Great Room

Well, I have had a very busy July and have been neglecting to post, and now I'm way overdue! I'll get to all our vacation posts one by one. I'll start off with a house post though.

This was obviously a major task to say the least. The beam is 30 feet long, and spans 27 feet across the room. Brian had to -

*Take down all walls
*dig footer under the house
*reinforce the walls/add a pillar under the house
*add a header above the hallway entrance
*reinforce the walls under the header
*install beam
*re-work all the electrical in the entire open space
*wire up and install overhead lighting in open space
*pass building and electrical inspections

ok - if you're at all familiar with building, that list is a heavy one! Literally, as the beam was 700lbs. Thanks to a group of might men for lifting that into place while Brian tied it in to the joists. He was able to accomplish all this in 2 weekends, 1 day off from regular work, and 9 evenings. That's...really incredible. Certain things, like the electrical ended being more complicated than normal, because the house was originally wired very strangely.

We came home to this!

 We hired out the finishing of the ceiling and walls - the ceiling was going to be a monster to fix, as each of the 4 old rooms had very different ceiling finishes and 2 of them very difficult to cover over. The walls in each room were also finished in a different way, some smooth, some swirl, and some under paneling never even touched. Getting a perfect and matching finish "like new" is really an art form - and we know our limits:-) They can do in 3 days what it would take us 2 weeks to do, and poorly at that!

Leaving the house on Friday morning

Coming home at 2pm

Leaving house at 4:30pm! Massive improvement in one day!

So we've purchased all the finishes, it's now just a matter of installation, after the walls & ceiling are done (which should be Monday/tomorrow). First will come ceiling paint, then trim, then walls, then flooring, then kitchen! Then were done!! Easy, right?! Haha!!

We choose Lazy Gray and Serious Gray from Sherwin Williams - most of the house will be Lazy Gray - Serious Gray we didn't get much of, and will likely only be the hallway.

Colour of cabinets

Colour of flooring. It's pre-finished solid oak, and the stain is called Kona. It's not as dark as the darkest - but pretty dark.