Entry and Stairs

I finally got around to uploading some new pictures. We've been busy removing paint and sanding the entryway and stairs.

Here's a really old picture from when we moved in. We've learned that everything to do with the stairs takes an ungodly amount of time. Begining with the million carpet staples we've removed, to removing the paint, and finally to sanding and staining.

This is from last winter once the wainscotting was painted.

This was taking from a month ago once we had all the paint removed from the treads and risers.

Here's the spindles and stairs with all the paint removed.

This part was a lot of fun.

Removing paint in here was fun too.

Top of the stairs with the baseboards sanded and the floors edged. This shows the natural color of the maple floors upstairs.

Here's with the baseboards stained, my dad came down last weekend to help us get this stained. Still need to sand and stain the spindles, but that will probably wait until the floors are sanded and refinished.

Built-in in the dinning room.

Here's the linoleum removal from our closet. This came out really easy with the steamer.

Baseboards & Trim

My parents came up last week to help with the house and I used the slave labor to help us strip and sand down all the trim and baseboards in the dinning and living rooms. It took about 2 start days of dust, dirt, and sore backs to get it ready.

Here's a couple pictures of the sanded windows and baseboards.




We spent this last weekend staining and varnishing the two rooms off, for once we actually have some visible progress. We stained everything a dark rosewood color.

Landscaping & Stairs

We've made some additional progress on stripping the paint. The trim in the entry is finished and bottom flight of the stairs is finished. Still have about six steps left and all the spindles. Then I have three doors to finish before we can start to refinish everything.

Here's the before

Memorial weekend we added some paver stones along the sidewalk and Karina transplanted some hostas and flowers.

Marathon

Here's some pictures from the marathon last weekend.

Yard Work

Greg, Bill & Dallas, and Jeremy helped us with a ton of yard work this weekend. We had some drainage issues this last spring so they helped us install taller window wells so that we can add dirt around the foundation.

They also removed all of the overgrown shrubs around the house. They dug out a shrub in the front, a huge shrub in the back, and two along the side of the house. It looks so much better now. We were amazed that we got so much done with their help.

We spent today pruning back trees. We removed some of the lower branches from the birch tree in the front. We took out a lot of the braches on the cherry tree by the patio in the back, hopefully now we won't have so many dropping on the back walk and patio. We also removed branches from the tree in the back corner of the lot.

Here's the house last fall.