Patriotic pipes

Wow - its only been 4 days and it feels like its been forever since we've update the blog.

We've been putting in a lot more hours, but to be honest, it seems like Ryan is putting in more than us.  Theres been a few times that we've shown up to the house to find him working away on something.  It's great to have the company and nice to have the help too.  Dad has been making some regular visits as well, picking out about 1000 staples left over from our carpet removal.  It's tough work which yields an appearingly small amount of debris for hours of work.

We've really been enjoying finding little treasures here and there in the house.  Every now and then I'll pull something out and find an old squared off nail like they used to make at the blacksmiths back in the 1800s.  And things like the radiators are very decorative and cool.   We're also in the process of restoring the old wooden spindles on the staircase and it looks like they may be original as well.  

A couple of before-after photos of the brick work.

Ryan framed out the pass-thru window much nicer than we had planned on doing it.  I really cant believe that someone had just drywalled over this.

Now that the big upstairs bedroom is all finished, we've turned that in to our little chill area.  We got a bed and light from Freecycle, and threw in a carpet remnant and heat the whole thing up with a heater from Ryan's mom. 

With the 3rd floor being 99% done, we've moved in to the second floor.  We're working our way from top downwards.   We pulled out the 2 radiators in the front room because they were so close to the wall it was obvious no-one had painted behind there in decades.  So while the water was still off, we figured it was a good time to pull them out and scrape off the years of junk and baked on paint and make it look pretty behind there.   We also replaced all the wiremold behind there as well.   We've decided to carpet this room even though the floor is pretty decent.  It'll keep it quieter downstairs and should be quicker on us. 

The biggest news is that our pipes are going in.  Our plumber has been here for the past few days running all sorts of red, white and blue pipes.  Red and Blue for hot and cold, and white is the super high-temp stuff used for the heating system. 

Look-  theres water pipes sticking up!!!  Also, note the cool handpainted wallpaper we found behind the cabinets.  Theres not enough of it to restore, but we just think its so cool.  We're going to try to save a piece.