All of the Schluter Ditra is down and cured. The instructions said I could lay tile immediately following the adherence of thinset below the Ditra. I am not that quick or prepared. These pictures show the measuring method I used to see how to start the tile laying portion of the project. The room fit the tile very nicely with only minor cutting. The far side of the room only had an inch or two taken off. It just didn't seem necessary to split the difference with so little removed. Especially since the far side of the room will be mostly hidden behind the breakfast nook table. There are quite a few tiles that had to be cut to fit around things on the perimeter. Heating vents, desk supports, stair handrail posts, and bay window angles all had to be marked off and cut out.

Christie was happy to have finally gotten the old living room light down and replaced. What do you think of the replacement. Home Depot and Lowe's have some really cool inexpensive fans these days. Big difference in appearance. The light is nice too. The old fan didn't have a light fixture.

Here is the kitchen with the new flooring down. The orange roll is a new product I found that should help to keep the grout and tile from cracking. It is called Schluter Ditra. The underside is covered with a thin layer of fleece. The top side is a plastic grid of squares and ridges. It decouples the flooring from the tile allowing the wood below the tile to expand and contract with the environment without disrupting the rigidity of the tile.

It comes on a big roll that you cut to fit the floor space. It is then applied to the flooring with a layer of thinset. Finally, the tile is applied to the top of the Ditra layer with another layer of thinset. The little squares fill with the thinset creating a column like effect. This is the engineering part that is cool. The column effect is basically a bridge support for the tile above. Very strong and effective.

Here are some more pictures of our first snow. Breezer, the Snow Schnauzer made the 6pm news for these pictures. Channel 4 WYFF has a place to upload pictures of the weather, so I submitted these of Brea and she was used on the evening news!

This is the view from the front porch of our new house with the first snow of the year. We ended up with 3 to 4 inches! The tree is our Peach tree that Christie wants to get rid of. Maybe when she sees the pretty flowers, she will like it. But on the other hand, after the fruit drops all over the walk way leading into the house and brings flies and gnats, I may be ready to get rid of it too. Who knows? It is low on the priority for now.

This is the view from Mom & Dad's place in St. Louis on New Year's Eve.

This is the kitchen with the old linoleum coming up and the original flooring below also being removed. The black is the tar paper that goes between the subfloor and the flooring. The old flooring had to come up in order to get some of the height back for placing the new tile. The original owners put in a thick flooring and then linoleum to match the height of the 3/4" hardwood flooring in the foyer and dining room.

I have also removed all of the cabinet doors and drawers. All of the cabinets will be sanded down to degloss the surface and then be repainted and antiqued. This is by far the most difficult task. The popcorn ceiling removal was messy, but not quite the strain on the body that the floor removal has been.

We arrived home from Christmas to a leaking water heater. There were 2 or 3 places within the water heater that were leaking internally. The leak wouldn't have been detected had it not been dripping on the pilot light. Christie said the water wouldn't get warm, so I checked the garage and found it to be slowly puddling. Unfortunately, the overflow drain pan also had holes in it. So all the water was going onto the floor. All was fixed the next day though. Home Warranties on a newly purchased home are well worth the cost. We have had HVAC and water heater replacements now.

The carpet is installed and feels great! I have been picking up miscellaneous staples here and there. Hopefully, all of those will be gone before we step on one.

Today the padding was installed for the carpet. Apparently, carpet isn't laid in a day. The anticipation continues to grow. Tomorrow will be the final product. Well, almost, because then I have to go back around all the baseboard trim and anywhere else that might have gotten scuffed in the install. Hopefully, it won't be too bad. They have forewarned me that it is a possibility.

Here are some finished rooms and the upper hall. Wow, what a difference the paint makes. We are staying pretty neutral upstairs for now. The bedrooms are all the same 'Desert Fortress'. The Bonus room is called 'Southern Shadow'. The darker color below the chair rail is 'Lyndhurst Timber'. You will just have to visit to get a true perception of the color. The pictures don't do it justice. With the fresh sparkle of the white trim and the smooth coat on the walls, it is really beginning to feel like a new house. Christie gets more and more excited each time she sees it.

The windows are not few and far between in this house, and neither is the amount of trim to be painted. Not only are the baseboards getting a fresh coat of white, but all of the windows, chair rails and crown moulding are too. According to my calculations, all the trim, windows, and doors will need almost 4 gallons of paint. I'll be glad to have that done and ready for the walls. That red and yellow in the breakfast room and kitchen have got to go.

In the upper picture of this set, you can see the crown moulding masked off and ready to paint. Phase one of the trim to be painted. This took 3 of us about a week to get it all done in the whole house.

These have been in my camera for almost 2 weeks now. The carpet was removed last week and finally you can see some progress on the transformation of our first home together. The rooms really echo without the carpet. The new carpet color is called Feather. Hopefully, the feel on our feet will be soft like a feather too.

This is a Green Lynx spider that was on the front porch handrail. Christie must have scared him out into the open when she was planting new flowers in the window boxes. Apparently, this spider does not spin a web, but rather pounces on its prey like a cat. Thus, the 'lynx' in its name. It is a very voracious butterfly hunter. He is a little smaller than a fifty cent piece. The legs at the point of attachment are the thickness of a pencil lead in a standard No.2 wooden pencil. Very intimidating spider, especially knowing he jumps on his prey.

This guy was having lunch on a bumblebee in our Rosemary. The whole feast lasted approxmately 3 minutes. He was quite interested in what I was doing as I got clsoe and personal to take this picture. Every move I made, he followed with those beady, shiny, bulbous eyes.

Here is a cool spider that has been moving to a new location every morning at our house. Apparently, it has not found the best place catching prey yet. It is very considerate and dismantles all traces of the old web before rebuilding somewhere else. The web usually stretches a span of 2.5 feet at the outer circle with guidelines spanning over 10 feet.

I have upgraded my blog template. Now you can subscribe to my blog and receive an automated notification every time I update. Maybe this will encourage me to write more often. The link to subscribe is all the way at the bottom.

Here are some pictures as promised. This the mess we made in order to make it all our own on the day we move in. Popcorn comes down much easier than the work remaining to be done. We still have paint colors, carpet, and stone tile to pick before we can paint. We want to paint before we carpet. And the stone tile may just wait until a later time. It's all very exciting though. I spackled a bunch of nail holes and sanded some rough spots on the master bedroom ceiling tonight. Little by little, we get closer to the completed project...

The first weekend of owning our new home has passed. Since we closed on Wednesday, Oct. 3, we have been busy with the help of Christie's parents removing all of the popcorn ceilings. It was messy task, but went fairly quick. Very surprising! The white powder filled 8-10 yard bags weighing anywhere from 30-80 pounds. So much popcorn. The ceilings all need to be touched up where of the nail holes became exposed, but other than that, the ceilings are in great shape. The corners where they meet the walls are clean and sharp. Once all the spackling touchups are done, we will prime the ceilings and begin the painting. All of the ceilings, crown moulding, baseboards and walls need to be painted and updated. During that process, we will have the carpet spaces measured and quoted for new carpet. What is in there is 15 years old. Time for a sprucing. Be looking for a picture of the popcorn removal. I should have it up soon. Still in the camera.