Running into a brick wall: More Moving and More Shaking

Hey everyone! I can't believe it's already Sunday evening! I also can't believe I forgot to post yesterday. Yesterday was my 3 year blog-o-versary! Hard to believe, but totally true. I can't believe it's already been 3 years. My how time flies and things change!!! Anyway, like I said last year I don't know how long I'll keep this up, and in particular how long I'll keep it up here, but for now.....here's how the weekend has shaped up.

Friday Brent and I went to pick up Pippin from daycare together (I know, we're dorks). It ended up we were going to be home around the same time so I just waited outside and hopped in his car so Brent could see the daycare in full swing. This way we'd also be going into the house at the same time to see how far the contractors got. The original estimate was 3 days, which would've put them done on Friday so we knew they'd be close. It was so exciting to walk in and see a staircase stretching all the way upstairs!!! It's so pimp!! I'll post pics below. They have a few more things to do tomorrow, but then their piece is finished. I guess I should clarify - THEY'LL be done tomorrow, we still have a lot to do! We're having all the framing done, and will do all the trim and drywall ourselves. The math and sheer "architecture" as well as safety and bracing was just over our heads, and the fee for having this done seemed very reasonable to us - which is pretty rare! The other two things we had them quote on made us laugh, so we haven't lost our spirit - we just know our limits. Anyway, we were so tickled with it and took many trips up and down, up and down. Except Pippin. He's scared of the stairs and won't go past the second step. He doesn't like that the "kickplate" part is still open, he doesn't like open stairs - like tall decks, etc. Once they're finished he won't mind it though.

Friday night we just relaxed and watched TV, and did a little cleaning inside. They had to cut out quite a bit of ceiling for the stairwell and the dust was NUTS. We had covered a lot of the furniture, but WOW. Pippin went to bed at 6 - right after eating dinner. He was out all night, daycare WEARS HIM OUT! Saturday we all went for a walk over to a friend's yard sale. The on and off rain had really hurt the sale, and not long after we got there we had to take shelter on their porch for a while during a big shower. It was still fun, we got to hear all about the adventures her hubby and another friend were having at Bonnaroo. After lunch we did some salvage shopping. We really wanted to find some reclaimed pieces to finish the stairwell. There's an awesome salvage shop a few miles away, and we were able to find a circa-1910's banister & 2 matching posts. Perfect!! They need stripping before we can stain them, but they fit perfectly and are going to be so beautiful! We also got a door that matches the ones we have in our house for the hall closet under the stairs. It's been in a fire and had some soot on it, but Brent's already sanded it and primed it, and it looks good as new. We also got several new doorhandles and hardware that match our house. We LOVE that place. They had quite a few spindles but we need to figure out how many we need and the height before we buy them. Their prices were great and when we got home we had a check in the mail from our escrow company (what we've had to pay in this year was over the threshold for overage for taxes/insurance) equal to almost what we'd spent. I love days like that!!!

We also did some shopping last night, and have spent most all of the afternoon today working in the yard. Our yard was "behind" about 3 mows. It needed a mow the day the roofers started early - so we were behind to start with. Fast forward nearly 2 weeks of equipment being in our yard and it was a mess. I had thought about calling Codes on myself, ugh! But now our yard is nicely mowed, all the pots, flowers and furniture is back on the deck and porch and it's back to nice and neat. And we even had time to take a trip to Sonic for some well deserved ice cream.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and have a fabulous week!

Here are some pics of the construction:

This is the foyer before, with all the furniture we had in there removed.

Here's the horrible spiral before. Just try taking boxes and boxes of Christmas decs, furniture, etc up and down that thing.

And now - a fab new winding staircase! It's hard to really get it all in pics. It starts under the front window, goes up to a landing and then winds to go up to the 2nd floor.

More of the "up" piece, plus the great chair we got for $10 at the yard sale yesterday - it's got great bones but just needs reupholstering. Brent's standing inside the new hall closet here.