A lack of pictures

I am realizing, while I am furiously blogging, that I have been shirking my picture taking duties.  Some of the steps were missed.  My reaction to that is....oh well!  So what!  Let's move on with life.    I have to admit that living amongst the renovation mess and clutter has had it's challenges.  Everything is dirty, drafty at times, and really wears on everyone - especially the kids.  This renovation has really put a wrench into the way our home operates.  All attempts at scheduling seem futile, bedtime is a fight every night, and we can't seem to keep track of anything or keep on top of all the DUST!

All right, all right, are you tired of hearing me rant?  I am finished now.  I will count my blessings and just be happy that we are able to even undertake such an awesome renovation.  I won't even recognize this house when we're finished and I've lived here for most of my life!

So, because of the lack of pictures this should be the last post needed to get back up to speed and on track with where things are now.  I hope....

Everthing upstairs got taped and mudded.  Is that the proper way to say that....seems weird.  Anyway, our friend Lamar is awesome, fast, and does a fantastic job!

The ceilings after their beautiful coat of knockdown.

Our attempt to take a picture of the walls after they were primed.  Still too much dust and paint in the air I guess.  In my defense, I am pretty sure Steve took this picture!  Love you Honey!!

It's hard to tell from this picture but we put the drywall up around all the plumbing and heating that goes to the addition(see last post for the before)

All the bathrooms got all their drywall up - and yes I know that the grey stuff on the bottom is not even - it will be fixed.  The blue stuff on the top is the mold resistant drywall that will be painted eventually.  the grey stuff is the cement board that will be tiled over.  I think they'll turn out really pretty.

The upstairs got painted in 1 weekend.  Steve's other brother, Jonathan, and his wife, Vivi, came to stay for a weekend and Drew and Jon painted the whole upstair(minus the bathroom) - 2 coats everywhere.  Thanks guys!

Each of our kids gets to choose 1 accent color for their room and this is the awesome green that Maren chose.  It's one of the colors from her bedspread.

Here is the purple that Evy chose - what other color would it be??

These are the light fixtures in the family room....the ones in the bedrooms are slightly different...but of course I don't have any pictures of those.

Now we are finally back to the present - this next picture is of work that was done THIS WEEK!!!  Can you believe it?  Drew and Steve went to Kalispell to pick up a HUGE load of stuff for the house.  We bought all our carpet down there, our interior doors, and another big load of drywall.  EVERYTHING  is so much cheaper down there - it amazes me!  We have saved thousands by shopping across the border.  Anyway, they brought home enough carpet to do the new bedrooms upstairs, and enough underlay to do the whole upstairs.  Here is the tack strip that Drew laid on Monday.

Next he did the underlay and taped all the seams.

And HOORAY!  Carpet in Maren's room!!  I am soooo excited!

So is Micah - here he is - the first one to do a somersault on the new carpet!

I am attempting to try and post a video again...here is Micah doing snow angels in the new carpet.  Why are we so weird?  Who get's this excited about carpet?

Well, I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but videos just DON'T work for me.  But trust me, it was cute!

Well, here is the state of our house right now.  This is looking down the stairs from the front entrance.  The wall at the bottom is widening to accommodate the wider stairs.  We just need to put in a new header across the top to bear the weight of the floor.

I went outside and took a picture of the garage doors.  Sorry if it is a bad picture...it was cold.

This is what the front of the garage looks like now.  It will get all finished in the spring

Here is more drywall to finish a few projects in the house and also to drywall the garage.

And here are all our doors piled up waiting to be installed.  I can't believe I didn't think to buy all the handles while I was there....duh!  Oh well, we'll be going again.  We are buying our carpet in stages and we'll be going down to get another load, hopefully, this weekend.

We also have a bunch more windows waiting for warm weather.  We are replacing all the windows in the house so be more energy efficient.

The new, bigger, water heater was installed the other day - we should NEVER run out of hot water now.  The furnace will be replaced with a new energy efficient one just as soon as we finish up all our drywalling projects.

Well, that's it.  That's where we are at.  Tonight we'll be moving all the stuff for bedrooms upstairs so we can continue working on the main floor.  All the old bedroom carpet will come out, the ceilings scraped and knockdown put up and all the 'valance' thingy's above all the windows ripped out....I'm excited for that project.  Then fix it all up, mud and tape, paint and lay the carpet.  Then we'll move everything upstairs from the basement and do the same thing down there.  Maybe by spring we might actually be finished!  

I don't know if I dare hope for that yet! ;)