Week 4!!

This week was full of the inner workings of the house. I liken it to the body...there is a lot going on under our skin that you really don't think about until it goes wrong. The "body" of our house got a lot of electrical work done. We planned out the media room that included doing a lot of math. I even got to use some of my high school math skills! I picked out the star ceiling for the media room. I started the process of picking out carpet and delayed my trip back to the tile store. Some more work was done on the framing of the family room coffered ceiling and the decorative framing for the media room was started. Bought the rest of the big pieces of furniture for the house. We even had some excitement in the townhouse which included Carter and I sharing a bag of popcorn with a mouse.

Electrical outlets and lighting never really made me too excited, but when you are knee deep in a renovation, you get excited about all sorts of odd things. I think this is like when parents have their first ultrasound picture--they think it is the most beautiful thing ever, to the rest of society, they all look the same. Get ready to see some can lights. To us, the most beautiful thing, to society, same old, same old. 

we replaced all of our ceiling boob lights to can lights in the upstairs hallway

Upstairs hallway with media room on the right

Boob lights. They look like boobs, right?!?

We are going to replace this (boob) light with another fixture, but we are not sure what yet

Mudroom can lights

The boob was replaced and two can lights put in the hallway. The door on the left is the laundry room

Standing in the new mudroom space, looking towards the family room

We added 6 can lights in the keeping room. It is crazy they weren't put in here in the first place. This room got very dark. We are going to put shiplac on the ceiling and replace the fan with a white one

Light fixture moved over to be centered on the kitchen table

This was the kitchen table switch but moved back to...

Here. it makes more sense here and was originally here. Before there was a blank switch plate here

Steven, Jim, Christian and I spent about 30 minutes laying out the configuration of the media room and the electrical work. It was much more exciting than it sounds AND it involved math!! I could feel my brain cells regenerating as they used the level and measuring tape.  It was a nice change from Disney Junior and Angry Birds. 

Here are the columns for the room. Sconces will be attached to them

2 more columns 

This is the bar area 

The HVAC system will go here. I was very happy we will be able to hide it over the bar

brrr--this is right at the outside of the house. Nature's air conditioning 

Math

We are centering the TV off of the center of our star ceiling which will be centered off of the can lighting that is adjusted for the drop in the ceiling. Math--stay in school kids!

My drawing of the media room. The Purple inside is the fibre optic ceiling. The dotted line is the drop in the ceiling.  My shop teacher would be so proud

I went to Carpet Cuts to pick out our carpet. Steven recommended that I go there because they have really great prices. He was right! I was picking out carpet for our 2 staircases and for the media room. We originally were not going to replace the back staircase but the carpet back there is really old and needs to be stretched back. I do not want to pay to have it stretched since it needs to be replaced.  The front staircase is really ugly. Billy asked when we did the walk through if the runner would be conveyed--he hoped it would be a NO! 

I wanted something traditional on the front staircase, regular carpet that can be easily cleaned on the back staircase and something fun and different for the media room.

For the media room,  we are going to do brown leather chairs, cherry accents on the walls, cherry cabinets, and undecided for the fabric on the panels for the walls. I want navy background for the carpet. I really like the stars. I have some time to pick it, but here are some of the current frontrunners:

 3 potentials for the front staircase

potential for the back staircase. Or I might just do a plain carpet to match what is in the bedrooms

Here are some other things that have happened this week:

Starting to frame the border for the media room that will have the can lights in it

The gutted kitchen and new electrical work

Framing the family room to start working on the coffered ceiling

The mantle is gone!

family room ceiling framing continued

So the moment you have been waiting for. The mouse. The popcorn. Why is she sharing food with a mouse and a baby? Carter and I had just opened a big bag of Smart Pop popcorn. We both have eaten a couple handfuls of it. yum we both thought. Fresh. delicious. I started to put some in Liam and Nora Kate's bags for snack at school the next day when I looked at the opening of the bag and noticed there was a BIG hole chewed out of the side. I'm not going to lie, my first thought was Carter had chewed it, but I quickly realized he was innocent. I thought I would puke right then and there. After calling Billy and demanding suggesting we move back home and Billy reminding me we have no other place to live, we called maintenance and they patched the big hole in the drywall. It wasn't a mouse chewed hole, but the builders never drywalled around the water shutoff. I am hoping that Stuart Little doesn't make another visit. But now all of our snacks are in a plastic bin on top of the dining room table. I am all about live and let live...until they eat my popcorn. No harm came to any mice. Carter and I seem to squeak a lot more since the incident.....

notice right hand corner

Week 3!!

Even though it was not a full week of work because of the snow, a lot got done! The framers built a ceiling/floor in the family room/media room, the closet wall in Liam's playroom was taken down, all the built ins were removed and the mudroom was framed. I bought a kegerator and beverage fridge for the media room. We had more room in the media room than we thought so Steven was able to come up with a better configuration of the media room wet bar that will give us more room for cabinets.

The Family room/Media room: When we first met with our realtor I told her we did not want to even look at any houses with 2 story rooms. But when our house came on the market it had everything we wanted but had a 2 story room. We decided we could live with it and maybe figure something out later. The problem we have with it was it is hard to heat and cool and is very noisy. 

Here is the before picture:

                                               

 With the ceiling!

             

We are going to have a coffered ceiling on here

This is the media room:

The guys working on putting the subfloor in

Liam and Nora Kate were the first Irvins to step on our new floor

This is where the wet bar will be. On the left side of the wall will be the bar. Going from left wall to back wall... Kegerator with 2 taps, cabinet, corner round sink, dishwasher, beverage fridge. 

Back of the bathroom wall. There will be the back row of seating will be back here. 

It will be up on a riser. 

The view from the top of the back staircase. The opening on the left will be the door to the new bathroom

New wall to the media room and bathroom

Standing in the hallway looking into the media room. Door on the right

another view of the media room 

Here is the Keeping room. They took the TV down and will be taking off the surround for the fireplace.they will paint the brass with high heat black paint and rearrange the logs. The ceiling will change in here too. I am hoping we can put can lights in the ceiling. 

Another hole in the ceiling

Kitchen floor

This is a new support that was built in the kitchen. I assume it is to hold the weight while they redistribute it to the basement beam. 

2 more spindles missing

We had really thought about staying in the house and just living in the basement. We had no idea that so much work would be done down there to tie in the beams in the basement. I am so glad we moved out for this part. we would not have had anywhere to live! Here are some pictures of the chaos down there. 

Carter sitting in the middle of it...

They will use the same surround that was there before, just replace the fireplace

Liam's playroom: We decided to move the closet from the back of the room to be closer to his room. There is no way that it would ever get used if he had to walk the length of that room. We had the wall torn down and then will build a new closet in the playroom, but a few steps from his room. 

                                                   

                                           View from the back of the playroom. This is the framed closet on the right. the left side will be the door to his room. we are going to move the ceiling fan to be more centered in the room.  

Looking from his room into the playroom. Closet on the left, new door on the right. 

Closet

Old closet demo

Old closet

This will have new sheetrock put on to make it all one room again.

Mudroom framing. the right side is where the door will be

The mudroom with the beginning of framing

Here is our bathtub for the new upstairs bathroom 

 

Our first causality. The grass is all torn up. I assume they couldn't tell where the driveway was due to the snow. Nothing some sod or grass seed won't fix....

Week 4 is coming up! I meet with the electrician on Tuesday!! It is coming along so nicely and again, cannot be happier who we are working with!!