We have air conditioning! It's what separates us from the Apes. Well, that and blogging.
Betsy has been hard at work marshaling all the subcontractors and boy has she made progress!
Libby Twins finished up the air today and the interior temperature has dropped from 93 degrees to a cool 76. The system is drawing all kinds of humidity out of the house and the environment at The Ruins should really improve over the coming days.
The electrician came today and gave us an expensive, but good, quote for everything we want to get done. This will get the house up to code and give us plenty of light in the driveway, front walk, garage and foyer. We will also have proper ceiling fan stub outs for the Family Room and Living Room, plus add 7 hardwired smoke detectors to the house.
The plumber also starts tomorrow and will re plumb the new washer and dryer area in the garage. We are also getting the plumbing for a slop sink near the washing machine.
And the garage demolition is finished! All the drywall, studs, bad electrical wiring, bad tile, smelly shower room and worse smelling unducted laundry room are gone! Can't wait to see the job finished.
George Arias (A&B Painting & Remodeling, 407-963-7395) started smoothing the interior walls today. The process will include mudding about 25 gallons of drywall compound onto the walls, sanding it, texturing the walls with Orange Peel texture, priming, and finally painting the walls. Ceilings are also being painted.
Betsy also found time to go to Sherwin Williams and get interior and exterior paint samples. We are honing in on our color choices. We have picked out our tile for the kitchen, family room and bathrooms. And the rugs for the four bedrooms. Now we await carpet samples for the Living, Dining and Master bedroom. We have had quite a bit of help on this (thanks Dawson's Decorating Center - 407-851-2270!), and are doing colors we never would have picked on our own. But I think they are going to wind up being very very nice.
With all the progress we made today we are (finally) really getting excited about the house. It is fun to see a plan come together.
This was shot prior to the eaves being cut back to the concrete block walls.
The back porch was demolished in December in anticipation of a new insulated roof screen porch with two doors to the pool (plus a dog door for Hoover)
Here is a shot of the new kitchen. We chose a WilsonArt HD laminate counter top and GE Profile appliances.
The counters came off on August 29th in preparation of our new kitchen counters being installed.
Our new stone tile with the modern 1/16th inch grout lines is coming along. With luck they will be done this weekend and the carpet installed Tuesday and Wednesday. Which is good because we are hoping to start moving in on Thursday.
More garage. (sorry) But we did have them add a two inch styrofoam insulation. Eric's bed is going to be on the other side of the wall where the washer and dryer will be installed. Hopefully the extra styrofoam insulation will help keep the noise down.
They are not painted yet, and the hardware is sitting on the rental house hearth, but we have replaced the front door that belonged on a rundown Motel 6 hotel room with a very nice set of double doors. Yeah!
After a lot of consultation we picked a very interesting wall color. We are very happy with the choice now that it is on the walls.
We are told the kitchen was redone 10 years ago, but no one ever bothered to finish the ceiling. That is now taken care of and the ceiling matches the family rooms.
George has also removed the vanities from the main guest bathroom in the hallway that we call the "Pool Bath"
The tile and vanities are gone from the Jack n Jill bathroom that will be Eric's.
We have covered up the 1969 yellow painted wood paneling in the family room with a thin wallboard.
It's probably funny to keep harping on the garage. But we all put a lot of work out here to restore the garage to a clean and useful place. Thanks to Henry Electric we now have two flourescent lights over the car area, and 3 area lights along the back path of the garage. The plumbing is now in place for the washing machine, and electric is in place for the washer and dryer.
We have mentioned the bad smell in the garage multiple times. We have scrubbed the garage floor and painted the walls. We have demolished the majority of the drywall at the back of the garage. But the bad smell lingers.
It's funny how you come up with ideas. Betsy had recorded an issue of "Flip This House" and they had a short thing on installing a flat screen TV above the mantle.
The orange peel coating on the walls is almost complete. It looks really nice. Based on how nice the walls are going to turn out you will never guess the house was built in 1969.
Henry Electic finished up late Thursday night. There all all kinds of improvements that they completed for us.
They are not done yet but so far we are nothing but pleased with our choice of Henry Electric Company of Fern Park, FL.
Libby Twins (407-299-3588) did the air. They were great too. All the contractors are really happy with the air conditioning. And we actually heard the system turn off today. It has really been working hard removing humidity from The Ruins.
Manny Amador the plumber, whose company is AM Plumbing Services, Inc. (407) 625-1920 came out today and did a wonderful job installing the water and drain for the new washing machine area, and a stub out for a soon to be installed slop sink.
Still not sure how I originally thought we could get by with 3 48 gallon cans...
