DIY House Addition: Month 11 Wrap Up

Whew. We’re rapidly approaching a year of construction on the Memorial House, and isn’t it crazy how time flies when you’re covered in dirt uh, having fun? If you’ve got sharp eyes you may have noticed a little something different on the exterior of the house this month, which is the first time we’ve made progress on something outside of the house since we entered the sixth ice age up here back in October.

Here’s what it looked like in January:

Yes, there is way less blizzard going on, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Check it out…

When I was driving all over two states a few weekends ago, trying to find my brain, MysteryMan put the not maroon cedar beams in place.

So that’s exciting. Here’s what else has been going on in the last two months.

Month 11 Progress: Colors, Tile, Trim & Floors

There have been some great strides in finishing the master bedroom and master bath, including picking paint colors and doing something awesome with this window:

The grays:

I tasked MysteryMan with building the closet-shelves-made-out-of-plumbing-parts, which required enough math that even his engineer brain almost exploded. But it’s looking awesome, and if only we had a floor in there we could put it together and store our clothes somewhere other than the garage.

And speaking of floors, the full bath has one:

It also has this beach inspired rustic wall (plus a few more boards):

And a little tile:

It’s not done, but it is a far far sight better than what it used to be.

Yep, same bathroom. And hey, all we had to do was tear out all the fixtures, drywall, flooring, and miscellaneous closet, and then rebuild it all. Story of my life.

Month 11 Injury Report: Does Food Poisoning Count?

Hey, all my fingers and toes are present and accounted for, and I’m no worse for wear unless you count another layer of skin peeled off my hands from not wearing gloves when mixing thinset for the tile, and the fact that I almost died from the flu. Or guacamole food poisoning. A person shouldn’t be able to die from guacamole, so the jury is still out on what caused the 24 hours of hell, but I’ve made a full recovery thank you. Thus concludes the one day I alloted myself for sickness in 2011.

Month 11 DIYed and Didn’t: I Should Get A Gold Star For This

For the whole first half of this project I would like to think I pulled my weight and then some (considering I’m the one who washed the dishes out of a spigot in the back yard for a couple of weeks), but I wasn’t the MVP of the building projects, which always went to MysteryMan, or the professionals, or our electrician friend. But give me a house full of unfinished drywall, floors that need to be installed, tile that needs to be laid, and oh boy, am I in my element.

Here’s what I tackled myself:

• Texturing the walls in the master bedroom and both baths
• Priming and painting the bedroom and both baths
• Trimming and staining the window in the master bedroom
• Installing the full bath floor
• Installing the full bath tile

Here’s what MysteryMan did:

• Building the closet shelves
• Framing in the area for the tub in the master bath
• Installing the porch posts

This is what we used the “pros” for:

• Finishing up some electrical work (and does it really count as professional help if we pay our Chief Electrician in beer?)

Here’s to hoping we round off the year by actually finishing a couple of rooms.