I think there's something down there... THERE'S SOMETHING DOWN THERE!

I can finally say that aside from some touchup painting and a few other odds and ends, we are finally done with Phase 1: The Main Floor - Living room and Stairs extravaganza. Woohoo! Now we are onto Phase 2: The Basement. Dun Dun Dunnnnn!

Kevin has worked tirelessly to frame up and hang drywall to make a laundry room, my home office, a hallway, and a storage space. We've also had an electrician come in and wire all new can lighting in the hallway and add outlets. As I type this we have a professional drywaller here to hang our hallway ceiling and mudd and tape everything. There is one thing about all this we wanted done spot on and that was the mudding and taping so we knew this part would be money well spent for us not to attempt this ourselves! He will be here through the weekend and a little bit on Monday and then that part should be complete too!

So for your viewing enjoyment, here are some shots of progress. (I'll put further updates up next week!!) :D

Kevin built out a niche area specifically for a piece of art created by Jennifer Espenscheid (of Soma Gallery) and Jeremy Shamrowicz (of Flux Design) we purchased. Been waiting like 3yrs to finally have a place to hang this puppy!! So excited!!

looking for the perfect MCM piece of furniture to go in this spot :D

doesn't look like much here but this is my future home office

our hallway

standing in the hallway looking at the back corner of my office and the storage room

hallway

a laundry room in the making

my office again with a beautiful view of our well pump

my office door at base of the stairs

well pump area in office now drywalled off on a cool angle

my office looking into laundry room

these are the doors for the office, laundry and our workout room/bar in the back 40... (but slow down kids, the back 40 will be for awhole'nother show. focus. one thing at a time)

Time flies watching glue dry

So it has been almost a month since my last post. I think I need constant nagging to get new updates up or they just won't happen timely... so thank you to those who did nag me and you know who you are!

Lots has happened in the last month. We passed our final inspection, yay! and we had the wood wall caps and hand railing stained and installed. I am particularly proud of the wall caps (the wood pieces on both the half walls) and the hand rail because they were of my own design and they are just a little outside the norm and I just love them.

Now that we have passed the inspection for this project, we have steadily started work on the basement (part of the reason I have been falling behind on update posts) and I promise my next post will be more timely with basement progress ;)

But in the meantime, here are a few shots of the upstairs progress. I seriously CANNOT WAIT to start decorating.

Enjoy!

here is my handrail, isn't is coooooo'?

 To avoid seeing any holes from nails or screws, the wood caps were glued down and held in place with clamps and very sophisticated and complicated tools calls "mag-o-zeens" and "boookz" and we had to wait for it to dry... and wait... and wait

so, we got sick of waiting so we took the paperweights off

detail of one of the riser pieces holding the cap up. I wanted the caps and the handrail to kind of float. Really happy with the look.

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!