Blogging from Spain

Hello Hello! Blogging about our addition in Minnesota from all the way in Spain. Crazy. Mom and I finally figured out a way for her to get pictures to me without having to majorly shrink the picture sizes or send me 800 emails with three pictures each. So here you go! I apologize for leaving many of you hanging for so long with our almost completed project..haha. Not really sure what the status of completion is today, some of you might actually know better than I do, but I do know that the appliances are in, there is water in the kitchen sink, the new washer and dryer are all hooked up and the old ones gone, and the floors are in!

Our butcher block! 

Kitchen to dining room doorway 

the new basement was drywalled!

Shiny new fridge

messyyyyy

??

Installing the hardwood floor

Pantry space on the way into the basement

More new shelves, on the landing on the stairs into the basement (where that ancient door to the outside used to be)

Apparently they put shelves in our new closet 

Bathroom vanity...work in progress

Back stoop

More stoop

Dryer vent? 

Our new kitchen! Still missing the stone tile backsplash though

Dining room....not sure why the picture is split down the middle horizontally..? 

Hardwood floor! 

Where's our old washer and dryer?!

Our shower has a door! 

Things You've Missed

Hello! I have been majorly behind on this...I'm sorry. I was out of town last week and am now in Spain, but here are some pictures of things you've missed in the past couple weeks!

Ok..this one is super super late, but still a fun picture. Mom took it one day when they were painting shingles and using our lawn to let them dry. 

The doorway (in progress) between our new kitchen and the old dining room! 

After all their hard work, the kitchen was still not square! It was off by about an inch. Go figure. 

All of the ugly rocks in our rock pile became a nice retaining wall along the east side of our driveway where the old garage used to hold up the ground, and the three nice rocks were put in a line along the west side of our garage (the side facing Helen's house). 

Another Wall

Today, the kitchen/dining room wall was drywalled, and the wainscoting in the bathroom was finished!

Run On Sentence

By the time I meandered downstairs today (not counting when I rescued my beauty sleep from Dori's ridiculously pitiful howls as she realized she was left outside while watching Papa drive away...sorry for the run on sentence), Scott was nailing wainscoting in the bathroom, Jim was putting together the start of our back stoop and stairs, and Randy was hard at work measuring and squaring out the new kitchen/dining room wall. He also fixed the giant hole in the floor between the two rooms.

As with the rest of the kitchen, squaring out this wall required boards cut thin at the top and thick at the bottom...which is easier to see if you make the picture bigger

Old Fashioned Glitter Glue

Not much to take pictures of yesterday..just some more window trim and more painted windows, but that's about it. Today on the other hand, was quite the adventure! Jim, our contractor, took out the kitchen/dining room wall! The plan is to mimic the entryway between our living room and dining room between the dining room and new kitchen.

The rest of the doors also came! 

The lovely "dust shield" erected to minimize dust from cutting out the wall,  as well as a dark view of the doorway we are going to mimic between the dining room and kitchen

Stage One. 

Tearing away plaster

Adding new 2x4s to give the structural dimensions and support for the new doorway

Action shot! The little thing poking out of the wall in the middle of the picture is a saw blade! 

Sliding double doors for the closet

Bathroom doors drying after a coat of paint

Stage Two: no more wall!  

Some crazy nails in an old 2x4

Check out all the layers! Plaster, lathe, a paper thin layer of wallpaper, some more wood and then new 2x4s

The Jackpot of the Day: Some old wallpaper! Still in the wall at this point

The piece of wallpaper Jim found after I pulled it out of the wall. Hand painted. Dennis, one of our painters, told me they used to put up the paper and paint it afterwards. The fancy part is a border that was up next to the ceiling and the plain part where my thumb is is just plain wallpaper. Also, this piece was facing into the dining room.

If you click on this photo to make it bigger, you can see all the awesome colors and details still on the wallpaper! Dennis thought it was probably original to the house, which in this room means it is probably 110+ years old! Pretty awesome as a history buff. And just awesome in general. Also, if you look at the picture blown up, you can see something that looks like glitter glue. Dennis thinks it is probably real gold flakes! So. Glitter glue with real gold. Naturally this makes this souvenir that much more awesome. It must be the reason that mom and I like to craft with glitter glue in this room. 

The finished product for the day

Hard to get good depth perception from this picture, but the orangey/brown rectangle in the middle of the picture is actually the basement floor! It's a little easier to see blown up. Leftovers from the chimney removal. Not sure how they will patch that one up...