No more treehouse!

The absurdly large debris pile

The bathroom shelves are up, or at least two of them are since for some reason the middle shelf didn’t fit. I’m not terribly happy with how they came out, but at least there are shelves there and we can start using them for storage. When I have a few bucks lying around I’ll go get a sheet of birch plywood and do them better. I figure if I construct the shelf and the braces in one unit and attach it to the wall all together there will be fewer gaps.

The bathroom touchup painting isn’t done, but all the holes are filled and sanded. I now know that putty has to be applied pretty thickly because it shrinks as it cures. Hopefully I can finish that next weekend, and paint the door and window jambs where the old pink paint is showing through.

Last, I demoed out the wall in front of the old basement access door, and removed the plywood covering the stairs that gave us so much trouble with the underwriters last fall. Apparently, Nate is a big do-do head crap’r, whatever that means. Once I get the door freed of its very thick layer of silicone/rubber/whatever-the-hell-it-is caulk and get a padlock installed, I can move forward with taking out the existing stairs and filling in the living room floor with a temporary plywood patch.

Oh, those wacky previous owners!

I also have a good quote from an electrician to upgrade the service to 200 amps. Now I need to figure out what the schedule is for inspections and for Seattle City Light to hook up the new mast, and then I can schedule the electrician. I’m moving the location of the panel to the foundation wall, so I can remove the plastered-over stud wall the current panel is attached to when I completely gut the basement.

While Bryan is tearing down and ripping out the bathroom for it’s remodel before we move into the house, I will be tearing out the carpeting from downstairs that the previous owner kindly let their cats pee all over. Having four cats of our own we don’t really want ours getting a whiff of the previous damage so they can pick up the bad habit. It does break my heart to tear out the carpet because it seems to be one of the few things that the previous tenants actually did fairly well. They actually used a really good padding and it appears properly laid. Sadly it is soaked to the core in urine.

My other goal is to get all the rooms primed. Seeing as we are replacing all the wood paneling in the house it seems silly to paint it the actual color I really want only to tear it out in a couple months. But some of the colors are simply atrocious. I figure it’s better to live with primer white till then than say…

This is the baby’s room:

And the current color of the master bedroom:

Not good.

Then the major project that I have decided is mine and mine alone, the yard. It appears someone in the past had some grandiose ideas. There is a pond, and some build up for what appeared to be a water fall, and even a composting bin. Of course looking at the yard you would have never known because it’s all hidden under half of a yard of morning glory. I have found my arch-nemesis. Morning glory is the devil. It has eaten up almost fifty percent of the yard and I can’t have that.. (said wearing my steely-eyed Clint Eastwood face)  I have also planned a consultation with our friend’s gardener because there are flowers interspersed amongst the weeds and when I am cleaning out the horrifically overgrown flowerbeds next to the house I don’t want to pull out something I am going to have to pay to have later. It’s all just such a jumbled mess I have know clue what’s what. I have recently grown to love having my own vegetable garden and plan to put one at the house to in raised beds.

My back hurts already.

Now we just finalize packing up the old house for the move. We are almost finished, only a few bits and pieces to finish..