The old pantry - facing south - after being gutted down to stud.

Grace & Emilia found a new place to play hide & seek - inside one of the new bathroom vanities!

A picture from the inside of the old pantry before it was gutted. The white built-in shelf unit we were told was built by great-grandpa Emil for great-grandma Esther. Unfortunately we were not able to keep it as time had made it a bit rickety and this area will soon be our laundry area.

A picture from the bathrom looking at the old pantry - now laundry room door. All of this plaster and lathe has been removed and is now covered in lots of insulation and drywall.

Grace made a sitting area for her and Emilia so that they could watch some of the construction.

Landon's room

Yes, we are still alive and now finding time again to work on the house! It has been a busy few months between school, concerts, church events....we were running ragged there for awhile!
We had hoped to get quite a bit done on the house over our Christmas break from school/work, but instead were snowed in for much of break with cabin fever and not enough supplies to work on our projects. We are thanking our lucky stars that we found a good tractor earlier this fall because it is really helping to keep us cleaned out on the farm. This last snow took Paul more than 4 hours to clear out with the tractor and loader and now we hear that there's more snow coming in next week!
We just had the bathroom flooring laid down on Saturday. I will post pictures hopefully soon.
The most recent project that we've tried to tackle is to get Landon's room ready for him. We are only a few weeks away so it was definitely time to get going on it. It took a few days to get Paul's old room cleared out and ready but then we started working on the walls with hopes of getting them painted. We didn't realize how much old wallpaper was on the walls and we had to scrape most of the walls down to bare plaster before we could paint. It took A LOT of paint for the walls, ceiling and woodwork, but it's finally done! Paul doesn't want me to forget to add the fact that every Bloomquist male has slept in this room for the last 94 or so years, so it's pretty special!
We found two great antique dressers for him (you can see the girls cleaning them in the pictures) and Gma & Gpa Linn bought a really nice mission-style crib too. Now we just have to get clothes put into the dresser, his crib made and pictures on the wall. Hopefully we'll have time to finish the room up soon!

"Wet paint. Don't touch!" is Grace's new saying. She's right too!
We've been painting fools on the farm!

Emilia taking a break from dusting the new dresser.

Grace spent almost an hour dusting this one drawer!

Doors

We have been working to replace doors on the farm. Fear not, we will be keeping many of the originals, but there were others that we wanted to replace for update purposes.


The new six-panel oak bathroom door - which Emilia loves to "knock-knock" on.


The new family room closet doors that replace the old bi-folds. Once spring arrives with warmer temperatures, the doors will be stained to match the original woodwork throughout the house. But for now, we are enjoying our new doors (tradition & mission-style).

More bathroom pictures

A second round of pictures of the bathroom remodel.

Walls have been sheetrocked - especially the south wall. One vanity and countertop is in (for Thanksgiving Day only - so guests didn't have to wash their hands in the bathtub) The vanity will soon be coming back out as the flooring will be laid soon.

Another shot of the new vanity - a second vanity will be placed along the southwest wall making a small space in between the two large enough for a heat vent and a trash can.

Hooray for sheetrock!

New bathroom pictures

The south wall is now completely insulated! The west wall will be insulated, but we have to run the plumbing/wiring into/thru it for the laundry room which is the old pantry.

The old wash room window and the old bathroom window have been removed and replaced with one new window which will be centered between the two vanities/mirrors/vanity lights.

Our new bathtub located on the opposite wall. And no we did not buy a robin's egg blue bathtub. We just haven't removed the protective film on it. Might be odd, but we are going to wait until the mudding/sanding is done so that we don't damage/stain the new pristine white tub.

The look from the outside of the house - along the southside - showing the new bathroom window and the new south exterior door.

Another pic of the south wall with the new window.

Bathroom remodel - more pictures

I am very much behind on posting remodel pictures. These bathroom destruction pictures are from about two weeks ago. I will take new pictures tonight so that you can compare and see the differences. Right now the walls are down to stud, some insulated and re-drywalled, the new bathtub is in (though not functional yet) and the new plywood floor is in. We have everything purchased - flooring, countertops, vanities, etc. so it's just a matter of getting it all done! Thank goodness for my dad who has been coming down to the farm on his days off to work on our bathroom. It's a mess right now, but will be wonderful when finished!

A picture of the bathroom when the wall between the wash room and bathroom came out. To our surprise, we found a cast iron soil pipe. It took my dad half of a day to relocate it, but it's been done!

View from the old bathroom looking onto the old back porch. No more walls!!

The old bathroom/pantry walls by the toilet. The toilet is staying in the same spot only now the bathtub will be located to the other side of it.

Original walls and rafters.


Our redneck bathtub until the new one gets finished up. We just have to run the plumbing and it's ready to go!!