Happy New Year!

My christmas wish was answered!
We have ceilings and walls. I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am about this. Dance around the room, howl at the moon happy.
(way happier than some tiny cup of yogurt could make me – but, still a good ad campaign)

did you get that?

WE HAVE CEILINGS AND WALLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have pictures of everything and stories to tell, but my cameras downstairs at Butters and I’m at Kelli’s house about to go to bed. But it’s been so long since I’ve posted anything that I just couldn’t hold it in any longer.

WALLS!!!!

There’s still a lot of work to do – little bits of sheetrock here and there and ever more mudding and sanding – but we’re getting there.
We even bought our paint today – Lemon Soufflé for the kitchen walls (see my post about our test kitchen) and Parmesan for the walls in our living room and dining room.
Is it really that surprising that we picked food colors? And we weren’t even hungry!
We almost went all desserts, with crème brulée, but that was a bit dark, and, not illogically, didn’t go well with the soufflé.

See why it’s time for me to go to bed?
I’m a bit giddy. That, and it’s time for me to take some more Emergen-C and slather on more and more lotion on my hands. Sheet rock dust is turning my hands into corn husks. ick.

I promise I’ll post more this week – pictures and pictures and stories. We have a new friend that’s made this all possible and I don’t think I can give him a proper introduction without a photo. Not to worry – I have the perfect one already.

Mr. Heatmiser

 

See our Ducts?!

We have heat!!!!

Our furnace is named – of course – Mr. Heatmiser.
For anyone who might not get the reference, here you go!
This is one of my all time favorite claymation Christmas specials. 

Pretty soon we’ll have a Mr. Coldmiser, and actually we do, but he’s not feeling so well. Thomas fixed some things on it, and then the condenser died – I missed it, but apparently it was rather spectacular.

We had our gas turned on last week, after we’d finished installing the furnace and all the ductwork.
Yep, we.
I really didn’t have much to do with the furnace itself, but I did help with all the ductwork.

It’s been pretty cool, learning about boots, registers, saddle collars, venting a furnace (very important!) and flexi pipe (very cool – they pack 25 feet into a 3 foot-ish bag. Open the bag and watch it grow! Sort of like the pill sponge animals from when we were kids).
Oh, and that wacky red tool I had pictures of a few posts back? Those are crimpers; you use them if your extending some of the rigid piping – we did.
Now we need to finish building the soffit that will go around the main trunk that runs along the living room ceiling. The flexi pipes fit nicely in the floor joists, so will be hidden by the sheet rock, once we finish installing that.

See our Ducts?!

Cutting Holes for the Registers in the Ceiling

More Register Cutting

Venting our Furnace

One thing I don’t have pictures of is our newly insulated and decked attic!
Yay Thomas!!!!!
I really didn’t do anything on this, aside from bring home many rolls of insulation and help get them into the attic. Then come back the next day and gush over the great job Thomas did. And I’m not being sarcastic; it looks great.
He had me save a bunch of panelling that we pulled out of the downstairs, and he used that for decking. We really have been reusing the heck out of our old stuff. The rest of the decking will be the big sheets of plywood over the windows (yes, we still have some boarded up windows – we’re waiting until we’re done working for most of them. Then we’ll replace any broken panes.
We also used a bunch of the 2×4s that were across the plywood for shims and, well, anything Thomas needed.

More Pictures – Not Butters

I was on my way to Butters yesterday and stopped short outside of Kelli’s door. I just had to take some shots of her towering flowers.
Our mom and dad were here last week and saw one flower on her cosmos.
About a day after they left, it went nuts.
This is for you guys!

 

Life Outside of Butters

My life hasn’t been only working on Butters these past few months. Only mostly.
And don’t get me wrong – it’s hard and frustrating, but I love it. Probably because I’m doing it with Thomas. That, and I’m really stubborn and like to finish what I’ve started. As stubborn as I am though, there’s no way I’d make it through with him.
Enough of the sappy.

One of the things I did recently was go up to Michigan for my cousin Nick’s wedding. I would’ve gone anyway, but he also asked me to photograph the wedding.

Here’s one of my favorite pictures of the day – August 23, to be exact.

 

Really, what is there to say?

 

I’ll put a link in to the rest of their photos once I get approval from the bride and groom.

The World’s Longest Yard Sale

 

Mom & Dad's Dishes

 

I’ve been remiss and haven’t posted anything about a trip Thomas and I took with our friends Dave (yes, that Dave), Erin, Collin and Chris.
We went to the Word’s Longest Yard Sale, and it was awesome!
We stayed in Tennessee for the weekend, but it runs from Alabama to Ohio.

Here’s a link to their official site, and I promise I’ll be posting pics of this soon. There are some fun ones. 

Aw heck – i’ll post them now.

 

Mom & Dad’s Dishes

The World’s Cutest Living Room Set

Pretty Fence. Couldn’t help myself

Momma and Baby – looking a little annoyed

Mom Has these Cookie Tins

Dave and the Tiger, umm, Thing (yes – THAT Dave!)

Stone Chimney in Middle of Field

Brazen Grasshopper

The Lamp

More of The Lamp

The Lamp – ooh, ahh

The Importance of Being Hydrated

I really don’t have much of a reason for this post, other than to put up a picture I took a few weeks ago that hasn’t made it into a previous post.

It’s cool. I like it. So you get to see it.

Now.

 

Greg's Water Cooler

Butters Torn Asunder

 

Butters doesn't look like a real house anymore!

It’s been an interesting few weeks. We’ve been working, but it’s the sort of work that just makes you say, “Look. what. we. did.” As in, “Oh shit. Now we’ve done it.”

It’s all for the best, in that we’re getting the big stuff done now, and right, rather than patching things for the time being, but. . .yikes. Thomas and I are both more than a little daunted right now, but there’s a big Butters’-shaped light at the end of the tunnel. It’s just such a long tunnel. . .

So what have we done, you ask?

We ripped out most of the panelling and ceiling downstairs in the kitchen and living room. It was original panelling (from the 1940’s – 1944, to be exact, as you’ll see in a minute) and someone had painted over all of it in the living room to make it look nice and dingy.
Plus, it’s just old and nasty looking, so. . .sheetrock it will be. (I know what it is now, but I’m still not sure if it’s two words or one)
So, we did that two weekends ago, and today we tore out the wall that I was so hoping that we could.

Once we tore off the panelling on that wall, we could see that it had a light on the ceiling (in the middle of the wall), so obviously, it wasn’t there when the house was built. “Load-bearing” “floor joists” “some phrase that I can’t remember now, but indicates that you’d best not mess with this thing” – I’m learning a whole new vocabulary branch. wee.
The our friend Dave (of wood floor fame) took a look at it and reassured us that yes, we could knock it out. (he went to school for architecture and may just be the smartest guy in Georgia (we love you Dave!!!!))

 Tomorrow, while I’m working away at. . .work, Thomas and Dave will be replacing the wires downstairs (“junction boxes” – another new term for me).
Last weekend, I went home for my cousin Nick’s wedding – I’ll have a few pics of that in here once I have them ready to go – I got an upgrade of Aperture yesterday and am still getting the hang of all the changes. 

To set the record straight. Thomas has torn everything out – I’m too much of a wuss. I tried. It didn’t go very well. I AM good at taking out trim, but the walls were tougher than me.
So, I’ve been cleaning everything up – taking piles and piles (and piles) of stuff out to the pile in the back (I said there were lots of piles!) or shoveling smaller debris into our garbage can or those crazy strong (and expensive) contractor trash bags.
Sounds little, but when I started, Thomas had a pile that was up to my chest in the living room – and that was before he started on the kitchen, so you get an idea of my task.

Oh, but I did get to find neat things that had been in the wall. A dogtag from an A positive baptist (we’ll be googling him), an old seal stamp thing, an old pack of Wings cigarettes, and the coolest of all, part of an old Atlanta Journal from April 8, 1944. It’s the sports page and the headline is about the Crackers playing at the Federal Pen with the Fort McPherson folks.
For those of you not reading this in Atlanta, a little backstory.
The Atlanta Crackers were the local baseball team (the legendary Ernie Harwell ((of Detroit Tigers fame)) was their announcer!), and they played at Ponce de Leon park. Umm, Kelli and I work there now! Our Whole Foods Market is on part of the land that once was the park. There are lots of old photographs of the park all over the café, if you come visit (which you should – it’s only the coolest WFM out there)
So there’s that – but there’s also the bit about the McPherson players. Fort McPherson is an army base about three blocks from our house.
Click here for more about Mr. Harwell and the Crackers. 

Enough of the chatting – you’re here for the pictures. I know it. you know it. here you go.

Butters doesn’t look much like a house downstairs right now.

Our Front Door to Be

Some of Our Finds

The Big Pile

The Bigger Pile (it’s bigger still now)

Thomas in the Butters’ Shell

Bigger Hole Where Wall Once Was

Spooky Thomas

Thomas starts on the wall

Look How Much Room!

A “Before” shot of the living room

More of how the living room used to look

This is the wall that is no more!

 

and now I’m going to sleep!

Taking Down a Tree

We have a dead tree in our front yard. It’s more than a little scary, so we thought we could take care of it ourself. Our friend Dave took one down – safely – in his backyard and he was pretty sure he could get ours down too.

Before

Working on Limb One

Safety First (ok, second)

Erin and I held the ladder next

Cleaning Up

Fun with Power Tools

Yeah, we (read: Dave) got two big(ish) limbs down and then realized that it was going to be bad if we continued.

Anyone know any good tree removal folks? Pretty cheap too?!

Unearthing a Wood Floor

 

Last weekend we sanded our little hearts out, refinishing the floors on the second floor.

On Monday, we had sanded the guest bedroom floor, using only a belt sander and an orbital sander. Who knew that would suck so much? Ok, anyone who’s ever sanded down a floor, or a door for that matter.

Thomas and the orbital sander in the guest bedroom (to be)

Half and Half Floor – with a bit of sanding disk

Taking a break from the guest bedroom sanding

Thomas cutting out the bad wood

Putting in the new boards – see the shims?!

Before

Little Buddy – our drum sander for the day

working away at the glue – grrr.

Dave, the shop vac and the drum sander (Little Buddy)

Thomas and the belt sander

My friend the orbital sander

knot of power

A well-deserved break on our front porch

Pretty, huh?

My homemade kneepads

Look what we did! I can’t believe what we did!!!

But, once we’d done that room, and saw how pretty the floor was, we talked about it and decided to go ahead and do the rest of the wood. Thomas has been fairly set on having hard wood up there anyway, and this was a good bit cheaper than getting a new one and laying it atop the existing floor.

And what a time that old floor’s had.
The house was built in 1940, and since then, this floor has had two coats of gray-ish blue paint (well, two kinds – about four coats) and some green shag carpet.
The kicker was that someone decided that gluing carpet to a wood floor was a fine idea. Ok, I still can’t figure why anyone would paint a wood floor either, but it may have had something to do with the aforementioned glue.

We had to replace some boards that had had some previous water damage (really, I helped! Mostly by vacuuming and then placing shims beneath the new planks, but still. . .)

So, Friday our awesome friend Dave came over and helped us sand away. We rented a drum sander (which looked like a cousin of the old Electrolux that my best friend Sus had in college) and got really, really dirty.

We almost finished Friday, but decided to call it a night rather than hurt ourselves. The next morning (and afternoon) Thomas and I finished up the corners, Thomas went over the entire floor with a really fine grade of sandpaper, we cleaned and cleaned (and cleaned) and then put a coat of polyurethane on the floor. Stinky, but that part went pretty fast – much faster than wiping down walls, then floors, then floors again. ..
But look what we did!!

Thomas’ mom came over the next morning and helped him put another coat of poly on the floor (I was at work). I can’t wait to see it close up now that it’s dry.
Kelli and I peeked in this afternoon, but it’s still curing.

The Guest Bathroom

We were only going to paint the walls of the upstairs, but Thomas couldn’t stand the floor in the guest bathroom and that sort of started a snowball rolling. . .

It was a pretty awful floor, I’ll give him that. And it looks beautiful now. (it was so awful, I didn’t really get a great overview picture of the before – oops)

 

The Before Picture

Thomas with his Durock

He knew that nail gun would come in handy

Thomas putting in trim (I painted)

Bye bye broken, nasty medicine cabinet

pretty floor, huh? And I even cut some tile!

 

(SEE?! I told you I’d figure more of this out – and this is only my second post!)

 

There are more pictures of the bathroom to come – I think I’ll make each room/project a category of it’s own so they’ll be easy to watch progress.

We need to hang my awesome mirror that I bought in New Orleans, umm, 8 years ago and have NEVER hung. Yep, I’m a leaner.

and Thomas has already installed the new light he found on super clearance at our new second (third?) home, Home Depot. It looks very nice, though we will eventually need to scoot it over so it’s actually centered. piffle.