Livable

We’ve been asked a lot lately if the house is finished. Austin immediately responds with “yep! We’re in it now!” I usually laugh and say “well…we are living in it.” The real answer is that it’s livable but nowhere near done! It’s starting to feel more comfortable but we won’t be settled for quite a while. My studio is where we are sleeping for the time being because it is the only room that is completely finished. The hallway, bedrooms, and bathroom are all painted but still need trim. The bathroom will probably be our next completed room.

Here’s the before pictures.

At this point Austin kept saying “just think, someday we’ll come into this room to get clean.”

We moved the “poop hole” as Ellie called it, just a little since we were redoing all of the plumbing anyways.

This was the first time we had running water! We only had one minor leak to repair that day.

Painting day was exciting!

Ladies, marry a handy guy! You won’t regret it! Austin laid our tile with a little help and put the vanities and toilet in. We will have a bathroom door someday! This was the day that I finally started to feel like these walls were going to be our home! October 28th was our first night in the house. Austin, Granville, and I that is. Ellie stayed with grandma and grandpa that night. It was a cold night but we survived! We only forgot a few things.

Granville’s socks were the most important thing that we forgot. Luckily, we had a pair of Ellie’s gloves in the diaper bag so he wore those until grandma met us at church with his socks.

Our mudroom is painted and ready for trim. We plan to do the flooring in the mudroom when we do the kitchen and living room flooring. We will eventually have shelves, cabinets, countertop, and a sink in here. We (I) decided that if everything was being ripped out and plumbing was being redone anyways, then we should put a sink in the mudroom. I’m hoping that Austin will come in from the garage and wash his hands in this sink instead of bringing his messes into the kitchen.

This is the before picture of our bedroom. As we started ripping everything out, we discovered that the walls were 3 layers thick in some places. It was a mess!

The only insulation that we found in these walls was the new insulation we had put in Gran’s room.

We were pretty excited about getting rid of the ugly ceiling tiles!

When we moved all of our stuff in, it all got dumped in our bedroom. We are slowly getting things unpacked and put away (aka stuffed into the studio closet) in preparation for carpet. We are hoping to get that ordered and installed after we are done with all this nasty weather. We found some stuff that we hadn’t seen in a long time while we unpacked boxes.

Ellie found some treasures! We stumbled upon a bag of things that I was given at the hospital after having Granville. For some reason, Ellie couldn’t get enough of these “hospital undies” and wore them around for a few days. Austin kept trying to throw them away and every time, Ellie would cry. I had to wait until she was in bed one night to throw them away. I wish this picture wasn’t so blurry because I wanted it to be nice and sharp when it’s showed at her high school graduation!

Ellie’s room had beams in the ceiling that we didn’t understand. The light was right in the middle of them so her room was very dark. When we ripped everything out, we realized that one beam was purely cosmetic and the other had something in it. We tore out the cosmetic one and rearranged some things so the other is mostly in her closet now. There was also a box in the corner of her room. It was carpeted and we had no idea what to expect when we tore that out. It was just an HVAC line from an old system that was going nowhere. We were able to pull that out and get the floor patched up.

Ellie was ready to help paint her room! We picked gray for three of her walls and a light blue with glitter for her fourth wall.

The first few days that we were in the house, Ellie found all of my old Barbie stuff. She would sit in her room ALL day long playing with all of it! We had to force her to come out for meals and then she’d be right back in there as soon as she was done. She was still sleeping in the studio with the rest of us at this point.

Since then, we’ve put a big rug down in her room and put some of her closet together. Austin had to put spray foam around the floor in her room because there was such a draft coming from under the house. That stuff helped a lot! Her ceiling looks so much better now! We are currently looking for a trundle bed for her room so we can get her all set up as soon as we have carpet.