The home at 103

A little lovin for our bathroom

Bathroom November 02, 2019

November 2, 2019

My parents drove back down this morning to continue work on the house. We started out the day with a big hot breakfast at our favorite spot!

They drive here, we feed them and pay for their gas. I feel like this is total role reversal from my college days. This high quality photo was a snapchat sent to our oldest son. We had to rub it in a little that he was missing out.

So after breakfast, we got down to business- added another layer of mud to the drywall (dad) and replaced our screen door handle. After that we tackled that scary bathroom- our second full bath that needs a full gut-job. We aren't to that project yet, but with our track record we could start it any day.

Dad and I worked on the toilet. It has had a leak, so we have had the water to the toilet turned off for several months. As most of our plumbing projects have gone, it was trial and error. We thought we had it fixed only to take it apart two more times to get it "just so". F.M.L.

Dad had to cut the bolts off. Those suckers wouldn't budge. This was the only photo I took today of the project.

Yes, our main project is the kitchen right now but we were waiting for the mud to dry and it is nice to get some of the smaller projects out of the way.

SO, If you are keeping score we have TWO working showers and TWO working toilets. HOLY Moses. It's a great day. I bought a new toilet seat, & some great smelling soap to celebrate!

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Happy Halloween!

Currently October 31, 2019

October 31, 2019 aka "The year Jase got sheet faced"

Happy Halloween! We have had a wonderful day! I was so happy that Ty wanted to Trick-or-Treat this year. We got home and were getting ready to go and I got a text from his best friend asking if Ty could go with "the boys". WAHHHHH So, my heart cried a little bit, but I dropped him off with his buddies then Jase and I tackled the mean streets by ourselves. It was a change for sure, but we had a lot of fun. We even stopped at our old house and got to talk to the new resident! How neat!

Ty wanted to be Marshmello again. My husband made the helmet last year and it.is.AMAZING. So easy enough.

Jase on the other hand, he initially wanted to be James from Thomas and Friends. With everything else going on I just did NOT have time to do it all. So we joked that he should just go as a ghost and he was SOLD. So easy enough. I got the sheet, sewed it onto a stocking cap to help hold the sheet in place. THAT sheet didn't work. (get it? Sheet...Har har) After an hour of incessant "I cant see" I ripped the eye holes a little bigger and pretty soon he looked like a nun. It was totally the look we were going for. Great memories.

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The Accidental Renovation pt 7

Kitchen October 30, 2019

October 26, 27, & 29, 2019

My parents are awesome. The live about 2 hours away drove here and back THREE days to help us.

On Saturday, we tackled the shower- the hot water wasn't working. But after awhile we finally got it figured out and we have HOT water in the main bathroom! No more showers in our "scary" second bathroom.

After we worked on the bathroom, we started to work on putting in the header. yay.

This was the most exciting part- we found a few boxes in the attic. I just KNEW there was going to be lots of money in the boxes... I was wrong and it was a bunch of empty old glass jars, an iron, and an awesome old lamp shade! Not money, but cool in my book!

Here is our treasures!

Mom and I were done at this point. Dad is up there in the attic doin his thang. Notice my sweet selfie light which has been turned into one of our main sources of light for our construction.

One of the boxes we found- baby food jars and a roll of shelf liner!

Finished for the evening- this was Saturday evening. We did work son.

Tyler was learning to use the sawzall here. YIKES

And then, he moved on to the nail gun. He had safety glasses on for 99% of the time. OF COURSE I take a video when he had just taken them off.

Dad put up a piece of plywood and cut out a hole for sink so we have a little sanity during this process.

SO, currently we have a sink and there is drywall up with the first coat of mud. Party on Wayne!

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The Accidental Renovation pt 6

Flooring October 26, 2019

October 21 & 22, 2019

We are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of demolition. We working on getting the sink, dishwasher, base cabinets and the pantry out so we can remove the underlayment completely. Our initial plan was to try (Daniel more than me) to save the base cabinets and refinish them. They were a PAIN to remove and I noticed that they were being taken directly to the trash trailer- I was SO not mad about it. SO as of right now our plan is to get refinish the upper cabinets and purchase matching doors to whatever base cabinets we end up buying. Picking cabinets is ROUGH. We are leaning to IKEA cabinets, but we will see how this goes.

Taking the counter off of this section literally took two hours. it was anchored really well.

I am shocked this door held on while the rest was ripped away.

Here we are currently. YIKES.

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The Accidental Renovation pt 5

Flooring October 25, 2019

Renovation Date: October 18, 2019

So, Daniel works crazy days/hours and we actually had an evening off together, which is rare. This whole project began on a random day off together, our days off together usually mean either: we sit lazily all day or we get a wild hair and tackle some home project. There is really no in-between. All or nothing. I sometimes wish we were normal, but not usually.

About ten minutes before this picture Daniel said "It's time to take out the island". I quickly snap-chatted my friends that he just said the sexiest thing I have heard in a very long time. I was GIDDY. I have wanted this damn island redone since we bought the house. I love the idea of the island but the execution wasn't my favorite. It is too close to the dishwasher and doesn't have seating- which I really wanted.

Quit talking about Fortnite and FOCUS. Its GO TIME.

SO, we found another partial layer of Linoleum.

Getting there, slowly, but getting there.

What is this random picture you wonder? Well, after we got the island out I FINALLY convinced Daniel that we needed to go ahead and take out this portion of wall. Our newly painted, newly trimmed wall. We are idiots.

Trying to get the correct breaker turned off so we can take the outlet for the oven out. We got it off, but not before Daniel got a little zap zap. The meter read "0" when he started to remove it. I completely freaked out at this point.

This is the only "before" photo of this wall I can find. This was our youngest's birthday.

Oh hi, this is chaos. I was so excited to see what it would like without the wall-I stripped the paneling that covered this section- also recently painted and trimmed. We were waiting for our GOOD friend to bring us a trailer in the morning for all the debris. Notice the
we have it still piled up partially in the kitchen, the other half is in the driveway at this point. I am sure our neighbors were thrilled.

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The Accidental Renovation pt 4

Flooring October 24, 2019

Renovation date October 17, 2019

I decided to continue working on the floors while Daniel was at work.

The water line to our fridge will NOT STOP RUNNING. Guess how many times I have knocked over the red bowl with water in it? Too many. The answer is too many.

Trying to keep a nice and tidy while I work. Not working so much if you can tell by all of the dust floating around in the pictures.

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The Accidental Renovation pt 3

Flooring October 22, 2019

Renovation date October 16 , 2019

Daniel decided to keep going while I was working and was not pleased with his discovery. The last layer of underlayment was particle board and had turned to dust in the area he could see below the dishwasher.

This was the picture I received at work- the diagonal boards are the subflooring. Daniel made the decision at this point that we were going to need to remove everything- just to make sure that the floor was going to be in good shape for a long time, and to get rid of all of the crumbling particle board.