Rundola in Telluride

Steve and I are in Telluride celebrating the Fourth of July.  This morning before the parade the town hosted a "fun" run from the base of the gondola to the next station called San Sophia.  The distance was only a mile but the elevation gain is over 1,800 feet!  Your choice was to take the trail which makes several long switchbacks or to bushwhack up the slope.  The winner accomplished this feat in 21 minutes and 45 seconds.  The first woman's time was a little over 31 minutes.  Steve and I watched the start at the bottom and then took the gondola up to the next stop to see the finish.  These people are amazing.  We are enjoying our time but no fireworks tonight all over Colorado because of the fires.

We finally moved! ! ! ! !   We actually moved in ten days ago.  My sister Nancy volunteered to come out for a week from Florida to help.  This is a picture of she and I trying out the new rug that had just been delivered for the master bed room.  OOOH is it nice.  One day we rented an enterprise truck to move the smaller items and the next day we had a moving company move the bigger item.  We have the old house almost cleared out and will put it on the market soon.  The new address is 5970 Winding Canyon Drive and the zip is 89120.  Thank you Nancy for being such a great help.

A Stairway to . . . the second floor

When Steve and I bought the house we had no idea that we were going to change out a stair case.  I'm not even sure I knew you could.  But you can!  We had this ugly staircase inclosed with sheetrock.  Soon we will have this wonderful open staircase with walnut stairs, metal railing and cable stringers.  The amazing part is with their design we went from a less than 36" stair all closed in to an open stair of 44" without changing the landings.  Thank you J&J Stairs.

Kitchen Appliances

We finally have kitchen appliances and counter tops!  Of course the range is not hooked up because the gas valve the plumber put in is too long and we can't use the top drawer under the range.  This is just run of the mill stuff when you remodel.  We just need the plumber to come back out to change the gas valve.  To bad he didn't notice that the valve stuck out beyond the slider for the drawer when he was installing it.  Oh well!  We are hoping to move in sometime next week- hopefully.

My bath is ready!

Is this cool or what!  This is a picture of my new bathtub in my new bathroom.  This tub sat in my garage for months in a crate.  I had only seen pictures of bath tub in a brochure.  Then for two or three weeks it sat off to the side in the bathroom while the plumbers decided where and how the drain needed to go.  Finally my husband got involved and helped them figure it out.  Now it is in and the faucet even works.  Now if I can just get hot water I'm set!

New closet door

Steve and I needed some new doors for our remodel so he researched the internet and discovered the Sliding Door Company.  They do sliding doors, swing doors and even whole cubicles with glass panels and doors.  Their doors are real sleek and modern looking which fits into our style.  You can special order them in what ever size you need.  This door leads into a walk in closet but we also ordered them for the pantry and bathroom.

Kitchen Update

If you look down a few posts you will find the "before" kitchen picture.  This is the "Mid" kitchen picture.  The back wall includes the refrigerator on the far right, the microwave / oven on the left and the range in the middle.  The island you see in the foreground has the sink on the back side.  On the right side front is a glass faced cabinet and on the left is hole for the wine refrigerator.  The middle area is going to get paneling and on top is to be a solid walnut wood bar.  This is quite an improvement over the huge U shaped island that this kitchen replaced.

New fireplaces

Unfortunately I did not have a before picture of the fireplace in the living room. So the before picture on the bottom is the fireplace in the family room. The fireplace in the living room looked very similar and also had a hearth. The picture above is the new fireplace and we had the same design done in both rooms. We also had the window added on the left of the living room fireplace. When we bought the house there was only a window on the right side. It's amazing how much balanced the room looks with matching windows. The fireplace is gas complete with a remote and will be able to heat the room in the winter. (If we ever move in!)

Changing a staircase

It's hard to imagine that these two pictures are of the same area of the house that we are remodeling. The picture below shows a wall with an arched opening hiding the stairs going up to the second floor. Unfortunately the wall also hid two hexagon windows that could add extra light into the room. Soooo we decided to demolish the old stairs and add a free standing staircase with metal railings and wood treads. The picture above shows the work in process. The current treads are temporary until the remodel is finished and the walnut treads will replace the current plywood ones and the metal will be painted black. What a difference!

Snowshoeing in Aspen

Everyone is probably wondering what happen to the house remodeling project? Well in the process of removing the flooring and carpeting we discovered that the foundation on the south end of the house had sunk three inches. Sooo after several bids which involved engineers and permitting we decided to have it lifted. This involved drilling several very deep holes around the outside of the house, inserting huge steel piers, lifting the house with hydraulics and then drilling small holes in the foundation and inserting a two part polymer which expands and stabilizes the foundation. Amazing! Unfortunately after waiting almost two months for this process to happen - we went out of town on a previously planned trip to Aspen with friends. Hence the picture of me with friends snowshoeing in Aspen. We are now back home and I will commence blogging again about the trials of house remodeling.