely wanted a dark floor, and then nixed the red toned stains next. Our furniture has a lot of red tones in it and when you put red toned furniture on top of red toned floors, you get way more red than we wanted. In the end, we went with dark walnut which is the bottom, left corner. It's the color toughest to see in this particular photo but it has a really rich tone and E loved it right off the bat. I could probably have debated it for a few more days before ultimately making the same decision, but he expedited the process lol.

While the floor guys do their thing, R and his helpers have shifted their focus to the garage which we are attempting to turn into a finished space. That room is going to be a much bigger project than anticipated but in the end I think it will completely worth it. It's a 2 car garage with a gabled ceiling and R is going to loft 50% of it. This leaves an 8 foot 2 inch ceiling below, with recessed lighting, and a large loft above where we can store a ton of stuff or eventually turn into a little hang out space. The loft requires a massive engineered beam, which we have on order, and then drywall and insulation for the entire space, epoxying the floors, removing the garage door since the track takes up so much space, and building our own barn doors to replace them. It's really going to be a beast but the extra space will give us a laundry room, storage, and a work out/man cave space for E.  I can't wait to see what it looks like when the project is complete.

31 Weeks

Somehow, time keeps rushing by and we are getting closer and closer to baby arriving. Last Thursday marked 31 weeks and if baby actually makes their appearance on time, we'll be meeting our little bean in less than 10 weeks! 

According to our every 2 week check ups, baby is doing really well. Active, growing, doing all the things a baby is supposed to do. There is still a good amount of room in there for moving and lots of fluid so we've got a lot of position changes going on. The baby usually doesn't hang out in one spot for too long, not when there are somersaults to be turned and a bladder to bounce on.

I'd love to show you pictures of an in-progress nursery, sweetly painted with furniture being assembled, but the truth is our house is still in the electrical stage. We have made really good progress though and are at the point where things start happening really quickly. We passed our rough electrical inspection for all the rooms except the 3 that weren't ready to be inspected yet. Both the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms were patched AND painted, holy crap two mostly finished rooms, and the second round of inspections is this Thursday. Once the last 3 rooms get signed off on, low voltage stuff can be run, patching can be kicked into overdrive and the floor refinishing crew can do their thing. This month is going to be a flurry of activity and I think we have a really good shot at actually moving, with nursery furniture, in the early part of December.

Although we have a lot of stuff in storage, we've got a pretty big shopping list going of things we're going to need. The biggest is definitely the sectional for the living room, followed by nursery furniture (crib, two dressers, lamps, bookcase, rug, chair), side tables and lamps, a desk and filing cabinet, bookcases for the living room, possibly some chairs. We're going to have more space than we've ever had and while we don't have to furnish everything at once, I'm very aware that if I don't do it now, it's not likely to get done once the baby is here.

I've got another appointment coming up at the end of this week and will hopefully have photos of fully painted bathrooms to share!

17 Weeks - Home Offers!

Today E and I officially signed a sellers counter offer to accept our first house! This house and lot is a little smaller than the previous one we offered on (with less closets, boo) but it's got good bones and is very cute. It's far from a done deal though, there were counters sent to several people but I have a feeling they're going to pick ours. Then, we move into a whirlwind of inspections and contractors because the house we offered on needs some work before we can move in.

Another row of bumps!

Actually, some work might be an understatement. It needs a new kitchen, with walls knocked down, a small addition to add a bathroom, flooring replaced, laundry moved to the garage and the sliding doors moved to a different wall. It also needs some fencing, drywall and insulation in the garage, and floors refinished. So really, most of the house when you think about it. As long as the addition is done, we could probably wait to renovate the homes two existing bathrooms. One is kind of unusable but the other is in good shape despite being outdated. The floors could also probably wait to be refinished, but it would be so much easier to do that before all our furniture is all moved in.

In the meantime, our house hunt has started to merge with my pregnancy in my dreams. The other day I dreamt that I had to meet the contractor but I couldn't because I went into labor. I was trying to find someone else to meet the contractor while sitting in my hospital bed arguing with the nurses that I couldn't be in labor because I had a house to renovate. Clearly I've got a lot on the brain!