Yesterday we got new carpet! We also put the blinds back up, we didn’t get a chance to clean them yet so we didn’t put the covers back over the tops since we’ll be taking them down again to clean them soon. We also put all the outlet and switch covers back on so now our house looks less like a construction zone. We put the banisters back on and vacuumed like crazy. Today we are planning to take some dishes and stuff to the house and clean up for the move tomorrow.

The carpet looks really nice, the guy did a really good job. There was one guy that did all of it, he was dead tired when it was done. I was told someone was suppose to be there between 9 and 10am but I got a call from our carpet salesman at 7:45am and he said the installer was already there, I guess the installer was told to be there at 7am, so he had been there for about an hour by the time I made it there. He didn’t finish until nearly 8pm.

Yesterday we had another productive day. Jake and Lins helped us out again and we finished painting! Jodi and Jake painted a second coat in the guest bedroom while Lins and I taped the master bedroom. While Jodi finished up in the bedroom the rest of us moved all the stuff on the floor in to the garage to prepare for new carpet coming in the next day. After that we went to dinner at Wendy’s. When we got back to the house we decided to all four work together and worked on the master bedroom. Then we painted the hallway and stairway. It was still a long evening, but we finished it!

Yesterday was another long, productive day at the house. Jodi and I got home around 11:30pm last night so I decided to go to bed and blog about it this morning. Last night we did a first coat on the master bedroom, taped the other two bedrooms, and did a second coat of paint in the front room and in one of the spare bedrooms. Jodi also got some of her homework done.

We were only able to get all of this done because Jake and Lins came to help us again, they are so awesome! Jake started off helping me paint the master bedroom while Jodi worked on a paper for school that was due last night. When Lindsey showed up she started taping one of the other bedrooms to prepare it for a second coat. She’s kind of short so she had a hard time taping above the doors and on the ceiling. When Jodi finished her homework she taped the other bedroom to get it ready for painting.

After we all finished in the bedrooms we went out to dinner at Panda Express. Then we went back and all four of us began to paint. Jodi and Jake worked on the front room and got it completely painted with a second coat, they did a ton! Lins and I worked on one of the bedrooms and got it painted with a second coat.

The second coat really did look nice on those walls, filled in the spots that we could see the previous paint and just made it look thicker and better quality. We are really happy with out things are turning out and are very thankful for Jake and Lins, they are helping out a ton. Now tonight we just need to paint a second coat in the hallway and the other two bedrooms and we will be done with painting.

Today was a very productive day. We even had a couple people come and help us this evening! Jodi’s brother, Jake, came and helped me paint most of the evening. He did the corners and other brush work while I did the rolling. Jodi’s cousin, Lindsey, came and helped out for a couple hours and cleaned all of the windows and screens. She even cleaned the outside of the windows on the first floor! The screens were really dirty, they look so much better!

Jake and I painted the two extra bedrooms. The paint didn’t seem to go on as nicely as the first floor. The original paint in the bedrooms seemed really cheap and thin, it was different than what was on the main floor. We are hopeful that a second coat will add a little more to it and help give it some more quality and coverage. It seemed too like the paint just got soaked up a lot more than downstairs, I seemed to be going through it pretty quick. So far we have gone through 3 gallons of paint, went through about a whole gallon just today.

After Jake left, Jodi and I did one of the walls in the master bedroom. I think she was just really jealous that she didn’t get to paint all evening so she wanted a turn! :) Jodi worked on cleaning out the kitchen most of the evening, she cleaned out the cupboards and cleaned the oven. The oven didn’t show much progress even after all the time she spent on it, it is just really really dirty. She also cleaned one of the blinds, they are also pretty dirty. We are probably going to replace some of the blinds before too long, some are just really bad. Jodi also got everything else taped and ready for a second coat of paint.

It was so helpful and nice that Jake and Lindsey came and helped out, it let us get a lot more done than we had thought we would. They are great! We were going to take them out to dinner to show our thanks, but only Jake made it to that, Lindsey left just before we were going to go, so we still owe her dinner!

Day 6 was the longest day yet. we spent about 12 hours at the house cleaning, taping and painting. We got to the house about 11am and worked till around 11:30pm. We left for a quick run to Sonic to get some lunch and drinks (love those limeades) and then stopped for a few minutes around 9pm to eat some dinner (frozen pizza). My friend Justin stopped by just after our dinner to check out our new place too. It was a long day.

When we arrived we checked out our walls and realized that when we got up close we could tell we needed to do a second coat, we were hoping that wasn’t going to be the case, but sadly it was. From a few feet away they looked ok, but there was some of the old paint showing threw in little spots all over the place. So we began the long work of retaping. We went through about 3 rolls of tape. Along with this we had to clean and spackle the bedrooms, they were pretty gross. I don’t think the previous lady ever vacuumed between the baseboards and the carpet, they were sick.

We also decided to attack the tall walls around the stairs. About halfway up the stairs there is a landing area where the stairs make a 180 degree turn and then go up to the second floor. Because of this there are three walls that are about a floor and a half tall. This makes it tricky to paint, especially since there are stairs in the way. It took us a long time to get these done, but we did them. I had to climb up the ladder a few times to tape the ceiling and to cut in so that we could roll the rest of it. Luckily I didn’t fall once and everything worked out. There were a few tense moments when I was reaching over a ways trying not to fall off the ladder, but I managed to make it through it unscathed. We are going to have to do a second coat, but we aren’t planning to bother with taping or cutting in, just plan to roll it which can be done from the safety of the floor with an extension handle.

It was a long day, but we got a lot done. Still some more painting to do, but we should be able to get everything double coated by Thursday still, in time for the new carpet. We’ve also decided we won’t be trying to paint an entire house in a week again either, lots of time to pull it off, just need to find some good, cheap painters!

On day 5 we just painted the front room. Jodi did the cutting with the brush while I rolled paint on the walls. The system seemed to work fairly well, especially since she prefers brushing to rolling. The windows were a bit of a pain but still not too bad.

We made a trip to Home Depot at the end of the day and picked up some new door stops to put behind the door. We decided to replace all of the ones in the house since they are all gold springy ones and we are planning to phase all of the gold stuff out.

Today was our first day painting. We started off with a little more finishing work on the spackle and taping. Then we pulled out the paint brushes, rollers and paint. We decided to start in the upstairs hall area since that would be a good spot to get in to the swing of things since it won’t be seen as much as the front room. It looks us a few minutes to figure out what we were doing, but once we got going we seemed to be moving pretty well. We finished the upstairs hall area and the walls around the stairs on the main floor. We didn’t get the three really high walls yet in the stair area, those are going to be rather tricky. We’ve only used about a half gallon of paint so far.

Tomorrow we plan to finish the front room and get the bedrooms prepped, hopefully we’ll even be done with the carpeted areas by the first of next week. So far it looks like we won’t need to do a second coat, hopefully that is still the case after it dries.

We made some more progress on the house today, we took yesterday off to go see a play with some of Jodi’s family. The first thing I did when I got there today was get the Internet set up. We can’t go without that! I also set up one of our TVs and one of the DVRs.

Today we did more prep work on the main floor and stair area for painting. I worked on filling in cracks and dents and stuff with spackle while Jodi worked on taping and taking off the outlet and switch covers. A few days ago I bought a sanding block thing to use to sand the spackled areas, that worked out sooo much better than sandpaper!

We had a few visitors this evening as well. Jerusha stopped by on her way home from work, she helped out a little while she was there by taking down some of the blinds and by helping clean some nasty stuff in the kitchen. Aimee also stopped by, she just lives across the street. It was nice to see both of them and they like our place and what we are planning to do. Our realtor, Ken, also stopped by. He wanted to see if he could get the wall switch for our fireplace working, currently we have to turn it on with the knob under the fireplace. Not a big deal that it doesn’t work, but sure is nice that he wants to help out!

We also went to Home Depot and bought some paint! We got Harvest Brown Behr Premium Plus Interior Eggshell Enamel. We had them mix up 3 gallons of it, we’ll probably need more before we’re done. We plan to at least get a touch-up bottle of it later. We also got some Extra White paint to do some touch-up some of the trim and we bought a couple of small step ladders, another paint brush for the trim, and some more tape. We have gone through almost 2 rolls of tape so far!

Today was the second day of our house clean-up and painting project. We just met at the house after work and made some more progress on a few things. Jodi spent her time cleaning walls, including the really sick nasty one by the stairs, and taping to prepare for painting. I spent most of my time working with the garage door opener and then helping her to tape.

Today I went to Home Depot to find some way to support our garage door for the opener and a guy there told me to try a place in Orem called Lowry Doors, they showed me something that I could use but I needed to measure the door before they could get me the proper hardware. I ended up going by a place in Salt Lake that sells the brand of door that we have after work today and got the stuff I needed to reinforce the door. They just gave me an 8 foot piece of angle iron and a bunch of sheet metal screws. I got that put on the door though, should help out enough.

Then I worked on getting the stuff all wired up to the garage door opener and went to go put on the part that connects the trolley to the garage door and it was too far away, I know I measured that though! Oh well, guess I’ll just have to move the opener forward more, I figured out a way to make it work I think, rather frustrating though. I pulled the opener down from the ceiling and now it is just sitting on the floor for now, I’ll get back to it after we paint. I’ve spent way too long getting that thing going, need to get the painting done before the carpet is replaced next week.

Jodi and I finally got possession of our townhouse yesterday. We closed on the place on March 25th and the tenant moved out yesterday. She was suppose to be out by noon yesterday, but when we should up at 1pm the door was unlocked and there were a few small things in the house including cleaning supplies and a fish tank. We assumed that she wasn’t done yet and must have just been at her new place, or else we had just inherited a fish. We left and went to Home Depot and bought some painting tools as well as some other misc stuff. While at Home Depot I called my dad to get some painting advice, he was very helpful and gave me some good tips and suggestions on things that we would need and how to use them. We then went to Sonic to get some lunch. After these errands we went back to our new home and this time the door was open and a truck was in front, so she must have been inside finishing up. We left again and drove around a little to check out what places were around our new house. When we got back the third time around 3pm she was gone so the place was finally ours!

For our first day I had planned to install the garage door opener that we purchased a couple of weeks ago. We bought a Craftsman 1/2 hp Garage Door Opener, Belt Drive and decided that I could just do the install myself instead of paying the $99 to have it installed. I pulled everything out of the box and began going through the instructions, we made sure we had all the parts we were suppose to have and then I discovered that since our garage is finished, we needed to purchase a couple of support pieces to mount the garage door opener on the ceiling. We also needed to purchase a support for the garage door. We drove over the Sears in Jordan Landing and looked around. We tried to explain our problem to an employee there since we were not seeing the parts that we needed and he was not much help, told us to go over to the Parts and Service department, they were just as helpful. So then we went over to Lowes across the street and the guy there at least knew how garage door openers worked, but they don’t sell the brand of opener or the brand of door that we have, so he was not able to get us the parts. So we drove back over to Sears and found the ceiling mount, then we went looking for the bolts that we would need. We could not find them so we found another employee and she was not helpful at all. I was very frustrated and decided maybe it would be better to just pay someone to install it for us, maybe then they would have all the extra parts. The employee we were talking to wasn’t sure if they would have the parts or if we would need to furnish them, so I wasn’t sure what to do. Luckily Jodi noticed that the screws and bolts that we had been looking for were actually packaged with the ceiling mount that we had found. So I decided to go back and see what I could do.

We went back home and I got the garage door opener assembled and mounted to the ceiling. There wasn’t much clearance above the door so I had to mount the header bracket and everything to the ceiling, hopefully it will work like it is suppose to! I still haven’t found the support mount for the garage door, hopefully tomorrow I can track that down so that I can actually attach the opener to the door.

We also discovered that the previous person who had been in our house was not very clean. The carpets are disgusting, which we knew and is why we are having new carpets put in next week, as well as some of the walls and the kitchen. The kitchen was filthy, I think she swept, but that was about it. Jodi spent all afternoon cleaning all the appliances, counter tops and the sink. I think she is mostly finished. Tomorrow we hope to finish getting the garage door opener put together and clean some more. We are also planning to fill in some small cracks with some spackle and start painting Wednesday (we have other plans Tuesday so we won’t be working on the place that evening).