It's alive!!!

The blog that is.

It's coughing and gasping for air but it lives.

Three months without a post. Let's not talk about it.

Instead let's talk about basement progress!

I'll make this post short and sweet unlike the last one ;)

With some help from my parents, the drywall went up in a weekend. Remember, this was to replace the terrible dropped ceiling.

For the kitchen reno, we used a drywall saw like this one to cut out holes for the recessed lighting. This time, we bought a round saw attachment for our drill (the attachment can be added to any drill - not just "our" drill).

It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to use. It needs to be kept perfectly level or it gets stuck. It's MUCH better than jagged sawed out circles though. Easier on the arm muscles too! To know where to cut the circles, we used a combination of the lipstick method and measuring. Don't know what the lipstick method is? Here ya go :)

Here's where I'm missing some pictures of the finished drywall ceiling before the next step - priming for paint! So we skip forward to this...

Clean bright ceiling! Clean bright walls!! No more ugly paneling!! Yes, the paneling is still there, but painted paneling is a completely different story. Ed taped and mudded the ceiling drywall joints and then primed the ceiling and started on the walls.

Future site of office nook!

What used to be the "office" that we never used is now the nursery. We have three bedrooms upstairs and wanted to keep a guest room instead of having an office, nursery and master. So I'm planning on turning this closet space into one of those cute office nooks. We'll see when that happens ;)

Other things have happened like brick column repair, basement bathroom demo and of course, nursery prep! I hope to be posting about those soon.

Also, this is a repeat if you follow me on Instagram but we're expecting a girl! Two months to go 

(aaah!)

Basement progress - part 1

Even though I haven't been posting, there has been some progress in the basement!

*Readers think to themselves "oh yeah, I guess they were renovating the basement or something...wasn't that months ago??*

Yes! We started this project in August. It is now January of the following year. Ugh.

But like I said in my last post...I've been sleeping. Also my sissy got married in October and then there was Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and here we are.

So here is where we left off.

Since we last spoke in October, we hired two contractors. One to remove the old kitchen sink plumbing (you can see part of it next to the stove in the pic above) and one to install new recessed lighting. We originally thought of installing the recessed lighting ourselves but the more we looked into it and tried to figure out what was what with the wiring in our basement, we got scared and backed away slowly. Turns out the entire basement needed to be rewired - all of our outlets were wired through the lighting, lighting and outlets had been added at different times resulting in a maze of circuits and wires, nothing was to code...too much for a DIYer to handle. At least too much for these DIYers to handle.

So $1300 later, we got our basement rewired and 16 cans installed. This was BY FAR the lowest estimate. The first guy we talked to wanted $1600 - $100/can - and hadn't even discovered all the wiring issues. Can't imagine what he would have ended up costing. 

Next we wanted to try and eliminate some of the sound coming up from the basement and vice verse. Our bedroom is right above where the TV will be and right now, you can hear someone sneeze in the bedroom when you're standing in the basement. Not good. So we bought some insulation, not the best stuff but not the worst stuff and crammed it between all of the joists. We needed 12 rolls of insulation at $12 = $144 + tax.

We didn't even get estimates for the next part....drywall installation.

We're old pros at this by now!!

Yeah right.

Pros maybe not but at least it's not the first time we've done it!

We rented a lift for I think around $70 for the weekend (I forget the exact amount) and enlisted the help of my parents.

For those of you who care about the details, we cut some corners with our drywalls installation. As you can see in the picture above, there is crown molding in place. Instead of removing it, installing the drywall and then putting it back up, we discovered that the gap left by the dropped ceiling tiles, was the exact thickness of the drywall. So we were able to just shove the drywall into the gap between the molding and dropped ceiling slats and leave the molding in place. This also means we won't have to tape and mud where the walls meet the ceiling - SCORE! 

You'll also notice in the pics above that we left the dropped ceiling slats in place. This was not by choice. I would have much rather screwed the drywall into the ceiling joists. The slats are really strong and not going anywhere, and (we think) are definitely capable of supporting the drywall, but that's just not how it's done. You screw drywall into joists. However, when the electrical was installed back in the 60s, they ran some of the wiring under the joists and above the ceiling tiles. 

Red - wires

Blue - floor joists

Yellow - Dropped ceiling slats

This apparently is not up to code these days (who knows if it was in those days...). The wires should be running through holes drilled in the joists. We brought this to the attention of our electrician who said he would fix it. After we'd paid the man and he left, we saw that he had not fixed it...some wires still ran underneath the joists. I think we were too dazzled by the new cans to notice. So what did we do? We just moved on and screwed the drywall into the slats, over the wires. We're comfortable with our decision. If you're not - keep it to yourself. We know. We don't care. Now there's some pregnancy bitchiness honesty for ya!

When did this post become so long? Anyone still reading this?? To give you a break I'll split the Basement progress post into two parts :) I'll leave you with a pic of a finished section so it was at least worth scrolling to the end of the post ;) More to come!

Well hi there...

Remember me?

I used to post things here.

I've (obviously) been taking a veryveryverylong break... but I have a good excuse!

We're havin' a baby!

No - I am not this big yet. But who can resist trying on the fake bump at the maternity clothes store? 

Our little one is due in June, which means I was in the first trimester for the last three months, which means I've been sleeping. Seriously hibernating. I've never been so tired!

But now the energy has come back... At least enough for me to host Christmas at our house for the first time.

Our Christmas Eve table. We always have Hungarian goulash on Christmas Eve so no plates needed.

Oops. There were red candles added later on...

I got this plaid fabric at Joann's for $10 and used the extra to line a tray.

The wine station :) in which I cannot partake :(

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas or Hanukkah or both!

Peanut with her gift from Santa. This picture was not posed (except for us making her wear the jingle-jester collar).