No Colors Anymore...

I want them to turn black.

Not really, but I'm really happy with how our black & white bathroom is turning out.

We put in a lot of work this weekend, and have been making miraculous progress - we might actually start moving in next week!!

I had a bit of a battle with a patch of drywall that looked awful once we started priming, but I managed to prevail and things are looking great.

I am posting several photos of the new black beadboard wainscoting and window trim. This picture was taken after one coat. It looks even better after the second coat, and we may even do a third. Michael is hoping to start working on the tile tomorrow, which is very exciting. Anyway, here are the new bathroom photos - we had to take out the ceiling light fixture to paint the ceiling, so the light is a little odd:

We Could Get a Lot More Done...

If everything didn't take so long.

We managed to make decent progress this weekend. Not quite as much as I'd hoped, but not terrible.

The waincscoting panels are now all up. The drywall is completely finished (YAY!). And the built-in cabinet is essentially finished. I'm a little sad that the pictures don't appear to show much progress, but that will change soon.



Michael contemplating the space for the last wainscoting panel:


And it's up!:



(the window still needs its top & bottom trim, and no I that is not what they will actually look like when they are finished.)

Today when I get home I will either start staining the built-in or priming the drywall, whichever sounds more exciting to me.

We also have the supplies I need to work on the bathtub. I'm excited to see how that turns out.

I guess it's still possible we could start moving in the weekend of the 12th, but it's probably more realistic to think the weekend after. But I will still tell myself the 12th to try keep my motivation up. The same way I like to keep the clock in the car a few minutes fast to try to get places on time. But based on that philosophy I shouldn't have to use too many tricks because we thought we might move in 3 months ago, and that clearly didn't help all that much.

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 :)

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.