Doors, Trim and Baseboards

We were able to order carpet last week. It should take 1-2 weeks to get here. It's time to get the upstairs done! Woo Hoo!

Saturday, August 3rd the kids were still at Grandma's Camp so it was just Kory and I. We had worked most our day outside on Friday and decided to take most of Saturday to play while the kiddo's were gone. We did get all 6 doors upstairs hung. 

Monday August 5, Kory cut all the trim pieces that go around the doors. For family home evening we hung out in our pool. School starts next week and we decided we needed one more "family night of fun" before school begins. 

Tuesday Kory and the older 3 were off to mutual so another night came and went without working on the house. Our carpet guy had told us he hadn't heard on our carpet so it would probably be another week. That's o.k we aren't quite ready anyways. 

Wednesday, August 7th Kory got the call our carpet had just been delivered to the warehouse in St. George. What??? We thought we still had another week! I'm not complaining really. Time to bust a move! We want to be ready to install flooring next week. 

And so Wednesday night we spent a few hours doing trim work. We were able to get all the trim pieces around all the doors complete. 

We also hung most of the baseboards in the family room. 

It's looking so good!

Thursday, August 8th

Maddie and I went around applying putty to all our nail holes in all the trim pieces around the doors and the baseboards that we got done the night before.  

Friday, August 9th

Several weeks ago we had a guy come and cut in our driveway to match our garage so it slopes now in the right spot for us to pull in. Kory also finished popping up the old broken sidewalk. We've been ready for concrete for a while now but our cement guy was away on vacation. Friday morning we got a phone call that the cement truck was on its way. Yippee!

Brayden helping while still in his pajamas. 

Beautiful!

The plan was to paint all the baseboards and trim on Saturday so we spent Friday getting ready for the paint. 

Kylie and Mom sanding. 

Brayden helped sand too.

Emily put new spackle where we missed the day before. 

Then we spent hours and I mean hours taping off our walls! 

Saturday, Aug 10th 

 Kory and I laid out our bathroom flooring!

It looks so good. We hung the trim and then taped it off too. 

It took all day long but everything got painted and we were able to pull off the paper and tape that night just before midnight! We are going to be ready for carpet Monday morning!

All 6 doors for upstairs also got painted. They are sitting in my kitchen waiting for the carpet to be laid and then we can hang then all back up. 

Backyard Shenanigans

Earlier this week on Tuesday, July 30th our neigbors irrigation backed up and flooded our back yard. Friday morning, August 2 we still had standing pools of water. What a mess!

This weekend was Grandma's Camp. Where all the grandkids get dropped off at Grandma's for Friday/Saturday with out their parents. Grandma and Grandpa have fun projects and activities planned to do with them while everyone is together. This year my Mom had asked if one of the activities could be swimming in our backyard pool instead of having to take everyone up to the city pool. We didn't mind however our backyard was still super muddy, the pump to the pool still wasn't hooked up and the pool was getting a little slimy on the bottom. 

So Friday morning instead of working inside the house while all the kids were gone Kory and I worked outside. He was able to bring some dry dirt from the front yard and layed it on top of our muddy mess.

Then he leveled in all nice and even. The dirt is still wet but at least we didn't have standing pools of water anymore. 

Our plan was to buy bricks and make a path from the porch to the pool. But being we had 2 piles of rock already on the side of the house we decided to spread it out instead to save money. Hopefully next year we'll put in a sprinkler system and plant some grass but for now the rocks should help with the dust and mud.  

While Kory was playing in the dirt I was hauling off the cardboard boxes and several broken peach tree brances. We have so many peaches this year the limbs are breaking. So frustrating.  We also hooked up the pump and threw in some clorine. In just a few hours the slime was gone. Amazing! Our back yard looks so good! On a side note our neighbor came over and talked to us about how and why our back yard got flooded. He appologized over and over for the mess it caused. After talking Kory took the skid steer over and helped clean out the side irrigation ditch that the run off water is suppose to go down but ended up being blocked so came into our back yard instead. Hopefully we never have to deal with that much water all at once again!   

We ordered our carpet this week. We are so excited! It will take 1-2 weeks to get here. 

Ceiling and Can Lights

Monday, July 29

We have a little taper tool that is suppose to make taping off so easy! We have two of them, one for the shop and the other for the house. Kory uses the one at the shop almost on a daily basis with no issues. The one at the house, same as the other one, is a pain! The tape is always bunching up, getting stuck and come away from the paper.  So after work Kory brought his taper home from the shop. Oh my goodness did it work better. Not once did we have an issue! We will definetly be returning the other one and swapping it out. 

After taping the walls off Kory began painting the ceiling. 

As soon as the ceilings had there 2 coats we took the tape off so it wouldn't pull the fresh paint off with it too. It worked perfectly! I love my walls. 

Tuesday, July 30

The plan today was to haul off all the huge cardboard boxes that the pool came in and finish up our brick path to the pool during the morning. Our back yard is all dirt and we're just trying to come up a temporary plan to help keep dirt/mud out of the pool when the kids are constantly in and out. One day we'll have soft, curl in your toes grass!

We had a bit of a lazy morning, more than normal. At 8:30 Emily went out to check on the chickens becuase they were squaking up a storm and we needed to collect the eggs. She came back in saying the coop had a ton of water in it and had thought that maybe the pool was leaking but didn't see any water coming out of it. I went outside to investigate and NO the pool wasn't leaking but our neighbors were getting irrigation. Sometimes the drains have a little blockage and our coop can get quite a bit of water in it. No biggie. An hour later I went outside to start hauling off boxes to discover 1/2 my back yard submerged in water. What the heck? Tried calling the neighbors but it went straight to voicemail. So I texted them both saying there was problem this morning with their irrigation. Emily had somewhere to be at 9:30 so I ran her where she needed to be. When I got home it was about 10 and Brayden and Kylie both had friends coming over for a "pool party". After eating a popsicle and me making sure everyone had sunscreen on we went outside about 10:30. Oh my heck! My entire back yard was flooded. 

The water was above my ankles and was right up to my back patio. There is 20 feet between my pool and patio. That was a ton of water!

I tried calling the neighbors and again it went straight to voicemail. So I went over to their house hoping someone was home. Their adult daughter was home, had noticed their back yard was flooded and was calling around to her family members trying to find someone who could come help. The owners of the house were serving in the temple and wouldn't be done until 12:30. The adults were all at work and so a 16 yr old young man showed up. Luckily he knew were the irrigation valve was (around the corner and down the street) and was able to shut the water off. What a muddy merky mess! So much for hauling off the carboard or laying my bricks this morning. Pretty sure that's not going to get done for a few more days. It's going to take some time to dry out! I'm considering it a blessing that we didn't get the pool pump set up last night that will be sitting on the bricks I was suppose to lay out this morning. It would have filled up with muddy water and could have ruined it.  

At lunch Kory and I began installing the can lights up stairs. When we ran out I headed to St. George to buy what what we would need to finish the upstairs.  

After dinner we got all the can lights done! The bedrooms/closets and family room. 

We are going to have 3 fans in the family room and one fan in each bedroom. I didn't realize how much of the fans we would have to put together from the box. It's not hard, just time consuming. Especially knowing we have 5 to do.  

We got one mostly done before Kory had to go to mutual at 6:30. That's right, Kory not me! 2 Sunday's ago I was released as the 1st councelor in the YW's. Last Sunday Kory was sustained as the 1st Councelor in the YM's. It's funny we had the same calling just in the different youth group. We didn't even get 1 Tuesday home together. Going on about 5 years now...... Maybe one day!

Painting the Walls

Our tape and texture guy wasn't suppose to come until this week. Lucky for us he came the end of last week which gave us a bit of a jump start. I'm certainly not complaining. Unfortunately I had made plans for the kids and I so that we wouldn't be around while the "workers" were here. 

Monday, July 22  we had several errands to run and spent most of the day in St. George. 

Tuesday, July 23 my kids were hanging out with friends so I spent the day cleaning my kitchen. I put piles and piles of tools and and left over supplies from several different projects away. I cleaned out the bottom of my sink and vacuumed up all the debri that's been pilling up like sheetrock dust, insulation, etc. It took me most of the day!

Wednesday, July 24th was Pioneer Day. We spent our whole morning at the park participating in the festivites. That night we began sanding the walls in preperation for painting. 

Thursday, July 25th The girls and I were up at 6:30 sanding the walls. We worked hard until 9:45am. At 10am I took all my kids and a few friends to Las Vegas to go to Wet n' Wild. After a 2.5 hour trip we got there just to be told they had seen lightening and we had to wait 30min. After waiting for almost 1.5 hours and still not being able to get in we headed home and stopped in Warm Springs where we spent several hours before heading home. That sheetrock dust went everywhere!

Friday, July 26th we were up at 6am and began our day. We finished sanding what we had missed in our haste the day before and vacuuming. Then Kory spent the time taping off the windows. 

Several weeks ago we decided to order an above the ground pool. We spend most of our evenings working on the house. During the day the girls and I are quite often doing little things or finishing up what we didn't quite get done the night before. Seems like its just been a summer of work, work, work! It was time to take the time and set this bad boy up. It ended up being a lot bigger than expected! But oh my goodness how we have enjoyed the water in our very own backyard. My kids are living in it. 

In between setting up the pool Kory was spraying our walls upstairs. By 10pm every ceiling/wall had a coat of primer on it. We hope to get it all painted tomorrow. 

Saturday, July 27th

We only had until 2pm to work. My youngest sister, Hanna, was going through the temple for the first time. Between finishing setting up the pool, helping someone who called asking for help and 2 different people "stopping by" to talk to Kory we almost did it. We had 2 coats of paint on all the walls!

My camera had a real hard time taking pictures. Cousins were in town so we didn't have the kids help. I was holding the light so Kory could see and trying to take picts at the same time. The rooms were filled with paint dust and my camera just didn't want to focus. Oh well.... We would have liked to get the ceiling painted too but we just ran out of time. That will be the first thing we do next week. 

Sheetrock Complete!

We had a wonderful reunion this past weekend with Kory's family. It was a nice little break getting away from the house. We're back now and we are ready to work again! On Monday, July 15th the girls and Brayden and I cleaned the upstairs. With the 2 bedrooms and closets being done we swept and vacumed up all the sheetrock dust. Brayden wasn't a fan of vacuming. He would have much prefered to be screwing sheetrock to the walls. 

Monday night after dinner we all jumped right in and began sheetrocking the family room. 

We only had about 6 smaller pieces left of the family room when it got to dark to finish. It was past 8pm and the 2 big kids had been invited to a friends house to play games. So we called it quits, let the big kids leave and we played a game or 2 with little ones and then went to bed!

Tuesday night mutual started an hour early again. I had dinner ready at 5pm so when Kory and Hunter got home for work we ate and jumped right in. We were able to finish the family room and hang another sheet in the bathroom before we all had to leave.  I hate that it's taking us so long but we are making progress. I just have to be patient! 

On Wednesday Kory's lumber didn't show up to the shop. So after lunch he brought an employee (our other guy took the week off) to the house to work until his lumber was delivered. We were able to finish the bathroom sheetrock and the stairwell! I will never have a 2 story house again. I hated setting the walls for the upstairs, being so close to the edge. I hated being on the roof so high of the 2nd story, I hated having to carry sheets of plywood up the ladder to the 2nd story on the outside. Carrying the lumber and sheetrock up the stairs was also a pain, thats some heavy material! And now having to hang the sheetrock in the stairwell, It was hard. My arms and hands are tired and sore! I know I will love it when it's all done but it really was a lot harder to do than the main floor.  

We are done with the sheetrock upstairs. It feels so good!

The guys then came downstairs and began working on the kitchen plumbing. They didn't get to far when Kory got the call that his lumber had finally arrived! 

Kory took off Thursday from his real job to go on a Priest Horse Backing Trip with Hunter. They left early Thursday morning and didn't get back until Saturday night about 6:30. They had an awesome time. 

Thursday afternoon there was a knock on my door. It was our texture guy! He had come to start taping the upstairs. 

It took several hours but they got most of the upstairs taped and screw holes filled before they had to leave. 

They did not come back on Friday which I will admit I was a little dissapointed. However they did show up Saturday morning. They taped off my stairs so that when they start sanding hopefully the majority of the mess will stay upstairs! They got everything taped and filled. They hope to come back next week sometime to start texturing. WooHoo! I just might have kids upstairs by the time school starts afterall. Just 23 days left of summer. How awesome would that be?

Our heating and air guy also showed up Saturday morning. We had a busy house! He was able to connect a few ducts together and move the duct work in the upstairs bathroom. The duct was coming out of the floor by the door. He moved it across the room so it will be under the vanity. It will make it easier to clean the bathroom floors this way. Knowing I will have 3 girls with long hair upstairs I really didn't want that vent to collect all the hair!

He didn't get quite done when his wife called to say that she was in labor!  

He took off to Cedar and said he'd be back!

Congrats J.C

So awesome to see so much progress done on the house this week. I am getting excited!

Starting on Sheetrock

People are always asking, "So when do you think you'll be done with your house?" or "Do you have a date set to be done yet?". Oh how I hate these questions. We are not in the process of buying a house. There is no "closing date". We aren't paying someone to build our house. So again there is no "finish date". It will be done when it gets done. We're going just as fast as we can. To be honest we ALL wish it was done yesterday! But it's not. We are fully aware of how long it's taken us. But we didn't get a loan, we are paying for everything in cash. We are not in debt! We are going as fast as we can and we are tired!  But it is coming along. And so we don't have a "date" or a goal. Although I am starting to tell everyone, "by the end of the year". Our landscaping probably won't be done, the cement we want poured to the back shed and our driveway might not be done either. But I am hoping the inside will be done. I'm hoping my walls will be painted, my home decor will be on the walls, we will have more than 1 finished bathroom, I will be curling my toes in carpet (something we haven't had for 3 years now) and I will have a "real" kitchen again. All before Christmas is what I would really like. But time will tell.....

What I would really, really like but something I just recently voiced to my kids is that I would really like our upstairs to be done by the time school starts. As of today (July 8th) school starts up again 5 weeks from today or 35 days. I would love it to be all painted, have a working bathroom and carpet. We are so close I don't see why it couldn't be done but something always seems to come up, whether its a different kind of expense, like Kory's truck breaking down, so we have a lack of funds, or time getting away from us with other things that need to be done.

And so this week I was really hoping that we could get the whole upstairs sheetrocked.

And so on Monday night, July 8th we all began working in Maddies bedroom.  We didnt bother with the sheetrock lift since we had all the kids help. We lifted that sheetrock high and then Kory and Hunter would screw it in. 

Emily went around sweeping up the insulation mess. 

We let a friend borrow our sheetrock lifter we use for the lower sheets and he "forgot" to bring it back to us. But we got all the upper pieces in.

Even Brayden took his turn putting in screws. 

Maddie and Emily took turns drawing our lines so the boys had a refrence where the studs were underneath.  

Miss Kylie was our girl who kept our hands full of screws. 

On Monday we were able to get all the upper sheets up in Maddies bedroom. We got 2 upper sheets done in her closet. We realized we had forgotten to blow in insulation behind the bathtub, which share's the wall in the closet. Uggghhh... Kory wasn't quite done with the plumbing the 1st time we had the insulation machine. We figure we'd finish that wall the 2nd time we had the machine but we forgot. Oops! So we hung one sheet in Emily's bedroom and one sheet in the family room and then it was time to call it quits.   

Tuesday nights are a hard night to work. We've got scouts and mutual. This week everyones activities started an hour earlier so we really didn't have time to work. But Kory and I did install all the electrical boxes in the dining room area and the office. 

On Wednesday the girls and I worked most of the day. We were able to get the office and dining room electircal boxes wired. Now we just need Kory to put in the can lights and we can wire them next. 

We also had to cut little squares of insulation and then shoot them where the top and bottom floor meet. What you see above Emily's head in the picture below. Emily went around and foamed the edges for us. 

Maddie putting the pieces in.  

I sat on the floor and cut, cut and cut. 

Wednesday night we had pack meeting. So once again we didn't get as much as we would have liked done. We did get our toe lifter back so we hung the 3 bottom sheets in Maddie's room and another sheet in the family room. We won't be able to hang anymore sheets until we insulate that last little bit.  

The kids and I spent Thursday getting ready for our last family reunion of the year. We are going camping in Alton tomorrow and are in charge of dutch oven potatoes. So we spent the day packing, finding all our camping gear, slicing potatoes and cutting up onions. We are going to work a 1/2 day tomorrow but need to be in Cedar about 3pm. Although we insulated last weekend we quickly realized we are still loosing a lot of our cool air into the attic. We were able to insulate one side of the stairs but not the other. And so we haven't been running our AC this week like we had planned. Kory and I aren't sleeping well due to how warm it is at night. And so instead of finishing the sheetrock on Friday we decided we're going to rent the insulation machine for in the morning. 

Saturday morning, Kory was up and gone about 5:30am. He had left to Cedar to buy another case of insulation so we can actually finish the upstairs and attic for good this time. At 8am we began.... 

We first went around the upstairs and finished blowing insulation around the bathtub and little crevices we had missed the 1st time. And then Kory climbed into the attic over the 1st part of the house and we added more to get that higher R value than what Sun Roc had done several months ago. When we were about 1/2 done the family switched jobs. Hunter climbed into the attic while Maddie and Kylie kept the insulation coming.  

Look at that cute little girl doing her best to help!

That left Emily, Kory and I to start on sheetrocking. 

When the insulation was done everyone helped with the sheetrock. 

We ALL worked until about 1pm and then we began hitting the showers. We still had to return the insulation machine and be to the Cedar Temple at 3:30/4. Wow did we work well together. We were able to finish Maddies room and closet 100% We also hung sheetrock in Emily/Kylies Room. So it and the closet is also done 100%. 

I was hoping to get the whole upstairs sheetrocked this week, we didn't. but we still did good. We worked almost every single night plus 1/2 day Friday and we got a lot accomplished. We have 2-3 sheets hung in the family room and 2 sheets hung in the bathroom. Hoping to get both rooms finished early next week so that we can get our tape and texture guy back out. It will take him a few days to get his part done and then we can paint which will also take a few days, hang light fixtures, install all the electrical covers and hopefully get our carpet going. We've got just under 30 days before school starts. We can do this!