Construction Update

So far, the drywall is all hung and has been taped and mudded twice. I'm thinking they'll be back to mud and sand one more time, maybe two, and that will be done.

We had a painter in today to do an estimate, but he came out so ridiculously expensive we're thinking of doing the painting ourselves. I want to save all the insurance money to put toward the hardwood flooring we want to do in the great room upstairs. Maybe we're crazy to think about painting ourselves, but it should be relatively easy... no floors to worry about spilling onto. Just have to worry about the trim, which we wouldn't be painting. Plus, we've decided not to change colors or repaint whole rooms, so we just have to feather in the new paint to the existing paint. Someday we'll change colors and paint the whole rooms, just not right now. I want to do as little as possible to get things put back together.

So next up is getting a bid on the rock work for the two fireplaces. We need a plumber to move some pipes that are sticking up from where the bar used to be upstairs. We're going to move those over toward the wall so we can have a built-in wet bar in between the dining room and living room on a much smaller scale than what we had before.

After that, it's flooring. Hard wood upstairs and carpet in the master and office and downstairs.

We did spend some serious time at Best Buy this weekend, figuring out what we want for the media room. Have to figure out who to call to come move the home gym that's in there currently out to the garage.

And I need to choose some kind of cabinet/sink for the wet bar.

Still lots to do, but seeing the drywall go up and get mudded and taped at least looks like progress! There are "before" and some "during" pics on my camera if I ever get around to uploading pictures again in this lifetime!