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.

Construction - I Mean Destruction

Lately it seems more like we are doing a whole lot of destruction instead of construction and we are ready to see our house a little more put together but we still have a long ways to go!  So again we are praying for patience.  But we have been blessed to have family willing to come and help us out and make the house move along a little faster.

Grandpa karate kicking down the wall!!  He showed that wall who was boss!

Grandma patiently peeling off lots of really stuck on tape.  Good times!

More weird walls that need to come down!

Alan & Roberta & Mathew also came to help and take down another wall!

The wall has been defeated!  It is so much nicer and more open without it there!

Leah was really good at getting those stubborn flooring pieces up and she worked a long time on them!