Wow, what a week!

Hi everyone! This week has been crazy busy but we’ve gotten a lot accomplished and we are both very happy with our progress. I can’t wait for you to see what we’ve done! You may remember that when we left off last Saturday we had the big whoops of the shower door top being cut too short. Quick update on that – first thing Monday morning, Keith called Delta (the company that makes bathroom things, not the airline) and they are awesome and are sending a new top to our shower door. It will take 5-8 business days to arrive so we hope to see it this coming week. We enjoyed a few days at home relaxing and ordering food from our favorite local places and returned back to the mountains on Tuesday. Our handyman came Wednesday and brought a helper for 3 days. As we mentioned, we’re using Kevin (who is awesome by the way) to supplement things we don’t have time or the desire to do. He and his helper got a lot done this week! So let’s dive in and I’ll share with you the progress. Last week we had gotten the stairwell walls demoed. This week, Kevin was able to frame up the new stairwell surround and partially drywall it. Here’s a look at what was done.

• 

• 

• 

When we cut the wall down, there was some question about how to make it the most stable. We decided to upgrade from a typical 2×4 framing to a 2×6 framing. Since the stairwell is in the middle of the living area, it’s important that it’s stable. This put a kink in my original design, but the stability is worth it and I’ll share a little more about that in a minute. Before, that, here are a few more pictures of the progress, including the after pictures of the newly framed wall.

And finally, the newly drywalled stairwell down to the basement. Notice that we’ve also filled in the gaping holes in the ceiling with drywall.

• 

• 

• 

The guys will wrap up drywalling down the stairs later this week. Once it’s mudded and taped then we will rip up the carpet down the stairs. We hope the flooring arrives this week as well, and Kevin will work on installing that. I honestly think I can do it but Keith (and maybe me too a little bit) is afraid I’ll screw it up. So we’ll leave it in the hands of the professionals!

I want to share with you the dilemma that the 2×6 framing has caused me. If you remember my very first post, I had a very creative way to minimize the fact that we have a stairwell wall in the middle of the house. My plan was to make the den side of the stairwell wall be built-in bookshelves and the kitchen side be a banquette. But a 2×6 wall would make the built-in bookshelves kind of bulky and so I started thinking through plan B. The banquette shouldn’t be a problem, thankfully. Now back to plan B. Keith & I love a website called ana-white.com. She has amazing furniture plans and we’ve made several things from her website. Since I didn’t want bulky bookshelves, I decided something a little more open would be better. So we will be building shelves similar to the picture below, but we will make them as long as the wall, to still try to kind of “hide” it.

I hope you like it! We’re excited to build it, but that will be another few weeks before we get to the bookshelves or the banquette. I’m trying to decide if we will paint or stain the bookshelves, so if you have an opinion, let me know what it is and why!

Kevin and his helper also put shiplap up on our ceiling in the master bedroom. Keith & I are perfectly capable of doing that ourselves, but it’s time consuming and it was just faster to have them do it. And they did a beautiful job! I think the pictures tell it all. Here’s the before…

And the after….WOW! I’m glad that Keith painted it and I didn’t, because it was a lot of work! (Not that I was slacking…I’ll get to that in a minute)

Before Keith painted the ceiling, we took down ALL of the trim (baseboards, window trim, door trim) and then we milled the groove in our new baseboards and cut some extra trim for above our doors and windows. Then, while Keith was busy painting the ceiling and exhausting himself, I was outside working and praying it wasn’t going to start raining on me. I mentioned before that we have milled our own trim out of MDF for the house. It’s cheaper and allows us to get exactly what we want. But it does require more work. It required me to sand down each piece so that the cut edges would be smooth and then I had to prime all of the pieces. That’s no small task for 200ish linear feet of trim.

After that we were both completely spent and called it a day. And by spent, this is how I found Keith when I went looking for him – face down and half asleep!

One other fun thing which happened on Saturday is that we got our first visitors! Mike, the son of the couple we bought the house from, and his wife Christine live in Highlands full time now and they dropped by for a visit on their way “down mountain”. Their reaction to the changes we made was so fun to see, and we had a great visit (social distancing practiced, I promised) and look forward to hanging out with them more when it’s safe to do so!

We thought we had worked a lot on Saturday, but it didn’t hold a candle to what we got done on Sunday. We both woke up pretty early and worked all day long. We started with painting the room. And it looks so good with a fresh coat of paint. We’ve decided to keep things simple by going with SW Dover White for everything – trim, ceilings and paint. It makes it a lot easier that way, and it’s a nice creamy warm white. Once we wrapped up painting the walls, Keith started cutting the trim, and I went on and painted out the baseboards before we put them up. By painting them outside, we didn’t have to be super careful around the carpet. Once the baseboards were painted, I started cutting for Keith while he hung the new trim. Then came the painful part … caulking and caulking and caulking until my fingers literally started bleeding! Once I wrapped that up, taping began. Mom got into the action there and helped me tape up the room. Thanks mom!

After that, I painted all of the trim and Keith replaced every outlet and switch with new, more modern looking ones. But I’m going to leave you hanging here and will blog again in the next day or two with the final after pictures! We didn’t finish up until after all of the natural light was gone, and there are a few little things to wrap up. But to whet your appetite, we are officially done with the master bedroom except for carpet and doors, which will happen hopefully in the next several weeks. The master bath will be wrapped up as soon as we get the shower doors, and the closet is also done, except for new carpet.

Until next time, stay safe and sane my friends!