Boundless DIY - Mid September Update

There's not much outside of our DIY for me to blog about these days. It's pretty much all our household does outside of work hours. We do spend some time eating and occasionally (crap! F's only got one pair of undies left!) some laundry. Otherwise it's either house fixing or procuring supplies to complete another stage of house fixing.

The bathroom is done. It's been done for a few weeks now. It's still got some blue tape on the walls marking spots where the painter needs to do some touch-up, but we've moved back in and it's fully functional. And wonderful. So wonderful! I can't wait for it to get cold enough to turn on the heated floor.  Pictures of completion soon, but here's a narrow angle shot with an annoying reflection of my arms and phone.

Remember a couple weekends ago (facebook/instagram followers) when I posted popcorn removal in the hall and dining room? Those two spaces are finally repaired, textured and painted. Travis spent last weekend cutting holes for new wiring and new lighting. Sunday we took the day off to go to football (GO BRONCOS!) but he's back at it late tonight and will wrap it up tomorrow.

The family room isn't un-popcorned yet and it's a really easy place to see the makeover. We're noticing our house get lighter and brighter the more popcorn disappears.

This is a pretty typical scene around here these days. Rooms with no lights, holes in the ceiling, wires dangling everywhere, furniture smashed up as far away from the mess as possible.

We still have entire rooms encased in plastic, awaiting their next step.... No lights in this room right now, either, or on the landing which is where I'm standing to take this picture.

 There used to be a light there in this ceiling and now it's just a foil covered hole. FFM totally freaked out yesterday - I had a window open upstairs and the gusting air pressure changes between upstairs and the attic were making the tin foil covering the hole "breathe." He was 100% convinced there was some terrible thing living in the attic.

The giant hole is the attic fan and the tiny hole was an ancient hard wired smoke alarm. The two little holes are going to get patched up and a single smaller hole for a new light will go in. This ceiling is still popcorned, but it is on the schedule for removal this weekend. The stairs are still an intentional catastrophe and are slowly coming apart even more since Travis cut down their supports. It was necessary to do this demo early so we have time make drywall repairs (next week) and adjust the stair treads prior to the new stair railing getting installed (by us, hopefully early October).

The hardest part about all this isn't the mess in the house, although that is hard. The hard part is that we have to empty furniture out of so many rooms at once. Our poor basement has been overflowing with upstairs furniture and items since May. As soon as the bathroom finished we cleared out a little basement space which promptly got filled with guest room furniture, FFM's non-essential furniture, and more! Once we move out of a room we don't move much back in because any carpeted room will need to be empty when the new carpet comes in about three weeks.

Our bedroom, which has been mostly empty since May, is the transitional dumping ground for anything that doesn't go to the basement. Right now it's full of art from the rooms currently undergoing ceiling work, which isn't so bad. Last week F had to be totally out of his room while scraping, repair, texture, and many many many coats of ceiling paint went up so he moved in with us (the guest room is torn up, so he couldn't move in there). In this space below were all the items you see here plus his trundle bed, a few special stuffed animals that aren't in a box in the basement, two laundry baskets of his stuff, lamps, a handful of books (again, those not boxed in the basement) and his giant GIANT GIANT  dresser. No pictures because I could hardly walk without stepping on stuff or our child, but trust me, it was cozy. I was tempted to send Travis to get the camper and park it on the street so we could all have a little more elbow room.

 Ie you noticed, that is a pile of tools, hardware, and plastic in our bedroom (plastic everywhere, we have plastic everywhere!) over in the corner. The garage is pretty crowded and it's handy to have quick and easy access to your tools anytime! You know, for those middle of the night electrical or drywall emergencies.

We've started to joke that we live in one of those sliding puzzles...

We keep shuffling pieces/furniture around so we've got an empty slot or two to work in. The dining room table is in the kitchen. The kitchen table is in the garage. All the bedroom furniture is mostly in the basement...you get the picture. The last couple weeks F has had to go through an obstacle course to get to his piano and this past week we were blocked out of the kitchen, office, and basement for most of the week. It feels like we've hit the tipping point, though. We're slowly, day by day, getting out of the chaos and into the phase where rooms can get put back together. We won't move back in to most rooms until after carpet is done, but this week enough progress was made that once the carpet does arrive we'll be ready to wrap up this renovation adventure and put stuff back where it belongs.