Two Down and Two To Go

Work hours on site since last post: 37 hours, 25 minutes (plus lots of shopping!!)

We're finally feeling like we're making some really good progress here at the Villa...two upstairs rooms are done and just two left to go!

Here's a quick run-down of how we spent our last 37.5 work hours...

First off, the office was painted a lovely blue color (hence the second room complete!). In all honestly, however, I can only refer to it as "lovely" during the day. Somehow at night, the place starts to glow. We were extremely close to jumping ship after the first coat and going for something lighter, but we decided to stand by our choice, see what it looks like with new carpet, wall hangings, and furniture...and maybe repaint in a few months when we (meaning I) still cringe when I walk down the hallway at night.

Here's a little sneak peak of the room (imagine much lighter carpet and pictures on the wall...)

Why just a sneak peak? Our projects have a window of approximately 3.5 minutes for us to stand back and say, "Wow, looks great!" before they are briskly pushed aside to make way for the next project. I forgot to bring my camera the day that we completed the walls, and that 3.5 minute window was lost. The room became storage for the next big project before there was even hope of a good picture.

And what are we storing in there? Everything from the master bedroom! That big move has accounted for most of Jeff's work hours since we finished painting. Organizing and cleaning 10+ years of life from the master bedroom is not a quick or easy task. I know that my turn for organizing and purging is coming soon...so no further comments from me.

The bathroom! We finally turned a corner in the bathroom, and all of the wall/ceiling repairs are 100% complete! It's been primed (again, twice...sheesh), colors for the ceiling and wall are selected (see top picture for my paint selection process), and this week's project is to finish those walls! Some quick before and after shots...

BEFORE - peeling paint, mildew stains, and ripped walls where anything was removed...

AFTER - no paint peels, no stains, and smooth walls and ceiling!!

Now this I will call absolutely lovely. Soooo many hours were spent in here, and seeing the smooth walls is about as lovely as it gets in my home renovation book. It's absolutely still a work in progress with plenty left to do...but it's fantastic to be in the "rebuilding" phase rather than the "repairing" phase. We've even purchased many of the new fixtures. And yes, I'm more than ready to reinstall the toilet and be done with the basement "throne"...

Slow and Steady

Good thing we're not actually racing anyone...the professionals probably could have built four entire houses by now...

I've been holding off on posting anything because we are still completely lacking any cool before and after shots to share. BUT!

Man hours since last post: 29 hours, 50 minutes. Considering how busy our lives have been in the past two weeks, I'm pretty impressed with that number. And just to highlight a few things that we've been working on...

Here's this weekend's big project! The plaster repairs in the office are finally complete, the whole room has been primed twice (thanks to some awesome dark green paint), the new color has been selected (much easier process than either of us thought!), and 2 gallons of paint are patiently waiting to be rollered on the walls. 

The bathroom ceiling is DONE!!!! Of these past 29 man hours, we've probably spent a good 10 or so up on a ladder lovingly fixing this baby. You might recall that the before pictures show some pretty bad peeling of paint, and changing out the exhaust fan left a gaping hole into the attic. Jeff has picked up some drywall installation skills, and I've been smoothing out all the bumps and bruises with many evenings of sanding and skim-coating. You can see that the walls needed a little bit of help as well, so you can tack on another few good hours for those. (I apologize for the horrible lighting...in my awesomeness, I accidentally rendered the wall light fixture totally useless. Which was in the plans eventually...but didn't make for good work lighting. Oops.)

 We're not quite ready to paint this room, as we still have a few areas like this to deal with. Last weekend we removed the last of the fixtures from the wall and are touching things up before we paint. We probably could have used the existing nails for our new hardware, but we decided to start with a clean slate this time around. The baseboard has also been removed since we'll be raising the floor up a bit with some new floorboard and the tile. Much to our surprise, the baseboard was GLUED on. Yes. Glued. Which means...more repair work where the glue tore little pieces off the wall. Come on people, glue?!? A few finishing touches this weekend and we'll hopefully be able to prime the bathroom next week.

But now...the most exciting update since our last post...

We've starting shopping for all things NEW! Here's just a little sneak peak of our front-runner in tile for the bathroom floor. I was originally dead set on some shiny pretty marble tile, but after looking around a bit we both realized that this bathroom needs something with a bit of "older" character to fit with the rest of the house. What you can't tell about this choice from the picture is that there's a slight (but just enough) contrast in color and texture between the big and small tiles to make a really nice but still pretty neutral statement - and we still have a few other options in the mix. We're taking a tile class tomorrow morning, and then it's decision time.

Exciting things, which is good because our first real deadline is staring us down! We've enjoyed being able to do things at our own pace without being stressed about time, but we MUST have the upstairs finished (and by finished we mean clean and live-able) by October 28th. We think this is pretty realistic goal, and it's actually really good for us to have a purpose to push forward.

Happy Friday. If you need us this weekend, you know where we'll be...paintbrushes in hand!