Yea for Craigslist!

I've never used craigslist before since we didn't have one in SA, but I realized we had one here the other day. John suggested I list the double oven on there instead of just chunking it in the dumpster. I didn't really know if anyone would even want the thing, but craigslist is free so I figured it wouldn't hurt to try. It only took a couple of minutes to list and within 12 hours I had an email from someone wanting it! Clay and I met them at our house at 5:00 and they paid me for it and put it in their truck. I listed it at $25 so it's not like I'm rich now, but hey, it's $25 I didn't have before! And I was just going to put it in the dumpster. I like this craigslist thing. =)

September 22 and September 26

There hasn't been much time between traveling for work, but John was working on the wiring this week. Here he is up above where the dining room will be.

I wasn't fast enough with my camera for this one - John had just thrown a big hammer down to Jake. I think Jake is happy to still be alive!

Awww, poor John. He got an "owies", as Aulora would sadly say.

Speaking of Aulora, here she is driving the orange cart at Home Depot.

Julia was not impressed at all to be at Home Depot again. It took some convincing to get her to smile for this picture. (Thanks to Davus and Biggie for the visa card that bought her new outfit from the "monster store".) That girl loves to shop! Just not at Home Depot.

Daddy had to figure out exactly what kind of thingy mabob we needed.

The problem with shopping with kids is that there isn't room in the basket for anything else!

Try to Contain Yourself

Things are getting boring around Flip This Piece - we sincerely apologize. Things are happening, but they're small, mundane things that nobody cares about. The wiring is almost done. Woo! The rocks are mostly gone from the front patio area. Yeehaw! The dumpster was emptied today. Hi ho cherrio! I took the kids to Home Depot (again) and paid for the appliances. Cool beans!

See I told you. Boring stuff. I'll try to bring more excitement your way later......

September 21

Today I worked on the piece while the babies were napping. My arms ache from scraping all of the kitchen floor.

I HATE LINOLEUM!

Ok, I got that out of my system. I fee better now.

Anyway, I scraped the floor, went to the hardware store to get a few things, dug up the ugly border along the front sidewalk (with some help from Jake who is apparently a much better border-digger-upper!), swept, and started scraping the bathroom floor, but the linoleum in there was so stuck that it broke my scraper! It was around that time that I screamed out in frustration that I hated linoleum. I wonder if the neighbors heard? =) hahaha

When we got back from the store, I walked in the house and started shrieking because there was a big black bird flapping around in there! It kept ramming into the windows and just couldn't find its way out. Jake finally managed to shoo him out the back door. Too funny. I only wish I could have videoed it!

Oh, we also hauled the dishwasher out by the curb. I really hope it's gone in the morning. Surely somebody wants an old, ugly dishwasher that probably, maybe works. Surely......

I have to say.....

in every picture of the front of the piece, I just want to reach in and pull out that goofy looking white globe on the front brick column thing. It IS going to be gone one day - just in case any of you were feeling the same way.

There. Now I can go to sleep.....

The Brady Kitchen is No More

Isn't it beautiful? I mean really, don't you think we increased the value of the house by thousands of dollars just by removing the yellow and dark brown Brady kitchen? I don't know if I can stand waiting for the new cabinets to come in. Two more weeks I have to wait. TWO! As busy as I've been though, I suppose it doesn't even matter. It may as well be two days 'cause that's how fast it will seem.

Would anyone like a free double oven or dishwasher?

Or a stove?

Moving right along.......

The sprinkler system is done! Well, except for that one stupid spot where I took the picture, I guess. We haven't covered that pipe yet because there's a tree root in the way, making it hard to dig the little trench. But we will prevail!

The Back Porch

Now you see it

Now you don't!

The screened in porch had to go since it was all rotted out. I doubt that we'll rebuild another one. I think it would look good swept off with some rocking chairs. Wouldn't it be nice to sit there, rocking away while shelling some peas for dinner? Or snapping green beans. Either one, as long as I get to rock on my nice porch. =)

New Front Window

Before

After

So far our favorite changes are #1, the walls knocked out to create the big open flow, and #2, the new window we put in the front wall. It used to be a big solid brick wall - weird and foreboding looking, if you ask me. It looks SOOOO much better now and that front room is going to look great from the inside too! I'm glad we spent the money on it. What do you think?

Btw, the krudcutter stuff that was recommended for the brick stains did not work. =( We'll have to try something else......

Not So Easy

Just a quick update to say....this remodeling thing is not so easy. Something is always going to come up, go wrong, cost more, break, or whatever. That's ok, because we expect it, but it sure does keep you busy and moving.

Our original time line was to be finished and moving in after about 4 weeks - that's what John said anyway. I'll admit I secretly laughed at that. It looks like it's going to more like about 6 weeks total. That's really not too bad considering how much John is traveling. Last week and this week both he's pretty much been non-existent around here. He is making money though so who am I to complain. Praise God for a great job! After this week his traveling will be much less.

I will do my best to post some pictures of progress tonight. I've got to go to Home Depot again now. Luckily, it will not be with four children. ;)

Don't Try This at Home

Right after work today, I went to Home Depot and Lowe's with all four children. There should be rules about this type of thing.

They climbed into the dryers and closed the doors on each other, they pushed their way through huge, hanging rugs, they hid behind boxes of tile, and they tried to use the long pieces of accent tile as drum sticks.

I tried bribing them, I tried scowling at them. In the end, I decided to just get out of there as quick as we could!

The end result was the purchase of beautiful tile for the shower floor. Hopefully, it will look good enough to be worth that tortuous trip! ;)

September 16th

We bought our bathroom tile today finally. I guess we'll still have to go to Lowe's or Home Depot tomorrow to get the accent stuff though, since they didn't have what we needed at our discount place. What we really wanted was a beautiful travertine tile, but at $7+ a square foot we just couldn't bring ourselves to do it. Especially when we found a 20x20 ceramic tile that looks and even feels so much like the travertine we wanted. It was only $1.45 a square foot! Yea!

Here's one of our workers knocking out the hole for where the new window is going in the front of the house.

I'm glad I wasn't having to do this job - it didn't look fun!

The view from the inside. I think it will be a lot better once the white pick-up is gone. And the worker too.

I forgot to take a picture of this wheelbarrow the other day. We couldn't track our big nice one down, (I think we finally figured out that John's brother has it) so Clay let us use his. He was quick to say that it wasn't that great but we were welcome to it. I'm pretty sure that those neighbors who were entertained by me yesterday in the dumpster were also entertained when they watched me transporting broken pieces of tile in this thing. I was tempted to leave the wheelbarrow itself in the dumpster! I didn't though.

September 14th

I went over today and worked while the babies were napping. I wish I could have stayed longer, but at least I got to go for a while. Jake was there too so we spent most of the time hauling out big stuff to the dumpster that he couldn't do by himself. I was feeling like quite a "she-man" doing all that big lifting. The worst part was being terrified that you were going to get stabbed by a nail when picking something up. My leg got it a couple of times and then my chest. I lived. (Obviously.)

The dumpster is filling up. See my fancy little ramp I made when I needed to dump the big trash can in there? It was sooo heavy! You should have seen me trying to turn the stupid thing over to dump the contents out. I'm sure any neighbors who happened to be watching were quite amused as I twisted this way and that and heaved and hoed and jumped and pushed, trying to get that trash can emptied.

I cleared out the living room. It's so much easier to imagine exactly what I want to do now!

We hauled out the blue counter.

Jake took down the mirror and it fell over. Oops! That should be fun to clean up.

The New Windows

The place where we knocked out weird walls and brought it out even with the rest of the house is one step closer to being done. When I walked in on Saturday and saw it, I immediately knew we had made a great decision. Our original thought was to move the sliding glass door out to that wall (it was on one of the walls we knocked out.) I sat up in bed one night and realized I absolutely did not want a door there. I wanted windows! A glass sliding door in a nice dining area just didn't sound as pretty as windows. So I went to Lowe's and there you go.

Are you confused as to where this window is? The picture below shows the end of the kitchen area. To the right would be the three walls we took out. There were three walls that formed a rectangle shaped patio area right outside. We took out the walls and made a new wall even with the rest of that side of the house. It meant a nice open flow from kitchen to dining room to living room. Not cheap, but probably one of the best changes we'll make.

September 12th and 13th

We are so relieved the rain has finally stopped! It wouldn't have been so bad except that they were in the midst of digging for the sprinkler system so there was dirt everywhere. That dirt turned to very slippery mud that covered our sidewalks! Very messy and very dangerous.


The dumpster in all its glory. It's pretty huge. And that red car? That belongs to a friend - it needs a little work done on it and they don't have anywhere else to park it right now. So we're not even living there yet and we've already got a junker car in the driveway. Awesome.

Bye bye ugly 70's green tile. John David made sparks when he was helping to bust it out with the hammer!

You're next, blue counter top. Don't forget, if you want your own bit of "Piece" history, become a "Piece Partner" today! =)

The tile in the hall bath will soon rest in peace in the dumpster.

The master bath is preparing to be beautified.

And All God's Children Said....

"Praise the Lord!"

The sun finally came out yesterday and today it's out again! I love rain, really I do, but when you're trying to work on a big piece like we've got, the rain is just ridiculous.

Pictures will come later when I have time, but yesterday I had a big dumpster delivered to the Piece and the work has once again commenced. Still not in full swing due to various reasons, but it's going. John is still gone and Clay and Sandy left on a trip last night so I have all three younger kids this weekend by myself - this should be interesting. I do feel way better just having the dumpster there so we can clear out the demolition junk. I can almost think when I'm in there now!

Rain rain and more rain

I don't have any pictures right now so you'll just have to take my word for it - the Piece is the biggest stinkin' mud pit ever right now. Ughhh. John and Jake were nearly finished with the sprinkler system when all of this rain started. Jake continued to work for a a day or so but it's just not possible at this point. There's mud everywhere outside that house. I almost fell flat on my back when I was walking down the sidewalk this morning and my shoes starting sliding. Wow. What a mess that would have been.

All the rain also means most of the inside work has really slowed down. Construction guys must melt in the rain because they do not want to work in bad weather, let me tell you. At this point, with all the mud everywhere, I'm almost ok with that. I really don't want all the muddy mess coming inside too. The only problem is that this rain is not stopping anytime soon! Hopfully, I'll make it over to the tile store to pick up our bathroom tile today so that at least they can get the master bathroom going. All of the shower and tub tiles have been removed already.

I braved the weather with the two babies this morning to go to Lowe's for a comparison quote on our kitchen cabinets. The place we're getting them cost less than half of Lowe's price for the same thing! So the trouble of going with a small, non-high tech place is definitely going to be worth it. I've got to call them now........

The Cat's Away

The main cat anyway. John left for LA this morning and so now I'm supposed to be in charge of things at the house. I went by around 11 and things were ok. All I know is that my spanish is not so great and it's not so easy for me to be over there a lot. Like right now, two babies are napping (a very celebration worthy event) so I can't go over there like I want to. Hopefully all the "mice" will behave and get the work done.

I just got off the phone with the store where we are getting our kitchen cabinets. The man who helped us on Saturday is off today even though he specifically told us he would be there first thing this morning to run the numbers and officially place the order. So guess who didn't get any cabinets ordered this morning? Some (not too smart sounding) guy was going to try to find the papers so he could run the numbers for me. There's a price to pay for using the inexpensive places, you know.....

September 6th

One of our main goals for the day was to get all of the kitchen cabinets and counters ordered. In order to get some of the measurements we needed, it was helpful to take out some of the existing cabinets. I can just hear Doug from King of Queens saying "Demo-li-shi-on"! I love that show. =)

It was so great to see at least some of those ugly cabinets come out. We got our measurements and went up to the store to plot out the cabinet design only to realize that we didn't have every measurement we needed. Oops! Back to the car, drive across town and measure again. Live and learn.

The store we used is kind of like a handy man depot (a store that SA used to have). You can save a lot of money but they're not as user friendly as Lowe's or Home Depot. This store currently has no computer program to help in the kitchen design process. Lucky for us (and for the store employee) John had his graph paper and calculator and figured it all out. It doesn't seem like it would be hard, but it's like a big puzzle. The store was closed when we finished designing it so the worker man is going to call in the morning with the actual cost and then I'll go up and pay for it all. I can't even tell you how excited we are to get those cabinets in there. That's when it will really all start to come together!




Late that night, we went back to the house with John David since he had been wanting to help. I didn't have my camera with me. =( John David helped shovel out rocks from the front patio area and he helped hammer out the entry way tile. So cute! I kicked myself for not taking my camera.

Here's a video of John working. Not so very exciting, but I went to the trouble of loading it to Photobucket so it's getting posted. I have to keep taking the videos because you just never know when something funny might happen. And sorry it's kind of dark - the electricity is shut off in that room due to the construction going on.....

It's quite official now - we own our Piece!

September 4th

I was able to swing by the house for about five minutes today in between a doctor appointment for Julia and going to Wal-mart to get her prescription and groceries for dinner. It's killing me to not be over there more but there's only so much I can do. Being a momma to all the babies keeps me pretty busy!

They had made great progress in taking out those walls I mentioned in the last post. It was exciting to see such a big change!

The sprinkler system is close to being done.

We got to see a lot of it in action today!

My favorite thing so far! This picture was taken from near the front door.

That's Fernando, our contractor. (He's the one who will send you your blue counter top if you become a Piece Partner!)

This picture is taken from the kitchen. We can now see ALL the way
straight over to the end of the living room! How great is that???

The Front Room

I love the idea of this front room. I love it because I have no plans for it yet. I mean, we know what we're doing with it remodeling wise, but once we're living there......it can be anything! Formal living, play room, formal dining, office, 5th bedroom, piano room....whatever I want! It has french doors going into it and although it has one window now, it will soon have a second window that will look out into the front. It's going to be so pretty! I guess I'm just enthralled with my family of six having an unclaimed room. Very, very nice....

September 3rd

The biggest structural change we're making is to enclose what was a patio space and to incorporate it into the living area. It's not a very cheap thing to do, but it's so worth it already! We will now have the beloved "great room" feel....

What you see in this picture sits right between the kitchen and the living room -
it will soon be a dining area!

Here's the walls after they were just beginning to be stripped.

The view from the outside (which is on the side of the house).

We're not filling in the hole with brick. It will be a sliding glass door that leads to the side yard.

Big mess = Big progress
(at least in this case anyway)