WE ARE MOVING FORWARD!

O.K. It's just one room at a time but at least it's a forward motion

I won't bore you with a ton of photos of an unfinished outside but it will probably help to have an understanding of how we eventually plan to get to the end result.

The original portion of the house after being stuccoed . . .

From there, we bought a pre-finished cabin.  This building is to be our master bedroom and bath. The idea was to connect the two buildings with a hallway.  Note the front porch . . .

Well, pretty soon the hallway became a hallway and a closet, and then it was no longer a hallway at all.  The space just kept getting larger and soon it just became a room unto its own. A den. And, at that point, the closet moved to the front portion of the master bedroom.  Note there is no longer a front porch on the cabin . . .

Also, the front door onto the porch has been moved to the side of the building . . .

Attached!  The stucco on the addition has been started.  The white is a foam board which gets covered with chicken wire.  Then the actual stucco goes over that (the gray).  That is followed with a synthetic stucco (if you want) with the color added to it.  You don't have to do that, but that means you are painting the actual stucco and over the years you will have to paint it again, and again. The synthetic never needs to be repainted.  Kind of a no brainer, at least for us.

The small squares you see are 8" glass cubes.  We put four along the front of the bedroom so there is always light in the closet. (O.K. not at night smarty pants!)  The 3 on the foam will be more for design than anything else.

The stucco is done! And, there is now another door for me to paint to match the actual front door. :/  The fence needs to be expanded too, so it encompasses the whole front of the house.  But, it now looks like a semi grown up house . . .

So . . . I think this is where we left off the last time.

Not much has changed in this corner . . .

But, the rest of the livingroom is about 90% done now.  (There is still framing around the door to the kitchen to finish.)  This is a VERY small (narrow) room. It's about 9.5 feet wide by 20 feet long.  In other words, a challenge to do something with.  Down here, it will be more of a sitting room than anything else.  Most of life happens outside.  The funky white thing on the wall is our heat/air-conditioner.  It's called a mini-split and we have 3 of them in the house.  Not my first choice as to where to put this one, but if we want evenly dispersed air conditioning and heat this is where it needed to be . . .

 

The hallway to the right goes into the bathroom and laundry room areas.  The next door on the right goes into the guestroom/my office.  Front door needs to be painted but I'm not quite sure how I want to do that yet.  This gives you a good view of the new floors Glen put down.  The little sample to the right was the old floor, which MANY of our friends tried to talk us into keeping!  But, while it was really pretty cool, it was worn threadbare in too many spots, had splatters of several paint colors on it (not ours) and 2 more layers of linoleum still glued to it that we just couldn't get off in several areas . . . 

  

Below, a corner of the guestroom.  That's all you get for now.  :)  As you can see, it still is somewhat of a mess with stuff on the hide-a-bed and lamps on the floor . . .

And then we have the Den with its 3 little windows.  Well, a corner of it . . .

And, just so you don't forget how all this started . . .

Hope to see you soon!

Stay safe everyone.

Glen and Charleen

WELL ... ITS BEEN A MONTH.

AND ... A LOT HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED!

Walls are all up, painted, the trim is done, the floors are stained  AND SWEPT as per instructions from the Inspector. (Is that a little power trip or what?!) That all had to be done before the Plumbing/Gas Inspector would come back for his last inspection when he would (hopefully) unlock our gas meter so we could get some real heat in the house.  

We passed.  Well, sort of.  He unlocked the meter but wants two of the 4 sink traps replaced.  Because of their positioning under cabinets, the fella's used two accordion style traps.   Evidently they are not legal in Idaho.  They sell them in Idaho but they are not legal in Idaho.  ??  How does that work?  Anyway, he said to replace them, take a photo and text it to him.  Then we are done.  Hallelujah! 

Kitchen sink is in the island.  You can see some finished/painted walls behind it.  I LOVE the sink and the faucet!  

This is our bedroom (walls finished but no trim on the windows yet) and that's Glen and Ernie attaching an old Barn door to the wall for our Headboard.  (Many coats of varnish later!) You can't see it in the photo but there is an old brass plate that says 'Private'  right in the middle behind Ernie ~ it was on the door when we rescued it :)   It has great shades of old barn red, brown, black and even some white paint on it.  There's even an old rope handle. Unfortunately, I just wasn't able to capture it in the photo.

Electricians have been back and installed 'most' of the lights.  These two are over the island. 

These three are over the kitchen stove and counter area.  

Installing Medicine cabinets in the main bathroom.  Lights are up.

Done!

Next, the cabinets.  We went with Hickory for both this bathroom and the kitchen.

Yes.  That is pennies.  This is the floor for the shower.  I did the penny work  (and, in case you are wondering ... never again!)

When Glen suggested we do the whole bathroom floor that way I 'politely' told him he was welcome to go ahead anytime and do it.  You will soon see how far that idea went!!  :)  I covered the whole thing with about 6 coats of an oil based polyurethane floor varnish, and no, it is not slippery.

  

The rest of the shower finished.  Those are galvanized steel panels that have been made into a shower surround.  (Thus, the industrial part of Rustic Industrial.)  :)  Bob did the majority of the work on this and he did a great job.

Cabinet above microwave is in.

We spray stained the concrete floor.  We used two coats of a white-wash stain, two coats of a midnight slate gray and 3 coats of a high gloss varnish (which turned out to be not really high gloss).  They suggest you use a weed sprayer to do it, which we did.  That takes some practice   :/  We practiced in our closet.  We won't be giving tours of the closet.

A close-up of the floor.

For the most part, the floor actually turned out great.  Well, lets say it has its own personality.  But when you realize we had no idea what we were doing when we started the project it's not too shabby.  The floor catches everyone because they are not sure what it is when they first see it.  (PLEASE NOTE: no pennies :)

Bob and Ernie working on putting in the 'mudroom/coat rack' area.  If you go back and look at the photo of the kitchen sink, this is on the wall that you see just beyond the sink (with the rag stuffed in the electrical hole).  :/

This is our grandson Sean, taking a break and having lunch up in the small loft above our bedroom.  He has claimed this as 'his room' when he comes up and visits.  :)

These photos have been waiting for me to do something with them but I have been VERY busy packing, and now, unpacking..  Two weeks ago tomorrow we moved.into the house.  No, everything is not done, but it is livable.  As soon as I get the rest of the photos re-sized, etc. I will be doing another Blog and can show you the progress we have made just in the last several weeks.  

Unfinished or not, it feels great to finally be in the house!

See you soon!

WHO WERE WE KIDDING . . . ?

Ourselves of course. 

At some point we thought we just might have our new house 'somewhat livable'  by the end of October.  Well, tomorrow, October will be saying Good Morning to us and we are not even close to where we had hoped to be. The antics of the Construction Company (and a few others) literally put us two months behind where we thought we would be by now.  I guess this isn't all that uncommon when building your own home and you have to rely on others for a major portion of the work.   I still find it sad though that when People give their word it is not quite what it used to be.

But  . . . first things things first!  As soon as the patio was in my 2 Blue Strawberry pots came out of the clutter in the yard and onto the patio.  A little sad looking right now but at least they have a home and will look lots better next Spring!

The electricians arrived 2 weeks ago and installed the electrical panel.  But . . . we are still on temporary power.  :/  That means all lights, tools, garage light, and the lights, etc. in the RV are all running off an extension cord (or two!).  Not what you would call an ideal situation.  Definitely no toaster and microwave at the same time!  Actually, it doesn't even take that at times to lose power.  We have these mystery power-outs in the RV, usually when it's dark, and then Glen has to make these treks across the yard over piles of rocks, lumber and mounds of dirt with just a flashlight to find that somehow the cord has worked itself loose from the temporary panel on the temporary pole . . .  Good news is that the electrician called today and said they will be there either tomorrow or Thursday.  Fingers are crossed.  We can't go any further with the walls until the wiring is done.   

Finally found a different Plumbing/Heating Co. who came (expediently) and gave us a bid to install the gas pipes for our Fireplace, Stove and Furnace (and water tank and BBQ . . . :) AND . . . as of yesterday all the pipes have been installed, Inspector came today, and now we are all ready to be hooked up.  One of my neighbors (Flossie, my 90 year old neighbor!)  called me and said that the Utility  Co. was there today tearing up the street and sidewalk :/ to run the natural gas to our house.  We are actually making real progress!

  

Interior walls are now all studded in. The lumber on the floor is in the kitchen.  Behind the orange chair is the bedroom  :)

That's our granddaughter Katie taking a break up in what is to be the attic.

And here are the boys  ~ not quite sure what they are all doing here!  :)

The floor in the Attic space is now in.  It's a small area over the two bathrooms which will have 8' walls.  The rest of the house will have  12' walls and open ceilings.

When done, we are aiming for a 'Rustic~Industrial feel to the house.  This is an Old door (one of several) we resurrected from a yard sale.  As you can see it needs a little TLC but we do have plans for its use.  :)  You can barely see it, but there is a line across the bottom 6" or so that it is about to be cut off.  We will definitely show you the finished results.  :)

Pull down stairs to the attic installed!  'Our Supervisor' (Ernie) had several real good suggestions helping with installation.  Every job should have an Ernie.  Besides being a great help to Glen he is a wealth of information on the history of the area.  Just one of the many nice people we have met since making the decision to move here.  When we mentioned to the owner of the Heating Co. that we have met so many nice people since being up in this area, he said 'Get used to it'.  That's just how they are here'.  

How can you not smile about that . . .

til next time

Charleen