Many thanks, and more pictures.

Hi, I just wanted to compile a list of thanks to all that contributed in many ways to this project.

First, I want to thank my parents Ronnie and Patti.  We owe a major debt to my mom for moving here to essentially nanny the kids, and for her financial generosity.  And I'd like to thank my departed dad too, without him none of this would have been possible, he instilled the DIY determination in me and I would give all this up for him to be here with his grandchildren.

I oew a monstrous thanks to Beth and our kids for their tremendous patience while all this went on.

Thanks to Beth's parents for their support as well, Jim I think I still have more of your tools.

Thanks to my friend Eric Todd, he flew all the way from Yuma and helped me the first week put together a clean comfortable place to temporarily live.

Thanks to Doug and Fritz for their major input into the design and layout, their ideas on where to move walls and reduce wasted space were tremendous!

I would like to thank the many contractors that put their best effort in:

Devon Sweeney as well as Travis, Javier and Joel of Sweeney Restoration (look them up on facebook)  are true modern-day craftsmen, their carpentry work is absolute top-notch.

Kevin the plumber, Selvin the electrician, and Orlando the AC guy all did great work getting the guts back into the house.

Jose the day-laborer for his attention to detail in everything he does.

Thanks to all of our new neighbors, most notably John and Kara, their cousin Steven, Patrick and Suzi next door, and the others we are getting to know for being so welcoming and understanding during this crazy mess we had going on.

Again, many thanks to you all!

This post would be just words without the following pics:

Finally readers, please don't feel like this may be the last post, it is not, as most all of you know a house is never really done.

After the New year begins, and we make more progress with the huge amount of detail work yet to finish, we'll be sure to post up some before and after shots.

Unpacking, house diving, and HEAT!

Why is is that the dirt under a house always feels so much more.....well, dirty? Today, I put on my trusty petzl head light for hopefully the last house-diving expedition for the forseeable future.  Since our new meter won't get set til next monday or tuesday and the downstairs furnace is electric, I had to fix us up with some heat downstairs, so I piped in about 9ft of pipe under there and hooked up the trusty ol' gas heater and we're warm again!

Sooooo, as most but not all of you who read this may know, since the last post the house has mostly wrapped up except for a ton of detail-painting.  Our stuff was delivered, and we're moved in.

I also want to say I'm sorry, I really meant to try and update this at least weekly if not bi-daily but exhaustion, kids, and exhaustion kept me from it.

Without further adieu, here's some pictures of what all has went on:

This is the 2nd bathroom we added on, just to the right of that shower wall is where the washer/dryer stack.

These are our floors and stairwell all refinished:

Here's all our stuff going in:

We finished out Ella's room:

And here's our super-nice kitchen:

  The backyard before and after our stuff:

The garage is jam-packed but I won't show that just yet.

and little Ella loves to mock harvey (look in the blurry background:

BLUE

We went with blue, the grey-blue, #6226 to be exact. They started painting the main color today. The exterior painters also painted the first coat on the porch ceiling, a traditional sky blue.

The Outside

Paul showed me how to post to the circus, so here I am!

We finally picked a color to paint the outside of the house from the selection shown in this cell-phone photo.




Guess what we picked!? We're planning on white trim and grey window frames, with grey shutters if they ever get replaced.

The house has been sanded and primed, and Ella is not happy with the primed house color. Arriving home one day, she asked her grandma "why is my house white, I don't want a white house!" and proceeded to cry about it.

But it won't be white for that much longer...

Progress pics!

Time to post up some progress pics since this past week has seen tangible changes (not that the stuff you won't see every day isn't tangible...)



The drywall is up finally!

Me and my neighbor's cousin tiled the downstairs:

What's that on the walls you say??  The cabinets started going up!!

Making progress in the bathrooms

Fireplace

Oh, and the exterior is primered, set for paint this week....

Ella was very helpful with the roller.

And she loves her baby brother!

Maybe we're in the middle now?

Like the title says, maybe....

So after the last post, we had a near two week total slowdown of progress due to waiting around for the sheetrock, and then waiting around some more while it takes way longer than expected.

In the meantime, we ended up tearing down every single wall of the house which we should have done in the first place, we've got both front and rear doors re-glassed and lockable,  we've got the cement board down everywhere we'll be laying tile, we're in the process of going over each window and door sanding and prepping for primer, we've got the exterior sanded and actually began primer today.

Presently on the interior, the sheetrock is finally almost done, and we can move into the more "final" finishing stages.

Probably though we need a minor miracle to happen, because I really have no idea how we're going to be ready to accept our home goods on the 11th of November. Maybe the trim-out will start by thursday or friday, depending how long that takes as well as painting it all will determine when we can finally sand the floors and move in.....stay tuned folks!


Totally gutted, plus notice the 5 tiny windows we added above the cabinets:

stacks of drywall waiting to be hung:

Eating outdoors: