Salmon Rolls & Surprises

When last we left our intrepid young destroyer (Brad the Demolisher), he had successfully ripped out the drywall and insulation from the living room, and removed the carpet from upstairs. In the meantime, we met with James again for some good news/bad news. The bad news first - due to Brad's master plan to insulate the living room ceiling, we now know that the flat roof leaks, and will need to be replaced. We're still waiting for that number, but bye bye contingency budget.

The good news is that the drywall number came back and if we re-drywall the entire dining room and kitchen ceiling, it's actually going to cost $600 less than trying to patch the holes and match the sand texture. Woohoo!

So, all of the temporary walls are down. And, we finally get an idea of what the space is going to look like. It's awesome. First up - the view of the dining room and future island from the laundry room.

 Next up - the kitchen and dining room from the corner of the living room.

Another view of the kitchen and dining room from the front of the living room.

The view from the kitchen/future pantry area to the living room. You can clearly see Brad's insulation rolls. James called them Brad's salmon rolls, which immediately made me hungry for sushi. Yum.

So, Brad's next tasks - pull the kitchen and dining room ceilings down and remove the insulation in the laundry room ceiling. As Brad has pointed out previous, the ceiling in the living room addition was woefully under-insulated. Not the case in the laundry room. It had a layer of the crappy pink stuff, as well as a nice think layer of yellow insulation.

He did, however, find yet another mouse house. Not as cute as the Mickey kind. And, whichever mouse currently lives in our house is quite smart. I can eat the peanut butter off of the trap without snapping the trap. Brad has tried 2 different trap types, with no success. Sneaky little mouse.

Next up - the kitchen ceiling. Brad hacked away at it and found a surprise. You might see it hanging down in the next picture.

He found a hidden drywall saw. Check it out. Not expected, but not a terrible surprise. Good thing it didn't fall on his head.

Now, onto the bad surprise. Under the upstairs sink, which has been leaking for a while, Brad found some nasty mold. He's found a fair amount of the black stuff throughout the house.

But, what was new was the fuzzy white stuff. Yuck, yuck and yuck. We are really glad we're replacing the whole ceiling at this point. Yuck!

We then met with the painting consultant, who gave us some wall prep tips. Zinsser Cover Stain Oil primer for the walls downstairs after cleaning with plenty of DIF and some scraping. He also left me with a color deck. I guess it's time to pick some colors! I don't know how people live without a color deck. It's my new favorite thing. Think you like that color? No! Too pink! What about the color next to it? Better! Instant gratification. I love it!

I then forced Brad to take me out to lunch at a sushi place (I need some shrimp tempura rolls!) before going to finalize our appliances and get our sink. I'm very excited by the sink! This isn't the exact one we bought (ours is a bit bigger), but the shape is the same. We have even picked out a faucet that's similar to the one in the picture.

Then, we went tile shopping. Which, it turns out, wasn't as difficult as I figured it would be. We even agreed on what we liked. But, we need to go check out another tile place before we finalize our tile selection.

Until next time!