Afraid of Bugs – Tales from the Homestead of Casa Chihuahua

And we’re still at it…..
Stuff is being loaded into the house now by the movers but we still have a lot back at silverlake
Hoping we finish before dark

looking good…taken yesterday afternoon

just need to replace some hardware and the sconce

even without the floors redone, it looks much better – love the afternoon light the room gets

and the little book nook – they fixed all the cracked and peeling plaster and gave everything a fresh coat of paint – glorious!

but Jess just download some photos from yesterday…too good not to share

L.A. is so freakin cool – we get to have NINJAS paint our house

duct work running everywhere in the basement, even up the stairs

mega-robot octopus wants to hug you with its long warm tentacles

we decorated early for halloween -  you like?

stripped of its knobs – the cabinets get 40 years of food painted over – i mentioned we didn’t clean anything first right? (kidding mom)

rather than buy new furniture for the living room, we went with this modern art installation – money well spent don’t you think?

seriously…

I haven’t seen the house since Sunday….thanks to the fact that it’s only wednesday and i’ve put in over 43 hours at work….but Jess has been doing a great job of keeping me up to speed on the progress of things.

Here are the updates from the 26th…They’re still working on the giant robot octopus in our basement…and here you see the kitchen and bathroom getting prep’d for their face lift via a coat of paint.

enjoy.

Does this look like it’s ready for us to move in?

no – not so much..

We got a big chunk of the boxes out of the rental last night and over to the house…but there’s still so much to do.  My work week is going to be intense so J is sadly going to have to do alot of the nightly back and forth himself – until thursday eve when I can jump back in and help.

The garage is filling up fast – we’ve got it about 1/4 full now – but need to leave room for Vick and Salah to finish the HVAC work.  They’re scheduled to be done tomorrow most likely.  But this brings me to my next internal stuggle…we need to start moving in and almost every room is still being worked in or on.  This greatly reduces our opportunities to bring stuff over.

Another early morning list…just because I need to do one…

• Entry way – being painted again, getting hole patched from vent opening
• Powder room – being painted
• Living room – being patched and painted
• Kitchen – being patched, painted and floor urethaned
• Dining room – being used as a staging area for the contractor
• Basement – HVAC work ongoing – no room to store stuff down there yet, let alone clean
• Den – the one place we can store stuff, thankfully, but have to wait until hall paint is done/dry
• Bedroom 1 – trim being painted- should be ready tomorrow
• Bathroom – being patched, painted, scrubbed
• Hall closets- need a sweep but are ready for me to bring stuff over
• Bedroom 2- trim being painted – should be ready tonight for stuff
  
• Office – being painted, scrubbed

So, we’ve got the Garage, Den, possibly the 2nd bedroom and the hall closets – and hopefully all the other work will be done and dry by saturday morning.

It was (and continues to be) a jam packed day.

Just taking a 15 minute break before driving another car load of stuff over to the house.  Today we did an early morning check in with Juan Jose to point out a couple of things that needed re-touching and ended up finalizing plans to paint the living room, kitchen and bathroom.  I made sure to point out what in the kitchen needed to be scraped, tossed out and patched.  I can’t believe we’d gone this far already…it kinda makes my head spin.  The heater is pretty much installed as well and looks like we have a giant prone robot in the back corner of our basement…it’s cool looking.  I also managed to squeeze in a few hours at the office and came home to pack up the kitchen around 1 – and then J and I started shuttling boxes to the house.  We’re just inhaling some dinner now and will make one last run tonight and take some photos of the work that was done today.  The bedroom is nearly ready – just need the new fan put in – so I can’t wait to see it.

Here are some photos from yesterday…

Until we have to be entirely in the house…

There’s still lots to be done and the clock is ticking until we absolutely have to be out of rental…here’s hoping we can get it all done in time.

The kitchen floor stained – waiting for a coat of urethane – afterward the whole kitchen will be painted.

freshly painted stairwell..

The past 2 days have had 4am wake-up calls and ended in me getting home too late to go the house to see progress…but Jess has been checking in on things and keeping everything on track.  We’re packing up the last of our stuff here and transporting some to the house tomorrow.

Just to keep things rolling – here’s the latest list:

• stain and urethane kitchen floors-it did rain today and they were doing some work in the kitchen so the sealing/staining/etc is on hold till tomorrow
  
• order appliances -might go order these tomorrow for a friday delivery
• get 2 fans and 3 sconces-get over to Home Expo and get something so we can finish the bedrooms for the “move-in” condition – hopefully this weekend
• call a plumber-to fix the 2 leaks (from our initial inspection) and to hook up the new dishwasher – shooting for friday
  
• industrial cleaning of entire house -hoping to do this on wednesday…the urethane in the kitchen has to be dry enough for them to get in there to clean…fingers crossed
  
• paint hallway and upstairs – primer coat all on, paint going on tomorrow – bedrooms are looking great
  
• refinish the oak floors upstairs – moving back down the list
  
• puppy proof the decks -try to get this done in the coming week -moving up the list
  
• get estimate for the den -budget check needs to be done…maybe in march sometime?
  
• remove our trees – first couple of weeks of february
  
• clean chimney – i should probably remove this….but i should probably just have the darn thing cleaned and be done with it
  
• hvac (install new heater, ducts and a/c) - heater in, a/c in, vents cut, duct work going in tomorrow, electrical run…we are almost DONE!
  
• create a remodel plan (bath/kitchen) and stick to it – going back to a plan…probably a good idea
  
• windows (partial) - window hazards should be patched up by this weekend
  
• spaz out (daily occurrence) – lots and lots of work spazzing..
  
• sit perplexed for 3-4 minutes trying to remember what i’m forgetting – i know one thing, i haven’t forgotten how to eat…
  

Again!

While neither Jess or I could be at the house to document the action – our amazing crew demolished the darkroom and removed the old duct work and furnace from the basement – opening up an amazing amount of space!!!

Jess took the “after” photo – and next to my “before” photo, it’s pretty dramatic.

the before -complete with bongos in the background and lots of junk

and the after – oodles of room for my studio space,laundry and the furnace!

The other good news was someone actually took the old fridge home with them, so it went to good use!

Probably tomorrow the hvac units show up – and then thursday the wall work will ramp back up.

I was just done with this post – and J asked where “the list” was…here ya go.s

• stain and urethane kitchen floors-rain expected tomorrow and Juan at another job – so on hold
• order appliances -for delivery next week sometime
  
• industrial cleaning of entire house -maybe towards the end of the week, next week? next month? when does the work stop so it will make sense to clean?? i dunno!?
  
• skim coat and paint hallway and upstairs – in the coming week
  
• refinish the oak floors upstairs – somehow this is moving back up the list!!!??? but probably not really
  
• puppy proof the decks -get photos to show Juan and pick a date to start work
• get estimate for the den -this used to be the 1st thing on the list…fell of the list…and might come back before the windows are done…we’ll see.
  
• remove our trees – next month maybe? but need someone to “clean-up” the backyard sooner rather than later – too scary for our dogs to go back there right now
  
• clean chimney – not really a priority at all….check back next november
  
• hvac (install new heater, ducts and a/c) - bad stuff has been removed, new stuff going in- on track
  
• move in - another week would be really really really helpful
  
• create a remodel plan (bath/kitchen) and stick to it -somewhere along the road this went from a 10 yr “this old house” project to a 1 week “extreme home makeover” episode…they don’t use plans on that show do they? we’ll be fine.
  
• windows (partial) - “that tube of caulk could probably fix the giant gap in the window frame…”
  
• spaz out (daily occurrence) – no house spazing at all today
  
• sit perplexed for 3-4 minutes trying to remember what i’m forgetting – good day, didn’t lock myself out of anything, just lost my work ID for 1/2 a day…not too bad.
  

More progress…

I’m beat today – i didn’t really do any “work” – but am feeling pretty wiped out by the intensity of everything over the past 3 1/2 days.

All the guys got right to work this morning on the plaster and on finishing up the drywall.  The electrical was also embedded into the walls in the two bedrooms and will make them much nicer now.

We need to shop for 2 ceiling fans and 3 sconces so things can be rewired in the bedrooms once they are painted.  The HVAC is on track and they pull the asbestos out tomorrow morning. All in all, things are chugging along very quickly.  I also removed all the safety bars from the upstairs bathroom and while dirty, looks much better too (J has a photo on his flickr)

I did have a slight side adventure today tho’ – when I ran home to walk the dogs at noon, I locked myself out of our rental (dogs were already safely back inside) and had to ask our neighbor S.C. to let me borrow his phone (and for J’s cell number which I still haven’t memorized)…so lame of me.  It’s hilarious because just moments before I was chanting my “to do ” list to myself so I wouldn’t forget anything in my running around and sure enough managed to forget my bag with everything in it……….

It’s good to be home, full and showered – but not ready to head back to work.  It’s going to be a very long 2 work weeks and I’ll be lucky if I get to see the house again before this saturday.