Dining room update

Here's a decent picture of our dining room. Its a color called "Evening Peruvian Lily". The color changes a lot depending on the lighting. Nautral lighting is all I have right now, since we haven't installed light fixtures yet. In cloudy cover, the walls take on a pink cast. When the sky is clear and it is sunny out, then the walls are more of a concentrated red or orange. I wonder what it will look like in the winter, when the snow will reflect a lot of light back up into the room...

The Green Kitchen

Well, not really a "green" kitchen, at least not in the "chemical free/environmentally friendly/reclaimed" kind of green. With just about 4 days until move-in, today I finished painting the kitchen. It is a lovely shade called "Pine Scent". It reminds me of a billiard table! Our kitchen isn't very big, but I think this strong color works really well in here.

I did finally finish the dining room yesterday and took some pictures today but the overcast sky outside made the walls a funny color, so I will have to take better pictures to share on a sunny day. Its not what I expected now that its up on the wall, but I think I love it.


Wall where the range will go; Fridge wall, base molding to come later

More repairs have been pushed to the "after we move in list", including refinishing the hardwood floors. Its a little bit of a bummer, but totally okay. Mr. Ireland has developed a nasty tooth ache and isn't able to do quite as much as he would like. There isn't enough time to finish this project on my own, so I will do the things that I do have time for and make it as livable as possible. Which means I will be cleaning and moving small items over to the house over the next few days. I'm hoping that we will have some help moving on Thursday and Friday. Maybe it will be furniture only.... that would be nice, wouldn't it?

Remodeling in Technicolor! With Smell -O- Vision!

I managed to paint the boy's bedroom yesterday. It looks like Gymboree threw up all over the walls! The three oldest boys just could not agree on what color to have their room painted, so we ended up doing three colors. Let me clarify that this is not a style that I normally am attracted to. I find it overwhelming but, its not my room! Its a child's room, and since they change their minds fairly frequently, I'm sure I won't have to look at it for 20 more years. Five would be plenty!

Mr. Ireland started the beginning of his vacation yesterday. He is pretty terrific, choosing to spending his vacation working on the house. Of course, we have to be in it by the end of the month, so it's not much of a choice! With just over a week to go, we are down to the last of the manageable projects. Some things have made their way from the "before we move in" list to the "sometime after we are in it" list. We're trying to focus on paint and flooring and leave all the finishing work for later.

Triple layered living room wall, in all its pink glory

Yesterday we prepped the living room for painting, removing the wall paper border, filling holes, that sort of thing. One of the walls had two extra layers of sheetrock over the orginal wall... We were unsure of what we would find if we removed it, and were hesitant to do so, until I pulled the top layers back and peered behind it with a flashlight. I couldn't see any holes in the original wall or any reason why there should be another layer over it, and it looked like it was being held in place by a few nails, so we gave it a tug and down it came! Under the extra layers was a near perfect wall with pretty rose wallpaper. It smelled faintly of perfume and old house (it was not, however, scratch and sniff). We think the living room was originally 3 bedrooms, making a total of 6 small bedrooms on the third floor, so this had to have been a girls room! There was even a poster taped to the wall.

Smelling the wallpaper (we all did it!); Boys removing wallpaper.

Instead of removing the wallpaper, the previous owners chose to glue 2 layers of sheetrock together and nail it up over the existing wall. Talk about lazy! I'm sure it took far more time to put those up than the half hour it took for me and 2 children to remove the wallpaper! I guess we all use what we have on hand though. How about it, aunts? Recognize the wallpaper? Did you have any friends in highschool that had wallpaper like that?

Newly finished wall

After all that, we taped and mudded the wall and today I started painting the living room! I am happy to say that the ceiling is no longer magenta. I will not miss that color. With any luck, I will have the living room finished tomorrow morning and be able to move on to the dining room, the next to last room on my list. It is also the last room that needs to have walls textured. I can't wait to scrape the last smear of mud from the bucket and retire my blade.

Official count down to move in.... 9 days.

O the tediousness

Well, my manicure it thrashed. I went to Anchorage for the weekend and spend time with my girlfriend for her birthday and we had mani's & pedi's done. It was wonderful while it lasted, but after paint and sheet rock and mud, there isn't much left of my nail polish! I'll have to take another trip when this is all done.

Monday, Mr. Ireland and I laid down wood for the floor in the nursery. Our plan has never been to have this place perfect before we move in, but to have it mostly finished and leave the little things to be finished for later. Moulding, new cabinet doors in the kitchen, remodeling bathrooms. Those are things that I can handle being done while we live in it. Considering that those all fall to me, they will have to wait anyway! This solution is temporary. Someday it will be removed and replaced with hardwood flooring to match the existing wood in the dining room.

Next comes painting the floor and installing moldings. The nursery will need to be completely finished before we move in. To do that, I'll have to have someone teach me how to use a router *hint hint* Then I can make my own base molding to match the molding in the hall. I'm sure there's someone in my family who could do that....

Tuesday, I painted our bedroom. Unfortunately, it was raining and the first coat would just not dry, so I will have to put a second coat up before we start putting wood on the floor in there. We are sticking with the same color for our walls that we have in our rental house right now. It took years for us to agree on a color for our bedroom, why mess with it now?

Before; Current

Today, we hung dry wall! We finished the fireplace corner and the inside wall for the boy's second closet. It looks one hundred times better upstairs! Removing that fireplace really opens up the whole room. The rock is taped and mudded, now I get to go in and texture. The division of labor for this project seems lopsided, but trust me, Mr. Ireland finds paint and texture tedious work and I rather enjoy it! I'll be hearing about the fireplace demo for a long time, though.
Boys new closet; different view of the living room and it's hideous color

Texturing the living room will be a lot like the boy's bedroom - the texture is heavy and choppy looking. Matching what exists isn't that challenging, I'm just not sure where to stop. Some of the walls are smooth, some are not, and all are painted an awful magenta! Who paints a 500 square foot room MAGENTA? And then adds violet carpet?! It's just wrong. I can't wait to cover that eyesore. The metal pipe stick down from the ceiling doesn't help.

I'll post soon about the trip all my flowers are making from the rental to our new house. Here's a preview of it....

I'm surprised that it bloomed, since moving usually shocks irises. I've been waiting for that to get growing for 2 years. Anyway, more later on that project later. ttfn

Earthship

If you have time to spare this summer, or need something worthwhile to do, this is where you should go:

http://shipoffools2010.blogspot.com/

Kelly and Willow lost their home in a fire this past winter. They have 3 little kids and they are determined to rebuild. Not just rebuild but to build better! This is a fantastic project. I am envious of the goal they have set for themselves and the lifestyle they are choosing for their family. Laborers are needed, so if you feel like doing something meaningful this summer, make this it!

-Mrs. Ireland

Still plugging away

Demolition is definitely more fun than repair. Our postings get farther and farther apart, mostly because the work is slow going. With a month left until we need to be out of the rental house, we can feel the days wasting away. Here are a couple more pics, just so you can see what we are working on.

New ceiling
We started texturing the ceiling in the mom & dad's room on Monday, mixed our medium to thin, and had to start over. Today I finished that room and then moved on to the nursery. Only one bedroom left that needs texture. I've applied the texture by hand in the master bedroom, by loop roller in the nusery and the third will be done a completely different way as well, to match the ceiling in the other half of the room. It looks like it was floated on.... interesting. I don't care for the texture in the nursery, but I doubt I will have time to go back and re-do it. Time at the house without children is rare.

Mr. Ireland has framed in the wall that will divide the boy's room from the living room. We can see where they had a wall there before, but we are not sure how, since there are no studs that line up in ANY of the walls-ceiling-floor to make it a straight forward build. Mr. Ireland put some cross supports on one wall, which will allowed him to sink into the stud on one side of the wall and the bracing on the other. This wall will be in the back of a closet on the bedroom side and part of built in book shelves in the living room side, so we aren't that worried about it taking hard hits from rambunctious boys.


Next week we should be able to finish Mr. Ireland's office wall and sheet rock the fireplace corner. I have been clearing out the crawlspace this week, bringing boxes to the basement and my office, the only two spaces that are finished (well, mostly). Its slow going, but we'll get there!