It takes a village to renovate a house...

We have the greatest neighbors... ever.

While loading our 25 sheets of dry wall into our house some of our neighbors came by to say hello and lend their sympathies (renovation seems to be a neighborhood past time). One of our neighbors is a contractor and he mentioned he might come by and give us a hand with the drywall today. Well.. to our surprise he rounded up a crew of guys from the street to come help us hang drywall. He also brought many fun tools that made the job *alot* easier (laser level, t-square).

Being so far away from home and family we've been feeling a bit out on our own with this house thing so far. To know that there are so many people close by willing to lend a hand really helped our morale. Having a friendly contractor to bail us out when we get over our heads is also very comforting.

Let there be light...

Finally we have made some progress on a part of the house we can see. After 3 weeks of our electrician not showing up we booked someone else. We waited a long time before rebooking because the first electrician had given us a really low quote. Once we rebooked (at a higher price :\) things moved significantly faster! About a week after meeting our electrician we now have a rewired house. This is the first change we've made to the house that has a real positive impact on things we can see.

Here are some pictures of our shiny new wiring. Ok... it's not that shiny right now. We're hoping to hang some drywall this weekend so the pot lights have regular bulbs in about half of them and the other half have no bulbs. Even in this state though they make a huge difference. Our main hallway used to have no lights and adding 2 potlights to it made has helped make it look bigger and less grungy.

Dreaming of Bathroom...

This project is a long way off, but I am really anticipating having a bathroom that does not have a hole in the floor. Sometimes Bren gets on my case about dreaming about next projects when currently the main floor barely has walls. I have to argue though, that it's kind of like when people are in a situation where they don't have food for a long time and they dream about the next meal they will have. Any who... this is my dream for the bathroom...

Originally we were planning light blue/white really spa like and pristine like out old bathroom (below)



The plan hasn't changed too much. There's still gonna be lots of white. But now I'm leaning towards more yellowy off-white/white/black for a color scheme. Below are some inspiration pictures for various aspects of our room.



Floor (Our Fixer Upper)
Vanity (Rona's Odessa 2 door)
Light fixture (Home Depot)
Shower kit (E-bay)

So close... yet so far....

So after 3 weeks we might be getting electrical redone in our main floor this week (hopefully). Our electrician hurt his leg so things have been stalled out for a while.

In this waiting period we've started getting things in order so that when the electrician is done we can get our drywall up in the living and dining rooms ASAP. We've been busy figuring out jam extenders, blow in insulation, getting taping quotes. Next up, floor refinishing and window quotes!

In unrelated not so current news, we got our shower kit set up. We had splurged on a shower that had the telephone attachment on it to make cleaning our dog easier. Two doggy baths later and we can say, it was worth every penny!