The last of the upgrades for the house beside the need roof and the outside paint. The flooring on the left goes on the master bedroom and the engineered product on the right goes on the top floor. We like it a lot. What we did not know was that the wood needs to sit in the house for a week or so to “acclimate” so it installs better. That means the installation will not start for another week or two. We c
annot wait to get started.
The delivery guy, a nice kid named Austin, drove through Portland traffic from Salem, Oregon to bring it to us. He will be helping Jamal with the installation when the wood is ready. Lorena continues to paint upstairs and just has a few items left to touch up. It will be nice to not have the house in upheaval for awhile. The next pass will have to wait for better weather.
We have decided to wait a year or so before we turn the bottom floor into an apartment. We have decided to try to add a fireplace in the living room after we let our resources recover a little bit more.
We received an email from our flooring guy on Friday. It seems there is a sale on just the exact kind of flooring we want to put in the upstairs of our house. It should get shipped to the house within the next day or two after which it sits and “acclimates” in the house for a few days before it is installed. We were going to put it in the whole house, but decided we would only put it on the stairs and the top floor (money!), but we also decided that we would get rid of the nasty carpet in the master bedroom and replace it with the same stuff that is on the main floor of the living room and kitchen. We are excited to get started, but the house will be in upheaval again for a week or two more. We will have to get to the down stairs in a year or so.
Work in the home office has been somewhat chaotic over the last week. Lorena painted the whole thing “underneath” me. We shoved the furniture to the center as she went. Hopefully, we are only a few weeks from replacing all the dated carpet with hardwood and laminate flooring. In the mean time Kiwi continues to insert herself into the middle of everything. Notice her perched on my ever decreasing belly (Down 16 pounds now!) looking over my left shoulder. In a few minutes we are off to celebrate Lorena’s birthday.
Life is getting back to normal in the Chapman household. I guess I should make the caveat that it is about as normal as is possible based on adherence to the recently adopted New Year’s resolution to which I hope to stick. Lorena does not really have that first of the year resolution life modification thing because she sticks to what she is doing through thick and thin. Nevertheless, after one pretty big fall from the wagon and a brief smaller one, both due to visits and special circumstances, I am back in the game and hit a new “this diet” low in my quest to lose over sixty pounds.
Life is returning to normal now after the holidays. I am back on my diet–still 5 pounds over my pre-holiday high, there is too much work to do, company is coming for the weekend, Lorena returns to FINALLY finish up on the surgical work that started in North Carolina almost three years ago–after this she only returns to check on how it is all holding up, several short trips are planned after that, and we continue to work on getting the house fixed up. There are still four major remodel projects that I will try to post here. In the mean time, whenever I sit down to get a little reading, Kiwi lays on the arm I use to hold up my phone to read my book so I can move it until it finally starts going numb. When I finally move she is very disgusted with me and I deserve it.
They say it is unusual for the sun to shine during the rainy season in Western Washington. It may be unusual, but it is not that unusual. For instance: today. The air is crisp, clean, and clear. You can see forever. It is a great day to be alive. It would even be better if I were not chained to a desk although I have to admit that I do not mind that.
Lorena only has a little bit of touch up and some ceiling left before she completes the painting of the library on the upstairs landing. She did a great job and it looks a lot better. She plans to paint my upstairs office next so we will be ready for the new floor to go in sometime in mid January.
The picture above shows what the landing looked like when she started. The vision for what we want to do before we call the remodel “complete” (scare quotes because these things are never really complete) is now starting to form. God willing and I stay gainfully employed, we hope to put in new flooring on the first and third floors and in the master bedroom on the first floor, paint the first floor, paint the exterior, put a kitchen in the first floor, put on a new roof, and rework the landscape (not extensively). Lots to do, but nothing crazy and, especially, nothing crazy expensive.
Lorena picked colors we really like, even after she did the painting in the upstairs. She did the preparation and painting all by herself. She is now an expert at taking doors from their hinges and hanging them back up again. We are quite pleased with how it came out. Here are the colors:
The remodel continues at a good pace as we prepare for visitors, lots of visitors. To that end, we have to get the house in to a more operable state at the same time we need to continue work on the remodel. Easier said than done. People will understand a little bit of disorder, but we want to make sure the guest bedrooms work OK–the two goals often working at cross purposes with each other. We decided the number one goal is to have two working guest bedrooms by the weekend, After that, we can go back to painting.
We enjoyed getting some new furniture yesterday. It was quite a task getting it into the house, but we have a (kind of) system now so it will be easier next time. The picture right below this text shows how it all appeared when we put it in place. the picture way down at the bottom shows what I think it will look like for all but those rare times when we have company and Kiwi the remaining twin cat sister is in hiding and unable to scratch the new furniture. We are not sure these pieces will stay where they are, but until we finish remodeling and buy some more, they are in a good place.
Bob and Gena invited us over to their house a couple of days after we arrived in Washington. Ever since then, Lorena has had sofa envy. Well, we are trying to remedy all that, but I am not sure if it will ever be enough! The good news, is that in addition to the sofa, we got a BarcaLounger. That was what we called Grandpa Milo’s chair when we were growing up and boy did he love it. Looking forward to putting this to great use.
Lorena finished her first refinish project–the dining room table, then went out and bought some rugs for the under the table and for the first two chairs in the living room. We have a long, long way to go, but now we at least have a little bit of a plan in place. The big epiphany we had this weekend is that Lorena really thinks she wants to put in the LVT flooring in the first bedroom all by herself. We watched some videos and she really thinks she can do it. I am excited to see what happens next.
Mark left for home just a few minutes ago. He is officially complete. We are grateful for all his hard, hard work, the many edifying conversations we had while he was here. He is truly a stand-up guy and made the process fun, interesting and with a better result than if we would have been left to our own devices. If anyone ever wants to get a kitchen done and can talk Mark into doing it, their lives, not to mention their kitchen will be the better for it.
Kelly, with massive help from Mama Lore, moved out of her apartment today. They have a really cool moving service in Seattle where you can have a couple of guys pick up your stuff from your apartment and store it for a month for under $100. That seems to be a really good price, especially for Seattle. Lorena is really glad to be moving out of a house of a bunch of girls to an apartment closer to her work and closer to downtown with one roommate. I am sure she will be sad she was not there to see the hunky guys pick up her stuff–Lorena handled that because Kelly was at work.
Lorena found some stain, tried it, did not like it, bought some more stain, decided to do the dining room table top, too, and here we are. She saw the desk at Goodwill a couple of weeks back, texted me a picture of it and said she did not want to buy that piece of junk because it had some pretty deep scratches in it. I told her to buy it and we can use it in the garage because it only cos $8.99. NOW, however, it was a brilliant idea she had to buy the thing because she could sand out those scratches with her brand new Walmart sander.
. It was due for another pass. I must say, it is looking great. I view this as a very positive turn of events. I am going to have and excuse now to just say, “Why don’t you pick up something at Goodwill and refinish it? We really do not need something from Ethan Allen.” We have everything we need for the guest bedroom upstairs. When she finishes this, she wants to paint and put in an LVT “hardwood-look” floor.
The painter is coming to start work this afternoon. Maybe that is what got Lorena inspired to start sanding stuff with her new 
