This weekend was the last weekend I plan to go out to the house to work!  We’re busy the month of may and with the baby coming I won’t travel out there in June.  Ryan and Dad will go out next weekend to do the floors upstairs and Ryan will stay and finish a few more things.  We have our contractor back working on some things this week and next if we need him.  The house goes on the market on Monday next week!

Let’s try to recap the weekend a bit.

Friday night Ryan got the drawers installed in the built-ins so the tv-room built-ins are finally completely finished!

Since the doors are all painted I put the hardware back on all the downstairs doors and they look great.  Ryan hung the tv-room closet door too that I had finished painting last week.

Saturday we got an early start, the first thing I did was clean and mom the diningroom which was scuffed up from the painter, then I covered the floor with paper and a new drop cloth knowing we’d have people working in there still but wanting to minimize damage.  Our contractor came out (he’s back from Arizona!) and he did the crown molding in the ceiling over the weekend – it looks awesome!

His wife is actually going to do the painting for us, she painted the front closet on Sunday.  She’s also going to do some cleaning downstairs for us this week to get the house show ready (wash windows and such).

I got the built-ins stripped (just the front face) and sanded.  Ryan put up the last bit of trim on the built-ins and they are ready for caulking/prime/paint!

My project at home here this week is to strip/prime/paint the drawers and doors so ryan can put those back in next weekend.

Maribeth and Dan worked on outside projects mostly for us.  First Maribeth painted the outside of the little upstairs porch!

Then she and Dan scraped the old paint off the back porch and got it primed (the 2 sides).  Our contractor will do the siding on the back side of the porch this week and get the final paint on everything back there I think.

A big project Ryan did with Dan’s help is getting the ceiling of the front porches done (the wrap around and upstairs porch).  They finished putting up the last pieces of paneling, then quarter round around the edges, then lattice, flat trim on the seams.

Once that was done I could put up the ceiling fan on the porch!

Speaking of fans, I got the back bedroom fan and closet light installed.  I also go the master bedroom fan installed and fixed the master bedroom closet light wiring which was flaky/not working for some reason.

Ryan also got the hand rail on the front staircase installed (the second one) and finished the small railing by the side door which Maribeth then painted.  The one last back railing he got the hand rail and bottom piece installed, but has to do some sort of railing still, it won’t match exactly but it never did anyhow before.

Maribeth got the final coat of yellow paint on the little porch off the master bedroom.

With a ton of help Ryan got the vanity upstairs, he had to cut the side of the vanity that sticks out further than the granite in order to fit it properly in the bathroom – (that was unplanned work) but it came out great!

The bathroom list remaining is just : Paint touch ups (Last baseboard), hanging mirrors and bars, plumbing and glass.  Then it’s done!  That was definitely fast for a bathroom renovation!

Ryan and Dan also moved the washer and dryer upstairs on Saturday and I tested them out.  They are awesome!  Not too loud at all like everyone said, I ran a full heavy load through and you could barely hear it during the spin cycle.  The dryer noise was actually louder (and not too loud).  Man I wish we had done this particular project sooner so I could have enjoyed it!

Finally one of the projects that was just waiting to be done.. the banister!  Everyone pitched in Saturday night and got the banister sanded.  Maribeth and I stained it and she waxed it on sunday as I was packing to leave.  It looks awesome!  We’ll have it covered with plastic next weekend while the floors will be done so it won’t need to be dusted and it will certainly be a showcase feature!

What an exhausting weekend, everyone worked so hard and we were all sore after but so much is done.  My list of what’s left to do finally fits on a single page!  That’s amazing!  After this week I can focus on getting ready for the pig roast and then baby coming.  As we move more and more stuff out of the house (mostly attic and basement/tools left to move) we’ll have to find a place to store more stuff (another storage unit!?) like tools but it’s a good problem to have as it means we’re getting close to not paying a mortgage on a house we don’t live in (after 8 months already of doing so!), i’m hoping we can keep it to 1 year total.

Goodbye Nashua – hopefully I’ll see the house finished when we sell it if baby arrival works out well with that!  (She has to come a couple weeks before we close in order for me to deal with the drive out!).  I think that’s very likely.