Doors, Wallpaper, and Windows.......Oh My......

I have really slacked in blogging lately, but most of the changes have not been something where you can "really" see a change. We have the electrical almost completed and the plumbing should be getting there soon. The new water heater is installed, so now it is just getting everything hooked back up. Our new furnace should be delivered any day, so hopefully that will be installed in the next week. As soon as we get the furnace, then we can have running water in the house, don't want the pipes to freeze and burst right in the middle of the remodel.

Two weekends ago my parents came up to help. My mom helped take a ton of carpet staples out of the hardwood floors in the master bedroom, she decided that she would prefer to never do it again. My dad did a lot of clean up on the outside of the house. I wish the sun stayed out a little longer in the evenings so I could have gotten a picture last night to post, but it does look a lot better and no longer like a jungle.

This last weekend we had a full on work crew my Uncle Mark was back to help with some electrical stuff, my cousin Daniel and his wife Hyra also came to help, as well as Adam's brother Chris and his Dad. Everyone had different jobs so we got a lot of loose ends wrapped up. The pictures below note some of the progress we have made since the demolition, again not a ton yet, but once that drywall goes up there should be world of difference.

This is the before of the back door, although it doesn't look terrible from the inside the exterior of the door was pretty weathered, do we decided to replace it.

Here is the after of the back door, which ended up being a pain to get installed. I guess a door should be roughed in so that there is some wiggle room to work with when installing a new door. Adam's comment after 2+ hours of working on this, with the 3 Phillips men, was that they must of hung the door and then framed the house, that is how tight the door frame was. It ended up being an episode of MacGyver trying to figure out how to get the door to fit. As you can see they triumphed the nasty framing, and I think they would have all gone for a cold one after that mess.
Here is the before of the Kitchen where we were replacing the window with a patio door because it logically made more sense for the flow of the house.
Here is the after with the patio door installed. We had the contractors do this one as we figured it might be a bit more complicated. Adam was jealous and said they got the easy one, after the fiasco with the other door. I am really glad we made this decision, and it is so nice to have all of the natural light in the kitchen and dining area.

Here is the bedroom where there was a patio door and it is being replaced by a window. The windows are all special order and have not come in yet, so right now it is just a piece of plywood.

Now it is on to the wallpaper, oh the glorious wall paper. I think I have spent that majority of my working hours on this house steaming and scraping wall paper off of the walls. I will never, and I repeat never, put wallpaper anywhere in my house. The thought of ever having to take it down makes me shudder.

This is the before of the master bedroom, and after getting the steamer, this room proved pretty easy on stripping the wallpaper.

And here is where hours of my labor have been spent, the after, no more wallpaper!!

This hallway has been my nemesis over the last several days. A previous owner had the bright idea to just paint over the 40+ year old wallpaper. I have scored, steamed, stripped paint, and scraped this hallway and am still only about 1/2 done with this mess. My goal is to be gone with all the wallpaper in the house by the end of this week.
This picture (below ) is where the contractor came in and took down the wall between the kitchen and the dining area. It was load bearing so they had to put in a beam for support. It really opens up the space and makes the dining room much more usable.