New plumbing!

In an attempt to get better water pressure,  Mitchell redid all the hot water plumbing while I was at work one day.  Best. Husband. Ever.

Old pipes:  

Thats at least 50 years of corrosion right there:

Raw materials for repiping.  Only cost about $250, would have been over $1000 to have a plumber do it.  And so far its been working awesome...

Finished product.  All the red plastic piping is new. 

We definitely have more hot water now, which makes for warmer showers.  We're still going to need to change all the fixtures to get awesome water pressure, but now we have pipes that aren't hella corroded, won't bust if they freeze, and I don't get cold halfway through my shower.  Good times.

Painting the Dining Room

We chose a color and got to painting the dining room.  Here are the walls all cleaned and primed, looking shiny white.  It made the room look totally different - so much brighter and less gloomy.

Here are a couple pictures with the blue paint we chose on...one in daylight and one at night.  It actually looks a little darker and greyer in person, but you get the idea.

Here are some photos of the continued efforts to remove the plaster around the revealed windows in the living room.

Sadly the windows are also painted over, so we'll need new glass panes, and we'll have to take down the vinyl siding that is covering the windows from the outside. So we have a lot of work ahead of us to actually be able to use the windows...

This is a public service announcement

Kids: don't smoke in the house.  This could happen to you!

See that lovely line of demarcation?  To the left is the paint and wall after a good half hour of my scrubbing it with soap and a scrubber.  To the right is what the paint looks like with 50 years of nicotine smoke caked on it.  That is JACK NASTY.  I'm going to be painting over it, but I have to scrub the rest of the walls first so the paint will actually stick.  The ceiling is hella nasty too.  Awesome!

We also pulled off the ugly panelling, and found, guess what?  More walled up windows!  I think we're going to have to pull out the bad plaster around them and drywall.

Good fences make good neighbors

So our yard was not fully fenced, and the neighbor's fence is just chainlink.  This meant that Rogue could get out and run around in the street, and also that she could not focus enough to actually go potty.  So we put a fence in.  This is what our yard looked like before, looking into the neighbor's yard:

Mitch dug some post holes.  I wish I had a video of him pantomiming a postholer to a guy at Lowe's to ask where they were. 

One thing about putting in a fence: mixing concrete by hand hella sucks balls. 

Posts!

Add 2x4s

And then fence posts.  Fenced back yard! 

And here are some lovely pictures of the gate Mitch built on the other side:

Now that we can let Rogue out without worrying she'll run into the street or get hurt by the neighbor's big dogs, we can get to the business of the rest of the remodel.

Refinishing the hardwood, getting moved in

So we are moved in now, and actually living in our new house. We started by finishing up with the hardwood floor refinishing.    Here is Mitch doing the honors:

 And here is the floor, post sanding:

We were going to keep it natural, but there were some dark stains, so we decided to stain it dark to help cover them because we're to cheap to replace the wood.  

Here is the final product:

We're pretty happy with how it looks, especially for our first attempt at refinishing a floor. 

Getting started

Mitchie is trying his hand at finishing hardwood floors.   He rented a big belt sander and have been sanding down the front room floors.  This is what the floor looked like presanding, at least the dark around the edges is what it looked like:

This is sanded all the way down: 

Now we have to finish sanding the edges and put the finisher on and we're golden in the front room.   We're going to paint the walls and wash the ceilings as well.  I'm thinking blue with cream trim but we haven't picked a color yet.   I took some more photos today as kind of a tour.  Here are a couple of the front room (living room/dining room) with the sweet built ins. 

I spent most of today getting the bathroom clean enough for habitation.  We have also been rinsing down all the walls with vinegar to get the cigarette smoke out.  The house smells much better already. 

Here are some bathroom photos.  I love the sweet pink tile.  Today I took all the drawers out of the built in and cleaned them and put cute paper in the bottom of them.  If anyone has any suggestions as to what color we can paint the walls and built ins to match the pink, I'd love to hear them.  I was thinking maybe grey?  I'm going to get rid of the ugly brown tile on the counter, but I don't know what I'm going to put there yet.  Maybe just painted wood.  Maybe some other kind of tile. 

Tub pre bleach and post bleach:

And last but not least, our ugggggly ass sink that we are going to replace ASAP:

Honestly, who would put such a sink in this bathroom?  It doesn't match AT ALL and it prevents the drawers next to it from opening all the way.  I don't get it.  Thats it for now...more when we start painting and knocking down more walls.