Odds and ends

I was searching around for photos to take to accompany this post and, well, this is what I've got.  We're back in one of those lulls again where not much is happening except for details (caulking, cleaning, installing window coverings, putting on second coats of paints) and the details don't change the overall look of the rooms very much.  We've also been spending a somewhat ridiculous amount of time getting bids from contractors for the two car garage planned for the backyard, and coming up with a plan of attack for installing a patio, driveway, and landscaping.  So, it's been busy but not in a look-see-what-we-built! kind of way.

Brian did spend the weekend installing blinds in the master bedroom and finishing the electrical and we started moving some furniture out of the basement and upstairs.  We're reusing our old furniture for now, although at some point we'll probably look to sell some of our existing inventory and pick out some space-specific furnishings.  At the moment, though, it's nice to think about moving into a bedroom that has enough room for a sitting area in addition to the bed.

It's Good to Own a Sawzall

We decided to move a queen-size bed upstairs and into one of the guest rooms this afternoon only to run, literally, into a problem - the door to the second floor staircase is set into the stairs and thus too low to get the box spring through and up the stairs.  Obviously, the so-called third "bedroom" that used to be in the attic never had a queen-size bed in it!  We'll be taking down that wall anyway, though, once we start with first floor demolition so we decided to get a jump start by cutting into the wall now.  It took a bit of effort with the saw and created a great deal of dust but now we have plenty of room to move things upstairs! 

Chugging Along

It's starting to feel like Groundhog Day around here - an endless cycle of putty, caulk, paint, and clean - but we are making progress.  The second guest bedroom is now finished, newly painted in silver sage, a Restoration Hardware color (for which I have to thank my friend Kris, who stopped my endless fretting about colors by pointing me to their helpfully limited color selection) and the second floor guest bath is finally, completely finished, down to towel bars, mirror, and shower curtain.  I think that may be the first room that we can call fully finished.  We've spent the rest of the weekend, yes, painting and have finished all the trim and doors in the master bedroom and bath.  We'll give the master bedroom a touch-up coat of paint today and then do some cleaning so we're ready to move furniture up there next weekend.  It may seem like the same old, same old but every day gets us a little closer to moving upstairs.

Worth setting the alarm for

A few more pictures of the master bath - the glass guys showed up right on time at 7am and had the glass installed in a little over an hour.  It was an early morning but worth it to get the job done.  We need to let it set for 36 hours and we still have some caulking in the shower to do so we're not quite ready to use the shower yet but the bathroom is really starting to look finished now! 

Weekend, Part II

And here it is, the nearly finished master bath!  Complete with giant soaking tub, two person shower with rain shower and regular shower heads, and 7 foot vanity.  Needless to say, we can't wait to start enjoying it.  I've coveted this tub, the Kohler Escale, ever since one of our favorite bloggers, DIY Diva, installed one in her house and put up the gorgeous pictures.  We went with the freestanding version to keep the bathroom feeling open and airy and I love it.  It took some time and involved one very nearly squished cat to get it into place with just the two of us but fortunately, the weight of it does not match the size and we were able to get it into place without any non-cat casualties.  Now it's time to pour a drink and enjoy the remaining 13 hours until the shower glass installers show up bright and early tomorrow morning!

Weekend, Part I

We've been hard at work this weekend after I, in an overly optimistic moment, scheduled the glass installation for our master bath shower for Monday morning at 7am.  This meant that the bathroom, which a few days ago looked like the first picture, needed to be completely finished this weekend.  After a few late nights this week and a lot of work this weekend, I can officially say that we're ready - although due to the fact that I can't seem to get blogger to post more than 4 photos at a time, it's going to take me one more post to get the final pictures up.  But, in the course of a few days, we decided upon adding wainscotting to the bathroom, added it, caulked, puttied, and primed the new accent wall, painted the entire bathroom, including trim, in two coats, sealed the shower tile, installed all the fixtures, and installed the tub.  In short, we're both ready for Monday to get here so we can rest!  Oh, and we also painted one of the front bedrooms since we had the paint out already - we did both the master bathroom and one of the bedrooms in a gray-blue called "Urban Mist," which is what I'm going to call air pollution from now on ("can't breathe?  oh, that's just the urban mist!").  Next up, pictures of the finished product...