Saturday, Sunday and Monday

PHEW!!!
SO much has happened since I last updated our blog that I feel overwhelmed at the task of uploading the pictures! But I can't wait for you all to see the progress we made!!! So here goes:

We'll start at the top... so the upstairs of the house :-)

Bob and Becky were really hard at work trying to peel the rest of the wallpaper off in the master bedroom, hallway and kid's bathroom and bedrooms. It came off easily in the master bedroom but it was extremely difficult to get off in the rest of the rooms! They worked so hard though and got a lot off!

And here are the wonderful fruits of their labors!

Our Master Bedroom

The Girl's Bedroom! We'll need to spackle in here - the wallpaper was not easy to get off at all! Rob's Dad is an amazing spackler though so I know it'll look beautiful!

The Hallway - we couldn't get the wallpaper off here without getting down into the sheet-rock. So we're just going to buy an 1/8th" sheet-rock and go right over the top of it....

There are even two layers of wallpaper in the bathroom!

Rob's Dad has finished spackling our bedroom and painted the ceiling. Then he moved onto spackling the baby's room! (I forgot to get pictures today!)

Meanwhile, downstairs:

We all ate lunch together. We made hot dogs on the stove. Little did we know it would be the last meal it cooked in that house.... you'll see why!

Rob took down the shutters and blinds in the big living room and the den! It really brightened up the whole place!

Rob used the caulking gun to caulk all the cracks in the Living Room (around the moulding and the shelves) He's become quite the pro at it and really enjoys doing it now!

We finally chose our Living Room colors after we brought some framed pictures and a pillow over from our apartment. (See all the samples on the wall?) We got the paint from Sherwin Williams and started to paint! I've been dying to do it!

We ordered some vents off of Amazon (they were cheaper than Home Depot or Lowes) and Rob put them in on Monday evening!

Mom and I started working in the den/playroom on Saturday morning. We removed all the white stuff from the bricks. Some of it was cement that had been painted white! It looks so much better now!

Dad came to help a bit!

Dad was very busy gutting our kitchen. I think we drove our neighbors up the wall as we banged and cut our way through the day!

I think all the hard work got to him!

Dad started getting the cabinets down at a record pace! He was eager to cut the hole in the wall through to the dining room and we were dying to see what it would look like!

Here he is cutting through the wall. Unfortunately he forgot that the stove line was right in his way! We heard a loud pop and there was a flash of blue! He cut right through the power line to the stove. He was ok though! PHEW!!!

There's the hole in the wall! We really love it already!! It opens the hole place up!

Rob's looking forward to eating his breakfast here each morning.

I just couldn't stop myself from coming back to stare at the opening in the wall. It made such a difference to the room!

Demolition Man on the move! This was all still from Saturday! He moved extremely fast!!

My brother, Rob, came to see the house for the first time! He really liked it I think!

Excuse all the electrical wires hanging down. The guy before had them snaked all over the place. It was quite a mess but my Dad has taken care of it (as you'll see below)

On Sunday my Dad worked to finish off the opening. He re-dry walled around the opening and got it ready for the new cabinets. Rob and I placed the order on Sunday and our new kitchen should be here in three to four weeks! Just enough time for us to do the electrical work, re-dry wall and get a floor in! 

Here's my beautiful Mom walking from the kitchen to the dining room!

Working with the electrics from the old stove!

Today, my job was to break out the rest of the sheet-rock in the kitchen. I'm definitely not as strong as my Dad so all I could do was make these ridiculous looking holes! Rob and I will be working on removing all the sheet rock from the kitchen this week!

I helped my Dad work on the electrics on Monday afternoon. We put in all those blue boxes (new outlets) and ran the electrical wiring (orange). This wall will eventually be where our stove and microwave go with cabinets either side. The top blue box is the outlet for our microwave. The others will all be outlets in the kitchen!

What we are planning on doing next: Rob's Mom and Dad are continuing work upstairs. As soon as we settle on a color for our bedroom they'll begin painting it. Bob has also been working on the baby's room which is where we'll probably expand next.

We have some final things to buy to finish off the living room (a new return air vent cover) and we need to repaint the living room! I can't wait to get started on the trim in there.

We also want to pick a color for the dining room, kitchen and den.

We want to buy some new hardwood floor for the entrance hall so we can rip out the old one, establish the new level (there are so many in tis house) and install our new front door. (which we've had since before we bought the house)!

We want to pull out the rest of the sheet rock in the kitchen, move the laundry room door, work on the electrical, put new dry wall up, close up the hole in the wall where the old fan was, pull up the flooring to see if we can make the original floor boards level or if we need new ones....

It's going to be a crazy but exciting week! I promise to do another update towards the end of this week, before the weekend changes happen!

Here we are! The happy and very very blessed and grateful homeowners! THANK YOU to both of our parents for all of the hard work and advice you've given us so far! There's no way we could have done this without you guys! We love you all so much!

Thanks for checking in! See you again soon!

Love The Colby's