Week(end) #2 - A little bit of Everything

The second week(end) of our fixer upper involved a little bit of everything.

Moving our office, garage, and then on a last minute decision the majority of our belongings
Painting the inside…and a few places outside
Fixing the garage wall – there was rot from an old water leak
Finding a free gift with purchase…our house came with Carpenters just not the useful kind
and…some fun and games

Here are the highlights from week(end) #2

PAINTING + PREPPING INSIDE

This week is all about getting the main floor painted and ready for our stuff to move in. It took 6 gallons of Kilz Primer…the heavy duty stuff…and another 6 gallons of paint to cover the interesting colour choices, stains and terrible smell emanating from the walls and ceilings. By the end the house felt like a totally different place…almost nice. (almost!)

: Simple fix for a leaking sink and a wet cutlery drawer. 10 minutes and some silicon.

: The living room revealed

: A small update for the back porch. It was just too yucky to leave.

: Its a slow process with a brush but it looks a million times better.

: Peeling back the protective paper

: The purple kitchen is gone. And not soon enough

: Master bedroom. No longer blood red

: Living Room Painted

: Painting (for about 1 minute)

: Window Cleaning team

GARAGE REPAIRS

The garage has a few places that were rotten from old leaks and a door to the storage room that didn’t really close…nor was it really a door but rather a slapped together make shift door. Since we will be demolishing the basement we are going to reuse some materials from down there for our garage…like a door and some lumber.

: Deep contemplation…two head are better than one

: The door is installed…and level…and closes very nicely. Good work guys!

: Framing and shimming the new door to the storage room

: The wrecking bar gets intimate with the creepy room in the basement to harvest materials for the garage

: Making the door level in a garage that is NOT level

: Deadly…the measurement must be deadly :)

: Measuring for the new door. We are determined that this door goes in level and square unlike the old door. It never really closed.

: Adam breaking in his Sawzall…is that a manly face??

: Old rotten studs are gone and replaced with new, level, studs. Ready for foo framing

: The studs and bottom plate were rotten so we cut them out and put in new stuff.

: Restructuring to make it level

: Cutting out the rotten studs

: Observing the garage reconstruction

: To do the garage we pillaged materials from the basement. Two birds one stone!

: Safety first ;)

GIFT WITH PURCHASE

So we found out this week that we have a free gift with the purchase of this place…carpenters…but not the building kind…the deconstruction kind. Carpenter Ants. Yay!

As we removed some old random insulation from the walls of the garage we found a carpenter ant nest. A big nest. They luckily had burrowed into the rigid insulation instead of the wood but nonetheless…they are an issue. Adam and the Dads promptly vacuumed them up because the wall was a moving black mass and when you find yourself surprised by ants you reach for whatever you can. After turning the shop vac into an ant eater we took it out back and committed mass ant massacre.

Unfortunately we know that were there are a few there are thousands, so this is not likely the end of our ant journey. Time to go knocking on walls and listening for the scurrying of little legs. Sigh.

: This is what it looks like when you have carpenter ants in your rigid foam insulation

: This is what it looks like when Adam vacuums them up and gives them a piece of his mind

MOVING BEGINS

: Adam pouting because his trailer lights aren’t working. Looks like someone got his wires crossed!

: But don’t worry…he fixed the wiring and all is good now!

: Here come to tools

: Ron bringing in the tools…and so happy about it!

: The move continues.

: Moving in the furniture.

: Look, we have started to move in!

THE WEEK(END) TEAM

In all fairness there were a few others around this week and weekend who helped us get things done but we didn’t get good pictures of them so…we will just pretend they don’t exist. (just kidding) Big shout out to the 4 little boys for excellent tree climbing and soccer and Darlene for sending food in her absence!