Day 40- 81 Square Feet

So do you remember the Attic Dormer/Birds Nest/Scary Room? Well it was the front A-frame to the house, an unfinished attic space that was kinda creepy and it was behind the little door you see below.

My brilliant idea was to turn it into a toy room for the kids, gut the space, add a window in place of the vent, insulate and drywall. So here it is gutted:
then we added side walls and insulation: Removed the vent, installed a window and drywall and mud:

And here it is primed and ready for some toy niches and a built-in desk space.

This space and the upstairs in general are definitely the biggest transformations to the house. So far I think it is pretty exciting! I added only 81 square feet to my floorplate and I think increased my value by at least $3-5000. Now I call that some bang for you buck! What do you think?

Day 30 & 31 It's been a month!

Wow- I really need to catch up with my blogs so I might keep the next ones short and sweet. :) So the rest of the weekend we finished insulating the attic and upstairs bathroom. It was very itchy (fyi: if you are clastrophobic I would suggest getting someone else to do it).

*Mental note to store in the back of your head in case you ever are adding more insultation to your attic or wherever: Wear long sleeves and gloves to avoid getting insulation in your skin, if you do get insulation all over your skin try not to scratch. Once you are done take a cold shower in order to keep your pores closed and not let the insulation into your skin. Once you feel like you got all the insulation off you can then take a hot shower.*

We also scraped some floors that weekend. Cheryl scraped the nasty glue off the wood floor in the dining room and Tiffany and I tackled the kitchen.

The stick-down/glue down tiles in the kitchen SUCKED. You had to scrape each one off with a crow bar and hammer and/or floor scraper and they came up in tiny pieces. When you got more than a 3"x3" piece there was cause for celebration!

Woot Woot!

Day 29- And SCREAMS went out

So on a Friday afternoon I am awaiting my little sisters arrival to come and help me with the house for the weekend. My contractors had just left and my other little sis had just run to grab something from the other house. I am trying to clean things up a bit and am upstairs using the shopvac. All of the sudden a bird flys from one attic opening to the other right above my head. Needless to say I screamed. I call my contractor to freak out and ask him what to do and if he can come back asap. THEN....my hero arrives. It is Tiffany and she is wondering why I am screaming. I start to explain what just happened when all the sudden the bird flys out again and over to a corner and into a piece of insulation. It was near an open window in Lucas' room (which is how I am assuming he got in in the first place) so Tiff decides we should try and scare it out. I agree with her...and then hand her a 2x2 while I stand frozen and gutsy girl goes over and starts hitting on the stud next to the bird. Nothing happens. We decide that maybe if we start using the shop-vac again that it will scare him out. So I turn it on and start vaccuming...then all the sudden we see insulation fall from the attic above and we look at eachother with that evil eye and whisper "there he is" and then all the sudden I look up and he is sitting 12" from my head on a ceiling joist and all I could do was start SCREAMING!!!!

The bird then flys into Lilly's room and is sitting up on top of a piece of insulation up in the corner right next to the window. At that time Cheryl comes back and wonders what is going on, we tell her the story and show her the bird and she comes upstairs to join our venture. So we come up with a plan! We will open the window in that room, close the door, turn on the vaccum and hit the wall with a stick and he will just fly out...right??

Sooooo...Tiffany BRAVELY goes and opens the window that is next to the bird so that hopefully he can fly out. We all go in Lilly's room and close the door hoping to contain him in the room (although one wall is only studs so there is about a 5' opening for him to fly back to Lucas' room). So since I did not think to grab my camera at the time; here is a description of what is happening:

-I am in the corner of the room (farthest from the bird) trying to duck behind Cheryl although she is so skinny that it is kind of difficult to use her for any kind of protection.

-Tiffany has her beating stick (a 2x2) and is approaching the bird to plan on hitting the studs trying to scare it out.

-The Bird (which is black and ugly) has its yellow eyes wide open, its beak chattering and is probably way more scared than I am...maybe.

Tiffany gets in place and starts hitting the wall...scared bird does not move. I turn on the shop-vac and start yelling at the bird to get out of my house. He flys across the room and almost out of the 5' opening but instead perches on top of a shelf. (I hold Cheryl in front of me...what? you haven't seen the movie THE BIRDS?). The bird finally realizes that maybe he should try to get out of this house where girls are screaming and trying to hit him with a 2x2 and suck him up with a vaccum so he heads for the window...but BOOM! He hits the top of it instead. Ouch! He regains his composure (while still in the air) and FINALLY flys out the bottom!!! Tiffany rushes over and closes the window, I run to close the other bedroom window and we all breathe a sigh of relief.

So needless to say I have to give a shout out to my heros that day. For some reason I could not be as brave as my sister Tiffany. Maybe its because she deals with 8-12 children everyday under the age of 5 that nothing can really scare her anymore? I'm not sure...but I am really glad that she showed up when she did.

The only brave thing I did was after the bird was gone. I wanted to make sure that he had come in through the open window and not the attic space above through a vent or something (since my house has been known to be a bird haven). Sooooo I get a ladder and VERY SLOWLY stick my head up through a 2'x2' opening that has about a 6" layer of blown insulation above it. Kind of assuming that at any time another bird will swoop towards me and start pecking my eyes out........but nope. We are good. No holes in the gable vents that I can see and we decide that maybe that was enough action for the night and that we should go eat some dinner.

Although it would have been awesome to catch on tape and post to you-tube...all I got was a pic of my sister the next day being awesome like she always is. I thank God for the heroes in my life. There are many right now and I couldn't do this without them! XOXOXO!

Day 23- My Free Booty

And by "booty" I mean acquired treasures that I found inside the house...what were you thinking? So not much happened on Monday either...something probably happened but since I am behind all of my days are running into eachother so I will tell you about the attic and basement "antiques". So downstairs in the basement there is a small "crawl space" and by crawl space I mean a 4' tall by 4' deep ledge that runs around 1/3rd of the basement. This space was closed off with insulation board but when we tore it off we found what some might call junk and others might call treasure. I went with the later because most of it is pretty cool.

80 billion mason jars (ok, I admit that I might be exaggerating but there are ALOT)
I guess this is an old top to a "washing machine" and what I mean by washing machine is that this has a crank on the side and you ring your clothes through the two thingamajobbers and it rings out your clothes so you can hang them outside to dry. Although this "appliance" came with the house I have decided to upgrade and keep my old washer and dryer.
Up in the attic there were many treasures to be found. 3 suitcases, 1 never been used cot, one picture frame, one old vinyl wrapped twin headboard, and lots of books and games.

My contractor seemed to get a kick out of the English book.
The suitcases are pretty cool, even inside. I think I will try and make a table out of them or something.

Day 20- Plumbing and Insulation

Last Thursday was exciting because 80% of my plumbing went in and 70% of my insulation. Big day in my world. Probably not such an exciting blog though...except I do have a great picture of me with sticky foam insulation all over my arm. Mental note to self: wear gloves and long sleeves when using foam insulation in a tight attic space...otherwise you might get it all over yourself, then you might get it covered in dust and dirt, then you might not be able to scrub it off with anything except turpentine and a week later there might still be remnants of it all over your arms. Just an FYI to people who ignore instructions on the can...

Here is the attic before Insulation (and after digging out the old)...

Here is it afterward...

And the walls got R30 which is VERY thick (to keep my babies warm) Plumbing went in in both bathrooms, kitchen, washer, etc. I went with PEX which is both affordable and very durable. So all the white tubing you see below is actually my water lines run from the basement up to the 2nd floor. PEX contracts and expands with hot and cold so you cannot get pipes that burst in the winter. It is run in alot of the newer homes and so far seems pretty cool. I was also able to get a VERY good price on the plumbing due to the ease of installation.

And here is my new shower location. I am actually able to fit a 6'tub in my main bathroom but after comparing costs it was not worth an extra $1200 for 12" of tub space, so I am going to go with a standard 60"x32" tub but dress it up with amazing tile with hopefully only spending 1/3rd of that price.

I will keep you waiting in suspense for what the tile is going to look like...especially since I have not even picked it out myself. But no worries...it is on this weekends agenda!