Finishing Up the Rental, A Quick Drone Shoot and Valentine's Day

The kids are pretty good at keeping themselves busy while we finish up prepping the rental.

Every weekend has been pretty cold but as we are wrapping up the rental I had time to make cinnamon rolls for breakfast. 

 

 

I went to the hardware store to pickup the National Geographic book that my photo was featured in (and pickup some paint).

 

They told him his photo would be in the book 2 years ago, was nice to finally see it in print.  Our neighborhood hardware store is also a UPS drop off/pick up location.

Hey there's Brooke in the Boundary Waters. 

I guess you can say that I'm a National Geographic published photographer. Crazy.

Nothing like enjoying fresh homemade cinnamon roll and sharing your newfound minor fame on social media.

Meanwhile I tackled my mending pile. 

The Picasso Tiles/Magic Tracks/Brio city just kept on getting bigger and bigger.

 

It's nice when they get along and play together.  

Finally got some more use of my table saw and installed this missing piece of trim for the kitchen cabinets.

Brooke took on the task of cleaning the rental, while I painted the window sills I had prepped a week back. They clearly hadn't been touched in decades.

 

I spy little boy footprints in the dust.

Even though Scott said no more polishing I cleaned up the pull handles on the linen closet.
 

Busy days lead to picking up frozen pizza from the nearby gas station.

 But we still squeezed in a game of Guess Who. 

I took a quick break from the house work to shoot some drone shoots for an old contact of mine. He was going to use this shot for an architectural rendering.

I went grocery shopping and also picked up a few Valentine's gifts for the kiddos.

On Monday instead of working on the rental I was photographing it!

 

It was finally ready! 

 

Finally it is done!

The living room was mostly untouched other than painting and patching the ceiling. Brooke also cleaned up and re-stained the radiator cover tops.

 

Also any the windowsills and mantel.  

 

In the dinning room we repaired the bulging broken wall (with tons of assistance from Mr. Mike), painted the walls, added the ceiling medallion, installed the chandelier that was previously in our unit's hallway and got some sweet sconces off AliExpress. 

 

I wish we had taken a photo of the wall before we started demoing. It was literally taped up to keep from falling.

 

Before

After 

The kitchen mostly complete before we moved in.

 

We did paint the ceiling, install a new fan and had a plumber fix the pipes under the sink and run the gas line to the range. Oh and I got a super efficient matching fridge.

 

 

Before

 

After

 

The larger of the 2 bedrooms we removed 2 of the sconces due to an electrical issue, patched and painted the ceiling, closet, trim and walls and installed one new sconce. 

 

We also had an electrician add electric to the ceilings in both rooms. That added the task of patching the ceilings, hooking up duplex outlets and installing the ceiling fan to my long list of to-dos. 

The scones had to go due to an old gas pipe being in the way to move them and add junction boxes.

 

 I would not recommend these sconces.  I had to install a different back plate since they were too small for standard round pans or grabbing onto anything. In the end looks and works good, but required a lot of work on my part.

 

I wanted to shoot the entire rental, but would have to complete it after our buddy Tyler left. He had been staying in the rental on and off.

That night I made heart-shaped spaghetti and meatballs. You, know, since it was Valentine's Day.

 

Can you see them? 

The next morning we walked Meadow to school and picked up a couple of donuts. It's kind of Theo and my thing.

 

 

The smaller bedroom basically had us do all of the same tasks as the bigger bedroom. We went with these sconces.

 

It's hard to tell in these photos how much work we had to do. So much cracked plaster and dirty walls. Almost every surface had to be redone.  

Before

During

 After 

This hallway was a total pain. It started out with just patching cracks and painting the ceiling, but that looked really weird with the bumpy wallpaper. So, I started to skimcoat over the wallpaper. That was iffy and too much work, so I sanded off the rest of the wallpaper. Think it looks pretty good in the end with a good paint job.

 

The trim color was beige too so needed to be repainted to match the rest of the rooms.  We also later discovered this wallpaper was in every room at one point. 

 

Before
 

In the bathroom we painted the walls and trim, installed new towel and toilet paper holders and fixed the shower diverter. 

 

Mr. Mike cleverly patched the floor crack so that it can last another 100 plus years.

I replaced the sink which included finding the right means to anchor to the wall with strap toggle bolt anchors, installing a new faucet and hooking it all up. Just a few upgrades, mainly the sink, totally changed the look of the bathroom.

 

We tried 3 different new light fixtures but none of them fit properly above  the medicine cabinet so ended up going back to the original.

Now to find someone who will want to live here.