Sums it up!

Bumper sticker in the bar at Artz Rib House.

Too tired...

No words, just photos of progress...more tomorrow.

On the "home" stretch

We spent the last month getting to this point. We hoped the be finishing up the nice hardwood floor by now, but we are a about 5 days behind. I made up some time by taking off last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. But there is still a lot to do. So we called in the big guns.

My dad, a professional contractor, is flying in on the red eye and will be arriving at 8am tomorrow. He will bang out the floor in no time and he will be holding down the fort and getting things finalized while Ian and I work all week.

This weekend, we have friends coming to help to the big move and by Sunday light we will be completely out of the apartment (…good lord wiling and the creek don’t rise).

Here are some pictures of the second coats of paint, the hard wood (disbursed strategically around the house) and the first few rows of the hardwood.

Paint, Paint, Paint!

Some photos from early yesterday, now everything has a second coat and the colors are really deep (but it got too dark for good photos - more tonight).

Living room, kitchen and dining room have this color (faun).
The Baum-Price-Jindrich-Wirt-Sylvester-Pilhofer-Swanson-Foluke-Hardig-Snyder-Choi-Morre-Carlson-Marjoram-McClure-etc... Suite Master bedroom.
Back wall of the dining room.

Take two...

Yesterday Blogger was having troubles with photos – here are the shots from the last few days.

Jax and Plaid Chad taping the windows up.

Sparky IanFrench putting down the last of the subfloor.They delivered the hard wood - it is beautiful!!!

Mom's hard work - gone.
Filling in all the cracks. Jax sanding the cealing.Kitchen before...
Kitchen after - we had to rip out the cabnits to level the floor. Jax - working hard. French the texturizerWe were all getting a little "scrape-happy" Me and Jax in the recently texturized dining room.
Note, I recommend that if you every try this at home do it during day light - you can tell what you are doing a lot better then doing it at night.Painting day! This is an airless sprayer. You just set it down, plug it in and get stuff everywhere. A primed living room. My "pinkcident" and the hairnet. I forgot to take it off before going over to Torcy's for lunch everyone looked at me funny.
This is not the actuall color that the room will be, it is going to be a very deep red, but apparently if you put red paint on a white wall it turns pink, so instead you put a pink coat down and then red on that.

Today, I did the second coat of cream everywhere and then Ian and I did the first coats of blue in the guest room and green in the master bedroom.

Tomorrow, we will start with the red wall, do the brown walls, put second coats in the bedrooms, clean everything, scrape down the floors, order our appliances, and save the world.

It’s been a hard day’s night….

We have been at the house after work every night and 14 hours each day over the weekend. We are on the “home” stretch. We have finished the subfloor. Texturized all the walls. And today I began painting. I got primer on the whole house, pink primer on the soon to be red wall, and one coat of “weathered sandstone” (or as I call it cream).

I am off work until Monday so we are hoping that I can finish up the painting tomorrow or Friday, then we get to start laying the red oak hardwood floors and then we need to finish them and let them set before moving in all of our stuff. We have to be out of the apartment by May 1. (Yowzer!)

I tried to put up a bunch of photos bgut bloggger is having photo problems. I will post them tomorrow.

Old 97s

They rocked! We saw them tonight at Stubbs. It is an AWESOME venu.

For Phil

If you come to the party I will suspend the “No Fat Blanket for 10 years” rule and after a few margaritas I will sit there and take it.

We made the agreement on 4-6-2004. So if not, you still have 2,549 days to go.

PS: Remember this day, I still think it is an egggggcellet way to crack it.

Star Wars Stamps - they are really getting into this

Saw this yesterday at the corner of 9^th and Congress. USPS is going all out!

Jax masquerading as Ian

She came over last night in her work cloths to be our foreman. But, she got her hands dirty by helping me blue tape all the trim.

TX Wimps

I clipped this from weather.com – it made me (a Minnesotan in TX) smile. They were all bent out of shape last weekend when there was sleet and freezing rain in April. Now here we are 3 days later and it is 80F and sunny.

Lots of elbow grease...

We have done a lot of work the last few days.

On Sunday, French (our angel) and Ian got the last piece of old subfloor out.

And began laying down the first pieces of plywood for the new subfloor.

Here is our living room with a brand-spanking new subfollr.
And the kitchen...
Tomorrow, we go back over and finish up the subfloor. On Friday Ian and I prep the walls to prepare for the texturizing. And the we paint. The new hardwood gets delivered on Friday – but it take a few days of settling inside to get to the same temperature and moisture level of the house. Then we can begin laying it down next week. After we finish up the floors, we can have the appliances delivered and begin moving in all of our stuff. We are still on track for getting everything done in order to move in the last week of April.

We are so very grateful for all the help we have been getting. Chad Plaid, Jax, Caitlin and most importantly French. We still have to take Erica and Evan up on their love of painting. And we’ll see if we can coax Micah in to it too.

Happy Easter!

Love, Sarge

Sparky Saturday!

Today it rained all day so we spent is getting ready for tomorrow – the big subfloor laying day!

We pulled up most of the remaining subfloor and the boys let me play with the power tools. I went around and removed the remaining nails (the ones that couldn’t be pulled out with a crowbar because they were so old the heads popped off). It made for an interesting experience! I have never made sparks like this fly before!

All I have to say is bless French's heart - he has been our knight in shining blue jeans!

Home Ownership: not all it’s "cracked" up to be

James Thorpe, a famous athlete (football and track) once said “household tasks are easier and quicker when they are done by somebody else.”

And that is the case with leveling out the pier and beam foundations that is holding up your floors. This is not (contrary to what French thinks) something we can do ourselves. We hired Centex (the most well-known leveling company in Austin) to do the dirty work. The said they would take 5-7 business days to do it. They started on Thursday (last week) and you can understand my surprise when I arrived there on my lunch hour and they told me they were done.

Finished, finito. Completed, gone. Sionara!

They were supposed to be done Friday at the earliest! So I went in and looked around – they are pretty much done…but tonight I went back and looked a lot closer and there is still a bit of work to be done. So I will be calling them and having them back over tomorrow.

But, so far here are the photos...

Mom’s yard work covered in dirt.

Cracks over front door – cracking is normal they just shifted the whole house so there is bound to be tension and shifting cracks and settling.

More cracks in the kitchen (these appear to be the worst).

Master bedroom
Living room (can you find the missing joist?)
Hallway - see the how the joist sticks up an inch higher then the othe joists (going the other way?)
Better shot of the difference from the hallway to the living room.
The front bedroom.

Next up this weekend: remove the trim, put down plastic moisture protector, new sub-flooring (plywood), tape and seal up the cracks in the drywall, texturize the walls, prep/tape the whole house, and then start paining.

Yowzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzer!!