Sheet Rocking

Much work, little blogging. That seems to be the story around here! Though honestly, there hasn't been a ton of work on the house this summer as the Forest Service has been keeping Travis quite busy this summer. But, here is a little back tracking of what we've been up too...

What better way to spend Fourth of July weekend than sheet rocking your kitchen?

And it's even better when you're sporting your wife's pink tool belt. =o)

Our beautiful new wall! It did take a little getting used to no being able to walk through anywhere we wanted but actually having to use the doorway. I suppose it's worth the inconvenience to have the (future) bathroom separated from the kitchen, though!

And what would 4th of July be without a berry pie to top it off!

Stay tuned for more exciting projects!

Saturday Progress

Last Saturday was so productive! We started off by taking advantage of the break in the rain to get up on the roof to resecure it and tar around all the nail holes in hope of stopping the leaking in our "shop" (It's also our future master bedroom, but for now it's a shop!).

(Unfortunately, while it did help, it didn't solve the issue of the leaking...good thing we are planning on reroofing everything this summer!)

Then while Travis climbed on the roof again to give the chimney a sweep I got some flower beds started off the front porch. I forgot to take before pictures, but here is what it looks like now.

Ok, so it's not very impressive yet, but just give it a couple months. Those ugly strips of green are rolls of wild flower seeds and my hope is that eventually they will be bursting with color and cheeriness!

Next Travis got out his monstrous chain saw (I'm intimidated to use the thing, it's huge!) and trimmed down the wildly overgrown bush in our yard.

Again I forgot to take a before picture but if you can imagine everything in this slash pile below attached to the tree in a wild, chaotic, random way, you'll get a pretty good idea of how it looked.

But since all work and no play supposedly makes you dull we took a break in the weekend and went morrell hunting. Here are our spoils...

I love McCall!

Tiling the Entry

The next project we tackled was tiling our entry way with some of the awesome slate tile we got in Boise (and completely weighed down the poor little car trying to haul it all back to McCall!). It's just a small area, but we really like the way it looks!

Travis started out by laying the HardiBacker and then screwed down some trim around the edge of it to mimic the height of our future bamboo floor. Then began the tedious process of laying the tile.

We love the natural slate tile, but because it's so "natural" it was very time consuming trying to match up the heights of all the tiles, arrange them the best we could so there weren't any drastic drops from one to the other and then use the mortar to even out the best we could!In "just" three hours we ended up with this!

Now we have a lovely, tiled entry way and it was worth all the time and patience it took to get it there (I think). I'm not sure we'll be quite so picky about the process when it comes time to lay the whole bathroom floor!

Free Dump Day

In our last post we talked about the spring bloom (aka "trash) that was starting to pop up in our yard. Well, now we are pleased to say that thanks to free dump day at the local landfill and the help of some great friends we now have a semi trash free yard! It's amazing how much difference it makes to no longer have a toilet in your yard!

What used to look like this...

Now looks like this!

Now we just have to figure out how to get all the broken pieces of glass picked up...

Spring Blooming

In McCall we get the first bloom of spring as the snow melts... not flowers but everything that is hidden in the snow. At our house we have a huge crop of trash blooming out of the snow. This is where the loader pushed up a pile when they came in to "clean up" while the bank still owned the property. This is just what accidentally got pushed into the snow pile while they were scooping up the rest of the trash. It looks like a lot but it's sure better than if they hadn't cleaned up with the loader.

It's about time we got ourselves a dumpster. This is all the debris from the subfloor project. It's been sitting here since my parents were here. I think it's about time to have our deck back again!
Well this is the last post today which finally catches us up. We are up to date now. Stay tuned for more projects soon to come.

Bedroom Paint

I was recently in Virginia fighting fire (my real job) and while I was gone Carissa finished the drywall patches and painted our bedroom. So long weird mural!

Before

After

Much better! (Don't mind the messy room)

Tile

We took my parents back to the airport in Boise and then proceeded to do some shopping for our house. We found a good deal on some slate tile so we bought 150 square feet of it plus mortar and grout. We then loaded it all up in our little Pontiac to haul it the 100 miles up curvy roads to McCall. We guessed the car was hauling about 1200 pounds which is about 400 more than it's technically supposed to haul. The manufacturers are always extra cautious right?

It doesn't look like much in the picture but the little car was sure squatting under all that rock.

Odds and Ends

Just a few things to finish up my parents trip to the projects. We moved our stolen and repurchased tub back onto our property. It was in the house when the bank foreclosed but magically moved next door a few days before we closed. The previous owners were very kind to sell it back to us though.

Even though it looks heavy it's really heavier than it looks!

And a little drywall patching so Carissa can do some painting.

And to top it off a new toy arrived via UPS (they can actually find our house, it's amazing). This new gadget is a huge magnet on wheels. So far we have not gotten a flat from a nail in the yard but there are plenty of them out there.

Doors Finally

Our next project was one that has been on the to do list from day one. If you will recall when we bought the house apparently the doors were negotiable. The upstairs balcony door (an exterior door) was missing when bought the place so we took the door from the downstairs bathroom and the insulation from the water heater and plugged the hole. It's worked quite well so far but two months is enough. The new door installation was relatively simple the tricky part was that the rough opening was shorter than a standard door. I opted to "adjust the rough opening instead of special ordering a short door. This required sawing through the log exterior. We were planning on using a chainsaw but chose the more precise option of a circular saw from both sides. Dad has crazy circular saw skills which is good because I probably would have tackled it with the chainsaw, spent all day whittling at it and still ended up with the wrong size of hole.

Anyway this is how it turned out. Maybe we will get a door knob in a few months.

And of course the bathroom door got to go back to it's home too.

Chimney Demolition

Aside from being the one moving stuff back and forth while Dad and I worked on the floor, Mom was also the picture taker and the chimney brick remover. As a result we don't have many in progress pictures of the chimney removal. This first one is after the floor bricks were removed and the second is once the job is complete.

We moved the stove out, busted down the bricks, propped the chimney up, put subfloor below the supports, replaced the supports, put down a pad of bricks, and moved the stove back in!

New Subfloor

This post is pictures of us installing the new layer of subfloor. The whole kitchen had to be moved into the living room while we put down the wood and then moved back. Thanks to Mom's hard work Dad and I didn't have to do much of that.

Compared to what was there before the plywood almost feels like a new wood floor... well it is a new wood floor but not a new "wood floor" an improvement none the less!

Sub Floor Removal

At the end of March my parents visited for five days to help us work on the house. We got tons of work done while they were here. The first project was to replace the subfloor in the lower level of the house. The original subfloor consisted of 1/2" particle board over 3/4" plywood. From the research I did online I found that particle board is not an acceptable subfloor but that 3/4" plywood is sufficient all by itself. So we tore out the particle board and just to be safe we replaced it with 1/2" plywood. We started tearing it out in the bathroom (and tore out the bathroom wall too) and progressed from there.

We also had to do a little leveling of the main subfloor where the refrigerator sits. Unfortunately you can only do so much with an already built house. At least the fridge won't be leaning noticeably anymore.

We really put that $1 garage sale pry bar to work. I think it more than paid for itself.

The last step in the removal of the subfloor was to cut out a weak piece of the main subfloor in the bathroom to be replaced. The previous tenants apparently weren't very good plumbers so they just didn't bother to fix leaky pipes.