So we have been focusing our efforts on the upstairs. Our master bedroom is coming together quickly and I think I can see the end in sight! Jonathan has been doing most of the work up there, but I have been able to act as his personal assistant, so that has been nice. This past two weeks we have sistered the ceiling joists, insulated the walls and ceiling, installed the electric, and drywalled. 

First things first, this is where I left y'all last time: 

Jonathan (mostly) and I had the upstairs about 90% gutted. He still needed to take down the remaining half of the chimney and the wall beside it. Side note: that "chimney" is still a mystery to us. It was actually only a row of bricks that they built the wall around. There was no evidence of the other three sides to the chimney. So Jonathan just pulled it down brick by brick and we saved them to use as a border in our future garden. 

This is what everything looked like when it was 100% gutted:

After that, we sistered the ceiling joists. Basically this means attaching new joists to the old ones so that the ceiling is flat. Our house is old and because of that, nothing is level. This is a quick solution to that problem. Trust me, now that the whole thing is dry walled, it is amazing! The ceiling is perfectly flat! If you look in the above pictures, you can see the new joists peeking out just below the old ones. It was a lot of fun helping Jonathan with this! I held the beams in place at one end while he held the other and then nailed them all.

 

After that, Jonathan built out the closet:

It will be nice to have a big huge closet in our room. We are really looking forward to it as there is only one other closet in the whole house. Plus we don't have an attic, so this may be one of our most cherished storage spaces.

He also installed new electric. Previously the upstairs had only two lights. One in the smaller bedroom and one in the hallway. Also, get this, there were absolutely NO outlets at all! I don't know how the previous owners functioned without them. So Jonathan installed 6 outlets, wired 4 lights (one in the center of the room, one for the stairs, and two in the closet), and hardwired the smoke detector. 

After everything was framed and wired it was insulation time! I was able to help with this part, which helped to curb my hopeless-because-I'm-not-a-carpenter feeling. I basically put all the insulation in place and stapled it to the studs while Jonathan cut pieces specific to certain holes. We pounded out the whole upstairs in one night! It was a long three hours and we were horribly dirty after, but it felt like such an accomplishment. Due to the amount of insulation in the air, I never did get an after picture. But I am sure a lot of you know what walls filled with insulation look like. 

The final step to the walls was to drywall and mud them. Luckily, Jonathan's cousin's husband came over to help with this job. We have been helping them remodel their house for the past two years and now that we had our own house issues, he came to help us! That took the load off my shoulders (literally--can you picture me holding up sheets of drywall?? I can, but it wouldn't have been pretty.) It also allowed me to spend some time with these cute little ones: 

And finally, without further ado, here is our finished (well almost) master bedroom: 

 The staircase 

 The view when you reach the top of the stairs.

 Looking at the stairs.

 Our closet! 

 Instead of the railing that was there before, we put up a cute little knee wall. 

The access hole to the crawlspace above the back of our house. We are going to frame it out and make it into a removable bookshelf. I can't wait! 

Progress!!

I promised you progress pictures today and I am going to deliver! Hmm where to start? Well, first I would like to give you a run down of what we are working on and what our timeline looks like.

We are planning on moving-in in about a month to two months. It will all depend on what we can get done and how smoothly things go. Our list of things to do before we move includes:

1. Gutting the upstairs and making it into a big master bedroom
2. Gutting the bathroom and updating it
3. Sanding and painting the cabinets in the kitchen
4. Painting all the walls and ceilings in the house (the previous owners smoked, so all the walls and ceilings need to be painted to cover up the smell and color) 
5. Updating the electric
6. Updating the plumbing

So we have been steadily working on this list. Jonathan has been working his normal job during the day, coming home for dinner, and then heading to the house every evening. I have been helping where I can. Since my carpentry stills are *ehm* somewhat limited *ehm*, I do what I can. But enough of this background junk, on to the pictures!

So without further ado let's start with the kitchen:

As you can see all of the cupboard doors have been removed. The laminate tiles have been scraped off of the counter on the right side of the kitchen (top picture). I have also been sanding everything. First I pulled off the doors and all the hardware. Then I started pulling out nails and scraping down the cabinets. Now I am on to the sanding part. Once that is done, all the wood will be painted white (the trim, doors, and cabinets) and then we are going to just paint right over the walls. The walls are actually paneling and I am afraid to pull it all down, so a nice coat of primer and paint should do the job.

Now on to the rest of the downstairs:

We pulled the sink in the bathroom. Can you see how the wall sort of bows out? Well, because of that, we have decided to gut the bathroom. There was no way to fix it well without ripping out the rest of the wall. Oh plaster and lathe; how I hate you.

Then there is the guest bedroom and our living room. As you can see we pulled all of the carpet in each room and these rooms are just patiently waiting to be painted. I can't start priming and painting until Jonathan is done pulling all the plaster and cleaning it up. Otherwise my walls would be covered in dust and primer :)

And last but not least, the piece-de-resistance! The upstairs!!!:

 A view from the stairs

 No ceiling (I'm trying to convince Jonathan to keep it this way :) ) 

 Another view. Along the wall by the window is where the closets used to be.

 Where our bed will eventually be.

 Another view. Looking at the stairwell.

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From the stairwell looking at the doorway into the room. 

Eventually this wall will be completely gone. 

And there you have it! Can you start to picture what the upstairs is going to look like when it is all done?! When I took these pictures I kept 'ooo-ing' and 'ahh-ing' because it felt so open and airy. I can't wait till we start putting the drywall up!! 

Let's Catch Up

Sorry to all of our "fans" out there! I guess it is about time that we do a status report around here. Let's catch-up shall we?

The hubs and I have been busy, busy, busy tearing the house apart. We have our plan of action together and we are on the fast track to moving in. We would like to be in our new digs at the end of the month. Now we just need to pray that everything goes smoothly and that we can accomplish this grandiose task. Please pray! :)

So after this post, you may be wondering about the layout changes we referred to. We used floorplanner again to show you what our thoughts are. So here is the original house layout:

And here is what we would like it to look like in the end: (please note that the master bedroom is actually above the living room on the second floor)

You will notice that we are planning on adding on a bit. Here is a brief list of what we would like to do.

1. Make the kitchen bigger by bumping out the left wall to be even with the sun porch and the back wall to be even with the entryway into the house. 
2. Extend out the back entryway and add on a laundry room/entrance way. 
3. Add on to the guest bedroom making it into a office area.
4. Make the sun porch and the dining room into one room. 
5. Knock down the walls upstairs and make one big master bedroom. (We will eventually be adding on to the second story, but right now we aren't sure what that will look like.It will definitely include another bathroom and two more bedrooms though.)

So that is what we are working on now. We have decided that we want to complete the master bedroom, gut and renovate the bathroom, and paint everything before we move in. Its a lot of work, but we are up for the task!

Want to see what we have done so far? Come back tomorrow for some progress pictures!