Swim Spa Removal

Well it has been almost a month since our swim spa has been gone!  And we sure did fill up that space already since we moved in last weekend and our living room, kitchen, and office areas are not done yet.  So the sun room is our catch all so it is very good that we  no longer have the swim spa in there.  I thought you guys might enjoy seeing some pictures of how they removed it since we thought it was pretty neat to see.  First we had to remove the patio doors and windows that are one piece.  Uncle Alan did a lot of the work to remove it and then Bryan & John finished it up the night before they came.  So our sunroom sat with just a tarp covering it for a couple of days.  We actually had to damage all the vinyl trim to get it off and it was not a simple project.  But thankfully we had my uncle to help us put it back on properly so it is sealed correctly.  It still needs the trim though.  The swim spa movers came the next morning and it went very smoothly.  They got here early despite being given the number part of our address backwards!  I saw them drive by and said hey maybe that is them since it was a work truck and then they came back later and said that they had seen our long black driveway and remembered the gentleman telling them that and thought it was worth a shot to see if it was the right address since they couldn't get a hold of the gentleman because he was riding a motorcycle and couldn't answer his phone.  The spa movers actually use thin pvc pipe to roll the spa after they jack it up which was quite surprising since that spa is crazy heavy!  They also had to get it over the base part of the doorway which stuck up a little from the rest of the concrete floor but they didn't seem to have any problems and they got it done so quickly that they had to sit around and wait for the tow truck guy since he wasn't scheduled to come until an hour after they came since they don't ever know exactly how hard it will be to get it out.  Getting it on the truck went well too but proved to be more difficult than getting it out of the sunroom.  Almost everyone thought we should keep the swim spa but it is not practical for us and we would rather have the space for other things like books! :)  The kids were a little sad to see it go too.  What kid wouldn't want a big pool in their house?  But they also are enjoying having the space and they love books too!

Bryan & John removing the rest of the door and frame.

Spa Removal Company Owner

The gentleman who bought the spa for his wife.

The spa is out!

We were surprised that with the spa gone it actually made the space seem smaller!

It looks so empty but it certainly is not this empty now!

The kids on the "stage" of our sunroom.

New Flooring

We originally were only planning on replacing the dining room, kitchen, and small bathroom (now pantry) flooring but when we ripped out the carpeting and saw the sub flooring that was soiled with cat urine we thought that the other areas upstairs might have the same problem.  Nonetheless we were still only going to be replacing the flooring in the same areas until Roberta's dad (a flooring and specialty tile professional) felt quite strongly about us ripping up the carpeting in the living room and hallway so we could see what the sub flooring looked like under it.  He felt so strongly about it that he offered to tile our basement bathroom and laundry room for free and provide the tiles for free as well since we were planning on using the flooring we had bought from him for those areas and if we used it for the extra flooring upstairs then we wouldn't have enough for those rooms.  Well, we certainly weren't going to pass up a huge deal like that!  So we were very thankful he was so generous and after ripping up the additional carpeting we did realize that we needed to also replace that sub flooring as well.  So our project doubled in size!  And the flooring that Roberta suggested (which here dad had in his warehouse) was perfect!  It is vinyl tile and it is beautiful and you don't have to worry about it getting wet or scratched!  So Roberta's dad came and got the vinyl tile started and then Alan & Roberta came a different day and laid the flooring for us!  What a huge blessing and they did a wonderful job!

New tar paper and plywood subflooring

Uncle Mark came and helped out too!

Mr. John hard at work again!

Uncle Alan getting it just right!

Roberta's dad who so generously came and helped us out!

Roberta enjoying our new floor that she put in!

Isn't it pretty?!

Bedrooms

Well all the bedrooms have been painted including the closets.  And one of them even has a bed!  Leah wanted an ocean room and since her bunkmate is Maddie she pretty much got to pick whatever she wanted!  And Maddie thinks it is pretty neat too.  I researched online to try and figure out how to paint the walls and it was quite difficult in my opinion with 4 different paint colors and trying to blend them when I really didn't know what I was doing.  Some walls turned out better than others but Leah loves it and I am happy with how it turned out.  She wanted it to be as if you are in the ocean and there are the different levels of the ocean all the way down to the ocean floor.  And she wanted the bunk bed to be the "boat".  We got the bunkbed for their room off of Craigslist and got it set up right away so my uncle would have an actual bed to sleep on instead of an air mattress.

Sam has gotten quite a bit of practice with painting and she does a really good job but she prefers to roll vs trim.  So I can trim and she can roll.  Perfect!  Leah and Bella helped paint in the closets and enjoyed that.  Grandma & Grandpa have helped with priming & painting different parts of the house quite a bit too!

Jake wanted a military room again but this time he wanted it to be more of an outdoors type of jungle military room.  We have some old looking lanterns for his room too.  I seem to always forget to take after pictures when we are done painting so his room has a bunch of boxes in it moved by the Kohlstedt Mini Movers.

Sam & Bella wanted a western/ cross room.  Bella is pretty easy going and loved all of Sam's ideas including picking yellow for the room!  Sam & Bella's room is the only room that got the ceiling skim coated by Uncle Alan so it looks so nice and smooth.  All the rest of the bedrooms ended up getting left with the textured ceilings and painted.  We did scrape all of the bedroom ceilings first though and that made a huge difference in how they looked and we were able to wash them.  Before that they were like stalagtites sticking out from the ceiling and looked so dirty and you cut yourself on them if you tried to clean them.  It took hours and hours of scraping to scrape the entire upstairs (minus the kitchen - the only room without a textured ceiling)!  We are so thankful we are done with that now!  Uncle Alan wanted to test out skim coating on Sam's room so that is why hers got done and he did an awesome job on it!  But it also made him realize he did not want to do the living room/dining/ hallway area!  It is not an easy job trying to get everything all smooth and even.  

Even our bedroom got a new color!  After 17 years of having our room the same style I decided to change it up and I am excited about it and Bryan is happy to not have an Indonesian/ Asian room anymore but don't worry I won't give up my indo stuff that easy and will figure out a way to incorporate some of it in there still!  Grandpa came up with the idea to heighten our shelving boards in the closets since the boards themselves were too deep so that when you tried to put a hanger on or off it was quite difficult to do.  So rather than loose shelf space he thought we could just add little chunks of wood above the brackets to add some space between the pole for hanging clothes and the shelf.  Voila!  It worked and Grandma worked on painting the wood pieces and the shelves too.  What a great idea!

A number of the rooms don't have any trim or the trim needs to be painted or restained and all the doors are in bad shape (their cats scratched everything all up especially trim and doors) but that is a project for later.  None of the bedrooms had ceiling lights either but John and Bryan have done the electrical and now they all ceiling light fixtures!  Yay!

One wall down - only 5 more to go!

Leah wasn't feeling good this day and she was thankful to have a bed to lie down on.

Leah & Maddie's room has become the toy room for now.

Jake's military green (a lighter shade) room.  He wanted it to be more of an outdoors type of jungle green.

Mommy & Daddy's Room - A Jade color

Grandma painting the shelving for the closets in the basement (future storage room).

Jake spray painting his light fixture a brass color and doing some graffiti on the cardboard!

More Work

Here are a few more pictures of some of the work we have done. 

Uncle Alan working hard in the bathroom.

Cousin John working on removing old vinyl flooring.  John has been a huge help and has been at our house almost every day sharing his expertise with us and really helping to move things along and even sharing some jokes along the way!

Daddy trying to get all the squeaks out of the floor.  There sure are a lot!  We ended up having to rip out almost all of the subflooring because of cat urine from the previous owner.

The kids got to have fun and create some "artwork" on the walls in Leah & Maddie's room before we primed and painted.

Painting the ceiling.

Grandma helping trim the primer.  Grandpa & Grandma have really helped us to get a lot of projects done.

Leah & Bella got to help prime the walls which they really enjoyed and Mom had to try to and sit back and let them do it which was pretty hard for me! :)

Child Labor

Well we have been putting our kids to work and some of it they like and some not so much and they have been a big help but they also make sure they get lots of breaks and free time!  And even Daddy gets in on the fun!

Sam has been a huge help all around and especially with scraping ceilings to the point where scraping ceilings is not so much fun anymore! 

Scrub scrub and scrub some more!

The kids really enjoyed destroying this wall with Daddy & Grandpa!

 

Hey kids back to work!!

Too cute!

Our driveway has had a lot of thrills and spills!

Daddy is just a tiny bit excited to finally have some land to use his toys on.  But he probably wishes he could be doing more of this than cleaning and remodeling!  I think Jake is enjoying the ride too!

Bryan taking all 5 kids for a 4 Mobile (what Bella calls the 4 Wheeler) ride.

Scootering in the basement.