Home renovations are wearing me thin

Well, I haven’t updated for two weeks, partly because I’ve been really busy, and partly because there isn’t much progress to report.

Last weekend, my dad went to Maine for the weekend, so pretty much nothing got accomplished, since everything that’s left to be done is awaiting his expertise. Also, Adam didn’t want to do anything, and I had a hunter pace on Sunday, so…nothing.

I did do a TON of cleaning in the evenings after work last week, though. I wiped the inside of every cabinet and drawer with bleach. That was pretty gnarly. It was like the former occupants spilled oil inside every single cabinet. And had a food fight with spaghetti all over the house...

The newly cleaned and polished handles are back on the cabinets; however, the countertops still remain covered with random tools, paint cans, and trash. UGH!

Also, put up curtains, which need to be hemmed (because nothing can ever just be DONE):

Cleaned the shower with excessive amounts of bleach and installed some fixtures in the bathroom:

This weekend went very much the same way. Saturday Adam was busy, and my dad showed up at the house while I was running an errand (because after 3.5 months of doing nothing but working on the house, god forbid I have to do anything other than work on the house once in a while), so he turned around and went home because I wasn’t there. So, the appliances remain unhooked up, and we still don’t have electricity in the bedrooms.

I did get the kitchen pantry painted, though:

The photo was before the second coat, so it looks even better. The walls were so gross in there. Adam sanded down the shelves to make them shiny and new. I also painted the bathroom shelves since they were also dirty (like every other surface in the house).

I also painted the window frame and door frames in the bathroom since they were scuffed and dirty.

Here’s Adam, hard at work:

There’s crap everywhere, as you can see. I’m sick of it.

Here are the killer zombie weeds which have sprung up all over the damn yard. Also, the lawn got mowed on Saturday, so that’s one thing, at least.

Luckily, my dad did get over on Sunday to mow down the bamboo.

Anyway, I’m seriously losing patience and seriously broke. I am about ready to put the house back on the market. There’s still so much left to do and no money left to do it, everyone’s burnt out, everyone’s got an attitude, everything always goes wrong, and I can’t take it anymore.

Here’s all the crap I’ve been spending money on lately:

-curtain rod, bath fixtures, three floor lamps, clothing hangers…$84.46

-returned a door stop…-$3.78

-bathroom cleaner, shower cleaner, toilet cleaner, felt pads for furniture feet, Mr. Clean Home Pro, screwdriver, door bumper, razor blade scraper, dowel for closet, weed killer, a machete (that was all Adam’s idea)… $37.68 (because I used $44.12 in gift cards)

-a nightstand and a clothes rack from Target…$20

-I got $100 off my fridge because of a small dent in the side! so -$100

=========

$8653.57 spent on renovations (and I haven’t even been adding monthly electric bills and property taxes and home owner’s insurance…wahhhh)

Also bought $300 worth of stuff at Lowe's last night, but I don't have the receipt at the moment, so I'll add it on to the next post.

Losing steam on home repairs

Well, it’s safe to say we are losing steam with the home renovations.

Here’s what we did this weekend:

-my dad started fixing our broken shower and replaced some outlet covers

-I cleaned more kitchen cabinet handles

-Adam cut some plywood to use as slats for our new bed frame

-hung the medicine cabinet/mirror in the bathroom and started setting up the bathroom sink

-we moved some furniture into the living room (!!!!)

But, that’s it. We are just waiting on my dad to fix the plumbing and hook up the appliances and we can move in and finish the small stuff later.

Photos:

Here you can see the trim we put up in the bathroom. It was cheap and easy, but I’m not loving how the corners came out.

We discovered that there is a crack in the basin on the vanity top, so I’m hoping that Adam’s talented and handsome brothers over at Surfaces Group can make us a new countertop…

And here is the completed living room:

Oh, and a blurry picture of it with the furniture in (there are two coffee tables because we weren’t sure which was going to stay in the living room, and which was going in the basement. We decided on the darker one, because it matches, even though I prefer the other one):

Expenses:

-returned a door stop: –$2.85

-bought a used washer and dryer for a coworker $200

-bought a bunch of Pex adapters, clamps, a dryer duct, a washer machine drain hose, and plywood for the bed frame $49.42

====$8615.21 spent so far on renovating the house

Also, we discovered that one of the ceilings that cost me $1200 already has a crack in it. The contractor is coming to fix it, but in the meantime we have to put moving stuff into that room on hold until it's done.

The Fridge Fiasco, and Finishing Floors

That’s a lot of Fs! But certainly not the only F words that were uttered this weekend!

The goal of the weekend was to get a refrigerator. I had pretty much written off finding something used when I found out about a 3 year old Kenmore stainless steel side by side for sale for $125 in the next town over. We went and bought it, drove it home in my tiny Nissan pickup, bribed my friend Mark into helping us get it inside the house, and then… discovered that it was too big. Despite the fact that it fit into our space (we learned from the bathroom vanity debacle to always double-check measurements), the left-hand door couldn’t open all the way:

Which really sucked because it looked fabulous in my kitchen:

A testament to the power of craigslist: We realized the fridge was too big at 8 PM, and someone had come and bought it from me for $75 more than I paid by 10 AM the next day. So, it sucked that we couldn’t keep this nice fridge that we got a fabulous deal on…but at least I made some money off the deal.

It was pouring rain all day Saturday, which meant Adam couldn’t make cuts on the Pergo flooring I was planning on installing (the electricity’s still messed up, so we could only use the saw outside), so we went refrigerator shopping. We went to two Home Depot stores, two Lowes stores, Best Buy, and two Sears stores. We finally got one at the last place we went to, the second Lowes. We had decided on a single door fridge at this point—I love the French door fridges but was worried we’d still have trouble opening the left hand door, even on a smaller fridge. So, we got this fridge:

It’s normally $599, but we’d seen it at Best Buy for $559, and Lowe’s said they’d beat the price (and they didn’t even bother to check if we were telling the truth!). But they were also having a 15% off Energy Star sale, which this fridge qualified for, and with my dad’s military discount, we scored the fridge, an ice maker for it, and the hose it needed, for $498, including taxes. I love being a smart shopper (even though $500 is still a LOT of freaking money…ahh!) It’s a great fridge for the price, though, and the price includes free delivery, which Home Depot and Sears don’t offer.

Once we were done fridge shopping, we attempted to put together our new Ikea bed frame…and Adam accidentally broke a critical piece of the frame on the third step because the opposite side was defective. It was a $300 bed frame so we’re pretty upset—going to see if they’ll take it back or if we can repair it somehow…

Today we completed the installation of the floor in the living room and hallway, and let me just say that it looks FABULOUS.

We just need to put the trim back on the walls and touch up some paint and the room will be ready to move stuff into. I need to replace the doors at some point too.

Oh, and I painted the bathroom after work this week. The color is Sherwin Williams Rock Candy:

I’ll do expenses and other miscellany in a separate post, because this one is getting to be longer than Stairway to Heaven.

Bedroom completion, and bathroom beginnings

Well, hello, my faithful blogfriends! Here are some photos of my beautiful freshly-painted, recently-carpeted, and newly-window-shaded bedrooms to reward you for clicking over to my page:

This past weekend was spent working on the bathroom (click here to see “before” photos).

First we ripped up the linoleum floor.

Then we ripped out the ugly vanity.

I had to scrub all the mold off the wall that had grown behind the old vanity.

Then, when we took off the trim along the floor, we realized the sheetrock was moldy and disintegrating, so we had to cut out 16” of sheetrock from the floor up.

Oh yeah, and we pulled out the toilet:

Ummmm, yeah.

I also painted the bathroom doors. They were heinous. This is the before:

I painted them all white, but don’t have any after pictures. I’m a bad blogger.

This is what happens to bad vanities, by the way, so all you vanities best be behavin’:

My dad and stepmom did some yard work:

And here is the bathroom, swept and eagerly awaiting tiles to call its own:

I also put a second coat of paint on the kitchen walls, and that was pretty much it for the weekend. Le sigh.

Stuff I’ve bought this week:

-a level, kneepads, 5 gallon Lowe’s bucket, cement board, chalk reel marker, speedlite, steel square, chisel set: $83.93

-cement board tape, dovetail saw: $24.94

-dehumidifier $152.98 (had a Bed Bath and Beyond coupon…returned the first dehumidifier we got, but, they gave me store credit so I can’t deduct it from my expenses since it’s not real money back)

-we returned $70 of ThinSet mortar, so durovent, versabond, stainblock, 2- 25 lb bags of grout, mixer, sponge, tile spacers, board knife, and grout saw cost me $36.56

-a sheet of green board, a leaf rake, and a box of drywall screws ($30 of stuff, but won’t add it since we used Lowe’s store credit from returning the dehumidifier)

Soooo, add that to the $50 for carpet tacks and I have myself a merry little $7279.05 to cry myself to sleep over. Oh, homeownership.