mudding and wiring

First, here is the most current photo of our new drywall section with all the mudding done.  we need to sand it and then we're going to paint that half of the living room.

Mitchie's day before thanksgiving project was to tear down the bathroom wall to rewire.  I wasn't expecting that, so I got home and found the bathroom a war zone.  Messy!

We've been using the Black & Decker book as a how to.  I guess I should say "mitch" and not "we."  I don't mess around with wiring.

The black wiring is the old wiring, the gray wiring is Mitch's new wiring. 

New light switch, not yet all the way in its home:

Last but not least, a beer can from 1938 and a ginger ale bottle from who knows when (sometime before 1965, when this company apparently went out of business) that Mitch found in the walls/crawl spaces while trying to wire.

Next will be more painting, then hopefully drywalling and tiling the bathroom.

Guest star: the Schoellenbach girls put up drywall

So Amelia came to visit me, and I put her to work putting up some drywall in the living room where we uncovered the windows.

Here is the wall with all the plaster and lath taken down:

Mitch and I putting up the first hunk of drywall.  He helped with the first bit, then went to work and Amelia and I took it from there.

Don't mess with a girl with tools.

Yeah, thats some nice drywall.

After drywalling, some celebratory carnage at Pok Pok.

Up next: mudding the joints.  Whoo hoo. 

Sweet new range!!!

Here is our old electric range.  I hate electric ranges, but she's done ok the month we've been using her.

Annnnd our fabulous new range, courtesy of our families via generous birthday gifts.  :)  Its a $1000 range but we got if for $720!

It has  sweet griddle attachement for the middle burner, as well as convection oven.  I am IN LOVE with it.

The gas company is coming tomorrow to put in a gas line so we can actually use it...

Bathroom time!

Our shower had horrible water pressure.  Fixing the hot water plumbing helped us have enough hot water to finish a shower, but it was still coming out as a trickle.  So we put in new fixtures. 

Here are the old fixtures:

We ripped out a section of the wall to get the new stuff in.  Eventually we are going to rip out the entire wall all around the tub, redrywall, tile, and all that good stuff.  But for now we just wanted to be able to take normal showers.

New fixtures, with some hella ghetto trash bags set up to keep water from leaking behind the walls.  But now we have awesome water pressure!  We are also eventually going to get new handles for the faucets - these are just the ones that came with our set.

Finishing up the dining room

I paid some attention to the built ins...the insides were pretty janky lookin.

Here they are all primed and ready to go.

I painted them the same color as the walls, and I'm pretty happy with how they look.

Starting to get furniture in now...

Next step is to get the dining table and hutch set up, then we're going to be getting our gas line put in, our new gas range, and putting new fixtures in the bathroom.

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...