Brian's Visit - Days 2 & 3

We are now three days through our summer "vacation" and though I feel like we've accomplished a lot, you can't really tell by just looking at the house right now.  Like most improvements, it has gotten worse before it gets better.

The basement is now 90% done.  The sheetrock is all up and "mudded" and Brian is working on building us a drop ceiling to access our plumbing pipes and HVAC system.

The rest of the last two days have turned out to be the saga of the deck. I have begun to refer to the house as "the parfait house" after the Shrek quote about layers.

Astroturf (circa 1977), beige carpet (circa 1990), and
future deck tiles glimmering in the distance.

Shrek: Ogres are like onions! 
Donkey: They stink?
Shrek: Yes... No!
Donkey: Oh, they make you cry?
Shrek: No!
Donkey: Oh, you leave 'em out in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin' little white hairs...
Shrek: NO! Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers.
Donkey: Oh, you both have LAYERS. Oh. You know, not everybody like onions. What about cake? Everybody loves cake! Shrek:  I don't care what everyone else likes! Ogres are not like cakes.
Donkey: You know what ELSE everybody likes? Parfaits! Have you ever met a person, you say, "Let's get some parfait," they say, "Hell no, I don't like no parfait"? Parfaits are delicious!

Like parfait, this house has several layers.  In our screened in porch, as we began to peel off the carpet we realized - much to our horror - that there was a layer of astroturf underneath the carpet. 

This is not the first time we've found layers in the house. The laundry room has two layers of linoleum.  The roof has two layers of shingles.  The walls are several layers of paint over wall paper.  We should expect from now on to find remnants of previous owners in all of our house projects. But, it's still a shock.

But back to the screened-in porch.  Brian convinced us that rather than patching holes in the screen that we should just start from zero - take off all of the screens, paint the wood without the screens on and then re-screen the area.  So after we got all of the carpets off, we began power-washing. 

Powerwashing is my mother's favorite activity.  She enjoys it immensely.  And I'm not even being facetious.  Really.  She does.  So she did that while I went home and waited for the dishwasher repair man at our rental house (his wise words, "yep, it's broken."  Thanks dude.)

When I came back with Lucy around 4 p.m., the deck looked amazing and Caleb was busy installing new outlets and light switches in the bedrooms.  All of the face plates and units were a 1970s chocolate brown, and Caleb updated them to a modern white (with a little tutoring from Brian).  Lucy was very impressed, and tried to "help" daddy by poking scissors in there.  We might need some serious discussions about the dangers of electricity.

Turns out after all of that powerwashing, the floor boards underneath are actually quite beautiful.  I had bought some very expensive eco-friendly deck tiles to cover what I thought was going to be hideous wood.  The good news is, we can return the expensive deck tiles (which adds $2,000 back to our budget) and just seal or paint the wood.   By the time I left to go home and make dinner, the men were working on installing the ceiling!  I'm getting very excited for how this space will turn out!