Showers time, boy!

This week is not as dramatic but it really is pretty!

The tile work is 98 percent complete. You can see the little inlet and the tile 3/4 of the way up. A nice touch is the framing around the glass block window. The window is to the interior part of the house.






The Mid shot here you can see all the walls and the little rack to put your coffee on while you shower.






The floor is complete too. With the tile design was changed when the floor drain had to off-center. Tim the tile guy came up with this random design. He smashed the tiles and made this fit. Pretty neat stuff.


Next up?" We are waiting for the windows to be delivered, maybe two weeks. So we will be painting the walls the next two weeks. Stop by and we might share some pictures

There's tile on dem floors!

This week it is the tile guys making a starring role in our house. More on that, but to the left you see the glass block wall has been built. It is on the wall in the shower between the bathroom and the bedroom. This will help to determine if someone is in the shower. If they are, you can stay in bed just a little longer.

The other benefit is it allows sunlight from the other side where most of the windows exist.

You can also see that the mud and tape guys have finished their sanding work, but then again you really have to be looking for it.

So here are the tiles on the bathroom floor. You can see the blue tape has prevented us from walking on the freshly lain floor. It is actually very tough and sticky - the tape not the floor.

The shower walls and are in and floor of the shower base is completed. I had to lean over the security tape to take this picture so it is not quite perfect. You can see the little spot for all of Kathy's product stuff. The floor will be scattered pattern thing that we spent hours designing. Ok maybe a couple of minutes, but it was really interesting to do at 11:00 at night. Which is when both of us were operating on fumes.

Up next, more tile, new windows and putting primer on the walls!

The messy parts are nearly done....

As we head to the final strech of the big parts we have some decisions made about the rest of the project. We received good news on the floor. The testing on the materials turned up negative for Abestos, so we are looking at getting the flooring people to come in after this done to restore the fir floors.




The dry wall has arrived and is nearly completly up. This will be a picture intensive post. I will make most of them small but you can click on them and they open up to a large picture.

The first picture is from the stairs landing looking into the new development. The wall on the left is where the chimney used to be and where a new closet has formed.

In this picture is from where the bedroom is looking back to the landing on the stairs. You can see the common lamp and pile of drywall pieces as a referrence.






In this picture you can see the other new closets from the other corner of the bedroom. The ceileing shows where the numerous lights will be placed.









The bathroom is taking shape, as well. The shower and closets are framed up. In these pictures you can see where those things that make a bathroom useable are showing up.

Fluff

Things are starting to really get going. We were on hold while for some of the stuff while we had to get an engineer to approve a plan to keep the roof from falling down. Not that I am an expert on such things, but it seemed like a good idea to me.

To the left you see the new nifty super supportive beams that were added where the chimney used to tower. The orange pieces of lumber are the new pieces that inspector requested we have completed.

In addition, we needed to add a new support piece between the bedroom area and the sitting room area. You see the couple of feet we had to add right there. There is another fancy support board on the top this piece. The original roof line was still up the ceiling of the upstairs. It was never really supported when they expanded in the early 50's we are guessing. In the picture to the right you can see the heating vents have been installed.

Plus, for those interested (and I assuming you are at this point...) the insulation is starting to be put in. Actually the foam parts are already complete. The roof peaks have some sort of other stuff that gets added. I know, I know I should ask more questions, but they could tell me they are putting jelly bellies and I wouldn't know the difference. Well, actually if it was jelly bellies I think I would now the difference, but if it was some sort of fluff thing that smelled funny - they could call it anything. Like OllieBaba... Umm .... Anyway, so the inspectors have done their thing for now, so the rest of the electric work and plumbing work is the more minor pieces. Next steps will include sheetrock and then we will get in there and prime that piece. The windows maybe another week yet and the cabinets soon after that. The tile and the rest are near the end. We are still waiting on some tests to see what we can do about the floor.

More updates in a week!

The hidden parts and more...

The plumbing is nearly complete at this point. You can see the nifty pipes and shower drain. Plus Karyn came over to check it out.


We have gotten to the stage where lots of people come over and seem to be dragging stuff around through our walls and ask you questions that seem easy, but that you later regret your answer.

For example, "Where do you want the pendant light to be over your bed, near the pillows?" I think about it for 3 nanoseconds and say "Yeah, that will be fine!" Then seven minutes later I realize how wrong I was and then eight seconds after that I forget to call them to change it. Kathy's approach is much different. If they get a hold of her, she thinks about it a little longer, she may call and consult me if she thinks it matters and then makes a decision. In case you are wondering, it is less expensive with Kathy's approach.

This picture you can see that the chimney is gone. We are saving the limestone bricks to use around our flower beds this spring. So, this really opens up the whole entry to bedroom. They will be building a closet where the air compressor is in the picture.

The other fun stuff is that we will have heating and cooling in our upstairs, which as strange as it seems is a big deal in Minnesota. Lots of people have these features in their bedrooms and now we will too!

This where the sitting area will be with plenty of outlets for our rocking stereo system. Or maybe something more practical, like a espresso machine.

The next steps are finishing the framing and get to get the city inspector to allow us to continue.

It is starting to look like something...

Well here we go.

It is starting to look like something afterall. Most of the walls are now up and the upstairs is starting to take shape. Kathy is pretending to be taking a shower where the show will be. She normally does not wear her slippers in the shower. You can see some of the old venting sticking up from the floor in this picture. The main pipes still exist from the old bathroom layout. (You can click on any of these pictures to see a better view).


Some of the fun has been trying to figure out where the clothes you packed away a month ago now reside. Things like an extra pair of pajamas have turned out to be more of a priority than I thought!









As you can see a lot of the basic work is just starting now. We are looking forward to seeing the rest of the framing and more pretending that the upstairs is finished is coming soon. Below you can see the sitting area shaping up. This is the most surprising to me. In the drawings, it looked kind of nice but it acutally is a lot larger than I thought. Of course there is no furniture in it yet either.
So that is it for now. I hope to update this again on Sunday - a lot of work is expected to be done this week.

Do you wonder?

I do wonder. I wonder what the heck we decided to do some of this?

Anywho. We have completed the rip-down portion and some of the framing is underway.

You can see some of the work here. The wall between the room is gone and framing for the future closet dealies are being framed in. We do not know what we will do for that area, but we are building the frame work once we can do that piece (and pay for it!)



Some of the work on the closets are framed in. The wall is gone to create the entry way into the bedroom, kind of right where the chimney is currently. The chimney will be gone soon.

This week should get started on the rest of the framing and the you will see the idea of what the future holds. Not the future for much, just the future of the work upstairs.

We will get an idea of what the floors in the bedroom will be like soon. We have some people coming over soon to give some ideas.


The final shot in today's entry is the new look of the bathroom. Everything is finally gutted! It took a little longer that I had thought but it is done. These pipes will be re-routed shortly.

This week should have a bunch of new information, unless the contractor leaves us high and dry and runs away with our money. But we at least have his air compressor, so you would think he would want to come back for that. Plus we have a lot of extra duct tape, which is always fun to play with in so many ways.

Soon, we can rest

So, the final stretch. This week we took out the last remaining walls and started taking apart the bathroom. This Kathy checking out the the new view inside the bathroom. There is a lot of hardware involved in the bathroom. Tons of pipes of course but even more different types of tiles everywhere.

The tile walls were actually fairly easy to rip down. They are so heavy that once it starts to come off the studs, the rest of the weight takes it down all by itself.

That sounds kind of nice. The problem, though, is that we then need to figure a way to get it out of the house. Good ol' Davis family sledge hammer took care of that issue.

We continue to take down the west part of the house otherwise known as the bat hotel. We have had three run-ins this weekend with bats. We can see now where these stupid things come in. Anyway, we invited our friend Chris Kauffman over and he took on as many task as he could. I bet he would worked all night, but that would of kept us up with all the pounding upstairs, so after we took out the dreaded tub, bathroom walls, various doors and over half of the carpeting we convinced him to come with us to get a beer and some grub.

Saturday, we mopped up basically. Kathy completed her fourth tour of scooping out insulation out of the knee walls. Then we took out the rest of the carpeting and then found all the different types of tiles. This is what remains - the ripping out of various types of tiles. In this picture you can see three of the four types of tiles in our upstairs. Over the next week or so I expect to get these removed.

Dust to Dust - dumpster to dumpster

So we survived the last three days of destruction, with today, Sunday, being a very light day.

On Friday we started with the meat of the project by taking down the lovely pine paneling. My buddy Kevin suggested we could just add the lava lamps to fit the scene upstairs and save us all this trouble.


This is me ignoring Kevin and working on taking down the panels. They popped off fairly easily. Later on Friday and Saturday, our nieghbor came over asking if the could go through our dumpster and try to salvage some of them. Actually she was asking for her father, whose wife could later be heard saying, " What are you ever going to do with those boards!"

Once the walls were coming down, Kathy excitedly started crawling around in the knee walls and started scooping out the insulation.

This kept Kathy occupied for many hours as she multi-tasked in trying to find out where "Those stupid squirrels are coming in!"

We found four different types of insulation, some that cause cancer, some that cause hysteria and some that itch. Ok, I am not sure any of those happen - except the itching.


The Process

You would expect some sort of measurable process with Kathy working on it, wouldn't you. Basically, we tear stuff down. If it is small and can be stuff in a garbage bag, we do that and throw it out the balcony to the back yard. You can see the pile of garbage bags in the middle of the picture. The bigger stuff, most of the wood is tossed down. Usually we need some fresh air we head down and fill up the dumpster.

It seems to work out just fine. Only a few pieces have landed in our neighbors yard. But they seem to like us for some reason.


We have filled two dumpsters thus far and we expect to fill at least two more tomorrow.

Progress update


We had some help from Kevin taking down the remaining paneling. He did other things like tear down various pieces and really helped get some of the various insulation cleaned up.

He also begged a waitress later that day to get some cheddar cheese for a burger and then ordered a chicken sandwich with swiss instead.

As of this evening we have most of the walls done and need to get the bathroom taken out and remove the carpeting and stuff like that. Here is the shot about an hour ago.

The preamble

So, here we go. We have finally decided to take on remodeling our upstairs. We will try and update as much as we can for those far-flung interested folk. Who knew lies beneath them thar walls we say!

We started with something less than ideal.
Not much to look at unless you like to look at a bathroom that Kathy claims you can all three major functions without moving. But really how hard is that in any bathroom, but we get her point. Then the fine pine paneling that accented the white tarp-like rugs. Hmm Martha Stewart would be jealous.

We met with five contractors that had lots of ideas and wah-la we picked a guy and they are coming in two weeks. So off we go to demo before they arrive.

The first two days involved moving the funiture etc. downstairs. We spent the next day bringing loads of stuff to Goodwill and started tearing stuff down tonight.

Here is the progress thus far.

Here is shot of the bedroom before the I started chunking away at the ceiling.














And after a couple of hours chunking away.













So the fun begins more updates as it seems necessary if nothing else I am not dead-tired.

Land at last!

So, anyway back to writing again. At this point in the trip, we have arrived in Kauai. Nice day indeed. We decided to see a things on land that did not include staying on the boat. This included our guided tour to the fern grotto. The boat ride lasted about a half to and back. We listened to some stories about the growing land and how bad Hurricane Iniki. It is important to the island because of the extreme devistation, but also for freeing millions of chickens.

The ride lead us to a brief walk up to the grotto. It was a beutiful walk through the fauna, up to the grotto. After we got there we were told how the hurricane devasted the island and set free lots of chickens and that the ferns have not really grown back yet. Then the guides performed a very nice cermony.

On our way back we got to listen to more traditional music and dance as we floated back to the bus tour. We left and headed to see a couple of waterfalls and where they filmed the opening scenes to Raiders of the Lost Ark and Fantasy Island.
Afterwards, we ended our day with a brief tour of a park outside of the port. We heard stories from the guide about how a large hurricane came to the island and set the chickens free all over the island. Later that night, we had a faboulus Italian meal that did not include chicken.

Two more days - eating, sleeping, eating, and reading.

So, why not spend a few more days at sea? It sounded actually really nice after that exhausting day watching people read, swim, sing and offer you food and drinks on the beach. We decided to break up the monotony and watch people read, swim, sing and offer you food and drinks on the boat.

Besides those tiring activities, we had problems with our towels mysterious appearing on our beds in odd shapes. We found it more difficult each time we came back to our room wondering what strange things our linens would turn into next. It appears the towel in this picture is some sort of angry rabbit.

Other things to do at sea, besides watching football

When we were not reading, sleeping or eating we found a few activites to do. I tried some of the sports on board and Kathy enjoyed walking for hours on the sports deck. As we headed to our next stop we spotted a few whales off in the distance. We did see some others in the later days that were much closer. It was the beginning of the migration so we were forunate enough to see these buggers.


Being that we did do much during the sea days, I will now leave you to hear more adventures when we set our feet on land.

Post #2 Lost at sea!

So then, we went for two days at sea. Two Days!

What would one do for two days at sea? What would you do? Would you take naps, eat food read books and take more naps? If so, you fit in with my schedule. This was the most worrisome part of the trip.



Before we head to the Fanning Islands, as the boat headed south they took us by where the lava was flowing into the ocean. Apparently, this has been happening since the early eighties.

When we were not watching lava flow into the ocean we read books and talked to complete strangers. Other than that we would eat and people would always ask if we wanted pepper on our food. The big party was on New Years, when we celebrated like crazy bored people who were at sea for two days and then shouted at midnight and then went to bed 10 minutes later.

So, New Years day we arrived at Fanning Island. The tough immigration policy of the island delayed us for about six nano seconds and were on our way to sightsee via little shuttle boats.
We were greeted by several different music groups who were apparently forced to perform non-stop the entire day.

(Well, I am not sure about that part but they seem to be performing everytime I came by.)





So after two days at sea, we were itchying to explore something besides the various decks and the like. We spent a bit of time exploring different parts of the island. But two days at sea wore us out so we spent a good deal of time swimming and then watching other people swim and then thinking about walking around and then later wishing I had taken more pictures.









So, we headed back to our ship and then headed to two more days at sea, back towards Hawaii.