#25 - Photo Overload

I snapped a lot of pictures yesterday.  Paint colors and doors, I think, are the major changes since the last photos I shared.  They don't look like sensational and drastic changes; but knowing what it's taken to get from point A to point B --- they sure feel sensational and drastic!






Here, in bullet form, is where we currently stand on most things!

• The furnace is running! Hallelujah, that's my favorite part.  The new furnace is installed and doing its job heating the addition.  The kids were off school a lot last week because of the frigid temperatures.  Our house has been bearable, even in the low temps, but I still spent a lot of time wearing a coat, hat and/or scarf when I was spending time in the kitchen (Does anyone else spend 85% of their life in the kitchen and the other 15% sleeping?).  We ran 3 space heaters during the drywall process and let's just say our electric bill was ugly. I opened it and thought I had forgotten to pay the last month's bill! So we stopped running the electric heaters and started using Kerosene as needed. Right now, the new furnace is heating the addition, our old furnace is heating the old house; but eventually we'll remove the old furnace and rely only on the new furnace for the entire house + the radiant heat in the new portion.
  
  
• As I type this, Matt is installing the controls for the radiant heat system.  He never ceases to amaze me. He did his research and studying and bought all the supplies, soldered together 52 joints and is connecting it in the utility room right now.   And interestingly enough, Camilla has a test tomorrow about energy, so while I was studying with her, Matt overheard and called her out there to give her a quick lesson about thermal energy and heat using the heating system components as examples. Afterward, I was able to use her knowledge of the insulation in the addition to help her better understand insulators and conductors.  Four our little hands-on learner, the timing is perfect!  Payoffs for life from seeing this whole process!  Or at least payoffs for 3rd grade tests.
  

  

  It's hard to believe that this is where it started in AUGUST.

  
  
  
  
  
  

  

  Building the system on the leftover wood from the Hobbit D

  
  
  
  

  

  Here it is mounted on the wall, still attached to the Hobbit Door remnant that Matt painted white.  See that round grey tank?  If you look at about 7:00 you can see, just off the edge, a hole where the cord from our oven went through the the Hobbit Door.

• Several of the doors are installed. We opted for prefinished doors in order to save a lot of time painting. Praise God, my mom and dad were in town for a good number of days around Christmas.  They graciously gave us an entire day of their time to come over and do whatever would be the most helpful.  And after they helped us the entire day, they took us out for dinner!  My mom and I did some painting and Matt and my dad hung doors.  I am so. glad. that my dad was here to work on that.  Hanging doors is right up there with scooping ice cream for me.  There isn't much else in the world that I would be less glad to do.  I mean, if hanging doors or scooping ice cream could make me a million dollars or save someone's life, I'm game.  Otherwise, count me out.  Matt is very meticulous and my dad is very meticulous, so they were two peas in a pod making sure those doors were perfectly plumb!  Way to go, Skilled Laborers. (Although, he was cheap labor so I guess his shirt is a lie.)
  

  

  The guest room looking out onto the landing.  The family room and stairwell are grey, and the guest room is sage, but the colors really don't show up well in photos.

• There are only 2 closets and one bathroom left to paint.  The closets will be all white and the master bath will be white, which means...all colored paint colors have been chosen and I no longer have to ponder Sparkling Sage (upstairs room), White Sheets (it's pink and gorgeous and the best color pink I have ever seen, but the name is completely inaccurate because if those were my white sheets it means I washed them with a new red T-Shirt), Repose Grey (family room) or Autumn Fog (master bedroom).  And there's one other lavender color in the laundry room but I cannot recall the name.  I was hesitant to choose an additional color (and a somewhat uncommon one at that) but I currently have a lavender laundry room and I really love it.  It's a laundry room so it's important to make it joyful and a tad whimsical so you feel like you're partying every time you throw in a load of white sheets with your new red  t-shirt.
  

  

  Family Room.  Doorway to laundry room is on the left.  Doorway back into the old house is on the right of the picture.

  
  

  

  Painting

• We're carpeting the upstairs, and just selected the carpeting for that a couple hours ago.  They come to measure on Thursday. We opted to carpet up there because it's cozier and a little quieter than having wood and an area rug.

We chose the one at the very bottom.  It's a warm light brown/oatmeal.

• The water heater arrives on 1/22.
• The lights are hung in the stair well.  Right after we hung them and put in the lightbulbs, I heard a little ccchhhrrrrck.  Sure enough, the light bulb was about to burst!  I moved out of the way and a split second later our Ikea Edison bulb shattered to bits.  Totally annoying.  We suspect Matt tightened it a little too much.  So now one of our lights is stylish with it's Edison bulb and the other light is rockin' a coiled fluorescent bulb until we change it.
  
    
  
  
•  The lights are hung in the upstairs bathroom too and we found a pretty mirror on clearance at Lowe's for about $35 marked down from $90.  This price was far better than any mirrors I had seen elsewhere and I like that it has a black edge to add a little contrast to the light pink, white and chrome.
  
  
  
  
  

• So what's left?   Water heater, water softener, switching over the water supply, removing the old utilities (furnace, softener, water heater, etc.) from their current location in the kitchen, painting, flooring, trim, siding, a few more doors, doorknobs, some work on the electrical service and 40 million other details.  It's going to be a while.  Who's the crazy lady that thought we would be finished by Christmas?  Christmas 2018 is more like it. It's been one year since we decided that we had to do something.  At this point last year, we were discussing whether to move or to add on.  The bank considers us at 85% complete, and this last 15% is what's going to take a whole lot of time.
• The cupboard doors we bought are stripped and ready for a fresh coat of white paint.
  
• Ezra caught the bug and has been pestering us for a good portion of the evening to build a tiny house in the backyard. (He's dead serious and is trying to convince us to give him a yes.)  And I'm kinda like, "Can we just stick with this GIGANTIC THING WE'RE WORKING ON NOW?!"
  
  
  
  And that's a wrap for now.  By the way, blogger makes formatting a big pain in the neck.  Which is why I leave weird spaces and bullets where they shouldn't be.  If blogging was my full time job, I'd perfect every last detail. But, this is merely a method to share info.  SO...there is no perfection here.  I have to save my atypical small bursts of perfectionism for when I have to hang doors.
  
  Good night, all!