Floors are sanded!  David had no idea the process would be so physically strenuous.  The first sanding took about 13 hours - one long day.  The second sanding was substantially easier but still took about 7 hours.  This was one of the last steps we were unsure about because neither of us had ever refinished hardwood floors before. Here's David working with the edging sander after getting the bulk of the floor with the drum sander.  You can't tell it, but David is miserable.  This is around 10:30 last night.

Here are some pictures of the finished floor

Tomorrow (Friday) the stain will be applied and within a few more days the floors should be completely finished.  

Earlier this week, David worked on fixing the downstairs bathtub.  He'd ripped out the shower wall to put in a new shower - the previous plumbing was incomplete.  This bathtub is still a little dirty after many cleanings, eventually we'll redo all of this.  However, we need to be able to clean ourselves in this house within a week, therefore the current set up will work okay.  Tile still needs to be grouted and sealed, that will be a job for next week when David's dad and brother (and possibly sister-in-law?) are here to help.

COLOR!  We've finally added some color to the house.  Here's a few pictures of how white everything became after priming every inch (except the floors).

The walls and cabinets were crying for color.   David sprayed them...

And I sat them carefully in their classroom (I thought they looked like eager students facing their teacher)

 

And the finished product.

In case you don't know our paint taste - we like COLOR!  So within a few weeks our white walls will be gone.  We did leave the trim white.  It looks great. 

This is the "walk through room" - it's the one David completely dry walled and took out the drop ceiling.  

We have a few windows to scrape paint from.

I haven't posted many pictures of the upstairs rooms - this is the one we'll make our bedroom.  Has built in shelves and big closet.

 

This is the other room upstairs...those are windows!  Hopefully the next pictures I post you'll be able to see the windows.

 

And this is the hallway upstairs.  It had been leaking through the old drywall.  David tore into it and found this brick.  We'll leave it exposed.  He ended up doing a little work on the chimney on the roof and stopped the leaking - the drywall repair around the chimney keeps slipping our mind. Maybe tomorrow it'll get done.

 

Long work days on the house have begun.  We're to be out of our current house in 18 days - we still have lots to do!  Luckily this weekend David's friend Jesse came to help.  Between the three of us we accomplished a lot from mid yesterday till today.  Granted we worked till after 11:00PM each night.

First order of business for the guys was the trim.  There was A LOT of trim to put up.  It looks great.

Our living room was turned into a wood working shop.  It's become so many different things during the construction.  Good thing it's a nice massive room!

Next task was patching the wood floors.  Neither had actually done this before - but between the two of them, they figured it out and saved a lot of money by not hiring someone to do it.   

Here's that section when they were finished.  Shouldn't even look like a patch after the wood around it is sanded.

 

 While floors were getting patched, I spackled all of the holes in the new trim...for many hours.

Here's the other 2 patches they worked on.  One is right behind David - it's finished.  This is the doorway between the hallway and living room that had previously been quite small.  It's now nice and big with trim up and patched floor.  In this picture he's working on a very random patch in the hallway.

Jesse also helped us get our stove.  It's an old 1950's stove and is heavy.  Thanks to Jesse for assisting with the stove.  He's already said he's busy whenever we need to move it out - we'll be looking for different friend for that move.  I'll post pictures of the stove soon.

Exciting pictures of the house are slowing down.  The last week has been filled with dry walling, mudding, skim coating textured walls and ceilings and a little bathroom cleaning.  The house has gone from white with red carpet to pure white.  Little boring.

Last Saturday we skim coated the ceiling in the kitchen and dining room.  Someone had previously had a brilliant idea of putting UGLY swirls on the ceiling.  It'll be nice and flat when we're done.

 

Everything was becoming so orderly and clean - so we did a little more demo in the kitchen.  Every time we think we're done destroying things - we find something else to make a mess of.  We did all of this Wednesday night when I finished work.  We were feeling energetic!

Here's David starting to tear out the kitchen wall and tile backing.

Little while later - getting it ready to dry wall

  

Here's the other side of the kitchen.  David found a hot wire just hanging out in this wall - not attached to anything.  Probably left by the same people that made the swirls.  We'll be turning it into another outlet. 

And new drywall!  Looks so much better - no huge holes from where we tore out the cabinets.  We got a little tired after doing all of this on Wednesday night - so David finished the drywall the next day (no pictures of that yet)

The other side with it's nice sheet of drywall.  New shelves will look great on these walls.  

I also managed to clean SOME of the downstairs bathroom (it's disgusting!!) - clean your bathtubs people.  Or the next owners of your house will curse you.

Drywall day.  

We recruited our brother-in-law Micah as well as some hard working Burmese refugees to assist us today.  Got the living room drywall hung.

We hadn't destroyed anything in the kitchen yet...so it was about time to start.  Tore up the linoleum (think we wanted to do that?) and pulled off the cabinets (we'll put in shelves instead).  Both tasks we would have done EVENTUALLY, just not sure when we'll have time to repair the kitchen! 

  

And no more top cabinets!  It makes the kitchen feel like it has more space.  Excited to see what the kitchen will look like after a serious face lift.