NO TIME TO CATCH UP!!

So busy, no time to talk, only show pictures! CHECK OUT THE BADASSERY!

Temporary floor transition until Jay can get us the "special piece" haha. 

TV mount up... quarter round done... 

Quarter round, new paint, windows stained... and suddenly we had a family room!! TV, furniture, pup, and all! It's pretty amazing to see. And I KIND of heart my reclaimed wood wall...

And then the big project... the one everyone was worried about... the railing...

This is what we were dealing with... we basically took down a wall, and rolled a circular saw through the middle of the remaining studs, smacked a 2x4 on top, and VOILA, temporary railing! However the building inspector did not think it was up to code... [SHOCKING, I know]

So in our "Pros vs Joes" moment, we debated tackling it ourselves, or calling in someone who had done it before... "we" came to the decision of "Let's see how hard it could be..."

And the boys got to work... 

The end result:

Color me impressed!!!

And the thing's solid as Sears... Well done, gentlemen!

Mmmmm, the Smell of Progress...

Usually a super toxic smell that I'm not allowed to be around at the moment. Awesome. Luckily, Mr. Moneypit and Mr. Chaz Adams rocked it out so I didn't have to. :)

So we rented the big floor sander from Home Depot - note to other DIYers... the sander rental; CHEAP! $50 for the day! Sweet!! Um... the sand paper, that you have to buy... to go with it... upward of $250 for what they "recommended" for our little one and a half rooms!!! But more on that later... The boys did the coffee room... (Nick, stylin' as always)

 And the family room

 We tried to protect our new carpet and semi-furnished bedroom as best we could... though perhaps ended up turning it into a bit of a scene from Dexter...

 Sunday we returned the rental with HALF the recommended sand paper, thanks to my dad lending us this baby to finish up...

 Not too shabby... (NOTE: that was not the ShopVac we used, we actually had [also from my dad] his heavy duty dust-wrangling attachment on the ShopVac - sort of like this - if you can get your hands on one of these if you're doing this yourself, DO IT, we didn't even need tack clothes, it got ALL the dust...)

 Back to the family room, where Nick was laying down the first layer of Poly while Chaz stained the coffee room our most favoritest stain color, Minwax's Dark Walnut.

Love love love... it's so exciting, I can't wait for them to be totally done! Which will be... later this week. Hopefully. 

Bad Blogger...

Is it possible my last post was over a MONTH ago??? In my defense, we've been working our tails off with the holidays, the show, and trying to get our C of O (the last stipulation for closing this book). Here's just a little picture tour of what's been going on...

Bedroom mouldings going up... 

 and up and up...

Master bath vanity needing finishing... oh, and mirrors...

How many Clarkson engineers kids does it take to lay a rug??

hehe, obviously kidding since they did an amazing job...

The soon-to-be-nursery rug down and moulding up...

 Damn crooked ass house... :)

Oh my goodness... that bedroom is starting to look like a BEDROOM!

Mouldings painted, carpet down...

Brick approves...

And last but not least... could that REALLY be the floor under all that mess??

Yes... yes it is... amazing what a little ok a lot of sanding and staining can do to original wood floors... (we did not do this, by the way, we left this one up to the pros...)

But now I'm reconsidering refinishing the rest of the third floor, rather than carpeting... 

That concludes our quick, up-to-date tour, more as it comes, promise!