Porch Remodel: Weeks 5/6

So I'm a little behind in this posting thing.  December is my favorite month in kindergarten, so I have an excuse!  It's much more fun to make gingerbread cookies and decorate gingerbread houses and search for our lost gingerbread man (after making lost posters for him. (Yes, I do make my kids work for it!)) than to sit down for an hour and write a blog.

My other very good reason? Draco.  Yes, the thunder snow storm of the year.  Although it gave me a snow day to sit at home and potentially write this update, it also meant that I had to shovel which proved very difficult.  I'm, well, exhausted.

The only real progress I made on the driveway before I got too hot and tired.

16 inches and still snowing as of 3:30pm on Thursday.

 So Friday ended up being a snow day too.  The Friday before winter break.  And, of course, I left my camera at school with all the pictures of the room that I had taken over the past two weeks.  (Not to mention my kids' Christmas gifts and the ornaments they made for their families.  Kicking myself for not sending them home on Wednesday!)  So there aren't any progress pictures, just today, Dec. 21st, but that's ok ;)

We decided to take out the sliding glass door and just leave it open, no french doors like we were originally thinking. 

Lucy sunning herself in her new room

 We also decided to paint the ceiling white so it didn't look so much like a cave.  We still have another coat to go, but it looks better already.

new fan

looking into the kitchen

Here's our new sliding glass door going to the deck and check out all of that snow from Storm Draco!  There's at least 18 inches out there. CrAzY!

 And our beautiful new floors!  I love them. 

Hand scraped oak.

Oh and remember that picture towards the beginning of this post of the awesome progress I made on the driveway?  Well, by the time that Andrew got home 2 hours later, it looked like I hadn't shoveled at all.  He wouldn't have known if I hadn't taken a picture.  We then spent another hour and a half to two hours shoveling the 2 feet deep snow off the driveway.

Feliz navidad!

Porch Remodel Week 4

It's almost done!  And I can't even wait for next week when our beautiful hand-scraped wood floors get installed :)

The past few weeks I have tried taking pictures every day so we could see all the stages of this remodel.  However, this week has been packed with after school meetings and lots of gingerbread prep (eek!  I love the gingerbread unit!  It's right up there with the chick unit (which Madison doesn't do, so now hatching the little babies this year, sad face)).  Anyway, that has meant that it is way dark by the time I get home at 5pm then walk the little girls.

In my defense, the only thing that happened this week was drywall.  So the room didn't look a whole different day by day.

Day 11/12: taping and mudding

 The amount of dust that accumulated in the house is ridiculous.  Especially when one little girl loves to play with her ball and she tracks the dust everywhere.  I have little white puppy paw prints all over the floor.  Especially since she played with her ball for about 10 hours yesterday. #ocdMaddie

The death trap stairs also came down this week which means that we can finally let the girls out on the deck without making a chair barricade first. 

 Day 13: continued mudding and sanding

 We're hoping to paint the ceiling white soon...

 Day 14/15: putting the "orange peel" texture on the walls

 Day 15: Paint!  Which doesn't look a lot different than the texture.  Let me introduce you to "Realistic Beige."  Realistic, isn't it?  It's the same color we have in the rest of the first floor, with the exception of the turquoise kitchen,

 This weekend, Sunday: no work done, but snow!

 And some daytime pictures of the room.

 And a little Maddie girl.

 Tomorrow (Monday) the sliding glass door from the kitchen to the new room will be coming out.  We were originally going to put french doors in, but decided that they would be open all the time anyway, so might as well just take it out.  (You wouldn't even believe how much it costs to take a door out.  Merry Christmas to me!)

On Wednesday the floors will go in followed by trim and then the final electrical.  We should be done by next week :)