happyflamily

This weekend is the big one…we are moving to the new house. Our first home.

We will have a little work to do before we can move in- painting, washer/dryer work, etc.  But we are going to work on it frantically and hopefully be ready to move in the morning.

Sophie and I have packed about 10 boxes. Shad and Lillie have packed none. Truth be told, we have almost nothing packed. However, with the exception of our garage, we have very little that we CAN pack.  We are going to spend a night or two with GranMolly and Gromper so that we can wash linens, pack stuff, etc.

Wish us luck, it’s going to be a big job, especially because we have not lined up much help. A few friends plan to “stop by”, but it may mostly be Shad and I. Memory building, right?

We laid the mosaic tiles for the shower floor.  We had to take the girls with, but they jumped in and helped. Sophie and Lillie started a “tile store” and made us ask for the shapes we needed. Sophie kept a list of what she’d sold to us and the whole process took a lot longer than it would have without the store, but it was also a lot more fun.

But alas, one grows weary of tile and the girls soon retreated to the living room to watch a movie. The green on the walls is one I picked out…

The bathroom as we are laying the warm floor…

The warm floor is on a timer so that we can make sure the floor is warm when we get up in the morning. So luxurious…

And finally Becky gets to lay flooring rather than rip it up. After checking out our options, we went for the cheapest option, with the intent to figure out what we really want and need in a kitchen floor and replace it later.

Last night we installed kitchen moulding. Tonight we will be working on finishing up the bathroom in preparation for the plumber and electrician and maybe installing more moulding.

Not all the work will be done when we move in, but no matter, it’s fun to stretch out the love, right?

As moving day draws closer (June 19th and 20th) we are scrambling to finish the bathroom, and the rest of the house for that matter. Here is the tile progress so far…

The biggest project this weekend was, however, the floor of the dinning room. In all of my life I’ve never gone through this much trouble for 100 square feet in my life. I think that having babies is easier than what I had to do to reveal the hardwood under years of bad choices by past homeowners. I had to take up two layers of linoleum (Shad took up most of the second layer) and was then left  with a layer of thick, black gunk. This glue had to be scrubbed off with paint thiner and scrub brushes.

The floors are done now and, like labor, I’m already forgetting how bad it all was. And then I take off my pants…

Apparently my plumber’s crack doesn’t give a lot of protection to the buttocks area.

After weeks of prep in the way of demo, drywall, plumbing and electricity, we finally began tiling this weekend.

First mixing concrete…

This is the shower, with tar paper, all built and ready for slate tiles…

Taping the seams for a flat surface…

And the tiling begins…

Jason came down to help us, he was very helpful and you should all be ashamed that you haven’t done the same…

This was what we had at the end of day two. There is much more to do. But we are pleased with the start.

Hard at work, Sophie and I found another layer of linoleum underneath the one we started to rip up. So the light stuff was on top and this brown stuff that we are working on is the linoleum under the white stuff and glued directly onto the hardware we are trying to unearth. Sophie was very helpful and all of it is now up. Well, the top layer is. For all of that hard work, we now have uglier linoleum with headless nails poking out of it. But I still feel like we are closer to something.

Lillie meanwhile was helping Daddy by “handing him nails and giving him kisses.” She felt this required the use of safety goggles.

Despite the large bathroom, it is difficult to take very nice pictures. Here is one from about a week ago. We are further along now and those photos will be posted soon, maybe tomorrow.

The half wall is going to be the only barrier between the shower and the rest of the bathroom, we are not going to have a shower curtain or a will between the shower and the tub. Basically, what is in there so far is how it’s going to be, plus tile, vanities and a toilet, of course.

For all of you keeping track, we move out of the rental on the 20th of June, but we hope to actually be done moving the weekend before that so we have some time to clean out the rental and tie up loose ends. Let’s see how that goes.