Weeks 3 and 4 of Working on New House

Confession: I am a whiny baby. In the interest of full disclosure - and "keeping it real" - I feel the need to share that.

We are officially done with weeks 3 and 4 of work on our dream home out in the country...that we've prayed for for years.

See, I need to keep reminding myself of that - that this is such an answer to prayer - lest I become so whiny that I annoy even myself.

This is a lot of work. A lot. Of course it is! I knew that going into it...but apparently I didn't really know it.

The running back and forth - usually multiple times a day - to squeeze in as much work as we can here and there? Really starting to wear on the children and I. We can't wait to just be out there.

But Jas knows that it would not be best to move yet. And I know he is right - I can't use the stove or do laundry right now (yikes! That would not be good) - I'm just fighting feeling impatient and whiny. This has actually been a growing experience for me: learning how to better follow his (and ultimately His) lead in timing...and be content in the meantime.

And the bottom line is this: We are out there working as often and for as long as we can...and we work as hard and fast as we can when we're there. And when it is time for us to move...we'll move.

Enough whining and self-introspection...on to the details of weeks 3 and 4...

These weeks were all about:

Wall demo
Recessed lights
Wallpaper
Laundry room

Over these two weeks, the wall that we are taking down between the kitchen and the family room went from this....

...to this...

...and finally, to this:

So - YAY! - the demo is complete, and now we're on to the finish work for this new opening: rehanging the hood, installing the counter on this half wall, and finishing the beam, etc.

And - woohoo! - we realized that we could keep the lower half of the great built-in shelves, because the thought of losing all those shelves gave me heart palpitations!



When we started the demo on the wall, we quickly realized that we would lose the lighting above the cabinets on that wall. There wasn't really enough lighting in the kitchen to begin with, in our opinion, so we decided to install can (aka recessed) lights in there. I am super-impressed with how quickly Jas got this done! In just a little over a week's time (of a little time here..and a little there)...he went from drilling the holes...

...to running the wires...

...to being DONE.

Let there be light!

I made more progress on getting the paper down in the dining room. At my fastest I can get down three feet in an hour. Not bad...but not great considering that there is over 60 feet of border! When I finished up at the end of week 4, I estimated that there was only another 5-6 hours of work left for me to do.

This is the pretty face you get when one of my children grabs the camera and hollers: "Smile, Mama!"

**Interruption**
Here are other random pictures Elisabeth took during this camera break:







I think she did a good job...or it may just be the extremely cute subject matter!
**Back to our regularly scheduled programming**

I've added an amendment to my earlier "Prohibition Against ALL Wallpaper" Law: **If** you want to hang wallpaper, by all means, go ahead. BUT  **you** need to take the paper down yourself before you move out of the house!




And onto the laundry room. This would more correctly be referred to as the Laundry/Mud room/pantry/pool potty. (Yes, some former owner installed a potty right in the center of one of the walls.  Looks funny, but this is actually a great idea with a pool and lots of kids!). This 12'x9' room is going to be wearing lots of hats!

Jas formerly took down all the pegboard because he wanted to hang insulation in here (there wasn't any in the walls). And we ripped out the linoleum, as it was in bad shape and had a big rip in the middle.

Before we could lay down the new flooring, we had to get the adhesive residue off the floor.  Jas bought a scraping attachment for his sawzall and I got to do this work.



Much of the kitchen wall work I cannot help with (which frustrates me)...so I try to take over other stuff that I can do.

Residue gone...we laid down the new flooring.  And when I say "we", I really do mean we.  But I got to do the easy part in the middle...and Jas got to do the "Puzzle" pieces around the edge that required cutting and fitting and so forth.  He's always loved puzzles...and he did a great (and quick) job of this!

And since everything was just looking so spiffy at our new digs (or not), we decided to have our first dinner party:

Oh, wait...does it count as a dinner party if the guests have to use boxes for tables...

...and sit on paint cans and boxes???

So, yeah, we had our beloved "Walker Boys" over for supper.

Their daddy (our friend!) Phillip wanted to see the new place...

...and we jump at any chance to spend time with our four Walker boys.



Phillip is an architect, so the three of us had fun walking around the property and all through and around the house, checking everything out.

And the kiddos - of course - played soccer.

So, slowly but surely, progress is happening at our new house.  On a day-to-day basis, it often feels like we're spinning our wheels, so it is an encouraging exercise for me to do these update posts about the work at the house...because I can see that work actually is being accomplished.