First and foremost, we now have a kitchen ceiling! It's hard to believe that the joists sat exposed for 8 months before the new drywall was hung. With the help of some men at church and a rented drywall lift, the 12' sheets of drywall went up in just a few short hours. Then Vince began the arduous and messy process of taping, mudding, and sanding the joints. To save his neck and back from having to pole sand everything, he rigged his scaffolding so that he could lay on it and use a hand palm sander. While its safety was somewhat questionable, its efficacy definitely wasn't as Vince got the job done quicker than he had expected.
Plastic sheeting and a large fan were set up to minimize the amount of dust to vacuum up, but since sheetrock dust has a way of permeating everything, we're still cleaning up the stuff months later. After the scaffolding and sheeting were dismantled, Vince primed and painted the ceiling and hung the new pendent lights over the kitchen island.
Vince trimmed out, caulked and painted the windows while Casey painted the stair railings and ballasts white. After taking a moment to marvel at the fact that the windows had sat unfinished for over a year, we rehung the crown molding that had made its transformation from honey oak to white like the rest of the wood in the room.
When Vince's parents came into town for Easter, we took advantage of their presence and put four sets of hands to work painting the remaining walls on the first floor, the hallway and laundry room upstairs, and some trim upstairs too. The orange creamsicle and sea foam green are finally gone!
Vince next moved on to the dining room ceiling and primed and painted that. Together we tackled the dining room walls and converted the existing red into a nice neutral color. The chairrail and the walls below the chairrail were painted with white trim paint to make a really nice contrast with the darker walls. Vince rehung the chandelier and this room was checked off our list.
Lastly, Casey painted the ceiling and walls in the office upstairs and Vince ripped up the existing hardwood floors in the kitchen and entryway to make way for the new hardwood floors that will be put down in a month.
Even with all that going on, we managed to celebrate both of our birthdays, visit the open house for the Kansas City Missouri Temple twice, sneak away to Virginia one weekend to visit Casey's extended family, and mourn the loss of Pete, whom we had to put down after we learned that his rapid weight loss was due to kidney failure.
While the temperatures will continue to rise with summer's arrival, we're gratefully on the downhill slope of remodeling!
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