What we are doing:

In what spare time we have, we decided to spend it (and our savings) on remodeling our rowhouse in South Philly. When we purchased our casa it was a 3 story, 5 bedroom, 1 bath that hadn't been touched in 50+ years. It's currently a 4 bed, 2 bath construction site with so much more to do it's hard to believe.

We use this blog to mark progress, say hi to friends and family, rant about the process of remodeling, and try to have some fun along the way.

- Bryan and Christina

Monday, June 21, 2010

D-O-N-E. What's that's spell?

DONE.

Before I get into showing any pictures or crafting some witty banter about the week I just went through, let me give you a Reader's Digest snippet of what life has been like since October with the playroom:
  1. Emptied the front second floor bedroom which was PACKED (i.e. inaccessible past 3 feet) into random parts of the house.
  2. Started demo in the room in mid October with the idea of everything being done for drywall in November.
  3. In reality, the room sat for months while I had one hour per week of time to work on it.
  4. Framed in the new closet a couple of times
  5. Installed new electrical in the room...over the course of 6 weeks
  6. Parker got bigger and accumulated more "stuff" that crowded our living room.
  7. I got older, grayer and more desperate
So that's about it. Last week I decided that enough was enough and pulled the ultimate DIY reno card: the "I'm taking the week off" card. It's a card that you can play from time to time, but must be used very sparingly and for the appropriate reasons. Well this was the time.

But since I do have a job with responsibilities I went to the office mid week for some meetings, so I got to write three days off as working. GO ME!

But I digress. So the week had to have a project plan and priorities...oh, and I had both. Check how it went down:
  1. Monday - install all remaining door casing, first coat of paint on the playroom floor
  2. Tuesday - caulk, install all baseboards, prime and paint (first coat) three of the doorways, second coat on paint on the floor
  3. Wed - stuck at work
  4. Thurs - create little railing thing for the bathroom, install all trim around closet, caulk
  5. Fri - second coat on the three doorways
  6. Sat - prime all playroom trim (including the nurse
  7. Sun - both top coats on all playroom trim, prime radiator, install the railing thing, third coat of floor paint plus paint hallway floor.
Right now I have to say that Christina took on an extra job over the past few days to paint the stairs leading up to the third floor. While she always thought that was in the current plan, I did not. But in the end the stairs look awesome. The risers are the same white as our trim in the house, and the treads have the same floor paint which really makes them look nice. Too bad we'll be ripping those stairs down in a year or so, but hey, in the meantime they look great.

So that's what happened this week. The playroom needs some outlet covers (which I just realized I forgot to pick up) and the doors hung. In the pictures I have it looks like the base cap white is lapping up the wall, but I assure you that is some Nikon trickery, and not true. I just have to say that for the record or my head will explode.

We're giving the floors a week to fully dry then it's moving time. It'll be nice to get things like our spare TV, couch and entertainment center out of the way and into a proper room. Plus Parker keeps accumulating "stuff" that just needs to get out of the living room. I mean what 16 month old doesn't want the same square feet as a Chelsea condo?

Posh living on 13th St.

- Bryan