So much done... So little to show

Its amazing. The first few weeks it felt like every little thing was a huge improvement and you feel like you're making tons of progress. Then... you get to the point where you spend 2 hours turning this:

Into this:

And you wonder if anything will ever get finished......

We had a super productive weekend overall. We started by tearing off the awning outside the back door which was an interesting process as we weren't sure how the heck the thing was attached. After some poking around we figured out that the top slides out from a bracket mounted to the wall after you remove the curly bracket bits that project off the wall.

ACTION SHOT!

Then we ventured back inside to scrape more wallpaper at which point I discovered that a section of wall above the fireplace mantle was actually drywall which makes some sense at the ceiling had been laminated with drywall at some point. Not wanting to struggle with scraping off the wallpaper and seeing how crummy the transition was around the mantle I decide to poke around....with a hammer.

And then it looked like this...

During that process we found a couple things between the mantle and the wall...


There were tons of bobby pins back there for some reason.

Coins!

A 1906 Indian Head Penny




We also found some fiberglass blow in insulation from the attic that made its way down to the top of the fireplace.  We cleaned that out while we had access.

Two bricks came loose as we yanked the mantle out of place which we'll have to re-mortar once we decide what the heck we are doing with the fireplace. We are thinking of facing it with river rock/fieldstone veneer to match the foundation but thats a ways off. Thoughts?

On the bright side we finally met our neighbor who is a former professor of the college up the street.  So far all the neighbors we have met have been super nice and by warning them in advance that we will be destroying then rebuilding the house we hope to keep those relationships solid. 

So.. since we have been kind of running around tearing stuff off walls and test stripping paint here and there we decided we needed to put together a solid game plan to get us to the move in date.  We decided that we need to have at the very least the master bedroom done. 

By done we mean that unless the ceiling falls down for some reason we don't plan on touching that room again.  That leaves us with a pretty big list of things to do before then.  Whats on that list you ask?  

 Oh.. well here we go:

Wallpaper Stripped

Trim Prepped for paint (stripped if required)

Plaster Stabilized with Big Wally's Plaster Magic (Including closets)

Walls Skim Coated (Including closets)

Electrical Complete (contractor)

Light Fixture/Fan selected and installed

Switches/Outlets and Plates selected and installed

Doors Refinished and hardware adjusted/repaired as needed

Privacy door bolt installed (and selected!)

Closet Organization Solutions selected and installed

Windows Refurbed (stripped/reglazed/repainted, weatherstripped and re-corded)

Trim gaps caulked

Walls, Trim and ceilings (including closets) repainted

Floors Done (contractor)

That should be everything and as you can see it is quite the list.  We have about a month and a half to get all that done.  Most of it will go fast but the 80/20 rule definitely applies when you are working with an OCD/ADD crazy person (me) who wants everything prefect and will be sitting there starting at the wall at 2am because he can't decide if it needs another skim coat.  It will get done though... because we have no choice!