Week ???

It's been about a month since I last posted, but I'm not sure what week that makes it. We were gone for a week, Derek took a road trip to Minnesota to be in a wedding and I visited my family and Michael and Amber and Audrey with my mom. Then we were home for a week and then gone for another week for another wedding in San Diego. Since our anniversary was a couple days before the wedding we decided to go down early and celebrate. Tomorrow will be the second week we have been back, so I guess this makes it week 4?

Anyway all of Derek's time has been spent getting ready for drywall. There are A LOT of little things that have to be done regarding both plumbing and electrical before the walls can go up. Some of it has been frustrating work. John has helped out quite a bit with the electrical. They have re-wired most of the house which meant chasing down circuits and running a ton of wire both in the attic and under the house. Derek has been doing an amazing job and has been putting in long days to get everything done.

We picked out and ordered the vanity for the master bath (not that it's terribly interesting but here's a link if you just can't stand the suspense https://www.maxfurniture.com/Double+Vanities+Click+Here+/7362/147-114-5741.asp, cream top). We decided to go with a totally different style than we were originally planning on but we're both excited about it. It's actually been hard designing the bathroom because we really don't want it to look or feel like we have remodeled at all. We also picked out tile for the floor. There is a flooring liquidator in Merced and we were surprised to find that they were actually very cheap. The tile for the floor was .79 a square foot. We're deciding between two tiles for the guest bath, both of those are very inexpensive also. This is a very good thing since the quote for having the tile done was $1800 just for the shower and another $279 for the floor. We have been completely relying on God to allow us to make our budget, and we have been very blessed throughout this entire process and even more so this past week as we are getting ready to spend larger sums on things like tile and drywall.

The rest of the good news we got this week was 1) the drywall quote was about half of what we had expected it to be. The guy is also treating the walls so they will look like the rest of the walls in the house. We couldn't put any type of texture on the walls because the rest are plaster, it would have looked very out of place and very obvious that the room was redone. And 2) he is starting the drywall this Wednesday! It's such a huge step in the process. So tomorrow and Tuesday will be spent cleaning up wood shavings, cleaning out equipment from the room, and insulating the walls. Derek asked one of his former students to help on both days. The drywall guy also gave Derek the name of the tile guy he uses and he is supposed to be pretty cheap. He should be coming this week to give us a quote. I'm looking forward to posting those before and after pictures! Speaking of which here is the latest....

This is how electrical makes Derek feel :)

Funny story, this is the office, the book shelf is gray. We decided to repaint it the white that is on the trim. We can't get everything right the first time I guess.

There are at least a hundred of these running through the rafters and framing. Each one had to be pushed through several holes by hand. It was a horrible job.

He's learning so much. Keep in mind that it's the height of summer. It's been over a hundred everyday and we aren't running the air because the ceiling is too exposed and it wouldn't do much good. He and his dad have been crawling around in the attic! Our thermostat usually says it's anywhere from 86-93 everyday in the house.


This is from my trip to Dallas. Audrey was getting her first taste of ice cream, yum!

This is on our anniversary. We spent the night in San Diego and ate at a swanky steakhouse.

And this is from the wedding we went to. It was a lot of fun and it reminded us of where were married.

I think if you "subscribe" to the blog it will tell you when it has been updated automatically. So stay tuned for more exciting pictures this week (hopefully).