have i talked about how fabulous my parents are today? because they are!

i had a volleyball tournament this weekend, so my mom and dad worked at my house. on saturday they installed a new window in the kitchen that will be right above the sink...pretty fabulous, eh?


there is a great window outlet in maple valley called millworks. i got this window for $50. the same basic thing would have cost $300 from home depot. i got to the house just in time to help clean up.

on monday, my team had an early departure from the tournament, so i was able to get to my house and help install a new door in the side of the garage.

first we removed the drywall from the inside and framed in a new opening. that made cutting out the siding really easy from the inside.



here's a little action shot for you...my dad is a master of the reciprocating saw. (i am his apprentice, and i'm getting pretty good...i'm not too shabby with a skill saw, either!)

yup...that's how you make a door...


pretty fabulous...

battered and bruised

last weekend at the house was rough. we got a lot of the junk wood loaded up and while my mom took it to the dump (half a ton of rotting, rat pee covered wood), my dad and i worked on the kitchen floor. we only had a few more floorboards to put down before we could call it good and move onto the next project.

well, as i was trying to lower myself down between the floor joist, i put my heel on the concrete pier in the foundation...and slipped. i banged my left arm in two spots on the way down...

i also hit my side, and have a bruise on my ribcage..."luckily" i was next to the main floor beam, so it actually "caught" me as i fell backwards...if it wasn't there i would have fallen straight through and landed flat on my back in the crawlspace.

this picture really doesn't do it justice...there are so many lovely colors that just don't shine through....purple, blue, green, yellow...it's brilliant.

not two seconds after getting up and trying to get on with work, i got a mother of a sliver embedded in my right hand. my mom had to perform surgery when she got back from the dump.

it was a good day.

awesome in fact.

tonight i'm getting an estimate to replace the garage roof - our recent rain storm definitively proved what i had suspected - it's leaking. i ran into an old friend at church on mother's day and he owns his own roofing company now. go figure...

tomorrow i'm getting another estimate and advice on what kind of heating/cooling system to install. this is the thing that's holding me up the most right now. i need to get an electrical permit to do all my electrical (we're all ready to start), but i need to know what type of heating i'm going to have in order to apply for the permit.

i have a volleyball tournament all three days this weekend (last one of the year!), so i'm not sure how much work we're going to be able to do. i'm hoping that we'll at least be able to install the new kitchen window and side door in the garage. we'll see...june is nearly hear and while i feel there's not much more to do before i can move in, i'm not convinced it'll happen by the end of the month.

plumbing

last weekend we replaced all the plumbing. and when i say "all" i mean, everything but the waste line to the kitchen sink...and when i say "we" i mean, my friend matt and his dad. : )

check out their awesomeness!

the bathroom walls are back courtesy of my fabulous father! this pic is taken looking through from the kitchen...


this one is from the bathroom doorway. obviously the tub will go against the back wall, the toilet over the black pipe in the ground, and the pedestal sink to the left of that. note the gorgeous new main stack! ooooooo....


the old stack! eeeeeeewwww...
(does anyone happen to know if cast iron is recyclable?)


here's the new closet for the 2nd bedroom/office - the small section to the right is where the washer and dryer will be, then the larger closet will house the water heater and storage.


i bought a stack washer/dryer at the sears day-after-thanksgiving sale that are still sitting in boxes in my parent's garage, but at least now i have a new washer box! puuurdy...


hot and cold for the kitchen sink, as well as a brand new, easily-accessible shut off valve. matt used "pex" a flexible plastic piping and attached it to copper fittings. the awesome part about pex is that if the water freezes, it will actually expand instead of bursting, then when the water thaws, it will go back to it's original shape. pretty awesome stuff!


also, we installed a line for a refrigerator ice maker...faaaancy...
(i probably won't even be able to afford a fridge with an ice maker by the time i'm done with this, but it's good for resale value at any rate...)


i did install the new hose bib (practically) all by myself...but of course i forgot to take a picture of it...

thanks again to the lindstroms for all their help...and for saving me tons of money on this job!

up in the attic

about a week ago, while knocking down the wall between the bathroom and 2nd bedroom/office, we thought some rat droppings had fallen out of the ceiling. i called and had the company who cleaned my crawlspace come out and take a look.

luckily it wasn't rat poo, but it was some really weird, old insulation with tiny little black balls. the insulation guy wasn't sure what it was, so we decided to get rid of it...just to be on the safe side.

they came out on saturday and hooked up a giant vacuum...


3 hours and five GINORMOUS bags of insulation later...




there may just be some extra storage room up there afterall...

walls schmalls...

we've taken out all the walls between the 2nd bedroom/office and the kitchen since all the plumbing is getting replaced...because we had to cut the pipes to get to the floor boards...because of all the dryrot...because someone thought it would be a good idea to pour the concrete steps right up against the house with no vapor barrier...

because walls are over-rated anyways...

welcome to my studio home.

we've replaced about half of the floor joices in this half of the kitchen and bathroom. now we're puttingin new floor board.

we found what is *hopefully!* the last bit of rot..underneath the major load-bearing wall. good thing we found it...this could have been tragic farther down the road.


we just have to take out a section and scab onto the existing floor that's not rotted.
hopefully this is it for the demo...knock on wood...good, solid, nice wood...

well, indoor demo, at least....
my brother and dad tearing out the old deck. lots of fun stuff under there...eek!!


i'm thinking of getting this for the front door...you like?

overwhelmed...

now there's rat turds falling out of the ceiling and the house needs to be prepped for a complete plumbing overhaul by friday afternoon.

i can't deal today.

here are some blossoms from my apple tree. i need to add a little happiness...