Nearly done

Front Deck framing
Originally uploaded by bredto

It's been a while since we've updated this blog thing. After many, many long days the flooring installation is complete. You can also see that we've started our front porch/deck. Robin, the guy who did our drywall and stairs is helping us build it. Actually, I'm helping him and he's building it. We had to dig three holes four feet deep by hand and that wasn't any fun at all. It took us literally all day. The deck is the last thing we need to get our certificate of occupancy so we're anxious to get it done.

 

Appliances delivered

appliances
Originally uploaded by bredto

Today our appliances were delivered which is one more step to making our house livable. Unfortunately, the stove and dryer won't be working until the propane people come back to hook them up. We did make a run to the get some food to put in our new fridge (you served us well bud light fridge, but it's time to go) and did a load of dishes in our dishwasher. Once I can cook again it'll feel like a real house!

So once the guys left, the flooring has slowed down considerably for multiple reasons. Reason One - The work week started. Reason Two - they left me with the hard stuff... for me at least. Lots of work on the saws and difficult nailing. Reason Three - pain. I've opened up a gnarly blister from swinging the hammer and it's nice and tender. I believe installing flooring is a good way to end up in a wheelchair. My back kills and my knees hurt. Cool. Now only another week or two and I'll be finished!

  
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Flooring going down

acclimation process 3000
Originally uploaded by bredto

Today my sister-in-laws brother, Matt, came up along with my brother and nephew to help me get started laying the flooring. I'm very glad they did since Matt has had experience do floors before. We worked about 6 hours and 200 sq/ft. in. They'll be here through tomorrow morning and Matt insists that the pace will pick up and we should be able to knock out quite a bit more.

I'm also beginning to see why guys geek out about tools. Yesterday I drove down to Binghamton to borrow various saws and sanders for the upcoming job. Those along with my absolute favorite new tool, the pneumatic nailer, I feel like to can do anything!

My camera is broken, so no pictures of the process yet, but I did shot a little video which I'll post eventually.

We're in!

into the kitchen
Originally uploaded by bredto

Yesterday we spent our first night in our house. You can see we still have work to do, but it feels great to be out of our musty old apartment. My brother came up with one of his daughters to help us out with the move which was great. We still have about 75% of our stuff in storage in my in-laws house in Binghamton which we'll get once the flooring is down. Speaking of which... We picked up 900 sq./ft. (in about 50 boxes) of straned bamboo yesterday as well. It was amazingly heavy with each box weighing in around 50-60 lbs. We're hoping to have a friend come up mid-week to help us get started installing it.

The painter finished painting the downstairs too. You can see we added an accent wall of "copper penny" in the kitchen and used 2 shades of grey for the rest. It looks awesome.

We won't have appliances for at least another week and a half which isn't too cool, but we do have a microwave and a micro fridge which will hold us over till then.

  

send in the pros

kevin the pro
Originally uploaded by bredto

My mother has been trying to convince me for a week to hire a professional painter to finish painting our home. I'm not spending my money on a painter when I can do it myself. No way. Well, she went ahead and hired a painter. He showed up around 10:30 am, looked around asked what colors go where and started to cut in the ceiling. By 1 pm he was finished with 2 coats on the ceiling and waiting for me when I got back from the paint store with the wall colors. Quitting by 4 or so he had completed the first coat on the walls. The dude is fast. He made me feel bad about myself for taking so long to paint the upstairs. You can see the color (silver fox by Ben Moore) in the small picts below.

Friday the carpet guy came and did his thing. We now have super smooshy carpet throughout the upper floor and it looks like a real house.

So Time Warner Cable... I called and expressed my displeasure with them by using lots of potty words and describing in detail what I've been going through for the past two months trying to get cable in our new house. The very nice lady on the other end said that she was going to send someone to install Friday between 8- noon. I was at the house Friday and when 1 pm rolled along I decided to call and use my potty words more to see where the installer was. I got a call back from a very high up and he assured me that they were going to make sure that I have cable by the promised September first if it killed him. Today around 4pm rich came out and installed our cable. The moral of the story is --- if you freak out on enough people you can accomplish anything!

 

staining isn't fun

half and half
Originally uploaded by bredto

For the past two nights we've been staining our bannister trying to get it done before the carpet guy comes. We got it done, sort of. While there is still some more to stain, everything that will touch carpet is done. The first night our screens weren't installed so we couldn't open the windows for fear of insect attack and I lost a few years of life by huffin' the fumes. Tonight I was all smart like and put the screens in for a little fresh air.

We're going to be moving into the incomplete house this weekend and continue to work on it. We're picking up our bamboo flooring this Sunday. If I can get enough flooring down by Wednesday morning, we can then have our appliances delivered. Can you lend me a chop saw?

Other bits... We have water (but not hot yet) and it tested negative for all bad germs and such. We can flush toilets, take cold showers and everything. We picked up and installed our cool glass shower door for the master bath. Time Warner Cable is run by clowns. I've called about 6-10 times in the past two months and each time I spoke with someone they assured me that service would be hooked up by September 1st. I got a call yesterday from them saying I was good to go and do I want to transfer service. I told them I'd call them back because I couldn't believe that they ran the cable to the house since I was there the previous night. After a quick trip to the house it turns out they didn't. Idiots.

  

Paint tour

Paint tour from Bret Olsen on Vimeo.

Too tired to write anything. Will update later.