Week 1 of January

So this first week back we have gotten a lot done, but not all of it can be seen by the naked eye (aka a LOT of time fixing and creating new wiring). But here's a list of what we've done (and by 'we' I mean mostly my dad does/instructs and we do all we can):

-Removed the flooring in the kitchen and dining room

Which involved removing baseboards, which revealed this beautiful wallpaper.
What do you think? Should we bring it back??

-Created a chase for new return air ducts (the house only had 2 return air vents and they were both on the floor in the living room) [dad is standing by the new chase in the picture below]

-Created a beam to support the ceiling for our new half wall

My favorite thing about what we are doing...open floor plan!!

-Created two smaller beams on posts in the basement to make sure the floor now holding all the weight is strong

-Took out the old closet tile in the entryway and replaced it with wood flooring, which meant we had to tear the flooring out all the way across the room for about 15 rows to make it line up and look right.

I'll get a better 'after' picture later but this at least shows you what it looked like before and what it looks like now :)

  

-Installed new lighting in the basement (the old lighting looked nicer but the wiring was a joke, so now we might have the standard basement fluorescent lights, but at least the house shouldn't catch on fire!)

-Painted the upstairs hallway and all the bedroom doors

-Rewired most of the kitchen and living room

-Moved around lighting and installed new lighting

Moved the ceiling fan from the dining room to the living room and
installed a light fixture we found in the garage in its place in the dining room

-Tore out the rest of the drywall in the living room when we learned we couldn't remove the FOUR different kinds of textures without taking out all the drywall.