10.28.11 (Extreme Nesting)

Time to take a break from posting about appointments (I'll give an update next week there) and tell you about something a little more fun, our nesting projects! Ed and I have always been a bit extreme in our nesting. When I was pregnant with Aimee, we moved our bedroom into the living room for several months. During that time we drywalled, painted and carpeted the 3 bedrooms. This time around we went after the wood floors!
We felt we needed to make some changes for Aimee's sake. This year, we had insulation put in our floors (and attic while we were at it), because she spends so much time down there playing. We also didn't want anything to discourage her from learning to roll and spin around on her own. Anything like rough floors with splinters. 

Pre-project kitchen floor-Don't worry, we don't really eat cookies. We just make them for looks. :)

Pre-project living room floor

Pre-project living room floor

Pre-project dining room floor (and glimpse of kitchen work)

Ed's parents were so kind in letting us borrow their trailer to live in while we made a mess of the house.

Aimee enjoyed playing in the trailer, especially on the bouncy air mattress!

Plus, it is extra fun to play with glow in the dark toys in a trailer, because you can make it very dark.

We spent about 2 weeks working on the floors (and about 3+, so far, cleaning and resettling back into the house). It wouldn't have been as much of a challenging project if we had just decided to sand and finish the living and dining room floors, but we took on the additional project of tearing out the flooring in the kitchen to get to the original hardwood underneath. I was so excited to have wood floors in the kitchen after 5 years with dingy, old flooring. We spent several hours each evening on our hands and knees with hammers and chisels to get out the layers of flooring.

Ed hard at work in the kitchen

Me, not quite as hard of a worker, but trying none the less!

I worked on the kitchen while Ed tackled the sanding project.

First pass in the living room

Mid stride and hard at work again!

Then came the sad, sad day when we had to decide it was all for nothing. We just couldn't get the tar glue off of the wood in the kitchen. We also discovered gaping holes, patches from where old walls used to be and even a section of flooring that ran the opposite direction! Big, sad sigh!

What a mess!!

So, we headed to Home Depot to see what kind of inexpensive floor covering options we could find. We were able to get something fairly reasonable to cover the mess, but oh the sadness of all that wasted work!
Ed did a fabulous job of redoing the living and dining room floors though. I am so pleased with how smooth they are and how much warmer it makes our home feel. What a blessing!

Mid-project living room floor

Final sand living room floor

Shiny!

Getting moved back in. Doesn't it just look cozier?!

New kitchen floor

Our next nesting project that we are working on is switching 2 of the bedrooms around. We decided to have Caleb and Aimee share the bigger of the 2 rooms and turn Aimee's nursery into a therapy/toy room. Aimee's equipment has been slowly (relatively anyways) taking over our living area and it is time for it to have its own space! I'll update you in pictures once we have this next project completed.

Ps. For those who might be interested, I set up a registry at myregistry.com for Caleb (http://www.myregistry.com/public/Rosa-Edward-DeVoe ). I also added a few items for Aimee out of the special needs communication catalog. They are toys, but designed specifically to help her learn about cause and effect, as well as, making choices. Just in case you would like to get her something for Christmas or her birthday that would help benefit her in a fun way.