Memorial Day to Now

Whew! We've been way too busy lately! I must get ya'll caught up on all things Tanglewood. And there's a lot. So, as I sit in my hotel room in Guymon, OK (aka literally the middle of Nowhere, Nowhere), I will start by going back in time to Memorial Day weekend. If you'll remember from the last post, Chris and I were headed to Lowes for their Memorial Day appliance sale to pick out all new appliances for the Tanglewood house. This was definitely one of the more exciting things we have gotten to do since we started this whole project. Well, I say it was exciting, Chris was probably annoyed by the amount of time we actually spent in Lowes that day. It was close to three hours. Not that it took that long for us to pick out the appliances that we wanted. We already knew that part. I just waited until we were in the store that very day to price check every imaginable online source for the same products to make 100% sure we were getting the best deals possible. (Lowe's will price match in case you didn't know.) At one point, I was so tired of looking at my tiny phone (Nathan Smith, if you read this, just know that the older I get, the more my eyes may need a Android phone with a bigger screen. Don't hate.), that I finally just asked the appliance guy if I could use his desktop computer in the store. He let me, and sure enough, with the Memorial Day Sale, Lowes actually had the best prices on the appliances that we wanted. So with no further delay, I give you the Tanglewood Whirlpool Gold appliance suite:

22 cu. ft. Whirlpool Gold® Bottom Freezer Refrigerator with Energy-Saving Resource Saver™ Technology (Normally we would have gone for a french door refrigerator with the extra middle drawer, but Tanglewood's refrigerator hole is only big enough for this little guy. Nothing wrong with this one, though. Still very nice.)

Whirlpool 30-in Smooth Surface 5-Element 4.2-cu ft/2.5-cu ft Self-Cleaning Double Oven Electric Range (Stainless Steel)

Whirlpool 30-in 1.9-cu ft Over-the-Range Microwave with Sensor Cooking Controls (Stainless Steel)

Whirlpool Gold 24-in 55-Decibel Built-In Dishwasher (Stainless Steel) ENERGY STAR

All of these appliances were 10% off for Memorial Day, and if you used your Lowes card, you received either an additional 5% discount or 18 months no interest. (18 months no interest was obviously our better choice.) In the last post, I also mentioned that I was going to attempt to use the additional 10% coupon from the change of address pack from the Post Office. Turns out that Lowes smartened up and made this an emailed coupon, meaning that you have to actually input your proof of moving details before they will send you a coupon. Since we are actually moving and not trying to swindle Lowes, I waited until the day of (of course) to fill out the information and submit it for our coupon. Well, it takes 2-3 business days for the information to process, so long story short, I didn't get to use the coupon that day. That's okay, though. There's plenty more to buy. Trust me.

On to more house renovation. I would love to tell you all that I finished painting the kitchen cabinets and that we are ready for our new counter tops, but I would be lying. Instead, I will tell you that sanding, cleaning, disinfecting, and painting the amount of kitchen cabinets that we have takes a lot more time than I anticipated. Mostly because I won't let Chris help me with the painting part. My OCD consumes me when it comes to painting. Let me show you some things I have been using for this project, as well as the little bit of painting that I have accomplished:

This electric sander was my best friend while I smoothed every single inch of our kitchen cabinets. I used 220 sand paper for most of the cabinets and 180 for the rougher spots. 

After wiping away all of the sanding stuff and scrubbing down the cabinets with water, I used Sani-T-10 to disinfect every single inch of the the kitchen cabinets. By the way, for that 32 oz spray bottle, I used 3 oz of Sani-T-10 with 32 oz of water, and I had to wear the face mask to breath. Very strong stuff.

Remember the kitchen before we did anything?

Well, here is the kitchen with floor gone, counter tops gone (with the exception of the sink area), cabinet doors and hardware removed, partial paneling removed from the breakfast bar (to be replaced by Sheetrock), and cabinets sanded, cleaned and prepped for paint.

And here's the only actual painting I have gotten done :)

Chris, with the help of our parents, has been working on Operation Remove Wallpaper. I cannot begin to tell you my hate for wallpaper, and I think Chris finally shares this hate now since he so graciously volunteered for this job. (Prior to Operation Remove Wallpaper, Chris was campaigning hard for wallpapered accent walls...This is no longer an issue.) There was wallpaper all over this house. Even wallpaper really well-disguised as just paint. The poor drywall underneath has taken a brutal beating from wallpaper removal. Most of the wallpaper was applied directly to the drywall, and now major drywall patching is required. That's okay as long as every last inch of wallpaper is gone!

Remember our dining room before? Notice the upper part of the walls here.

Surprise! That was wallpaper!

Kind of remember out front entry way walls? (the pic is not great)

You guessed it. Wallpaper!

Remember all the maroon in the den?

And in the hallway to the den?

Wallpaper

And more wallpaper. See the maroon still in the hallway? Oh, that's because there was maroon paint under the wallpaper.

Chris has also removed most of the paneling from the den. There are a few areas of paneling that will require more detailed saw removal, like around the windows and just above the built-in storage, and there are some areas that we are simply going to use Sheetrock mud to fill and paint over, like on the cabinets in the bar area, on the bottom of the built-in storage area, and behind the built-in bookcase. Take a look at our now mostly bare den:

 Chris has also removed the tile from the vanity in the guest bathroom. We will be installing the same quartz counter tops as the kitchen to replace the counter top in this bathroom. As you can see from these before and after pics, we've also removed the mirror in this bathroom. The mirror and frame were glued to the wall, so in order to get them down, we had to cut into the glue around the edges and literally rip off the wooden frame while holding the mirror part up. Behind the mirror we found yet another scrap of lovely wallpaper. Only this wallpaper was extra special. Those cute little flowers (barf) are raised and have the feel of velour. I have seen it all now.

Before

The after, but also the before. We are getting really good at making messes.

 We have made a lot of progress over the last week. So far we are finding that are biggest hurdle is time. There's just not enough hours in a day. The good news is that Wilson's Home Improvement officially started their work on the house this past Thursday. We've already seen a sneak peak of their work, and let me just tell y'all that when they're done, it will look like a completely different house from the outside. Remember that they are doing the sophetes and fascia work on the roof, covering the wood with vinyl siding, and replacing all of our doors. I can't wait for you guys to see their work, and I can't wait to have all new doors!

Once Wilson's Home Improvement is finished, we are going to have seamless gutters installed by Mr. Mark Signor (EMT Gutterworks). He comes highly recommended by many in the area. As of right now (and this is still wide open for discussion), we are almost certain we want black gutters. We have seen one house close to our new house that has them, and we think they look sharp. Take another look at the front of the house. The shutters will be painted black. What are your thoughts on black gutters?

Oh, and remember that load-bearing wall separating the kitchen and dining room that is going bye bye? If not, here's a reminder:

Well, while my mom, Declan, and I are in Guymon, OK this weekend visiting my brother, Mark, Chris and Kenny, with the help of Ryan Cutler and Brad Donaldson, are making this wall removal official. Last I heard, they were just about done. These guys are also reinforcing our rickety breakfast bar cabinet in the kitchen in preparation for quartz counter tops. This past week, we almost had our selves talked into getting rid of the breakfast bar, but no worries, it's a keeper now. It just needs some special attention and support beams added for the counter tops. I am anxious to see the work these guys are doing while we're gone. I will certainly let you all see the work in my next post.

Good news!

I'm finally getting around to posting the after pictures of the work that R & R Tree Service did for us at Tanglewood. They did a fantastic job, and I would highly recommend them to anyone! They were on-time, friendly, and worked extremely fast. Here are the results of their work in the front yard:

Before: Two very large oaks causing shade in the front yard at all hours of the day, which means grass can't grow

After: Two very large oak lofted approx 35-40 feet allowing full sunlight at certain points of the day. (This picture is obviously not that certain point of the day, but you get it:)

Before: Large oak near south corner of lot

After: Large oak near south corner of lot gone-zo

Before: Two pines on the north corner of lot (According to several of the tree guys who came by, the pine needles from these trees are also preventing grass from growing in the front yard.)

After: Two pines on north corner of lot gone (I know this is a different angle than the before, but the pines in the before used to live in the mountain of azalea bushes you see to the left in the after picture.)

We were very pleased with the work R&R did for us, and they were so reasonably priced. And believe me, we got price quotes from probably about 75%  of the tree cutting companies in the area. (Some folks are extremely proud of their work.) Now all we need is the grass fairies to show up and do magical things to make our grass grow and look at least half as good as the neighbors' yards. Our new neighbors are all ridiculously good at having great looking grass...no pressure or anything:)

So, enough about the tree stuff. We had an awesome night this past week, and I must share the details with you.

We have a lot of pretty great friends, but the awesomeness of this night involves these two mean muggin' cats:

Mean muggers.

This is Greg and Jana. Out of the blue they offered to cook us dinner this past Thursday evening. We had already planned that evening for Declan to spend the night with his Grandma and Papa so we could work on the house. So, a dinner break with these two sounded perfect. After all, they are two of the best cooks we know, and again, they did not disappoint. Slow cooker Korean pork tacos with coleslaw and sticky rice. Yum! 

After dinner, we brought them over to the house for the official grand tour. Then we got a wild hair. We decided we really wanted to see what it was going to look like with the wall separating the kitchen and formal dining room gone. So, the guys marked the studs in the wall:

"Studs finding studs" by Jana Crouch

Then we all took quite a few "stress swings" through the wall (paneling on one side, drywall on the other) with a crowbar and a 9lb hammer. Afterward, it was confirmed. Chris and I are going to love how open this space is going to be:

View from the center of the kitchen

As if having a great dinner with great friends and taking a hammer and crowbar to a wall wasn't enough to make for a great night, Chris and I got a phone call during wall demo. Tuesday evening we had gotten an offer on our current home. It was a low offer, so on Wednesday, Chris and I counter-offered. The phone call on Thursday evening was our realtor telling us the interested party had countered back, but this time, the offer was only $2,400 less than what we were asking. At this point, we had to ask ourselves do we risk scaring these guys off with another counter or do we just take the hit? If we scare them off, we could end up paying who knows how many more months of two mortgages. So, WE ACCEPTED! Pending a smooth 35-ish days (I think, I didn't actually count), closing will be on July 3rd! Thank the good Lord above! Best night ever!

So, after our happy dances and after Greg and Jana went home that evening, Chris and I stuck around to do a little more work here and there to the house. I finished up shop vac-ing (I don't know how to properly spell that word as a verb) the kitchen cabinets and pondered a bit on how the current formica laminate countertops were going to come off. Turns out, they're just glued on, and that same 9lb hammer we used on the wall works just fine for this too. Just a few taps to underneath the counter top, and it pops right off:

It really is that easy.

Chris worked out in the den taking the paneling off of the wall. Here's a reminder picture of the den:

Such a great room

As you can see, there's a TON of paneling. The good news is that there is drywall behind every bit of it. Hallelujah! We'll keep you updated as to how the paneling removal goes. 

Chris also continued work on the den's tile removal. You can see the end of the tile in front of the den's french doors in the picture above, but here you'll see just how much that tile extends to the kitchen:

We have discovered that taking some swings to this tile with that very popular 9lb hammer works pretty darn good. But be aware, free-flying chunks of tile can be dangerous:

Don't try this at home, or if you do, wear appropriate shoes (not Keen flip flops), clothing (not shorts), and safety glasses. #disclaimer

We are still on track for kitchen cabinet disinfecting and hopefully painting this Memorial Day weekend. We have purchased Sani-T-10 to clean and disinfect the cabinets. We picked this up from Sid Brown Co Inc in Russellville.

Speaking of Memorial Day, we have also chosen this weekend to purchase all of our kitchen appliances for Tanglewood. Holidays=sales at Lowes. The only other holiday that may occur by the time we're ready for appliances is the 4th of July, so we're taking our chances on Memorial Day being the better sale of the two. All major appliances at Lowes this weekend are 10% off with an 18-month no interest financing option when you use your Lowes credit card. That's a huge deal since we are not using a draw on our construction loan for the appliances. (We don't really want to pay for these appliances for 15 years.) So, this afternoon, we are headed to Lowes to purchase a Whirlpool Gold refrigerator, stove, microwave, and dishwasher. We're also going to get a little somethin' somethin' for the den's bar area. We're also going to try to sneak in a 10% "Change of Address" Lowes coupon that we picked up from the Post Office. I'll let you know how that goes.

Readers: Who do you recommend for garbage bin rentals? We are currently using the garage for all of the stuff we're ripping up and tearing down. We're going to eventually have to rent a garbage bin to get rid of it all. Our thought process in using the garage until absolutely necessary is that we'll save money with a one-time pick versus a long-term rental. What/who do you guys recommend for this?

Floors, Floors, Floors.....and Trees.

We have spent the last few days removing all of the old flooring at Tanglewood. We are torturing ourselves with this task so that we can try to save a little money. (We are replacing all of the flooring in the house except for one room, so we have to save where can.) Here are some pictures of the floors that were in the house....the good news is that we are ALMOST done getting it all out:

Brown paper bag flooring in the formal dining room

Brown paper bag flooring in the living room

Brown paper bag flooring in Declan's bedroom

Brown paper bag flooring in the formal living room

Brown paper bag flooring in the front door entry way and guest bedroom

Peel and stick tile in the master closets

Linoleum flooring in the kitchen area

Carpet and tile in the den area

By far, the linoleum glue (not so much the linoleum itself) has been the toughest to remove. We first approached the linoleum glue with this thing:

A flat hoe. This was a good idea in theory, but did it actually do anything besides prevent us from getting down on our hands and knees? That would be a big NO! So we moved on to this after a very convincing YouTube video:

 

 

 

The Spyder Reciprocating Saw Scraper Attachments
This was definitely better than the flat hoe, but we could only ever get it to take the top layer of the glue off. We couldn't get it to scrape all the way to the concrete like we needed. (YouTube man LIES!) Plus the saw was heavy to hold, and we only have one. Chris did decide to try these attachments on the master bath tile, and every single one of the attachments may or may not have broken on him. So, yeah, don't use these on tile. As a matter of fact, just don't waste your time buying these for scraping floors because here is the golden tool:

American Line razor blade floor scraper. My stepdad conveniently had two of these scrapers, and they worked like a charm! We are extremely sore and have no feeling in our arms, but the linoleum glue is all up because of this magic tool! Another thing that helped immensely with this scraper was using a sprayer to lightly spray hot water onto the glue and letting it sit for about four hours. Chris went and sprayed the floor early one morning, and then that afternoon, I went over to scrape, and the glue came up so easy! This scraper also did wonders with the brown paper bag flooring that we couldn't just pull up with our hands and the tile in the master bathroom

 

Chris was able to pull up the carpet and carpet pad in the den in about 20 minutes one afternoon, so there was no trouble there. We are going to leave the brown paper bag flooring in Declan's bedroom because it is laid a whole lot better than in any other rooms in the house. We have decided on carpet in his room so there will be no problems placing carpet over that. 

The one area of flooring remaining is the tile in the den. So far, Chris has knocked some of it loose with a pickaxe, but we are going to need to try something else for this. The pickaxe will take years, and we don't have years. Suggestions in this area would be helpful. I believe it is porcelain tile, and it is on concrete.

Now the exciting part about the flooring. We have hired a guy through Georgia Carpet Mill to lay our floors. His name is Walter, and we think he is wonderful. I'll introduce you all to Walter later. The floors will be one of the last big projects we have done on the house. Here's a sneak peak of what we have chosen, though. A hand-scraped engineered hardwood, ceramic tile, and carpet:

So the floor removal is coming along nicely and is just about done. My next project, while Chris continues the den tile removal, is the kitchen cabinets. If you remember, here is what the kitchen looked like:

When my arms or my knees got tired these last few days from scraping the floors, I removed all of the cabinet doors, drawers, and hardware. My goal for this coming weekend is to shop vac and disinfect these cabinets and actually get them painted. The sooner we can get the painting done and the counter tops removed, the sooner we can get our beautiful, new QUARTZ counter tops put on! (more on that to come)

Here are the existing door knobs and drawer handles in the kitchen. We are actually going to go ahead and keep these because they are in good shape and they will go well with our stainless steel appliances:

As I mentioned in the last post, we had some trees lofted and some trees cut down today. The tree service company still has to grind the stumps, so I wanted to wait until they were completely done before showing any pictures of their work so far. I am very excited for you all to see how much better it already looks in the front yard. It's amazing the difference a few trees can make. Here are the before pics:

These two pines on the left side of the front yard near Tanglewood are now gone.

This oak on the corner is now gone.

These two massive oaks in the front yard were lofted up about 40 feet.

Our poor front yard can now get a little more sun! Stay tuned for the after pics.

Random question for you readers: Can any of you tell us what kind of flowers these are growing in our new backyard?