2 Rooms Down...

Here are the newest pictures of the living room...

We painted the lower part of the fireplace, just so it looks okay for the time being. Eventually we will tile the fireplace and hearth. We also bought a couple of pieces of furniture (on the wishlist) from American Furniture Warehouse that complimented the coffee table.



Although this picture looks much the same, you can see the new curtains...





The only things left to finish in the living room are to replace the front door and to tile the fireplace!


Here are some pictures of the new curtains in the office. I wasn't sure whether to hem the curtains on the shorter window, but I think that the longer length is okay in a room with the high ceilings. Plus I think that it matches the other window. (Let me know what you think by voting in the poll on the left side of the blog...) **The poll was closed some time ago, but the consensus (by a narrow margin) was to leave the curtains the full length **

I got the curtain rods for $15 at Big Lots!!







And here is the office with some furniture in it. I don't really like the set up in the room right now, but the cats like to use my desk as a ladder to the high window. Plus the bookcase needs to rest on the east wall, since the floor is slanted and on the other wall, the bookcase leans forward! Ahhh, old houses...

Let There Be Internet

The internet connection was installed yesterday. Now I can include some updates on the various projects in the house.

As promised, I will include pictures of the bathroom. Here is the tile after it was grouted and sealed. As you can see, the shower is already in use.



Here is the vanity with the new counter tops, faucet, and Foster...



The bathroom still needs scraping, primer, and paint, but it is coming along. After much deliberation, however, we put the bathroom on hold and worked on finishing some of the "almost complete" rooms in the front of the house. So back to the office where we patched some new cracks (yes, more cracks...) and prepared to paint.

Since our cracks are so prolific and some have reappeared, we tried a two new products to seal our cracks. The first product is called Krack Kote. It is rubbery, and unlike joint compound, claims that it bridges a crack, not fills it. It allows movement to continue, which is good, since this house is always on the move. It has a fiberglass mesh that comes with it, and is applied similarly to the technique we use for joint compound. It seems the only drawbacks are that it is difficult to use on the "stucco" texture in the office and I could only find it on the internet. The second product is called Goodbye Cracks and is an elastomeric spray that seems like it will work on very small, superficial cracks. The drawback to Goodbye Cracks is that it comes in a small can and is pretty expensive. Plus it took several coats, smells like spray paint, and left me with rubbery boogers (I probably should have wore a respirator). Although neither compound has been on the cracks for very long, the Krack Kote seems to have a lot of promise. Goodbye Cracks will probably work for small cracks, but I have less faith in it over the long haul.

Here is a picture of the office with the cracks repaired. The top repair is Krack Kote and the brown spray paint-looking repair Goodbye Cracks.



After the final crack repair we primed the office. That took forever, since the office was a bright, pastel purple. Here is the office after priming.



We painted the trim and ceiling. The trim remained white, but looked so much better after the hours of scraping. Plus we used a semi-gloss so that it will be easy to clean. The ceiling was just a white, matte paint, but worth mentioning since they make this new product that goes on pink and then turns white when it dries.



Finally we applied the new paint. I wasn't sure about the color, since it appears more like split pea soup under non-CFL lights, but in the daytime it is true to my sample. Here is the final product... This is after all the touch ups.



All that is left is to replace outlet covers and some of the outlets that I painted, put in a new vent cover, add a door, and finish the clean up. Hooray for progress!

There Actually Is Some Progress

Move-in day was Saturday (and Sunday, and Monday...), but everything is just stacked in boxes either in the storage unit, the garage, or the living room. I haven't posted pictures of the bathroom, but we managed to grout and seal the shower surround, put in the main vanity, and finish most of the drywall work. I will post pictures soon, but don't have access to the internet until the 8th... Also I don't have a desk or a place to work, but those are little details.

Now what is the plan of attack for the rest of the house? I obviously didn't get as far as I had hoped, but now things must be finished, because I simply can't live like this any longer. So I think the best plan of action is to start room by room and make them livable. For most of the front part of the house, the only major "to-do" item I have left is to paint the rooms. For the back part of the house, pretty much nothing has been done.

On another note, I found a really cool website called Wishlist. This website lets you save a list of things that you would like to buy. I am currently putting housing items on mine, so that I can compare prices and remember when I find something that I like. The neat thing about this "wishlist" is that you can bookmark an object that when clicked it allows you to put the item you are looking at into your wish list. That is the best I can describe it, until you try it for yourself.

Anyway, I have posted my wish list onto the blog, but I must clarify that the point of this list is NOT to solicit for gifts (certainly some people use it for registries and the like). However, you are welcome to let me know if you see a comparable item for a better price somewhere else.