A slow 'upstair' climb

Its been awhile since I have made a post, sorry about that!

The renovation was in a holding pattern due to some delayed or damaged shipments. I wish I could say its been now full-steam ahead but its still a bit of a slow crawl. We were hopefully optimistic that we would have been done by the 2nd week of December so we could get a final inspection and then able to start on finishing off the basement ourselves but today is Christmas and we aren't there yet! Fingers crossed, we are supposed to get our final inspection of the upstairs and stairwell at the end of this week and then be able to start tackling my new home office space, lower level hallway, storage room and laundry room. 

 our floor is finally here!!

 

freshly primed and primed and primed and painted old and new walls

 

we signed the subfloor next to our fireplace before the new flooring went in

 

and here it is! Strand Bamboo floors. Harder than regular bamboo and so far would recommend it!

hopefully in the near future we will be beefing up this bookcase to be floor to ceiling and have a wood mantel that extends to be one of the shelves of the bookcase. We will need to remove the stone shelves to do this. I like them a lot but they just aren't super practical for decorating. 

1x6 baseboards are getting installed

 

glamorous, isn't it?

stairway to heaven?

 dry fitting the raised wall cap and angled railing before it gets stained

Kevin is using my office as his staining station. Sadly we aren't pros and after hours of trying to stain all the wood, its getting plained down and restrained by pros. Sometimes its not worth the money savings. : / Live and learn!

Shaping Up

Drywall walls are up and ready for the mudding and taping and sanding. Messy and dusty and messy some more. And wall patches have been placed in areas where big holes had to be made for rerouting electrical.

I had the plans altered to change this section from a full wall to having a partial cutout, so happy I did. The next phase of the reno will include opening this back wall and letting in light from the patio doors in the kitchen so this partial cutout will help bring in more light.

 

The future door of my home office, don't let the dungeon prison-tres chic vibe confuse you.

Standing in the dining room looking into the living room and very messy kitchen!

To be ready for this point, Kevin and I had to remove all the vintage grasscloth wallpaper on the long wall from the foyer to the dining room, sand it down and prime the walls so the drywall patches would take to the wall. We were always planning on removing this old wallpaper and replacing it with something updated but we didn't anticipate jumping to this step this fast. So now to add to my checklist is picking new wallpaper and finding a pro to hang it. (If anyone knows a good business or person who hangs paper at a reasonable price, let me know because there is no way I am going to attempt this myself!)

Progress is at a crawl but we hope it picks up pace soon

Not a lot of visible progress has happened lately that anyone would really want to see but we have gotten recessed lighting put in (3 along the back wall, 3 along the fireplace wall, 2 above the stairwell and one at the bottom of the stairs.
AND we had the hideous old ceiling fan that was in the middle of the living room torn out and hauled out to pasture.

After some delays, we had our rough inspection today and <drum roll> WE PASSED!
So the next step is drywall and some other plaster repair.

We did end up having to select a new flooring color so as long as that gets shipped in time, we should be back on track soon and hopefully I'll have more exciting photos to share by then!

PROGRESS!!

 Once the carpet is torn out, we plan to have Trillium Strand Bamboo Flooring put in. Strand is harder and stronger than traditional Bamboo Flooring. Sadly our flooring came in and its not what the sample looks like so <fingers crossed> we get what we picked soon, which is this streaked Exotic Walnut shade.

The red line is where our stairs will be. EEK!!

 Since we were tearing out the carpet and the room was empty, I figured why not spray all my ceilings white now without worrying about anything important getting hit by my handy 'first time using a sprayer' work... and Chairman Bob approves!

 going...

going...

Gone!

This is our Family Room, or otherwise known Acme Furniture Storage

Our foyer with its original slate flooring that we love and wanted to keep.

View in the living room where stairs will be

it's a hole!

yes, it is most certainly a hole!

we will have a half wall railing on the right and straight ahead is a partial wall 6'8" wall and behind that will eventually be another way into our kitchen and view of our patio doors to the backyard.

Memory Lane - Before the chaos

Now that this renovation is finally underway, I feel I can post some progression of before pictures. Now seeing these myself, the phrase "it's going to get worse before it gets better" was probably coined by someone who was going through a remodel lol.

Don't be jealous of my sweet carpet folks cause it's going bye-bye

but you can be jealous of my sweet cat!