While we were stuck upstairs I decided to give Loki and Sammy baths. It finally stopped raining so at least they won’t immediately get stinky again. They weren’t too happy about the baths.
Loki wet but refusing a blow-dry.
Sammy being silly.
Baths are so exhausting.
OK so after 2 nearly all-nighters, including last night until 4am, the guys are here to put in our floor. We used 6 gallons of paint on the ceiling, half of a 5 gallon bucket on the walls, nearly a gallon of primer on the trim and my comment of the night was “I LOVE Semi-gloss” as we just wiped away our drips.
The trim looks AWESOME. Just the paint, even without the floor, makes this house looks so much better.
The dogs have been camped out in the bedroom all week. It wasn’t fair to keep them in their crates but it wasn’t safe to let them downstairs. Here is Sammy asking if it’s time to come out yet. Please? Considering I could only get them on a few walks with the rain, they have done VERY well. Loki loves sleeping in the bed and Sam will hang out wherever Loki is. Ken even turned on cartoons for them. Bully Sticks are amazing things. Not the best setup, but wait until they see the plush area rug I picked out for them.
Entry
Windows
Ken Painting (he did walls, I did trim)
Last spot!!!!
3:28 AM
8:00 AM The DIY portion of this project is complete. The pros are here to finish the job!
Next is DOORS! (Dad I need help!) Then we have to paint the trim upstairs and change the wall colors. Then we will replace the worn out carpet. I had thought Dutch Boy paint might be kind of cheapy, but it went on VERY nicely and covered well and we LOVE the color especially with the white and the floor. To all of you who might ask why we painted wood: It clashed with everything. It was not pretty wood. It was pre-fab OK looking wood. No paint colors except white looked good with it. Everything I tried to do in the room looked wrong because the orange wood stood out so much. Plus, if we had built the house with white it would have been plastic, not wood. So we got the wood and had always planed to paint it. They wanted more to upgrade these things than it ended up costing to fix/replace them. We are replacing the doors because they are hollow core veneer junky doors. Every house on this block looks the same. Now ours will be unique! We did everything we were capable of doing ourselves to save money.
Please everyone let us know what you think!
Based on our 25 trips to the various home improvement stores in the past week, I would like to grade them:
Lowes: A+ They helped me get the quarter round off the shelf, carried it to the register, opened a new register to ring me up, and walked out to my car and LOADED IT IN MY CAR.
Menards: A+ The ladies in the paint department are funny and helpful. When I asked if I needed to use an expensive paint brush, she said “No, but I can sell you one.” 20 people must have asked me if I needed help, and the store was clean.
Home Depot: F No one asked me if I needed help. ALL of the wood was in 20 ft lengths, no 8 foot, so there was no chance of me fitting it in my car. I looked obviously lost in the “contractor” section and NO ONE approached me. It smelled like sawdust (I know, it’s a home improvement store, but the others don’t have dust in the air like that.) and it was dirty.
Which means the trim won’t match, so we are painting the trim. But then the trim will look good and the walls are all scuffed, so we are painting the walls. And if you paint the walls, you might as well paint the ceilings. And then the doors don’t match… so….
Oh, and we figured we’d save $100 by ripping up the existing flooring ourselves. Guess what? $100 doesn’t seem like that big of a deal anymore!!! But, we WERE going to do the install ourselves. We figured out really quick that we are not capable of installing a floor. But we decided we could handle the demo. Call it semi-DIY.
Ripped up carpet. Good thing SG doesn’t have garbage stickers!
Ken ripping up trim and tackboard.
Ken “I hate painting”
Loki decided to “help.” Do you see the PAINT on him??? No monsters were harmed in this weekend’s demo, although Sammy screamed the whole time she had to be upstairs. Loki was fine – he had a whole king sized bed to himself. Loki knows what is important to him.
OK Last pic for tonight. The painted trim. I’ve been waiting for this for 3 years!!! WHITE TRIM WUHU!!!
Today lots of our friends came out to the market. It rained a little. Sammy, mom and I stayed at the market while Ken stayed home and ripped trim off the walls. More pics of our minor remodel are yet to come…
