Well never mind about the built-in then!

After the overwhelming response, we have decided to leave the built-in as is, as far as the top part goes. I just really want to finish the bathroom and decided I was crazy for suggesting any extra work.

We are trying to pump ourselves up for a big weekend of work. I think we could make some awesome progress if we could put in 2 eight hour days. I would still like to move in in the next few weeks.

Most of the wainscoting is up, we haven't started the mouldings yet. But I really think this weekend we can finish the built-in, finish the wainscoting, and I can start priming and painting... that of course still leaves cleaning up the tub and laying the tile. I might be psychotically optimistic, but I'm hoping we can do that NEXT weekend. Then we could actually move in the weekend of the 12th (which is the same day the bar exam results come out, so now no one needs to ask about that).

Here are a few photos of our progress...

The bathroom window trim that is taking FOREVER to strip:



The sorry state of our back porch: (Neighbors I am truly sorry and I have been trying to clean it up.)



Our new wainscoting, it's beadboard paneling, and it's actually not bad. We went for the slightly better stuff that actually has some depth instead of those yucky flat panels with tiny ridges for the beads:


And the built-in yet again. It's a great thing to have, but I will be very glad when it's done:



Wish us luck this weekend, I will try to document our progress and hopefully be able to do a triumphant post on Monday :)

The Great Cabinet Debate

Work is continuing - just not very quickly.

My parents were out of town last week, so we had to rush home every day to check on the dogs.

I also managed to half-way dislocate my shoulder, so that really slowed me down. I'm okay though.

Anyway, we're still hoping to finish the bathroom in the next few weeks. But right now we're trying to decide on whether the two upper halves of the built-in cabinet in the bathroom should be the same height. Here are a few photos:





It was really hard to get a good shot of it - I need to get a wide-angle lens. But anyway, we can't agree whether it's fine as is, or whether it looks extremely off balance and the right side should be brought up to the same height as the left. Any opinions would be appreciated :)

Housecleaning

This weekend I was mostly on my own since Michael went camping with a friend on Saturday night. It's hard to resist taking some time for ourselves, but we are also anxious to get in the house... we struggle with that. But I had a nice time working at the house and did some reading in the evening.

The photos show the result of a simple sweeping and mopping of the floors. It really made me happy to see that they look pretty great under all that filth. We aren't planning on refinishing them, just giving them a good cleaning and then waxing them. (The floor was still wet in the photos, thus the shininess). Oh, and that's the guest bedroom, the bathtub is just living in there until we're ready to refinish the outside and install it.

We went for a drive to the nearby "big town" of Bowling Green in our search for beadboard wainscoting on Friday night. We were in luck because they were in stock, and while they were slightly water damaged, they gave us an irresistible price on them.

I was hoping to start mudding the drywall yesterday, since all the drywall is up in the bathroom, but I had some issues getting the bucket of mud open (i.e. I could not open it!) Today after I walk home I'm going to try really hard again and see if I can't get that started, and then Michael wants to go get all the mouldings for the wainscoting so we can start to put that up. It's nice that we only really have to finish the upper half of the drywall, so I guess I can practice on the lower half.

We had decided to go to the Bourbon Festival this weekend in Bardstown after hearing how much fun it was, but I think we've managed to convince ourselves that we really need to work on the house. It's already almost halfway through September, I don't know how this keeps happening.

Our New Bathroom Inspiration

Isn't it beautiful? We were already talking about painting the outside of the tub black, and now we've pretty much decided to do a full on black and white bathroom. I'm excited about the black, I think it looks really elegant and is not a very commonly used color (or non-color or whatever it is). I just hope we can pull it off, choosing the right paint will be very important!

Michael started working this week, which is exciting, but not good news for house progress. I've been trying to make an extra effort to go to the house after work and I've been sanding the trim for the built-in. I was actually having fun with it yesterday, it really helped listening to my mp3 player. I'm really enjoying an album I put on it by Mika.

Here are some updated photos of our built-in. It looks great. We're having a debate about the beadboard on the wall. I think we're going to keep it up, but we're not sure if we should paint if black or if that will be overwhelming. We're thinking that we'll stain the cabinet with a semi-transparent white stain which will be beautiful and break up all the black. Anyway, here are the photos of the cabinet and a sample pic of the stain:




So the stain doesn't seem to show up very well online, but it will be more like the white stain, but you will be able to see the grain more like in the gray stain:






We were bad renovators again last weekend and went camping, but I think we will get lots done this weekend, and we had a great time so it was worth it :) I had to share a couple of photos of Michael, from when we were out on our friends' boat: