Been a long time

It's been a little over a month since the last update and we feel like the pace of progress has slowed to a halt. That being said, with the coming warmer weather, we're eager to get outside and enjoy going some manual labor outdoors! Over the past month, we have made some progress on various tasks:

We have begun to hang the laundry room cabinets, as pictured here. The sink base is not yet installed and the crown molding is not yet attached. That will be a quick day's work sometime in the near future (waiting on a part for the washer/dryer).


We have also been interviewing and trying to pick out our kitchen contractor, cabinets, appliances, etc. This is more leg-work than manual labor. With that in mind, we have to be ready to install our new hardwood floor as soon as we get a contractor in to replace a structural beam and we order our kitchen cabinets. From that point, we need to have all the flooring installed by the time the cabinets arrive. We have selected Brazilian cherry hardwood flooring and we will be going with white trim and white doors throughout the house. I think Jenni has looked at a few too many Pottery Barn catalogs, myself. But, I know it will turn out beautifully. Here are some progress shots showing the removal of the foyer ceramic tile and the hardwood in the family room.


With some warm weather we also have headed outside to get a little bit of yard work done. We plan to rototill the entire back yard and re-grade it to have a nice continuous slope away from the house. Right now I would call it "lumpy" at best. We removed a rotted cedar railing from the external access stairwell to the basement as pictured. What's left are 3 very deep post-holes that were filled with concrete that we had to break up and remove. We'll be replacing these within the next few weeks.


We also have been trying to figure out a way to get our sump pump to drain away from the house. With the current drainage pattern we have a mini lake next to the house (and in the neighbor's yard). We found a buried drainage pipe yesterday for just the use. Now we just have to try to figure out why it wasn't being used! However, with rain in the forecast and the weekend winding down, we didn't take it apart to determine its usefulness. This will be a nice task for a drier day in the near future!

More updates pictures to come soon. We have determined that we are very good at demolition, but rebuilding everything seems to be a much slower task!