Before/during/after pics of my remodel and hearth install!

This is the ugly ass couch we used to have. It belonged to my husband's ex-wife's grandparents who bought it in the 60s from a thrift store in Idaho. It pretty much embodies everything one might hate about a couch. The only way it would be more white trash is if it had cigarette burns and some springs to poke you in the butt.

This is what we took out/off of my husband's desk when I cleaned it out.

For reference, we filled an entire trash can with stuff. Mostly old papers that he for some reason thought he still needed, like financial paperwork from 1992. Don't ask me.

Side view of my woodshed. My deck is cluttered with stuff that didn't survive the Great House Purge of 2010 that needs to be taken to the dump or the thrift store, but the woodshed's nice!

It's sixteen feet long and eight feet wide, with two foot slope to the roof. We used cedar pickets from a fence- rot resistant, woohoo! Look nice, too. The roof is OSB oriented strand board that I painted red.

Inside view. It'll have a door on either side, and stairs that go from the porch down into it. Again, some clutter that needs to be hauled out. (Anyone want a microwave too small to pop popcorn in?? No? Neither did I.)

My BRAND NEW SPIFFY COUCH. And my cute daughter. And my nice Macbook Pro. But the couch is what's important because it's LEATHER and RECLINES and isn't that POS you saw before. Also I got it half off because I'm awesome like that. (You can see the woodshed from the window! It cuts down on worries about people seeing me walk around after a shower. =P And glare on the TV. Very important.

The desk as it is now. I should have taken a before pictures of it, but alas, I didn't. Also, yes, that is a scuba tank that's been turned into a lamp.

My current TV stand. It's made of partcle board. See the clear drawers on the end? See how nothing's in them? Wondering why they're there? Because that's all that's keeping the TV stand from leaning over and falling down. Also sometimes when I feel like it, I put the daughter's toys in there. They never stay long in there because it's a fun game to Make Mommy Go Insane and Hate Her Life- aka, THROW ALL THE TOYS AROUND!

My current mess of a living room- it's really not that bad, it just looks like a lot because it's such a tiny space. But really that usually all fits neatly on the shelves and in the buckets and boxes. My next project for in the spring once I can work outside again is to build a big bookshelf/toy bin/entertainment center that will just basically go along the back wall there. Also that couch is too short to be a good couch and too big to be a good loveseat, and the fabric is really itchy. But the cats like to scratch it and it keeps them from scratching other stuff, so it stays until I find a good replacement couch/cat post. I'll probably save the upholstery and just use some of the scrap I have left over from the woodshed to make them one.

What passes for an end table and bookshelf around here. The end table is going to get thrown out and replaced, the bookshelf might get replaced if I feel like building one myself and/or find a good one at a yardsale or something.

The wet bar in the kitchen (and my one of my cats, Jinx, the stupid one). This is going bye-bye! MWAHAHAHAHA. I can't wait to go on a bloody rampage with a sledgehammer. DIE FAKE WOOD PANELING, DIE! The stove is going pretty much where this is now- gives it a more central location in the room plus the heat will circulate better without that in the way. And I had to take it out anyway when I redo the floors, and I definitely don't like it enough to try and put it back!

My kitchen table. It's all right, but it could be better and needs to be refinished. (And cleaned off, obviously!)

We have lots of random recyclable crap that won't fit in the bin now because it's full of my husband's crap. Waiting for trash day on Monday...

Anyway, that's my house! Well, half of it, anyway. You didn't see the Hall of Laundry or the bedrooms, because I have that much shame. =P It will look MUCH better in two weeks when I'm all done!

~Rose

I did! I even tried manually putting the links in the tags here- no dice! And my pics I posted in the "your neck of the woods" thread show up... Even tried uploading them into a new folder! Nada!

Grrr. I also have some very impressive post-packing pictures I wanted to put up. =P

~Rose

Post-packing pics! TA-DAAA!







It's GONE! Once I get all the furniture moved out tomorrow, baseboards and trim are next, then the wetbar, then the carpet!

~Rose

Yup! Today I'm cleaning the place to within an inch of its life, since this will be the first time in years that I've been able to get into every nook and cranny. Gonna work on packing up the kitchen and then moving the lighter furniture in.

~Rose

No way. Sucker was the most uncomfortable couch ever, plus we have a memory foam mattress... I'm not THAT hard of a wife. ~_- Though now that we have the nice one, I won't have to feel bad about kicking him out when his snoring keeps me up!

Gotten a lot of work done the last two days. Pulled off ALL of the trim and baseboards except for around the stove and the fridge, which was a groan and a half. Lots of itty bitty little nails to go back and pull out. Picked up all the materials I need for the floor yesterday (that damn OSB is HEAVY!), moved the furniture out except for the big black couch and the desk (those weigh about 300 pounds each and they're easy enough to clean I don't mind working around them and wiping sawdust off), and took down the wet bar in the middle of the room. I swear, that wetbar was the best construction work I've seen in this trailer to date, it was screwed down to the wall, so we're going to have to replace that bit of wall. Fortunately it's right where the stove is going, so we can just put tile up the back for where the paneling is torn out.

Today on the agenda is rip out that fake stained glass thing that goes over where the wetbar used to be, take the old furniture to the thrift store, pick up some free pallets from Craigslist for stacking firewood on, go back to Home Depot and look at materials for the hearth and paint, run some more errands, and then we'll start ripping the floor up tomorrow hopefully!

~Rose

Got most of what I wanted to do today done- errands ending up eating a lot of time, but MY WOOD CAME AND IS ACTUALLY SEASONED PRAISE THE LORD, went to Home Depot and dithered over tile colors and paint chips with my husband for about an hour, then we got the carpet ripped up, the glass thing down, the big black couch is moved into the kitchen, and I have 4-5 guys coming tomorrow to help demolish the living room! Man, I tell you, the further I get into this, the more I'm convinced of it's necessity. I don't think this floor would have lasted another six months, and the mold once we pulled up the carpet is just disgusting. As we were using a pry bar to pull up the carpet tacking, it was just digging chunks out of the particle board. The carpet padding was actually stuck to the floor in more than a few places. And the particle board is just black and grey and green with it. At least my walls are metal so I don't have to worry about THEM rotting out. There's one wall (thankfully the short wall) that might need to just be pulled out and replaced from the windows down, but that wouldn't be too hard I don't think.

Will take pictures in the morning!

~Rose

My very awesome sign that my friend Shawn gave me. I hang my aprons up next to it. =P

That's JUST THE TRIM from the living room and kitchen. Filled the whole box. Drove me nuts.

The incredibly scarily stuffed spare bedroom.

Everything from the living room got shoved in here. (Well, everything I didn't throw out!)

Hopefully in some kind of orderly fashion, but that kinda remains to be seen...

My husband swore that stuff was plastic...

It wasn't plastic.

My living room, sans sidebar (and old gross moldy carpet!)! Isn't so much more open now?? I love it.



About three cords of wood to be stacked...

And another 1.5 cords.

Exactly how far I got in about 30 minutes of stacking before I decided the hell with it, I am NOT restacking this wood twice just to let it season for a MAXIMUM of one more month before it start to snow...

~Rose

MAN. So we stacked a little over 2 cords of wood today, my husband bitching all the way. I forgot that he's allergic to every single kind of tree on the planet, and that just TOUCHING the wood will give him hives. I figured as long as it wasn't pollen or flowers he'd be okay... Nope. He swears that the woodsmoke won't bother him. If it does he had a whole year to tell me that it would before I ordered the stove and built the shed and stacked the firewood and now we're BY GOD committed to it. I also stacked it the wrong way at first... with the logs going long-ways instead of width-ways? I realized it about and 1/8 of a cord in and figured it would be okay to just start stacking the other way... And then it fell down. A lot. I yelled quite a bit. I keep telling myself this is the ONLY YEAR I am going to make mistakes like that and then next year I'll just know EVERYTHING and it'll be FINE. Or maybe the year after that.


What's left to stack. We got all of the smaller pile and what I started to stack, and made a bit of a dent in the big pile!

It was really funny watching my daughter help. She can manage to pick up one log at a time pretty good! She would line them all up outside the woodshed for me. I tried really hard not to laugh when she parroted my husband's "What the hell?!" with "Da hell?" And she gathered up all the kindling for us and put it in a pile. She's only two, so I thought that was pretty impressive.


The living room floor is all ripped up and the new OSB is in! It's very nice to have that part done at least.

I got my laminate today, it looks great. We finished screwing the new OSB down today, so that's ready to go. Got some paint samples for the walls. The walls are going to be an off-whiteish cream and the paneling is going to be a light sage color. We finally decided on a tile color for the hearth- we're going with a really blue slate.

We were left with a bit of an unevenness in the joint from the new OSB to the one piece of particle board we couldn't take out, since the next joist was under a wall. I didn't want to deal with a 4x12 area of leveling compound, and it was just almost EXACTLY 1/8 of an inch off, so I picked up a doorskin and that fits just perfectly flush. I was very impressed with myself. The OSB all lays pretty flush together to one another, so once we get the kitchen pulled up and the new floor in, I'll go back and look for high and low spots and see what else needs a patch or to be sanded down flat. For the kitchen, we're going to start from the patch I fixed up last year (same thing, pipe burst and we got water damage) and work out until we hit solid ground again. I have a sinking feeling it'll be pretty much the whole floor, but from underneath the trailer, everything under the counters looks good, so at least we don't have to pull them out. The real groan is going to be doing all the molding and trim all over again. Fortunately that's for the husband to do while I'm gone. =D

I've been scrounging Craigslist for new furniture (and wood for next year, of course). So far I've come up with a new dining room table, new chairs, a coffee table and end table, and a rocking chair to put in front of my new stove for me to sit in while I watch the fire. =)

~Rose