RTH – Update – Finished…For Now.

We have added a few accessories, bought a few rugs and a few old tables. We still have nothing on the walls, and that is where we hope to tie in some of the color that is in the couches, chair and rugs. But for now we are done with this room. Here are some pictures of the finished product:
The lamps are new, we found the set of three at Lowe’s. The end tables we found at a couple of antique shops one was The Company Store in Negley, Ohio and the other was Wagon Wheel Antiques in Valencia. Both tables need some tlc and as I have some time I will probably refinish them.

Here is the coffee table we found at General Store over in Wexford. The top is in great shape, I may paint the legs with the oil rubbed bronze finish we like.

Above is the third lamp of the set and a table that my wife was handed down from her grandmother. My dad refinished it several year ago. When I refinish the other tables this is the color we will try to match.

Above is another table we found in Beaver Falls in the Antique Emporium. What I love about all of these tables is none of them were real expensive but have good bones, will look fantastic with a little work and will last us a lifetime.

Above is a shot of the rugs we picked up.

I found this candelabra in a Thrift Store and thought it may work to decorate the fireplace, now we just need to find some candles, that will be Brenda’s deal.

Now onto the next phase.

 The stair way had these cracks in the corners of the plaster, but it looked like it was drywall tape lifting underneath. This did not make any sense since they are all plaster walls. Well above is what I found. It appears there were originally cracks in the plaster and someone tried to repair them by taping and mudding over them. Unfortunately they did it wrong. Let me say, that I am no pro. To my knowledge you are supposed to mud, tape and then mud over the tape, then sand, then mud and repeat until you get the desired surface transition. I know this because I had to repair almost all of the corners in the living room and dining room. What I found under the tape was no mud, just broken plaster. I am also patching some other random cracks in the plaster.

I don’t like being in construction mode again, but this project should not take near as long or be near as complicated. So here are some shots of my progress.

For those of you following me on twitter or on facebook you saw the picture of my measuring tape sealed up behind the plastic on the window sill, I got it out...

Thanks for visiting and checking out our progress.
Have a blessed week!!

What is next for robots???

Check out this video:

A Church Adventure: Week 6

This week we were home again, it was super nice to see our home church family again. There was a congregational meeting within the service this Sunday. It was great to see such diversity in age when the church presented its nominations for the pastoral search committee (I’m not sure if that is the exact name of the committee, but you get my point.). It is also good to see this search process is continuing. As much as I  understand a congregation needs time to heal as a long term pastor retires, I am ready to move on…
I want to take a moment to thanks all of my readers that have emailed, direct messaged, or facebook messaged me with invites to their church or suggestions of other churches in our area. Brenda and I really appreciate all of the postive encouragement we have received during this adventure.
For those of you wondering what this adventure is all about click on the following link: Church Adventure
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A Church Adventure: Week 1
A Church Adventure: Week 2
A Church Adventure: Week 3
A Church Adventure: Week 4
A Church Adventure: Week 5

Some Wii Action for Georgie.

As I did some wii fit today Georgie insisted to get into it as well.

And I weighed him and he lost weight….

I can’t believe they included weighing your pet on wii fit.

A Church Adventure: Week 5

Well, this past Sunday we did something we don’t usually do. We did not go to church. You see, the girls had a sleepover/birthday party on Saturday night and it was over at 11 on Sunday morning. Brenda and I talked about going to a Saturday night service or an early Sunday service, but then decided to order dinner in and have a movie night with each other. It was a very nice evening, we watched Charlie St. Cloud and Inception. Two movies I would suggest to rent. If you have not checked out renting from The Red Box, go and check it out.
So I would like to do a shout out to Lynn, for having the girls overnight. She had a houseful, 14 girls, 14, and she actually survived…
For those of you wondering what this adventure is all about click on the following link: Church Adventure
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A Church Adventure: Week 1
A Church Adventure: Week 2
A Church Adventure: Week 3
A Church Adventure: Week 4

A Church Adventure: Week 4

This week we went to an early service of a local church. It’s denomination is The Christian and Missionary Alliance. The music was wonderful, the pastor was very welcoming and the message was given by a missionary from Thailand and was a great one.
The acoustics of this sanctuary were amazing. We thought we were running late so immediately went into the sanctuary and found a pew, then realized the praise team was not playing a prelude it was still practicing, I’m not complaining. It was nice, we got to hear the wonderful music twice. As they talked very quietly amongst themselves between songs we could hear everything they said.
This was a good chapter added to our Church Adventure. I hope this next week, we can get to an urban church campus down in the city.
Thanks for visiting and have a blessed week.
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A Church Adventure: Week 1
A Church Adventure: Week 2
A Church Adventure: Week 3

RTH – 1st Floor Hardwoods - Update: Almost Finished…

The end of last week and beginning of this week, I hustled to get the finishing touches complete. This included the installation of the shoe moulding, painting the baseboard and touching up. Here are some pictures of those things complete.

Entry Way

Dining Room Storage

Living Room Register

Note: That rock rug will not be staying there, it is just to protect the floor until we find a new carpet we like.

Note: The lamp will be going away as well. It is way too contemporary.

Living Room.
Yesterday I brought the Dining room table back in from the garage.

Today I hung the curtains. It is really coming together.

Note: There is no chandelier. When we finished the attic, we found one circuit of knob and tube and had to deactivate it for safety. Eventually we hope to be able to rewire it via Bethany’s floor. Brenda has an idea for in the meanwhile, and I will show you later what we come up with as we decide.

 
As you can see, Georgie likes the new furniture. We also need some end tables and a coffee table and some decore. We will be looking for some of these things that are period to the age of the house at some estate sales and antiques stores.
So my favorite thing about this renovation is the fireplace. I am just surprised that we were able to do that. It is more than I ever expected.

Thanks for visiting.

A Church Adventure: Week 3

Well, we have decided to return again to our home church this weekend. We traveled yesterday to celebrate Megan, Jesse and Lilea’s life, as they prepare to journey to Hawaii as Jesse will be serving our country stationed in Oahu. We feel a bitter sweet about their departure. It is such a wonderful opportunity for them, but we will miss them. Our girls just love to play around with Lilea and will be missing her greatly. This will be there last Sunday worshipping with our church for a while. So we decided it would be nice to be with them this Sunday. Please keep the Scott family (Megan, Jesse and Lilea) in your prayers as they begin an adventure of a life time. Pray for traveling mercies as Jesse leaves this Friday and Megan will be leaving in a couple of weeks, Pray for Jesse while he will be pursuing this new exciting career, Pray for Megan as she juggles the final phases of this move while taking care of a little precious two year old. Pray that Lilea will have an unforgettable adventure with her awesome parents! Pray for their family and friends as well during this difficult time of saying farewell.
We pray that we will blessed to meet again with this amazing family in the future.
If you voted last week on my logo, Thanks. Obviously, logo #2 won.
I’m will be praying this morning that everyone of my blog readers, including you, have a wonderfully blessed week.
Let’s go and make a difference!
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Contagious (Video)

Good Saturday Morning to all. I woke up early (5am) as usual, this morning. I was reading some of my feeds and almost skipped over this video, I was wanting to zip through stuff this morning, in hope of either getting some these everlasting final touches completed on our renovations or maybe dragging my family to some estate sales before going to a farewell bash for some dear friends from church. I’m am so thankful I watched it. I found it over at Church Crunch a great site, worthy of a luck. This video proves that laughter is absolutely contagious. Just 11 seconds in, I was laughing hysterically, and of course our other early bird of the house, Bridget, was soon looking over my shoulder and joining in with laughter.  Laughter is a gift from God, and was created to be contagious…


Go laugh this weekend!!
For rss readers that are not showing the video, here is the link:
http://youtu.be/RP4abiHdQpc

RTH – First Floor Hardwoods - Update: Finish Coat, Baseboard and Registers

For this update, I flash back to Friday one week ago.
The girls went back to school after being sick last week, yuck. I spent all of that day applying our poly urethane on our hardwood floors. We chose Min Wax’s Oil Modified Water Based Poly Urethane with a satin finish. Again I was surprised at the odor, and how it was not obnoxious, it was a little stronger then the stain, but not really too bad. This by far was the most challenging step in this process. The manufacturer suggests three coats because of its water base. I ended up at four, solely because I had some flaws in the third coat that needed some attention. When the label states “fast-drying”, they mean it. I applied it with a 7 inch lambs wool applicator attached to a broom handle (a suggestion by the Lowes paint/stain department). It states on the can to maintain a wet edge while applying, I pondered before applying as to what exactly they were referring to. Remember, this is the first time I have ever used a water base finish. I have only used oil based and that was only once maybe twice if you include wood shop in junior high school. I now know what that meant. As applying the finish, I could rework one stroke width and anything more was already tacky or drying. You have to move quickly and deliberately with this stuff. All in all, the floor is awesome, not flawless, but for my first time doing it. Brenda and I are completely satisfied with how it finished(literally speaking). I worked on finishing into Saturday and was done by noon. Sunday was a day of rest, ( boy, did my body need it) and a birthday celebration of a very special one year old!
Insert picture of finished floor here:
 
Monday, I started to work on our 100 year old floor registers.

These had about four coats of paint on them. They are heavy duty, I have referred to them as World War II tank steel, fabricated into floor registers. I cannot imagine what it would cost to replace these with ones similar. I have seen floor registers in Lowes and Home Depot, I fear that they would not last a week in our house. So with that said, I spent all of my Monday wire brushing floor registers. It was a challenge to get the paint out from between the louvers. But with a small screwdriver and some patience, I was able to get most of it. I applied primer, several coats of primer and 3-4 coats of Rust-Oleum's Oil Rubbed Bronze Metallic Spray Paint. Here is the finished product:

Tuesday and Wednesday I installed baseboard. We chose a traditional styled, tall, composite, did I say tall. 7 1/4 inches high. Here are some pictures:




Yesterday I had a day of rest, helping my Dad get back and fourth for eye surgery. His surgery went well and my body received the rest well. I was able to get the shoe moulding painted yesterday afternoon, so today I will be receiving our new furniture and then installing shoe moulding. Then a much needed weekend! Next week I will be painting baseboard and any other touch up areas and then reclaiming the space….woot!!
Thanks for stopping by and checking out our progress. It’s really coming together. Have a fantastic weekend!!

RTH – Update: First Floor Hardwoods - Staining Hardwood Floors

To start, I will jump back a week ago when I started to stain the hardwood floors on Thursday of last week. It by far was the easiest task of all of this. I was amazed that the odor of this stain was less then the odor of the latex paint we used in the family room/attic. We chose a Min Wax oil based stain called Golden Oak. Here are some shots of the living and dining room floor after I sanded it, one of the entry way with stain going on it, and one of the dining room completely stained.





Thanks for visiting.