Renovation is more fun with friends!

This weekend our dear friend George drove up for a visit, and we put him straight to work!  I can't express enough what a huge help it was to have some more manpower to get us through the end of the demolition.  After the "hey, hi, how are you" moments had passed, we busted out the mini sledge hammer and got to work on the rest of the tile in the entryway and in front of the fireplace.  This is one of my absolute favorite things, but since the boys were so much more efficient, I decided to finish scraping the back room instead.

The finished fireplace demo.

The boys working on the entryway

Since we're replacing 13 doors in the house, and hardware can get expensive, we decided to try and spray paint what we already had to match our bronze fixtures.  I only took a picture after I applied the final coat, so I'll be updating this section later today after I finish with the sealant.  It worked great and saved us a ton of money!

The last thing we did for the day was finishing priming all of the door frames (we're also saving those since they're in pretty good shape and it'll save lots of $$).

George working hard!

Since the boys worked really hard all day, we headed to the Bremerton Brewfest for the rest of the evening!  I volunteered to be the DD (of course), since these two have long awaited a beer drinking reunion (and I don't like beer).  Ultimately, it was a little bit of a letdown.  The "commemorative beer cups"  were small, plastic, and paled in comparison to other cups we've gotten at brewfests before.  The lines were long and there were no food vendors, so the restaurants along the streets were selling hamburgers and hot dogs over the fence.  It seems super silly unsafe to me to have a beer festival without food, but it is Bremerton I guess!  The highlights were definitely getting more information on local breweries (including some from Poulsbo!), and catching a glimpse of Colin's future ship, the USS Stennis, after taking a wrong turn and ending up at the base! :)

The first beer -

The last beer.

After only being there a short time, 10 vendors had run out of beer, and the lines were getting longer and longer, so we decided to head back to a local bar in Poulsbo to get food and end the night.  After our stint at Tisley's Europub, these boys got back to what they do best - eating tots, drinking beer, and playing video games!  What a successful weekend long reunion!

Obviously, after the previous days excitement and hard work, we took Sunday morning nice and slow.  Once we had gotten George on his way back to Portland, Colin tried his hand at cutting the tiles for the fireplace with our new tile saw.  I think it came out perfectly, and I can't wait to lay them today!

We had initially chosen these pretty expensive accent pieces (almost $3 a piece!) for this area, but after a great suggestion from a friend, we looked into buying a sheet of smaller tiles used for back splashes and bathrooms, and cutting it up to make our own.  It worked out great and saved us a bundle!  Not to mention we love these accent pieces better than the ones we had originally chosen, and because they were netted together, we only had to use scissors to get those cuts perfect :)

Our floors should be getting here today (yay!!!!!!) and thus begins a long week of getting tile and laminate done.  My goal is to be done with all of this and on to painting doors and moulding by the time Colin's mom comes to visit the first weekend in August!  Wish us luck!

It doesn't matter to Lao Tzu if it's covered in cling wrap, a couch is still for napping!