Remodel Update and Other Stuff

I know I haven't posted for a while. I've realized the last little while that it's hard to describe things to people when they haven't seen what's going on here, so I figured that I really needed to update my blog so people knew what I was talking about. I was really frustrated with things for a while. We went through 4 plumbers before finally figuring out something that would work. Then, Nathan and I became more involved in the work, so I didn't have as much time to update between trying to work on the remodel and still keep up with the house and kids. I kept thinking that I wanted to start from where I left off and update from there everything that had gone on, but I realized that wasn't going to happen. So, I just took pictures today and here's where we are at.

Here is a view of our new storage room under the porch. It is full to the brim right now because we had to clean out the whole basement. More on that later. We have also had issues with the storage room leaking. I guess there is not a great seal between the new and old concrete. We're still working to remedy that. This view is looking from the storage room door into the storage room.And another view of the storage room. This view is me standing in the storage room, looking back to behind the door. Other than the leaking, I am loving this storage room. It is COLD!! Even when it's been warm outside, this room stays nice and cool. I might end up moving my bed down here in the summer.This view is from my family room looking down into the remodel. Sorry it's so dark.This is the playroom and new storage room door looking from the new doorway going into the washroom. My sister's husband came down and helped frame a bunch. The square off to the right is going to be some shelves. My idea for decorating the storage room is to have my kids decorate it. They always bring home such cute art projects from school and the library, but I don't have the room to display them. I'm going to hang a rope up around the room to display the flat things with clothespins, but the shelves are going to be for the 3D projects. The kids are SO excited to help me decorate. They are already bringing stuff home to show me so it can go up in the playroom. You can also see our wiggle cars. The kids are excited that we had to clean out the basement. They have been riding the wiggle cars ALL OVER.This is looking from the storage room door towards the washroom door and the salon door. The new furnace is off to the left and back in the back you can see our new water heater in it's final resting place in the new utility closet. You can also see all of our new ducts. I'm SO excited to have our house uniformly warm.Sorry about the brightness of the picture. The sun finally decided to show itself today. This is looking from the salon door from the house into the salon. And this is towards the salon door to outside and the window. Off to the right, you can kind of see the new salon wall.Here is standing in the new bathroom looking towards the new furnace. As they promised, it is WAY smaller than the old one, but with all the ducting, it seems about as big. It is a lot quieter and my house is heating more evenly though, so I'm happy. Once again, the storage room is full because we needed to store stuff. Next week this should be full of sheetrock, so once again, we will be moving stuff all around and it will look totally different.Here is looking into the new bathroom. The tub is set and, once we get the valve in place, we could probably use it, but we don't have any walls or a door. Next to the tub on the floor is where the toilet is going to be and next to that on the wall is the drain for the sink. You can also see the pretty red and blue water lines that Nathan and a guy from our ward put in a few weeks ago.Here is a close up of where the salon sink will eventually go.And where the washer and dryer will be. Hopefully I will actually be able to use them next week. But, I've been hoping to use them for a few weeks now, but every week finds me at the laundry mat again. We are supposed to get our plumbing inspected today so we can get everything hooked up and working.Here's our new manifold. I love having pressure at all of my faucets. I think they did a great job!A close up of the utility closet. Well and sewage pumps off to the right with the manifold above them. Then there's the pressure tank, water softener and storage tank, and the water heater. Back in the back corner is the bucket that is going to hold our sub water pump.A more expanded view of the utility closet. Off to the right is the beginning of the wall to the bathroom.And here is why we had to clear out the basement, and why you can see dust all over EVERYTHING in all of the pictures. We had someone come in and sand and etch our floor this week. Our plan is to have a concrete overlay put over the concrete in the playroom, salon, and bathroom, and stain it. We're also having the countertops in the salon done with stained concrete to coordinate with the floors.Here is another view of the floor right outside the bathroom. In the bottom left corner, you can see the concrete that wasn't sanded or etched. I'm excited about it, but it was pretty messy this week. I'll be cleaning up dust for a long while.I also had to get all of my toys out of downstairs. So, while I had them in the family room, I decided to organize them. Now the kids can get out one bin at a time and play with it. They've been doing pretty good. I'm hoping to trim down the toys as I see which toys the kids are playing with and which toys just keep getting pushed aside to get to the ones they want to play with.Here is our new breaker box. It's a good thing that we have breakers. Just a week after we got them, Nathan was drilling a hole into the attic and ended up drilling through a huge electric wire going out to the garage. It wasn't fun, but it would have been worse if we had had our oversized fuzes instead of our breakers. Not only do we have a breaker box outside, but we now have a subpanel downstairs. We are excited to be able to re-do a lot of our electrical and get stuff grounded. Our plan is to do everything we can reach now and then, as we remodel other things, re-do everything else.Here is the outside of our house. We re-planted our lilac bush a few weeks ago. It's really starting to seem like a yard again. Now if I could just get a sidewalk and steps going up to the new porch. Every time they plan for it, it decides to rain or snow.And here's my sorry excuse for a lawn. I should just be happy that we had some grass grow up through the dirt. The concrete guys left TONS of rocks in our front yard. The first day I worked out there, I pulled out 15 2 gallon buckets out and didn't even make a dent. The missionaries have come by a few times to help us with our remodel and one time helped me pick rocks for two hours. I'm seeing progress and I'm hoping that if the weather ever cooperates, we'll be able to finish getting the rocks out, smooth the ground, and re-seed.Here is where we are putting all of our rocks. We drive over this spot often to get to the pasture/corral/backyard, so we'd been thinking about it for a while. Plus we could use another parking spot for the salon, so it just made sense to make one here. I thought that we'd have to bring in a lot of gravel to put here, but we're finding plenty of rock right now in our front yard.Finally, here are my new raspberries. Nathan found them for free on craigslist and they were in our town, so I went to pick some up, Nathan tilled me a spot, and Jo helped me plant them. I'm really excited for them to grow up and give us some berries.And the other side of our raspberries.