McBerkoBlog

After 11 days of work by 4-5 guys/day, the exterior paint is done! The pictures don't quite represent the colors (at least on my computer) - the accent color on the sashes, top, and columns is a muted dark teal, but you get the idea. A bit different from the original . New front door, porch light, mailbox, and house numbers are still on order.

The house painters started Monday. Or maybe I should say, the house paint preppers. They've spent 3 days cleaning, scraping, and priming, and are nowhere near ready to paint. Maybe after a full week of prepping, we'll see some color on the house. 3 person crew x 5 days prep = one million weekends of me and Bill and Ruth time. I can't imagine how long this would have taken us. I'm glad we realized there was no way we could do this project ourselves.

Drywallers took much longer with this room than the last, but it's finally done and now all primed. Pics from yesterday partway through priming. Ruth did an excellent job entertaining herself while we worked.

No member of the McBerkowitz family can play all day every weekend until this house is done, there's too much work to do. Ruth finally got with the program today and completed some key tasks. She learned to measure twice and cut once: After pulling some wire, she helped nail in those cut boards for the recessed bookshelves: She then moved to some finish work, installing the hardware on the window seats in the office: All in all, a pretty productive day for a baby. Next weekend, she'll try her hand at stripping paint and eating applesauce.

I realized after that last post that I hadn't even previously mentioned that we've moved onto the entryway. (There are a few final paint touchups to the office, and then I'll post final pics of those.) We started it at the end of March when Eric and Mom were here for spring break. The lovely paneling (what else!) came down quickly, but the other two layers of wall took a bit longer. Since then, the progress had been embarrassingly slow until we decided to take a day off work and power through this weekend as much as possible. That plan actually worked! Drywallers can start this week. After we finished the insulation, Bill finished roughing out a few areas that needed it. Today, he finished the pre-drywall portions of the two built-ins. The first two pics are of the new recessed bookshelves. We are very lucky that this wall is deeper than normal because there's a pocket door between the living room and entry. Adding shelves didn't occur to us until we opened the wall...

Bill and I both took today off work so we could have a day without Ruth to work on the house. Amazing how much you can get done in a day without a baby! I had forgotten. Entry is now fully insulated. Hoping the drywallers can start early next week. Bill has a few things to finish first, so hopefully he can get that done while Ruth and I hit Lowes to order a new front door. One of these years, the house will be DONE and we'll be able to spend our vacations outside the house.

Bill has all the trim up and window seats complete. A few shelves in the closet and a lot of painting and this room will be done. Cross your fingers that Baby Ruth takes some long naps tomorrow so there's a minor chance we get through priming and a first coat of paint.

I forgot to mention the other great stride forward of our house - we now have a dishwasher. Almost one year has passed since we moved in. I thought the lack of a dishwasher would be far more annoying than it has actually been (turns out hand washing dishes isn't really so bad), but that doesn't mean I'm not super-excited to have one again. Yay for presidents' day sales on appliances!

My last post said we thought we'd get the room ready for drywall within a week. HAHAHAHA! We finally got everything ready, then had professional drywallers in for the first time. Best money we ever spent! I am glad we did the previous rooms in the house so we can appreciate how fast and well pros do the work. Thursday morning we had studs and Saturday night we were priming. After seeing how fast that is, not to mention reasonably inexpensive, there is no way on earth we are drywalling any more rooms on our own. There are weeks of trim work and window seats to go, but I'm thinking I won't post any more progress pics until we're done, for maximum impact. This room is shaping up to be the best room yet. :)

The to-be-office, which was Ruth's changing/napping area until this demo started, is our next major project. While Steve and Patty babysat today (thanks, guys!!), we managed to remove almost all of the 3 layers of ceiling (acoustic tile drop ceiling, tiles stapled up, and plywood). We also removed the top layer of wall, and parts of the second layer of wall. No plaster - yay! Goal is to finish demo, rewire, and insulate by the end of next weekend.