I do not encourage trying what we have done. It has turned out really well. We got a lot of good breaks. We had good help.

Painted all the walls upstairs now. Bathroom pedestal sink is installed.

Here is the marble floor we discovered under the ugly linoleum.

That’s half inch by one inches pieces of tile with the thinnest of grout. Very nice. In great shape.

Touch up the trim, clean, paint and install the quarter round on the baseboards.

So we plan to be moving next week one way or another. If we can start Monday, that means we get a lot of stuff moved by the weekend and then hit the big pieces. If we start moving next weekend, I am not 100% sure how that will work.

Buying a matching pair of vintage blonde dressers tonight.

And then we should be past this stress in March.

Last night we sanded the surface with 100 grit paper in one room and cleaned it completely with tack cloth and mineral spirits and then carefully put another coat of poly on. It is a little better, but still awful.

It looks like the long weekend of agony we spent sanding the floors may have to be redone… At least A) my back muscles are stronger now from doing it last weekend and B) maybe we only have to do a single grit sanding or maybe two rather than the 3 intense ones we did before… I don’t think our floors can be sanded like that again anyway…

It seemed like we were so close and it looked so good, from a distance…

Well, we are not there yet with the bathroom. The toilet was installed, but there is need of a hammer drill to get the pedestal sink installed. I have one. We’ll get it in there soon.

The bathroom door had to be remounted to the outside of the door frame (luckily they put in a door frame where this is possible) because the new toilet was too long to be cleared with the door opening in. This was something we wanted to do anyway to make the small bathroom “bigger”. We also have long term plans to change the hall linen closet to a bathroom closet, and changing that door helps that too. So, the tile was cleaned under the new toilet and sink, beadboard installed and primed along with baseboard.

New toilet is 20 inches high where the old was 14. It just seemed crazy short.

Bedroom is near completely painted. The color we picked was described as Tiffany box blue and, bygod, it is!

Installed most of the new ceiling tiles in the basement, but all the ones requiring cutting are left to go.

Filled the holes where there used to be deadbolt locks on all the doors. Apparently the old, old owner rented out rooms to students and wanted everyone to be secure… Needs a second and maybe third application of filler.

Tomorrow will be 4 weeks we’ve been at this. Every day. All day long for Ms Swanky most days and all weekend long for me and most evenings.

I had thought we would live in this house for a few years and then move on to something we liked more… I also once thought “All this house needs is some cosmetic updating. No biggy.” I don’t think I will go through this again. I’ll go through it when I can hire someone else to do it all… But, we have more time than money right now and a lot fo friends and family that know how to do all these things and are willing to help.

I just wonder if we’ll tackle the kitchen before we move or if the bathroom is the last side track… The kitchen just needs some minor cosmetic changes…

Good luck on the remodelling. Owning a house can be very rewarding. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

Kudos to you both for tackling a project like this. Mrs. BH and I have alway hired contractors…very, very, very expensive contractors.

Rats! Well, mice at least. Ms Swanky’s parents came by and one of the little buggers decided to die right next to his breiefcase, vomiting blood…

New carpet is coming for the basement on Thursday, so Ms Swanky thought it would be good to remove the drop ceiling tiles and clean them off while there was crappy carpet under them. She found LOTS of mice turds and we are tossing all the tiles for new ones.

It’s been three weeks now. No food in the house for at least those three weeks, maybe more depending on what they might have eaten while everything was in boxes for the movers for weeks before. So, maybe they have been without much sources of food for way over a month now and the house is not so great a place to hang out any more. It’ll be another month before we are fully in there and so the poison will continue to knock them off. And then, we will bring the Dogcats to kill and kill and kill.

All the carpet tack strips are out of the house and the quarter round from the floor boards. Most of the staples are gone. 3 of 4 rooms are primered.Ready to start painting trim in some rooms and ceilings, etc.

It’s been way cold here this week. It was in the 70s for a while and we were working with all the windows open and it was like spring. Not it’s in the 20s and winter again.

Ms Swanky managed to get $10 kitchen cabinet hardware for 50 cents each and a bathroom light that was $51 for $5. Yeah.

We have gotten the dining room mostly primed and the living room and bedroom. All staples and tack strips out of the dining room and maybe the living room. Removed paneling from basement to prepare for new carpet arriving on Thursday.

It is really looking good now as one room after another is primer white. But we still must paint the ceilings, finish priming lot sof stuff. Paint all the trim an doors white and then pick colors for the rooms and paint them. Next comes repairing the floors (vents boarded up, etc) and then sand and refinish and seal the hardwood floors. That will get us to a point to begin moving in. We may also do some big work in the kitchen. Remove two windows and drywall the holes and swap some cabintes and stuff around. Not sure right now. Seems like too much to tackle to get moved in by the end of February.

Need more money, time and back massages…

Actually… It sounds like work. Good work, though.

Sort of A Work Blast!