Negative Progress?

Somehow, this seems like negative progress; Don drilled forty three-inch holes in the main floor bedroom exterior walls in order to blow in insulation. EEEEE-gaads! We see a whole lot of hole-patching in our futures. The good news is that we found out that the dining room walls are already insulated. One has to wonder why some of the walls are insulated and some are not.

Today Don also got started on one of the more time-consuming projects; patching the hardwood floors where walls and floors were removed, and patches were made in the past.

The last reminent of the diagonal hallway.

And what is Sami up to? You guessed it - MORE sanding, priming and painting.

We figure that eventually we will remove all the bits we don't want, and add all the bits we do. These "bits" were planed off of a door that was sticking.

A Whole Lot of Holes

Work continues. Sami has sanded, primed and painted the window trim in the dining room and main floor bedroom and painted the inside walls in that bedroom. Now that we can see the color on the walls, it was time to choose curtain fabric. We are continuing using red as an accent color. This fabric won, hands down.

The first big product purchase we made, way back, last summer was the kitchen range. It was a fantastic deal because it was an "open box" return at Best Buy. It had some dings and a bent bracket. Don ordered replacement parts, installed them, and fitted the range into place. The dishwasher was also a summer purchase and this week Don put it into its place. They will both come back out when he does the tile back splash and floor, but its good to see how they look in the kitchen.

Before we move on to finishing exterior walls, some of them must be insulated. After watching a bunch of videos about do-it-yourself blow-in insulation we decided that we will tackle that ourselves. So, Don is now drilling a hundred, or so, three-inch holes in the exterior walls of our bedroom, the main floor bedroom, and the living room. Once we have upgraded the insulation, several rooms can be finished. Its like putting together a great, big jigsaw puzzle; one piece at a time.

Up Days, Down(ish) Days

Don visits the Providence Cancer Center for treatment every other Thursday and he is usually slowed down for a day or two by the Velcade shot, a "targeted" cancer drug, he receives. In addition he takes another cancer treatment, steroid pills, every Thursday that has its own set of side effects; feeling buzzed and sleepless for a day and night and then extra tired. Some weeks the treatments don't slow him down too much, but sometimes they do. When they do, he works on a project that requires less energy output than some. The last "low energy project" he picked was installing the pull-handles on the kitchen cupboards and drawers. He put in several full days doing it, because the cabinets themselves required some work to make them as good as they can be. Don switched out some too-short screws and reinforced hollow drawer fronts along the way. He does a lot of work that is not visible. But, what you can see looks mighty nice, don't you think? It is also nice to know that they are structurally as good as they can be.

Sami continues to mud, sand, prime and paint. Some stretching exercises come as a bonus.

New Bathroom - FINISHED!

Yes, the new bathroom is done! Yea!!

Here are some views of the final product...

The rebuilt window lets in lots of light without providing a view inside.

Pedestal sinks are NOT designed for ease of installation and maintenance! Don learned new skills...mainly working with PEX plumbing, which was part of the faucet package. We both put in hours and hours of work on this one. Oliver has declared the new bathroom “his.” All have tested the toilet and sink, and Don tested the shower last night. Time for a day off.