This Weekend's Update

Ed and I have been busy around the house again. He has his own projects he is trying to get done, but I am continually asking him to "come help me for a second." It always ends up being more than a second!

So to recap. I am working on repainting the family room in preparation for new carpet. But, in the process of repainting, the project has grown. We are planning to put in a gaslog fireplace somewhere in the future, but did not want to have the hearth there any longer. Since we are putting in new carpeting, the hearth needs to be removed now so the carpet can go all the way to the wall. That was my project for yesterday. Here is the fireplace wall before.



We also sold our sectional couch last weekend and bought a leather couch. Before the demolition began, I snapped a picture of the new couch.



I think we made a good trade!

Ed started the demo off by removing the very well secured book shelf from the wall and showing me how to remove the brick from the hearth.



I left him alone to do his thing while I chipped away at the bricks. Once the bricks and the plywood frame were removed from the hearth, the bricks that framed the fireplace insert were loose enough to come off in one whole piece. Those bricks were attached to a wooden frame which was only attached to the wall at the top of that section. Luckily Nicole had arrived home in time to help us remove that section from the wall. It was a little heavy, so we were glad for the additional help.



All that was left was the top section of bricks, which also was loose at the bottom and only attached to the wall at the top. We assumed that it would be far too heavy for us to just pull off of the wall and gently lower to the ground, so Ed decided to chip some of the bricks off.



He ended up chipping them all off and in a whole lot less time than it took me to do that job! We had all the bricks removed by around 11:30 p.m. We were curious as to what was behind the board, but far too tired to care at that point. We decided to just leave the mess and head to bed.



After church today it was clean up time.



Ed and I spent some time today listing out all that still needs to be done. I don't work again until Saturday, but I will definately be busy getting the painting done. We did take the original wall paint back to the store. The can of paint that we had did not match the paint chip and I was not loving the color on the wall. We got a new shade of green which I hope to experiment with tomorrow.

On other news - Nicole got a temporary job at Anthem Insurance. She will be able to take time off for interviews when she is able to find something in graphic design. We are thankful that she has this opportunity to earn some money while looking for the perfect job.

Courtney took her nursing boards on Monday and found out on Wednesday that she passed. She is officially an RN now! She starts orientation tomorrow.