Operation Grid Castle: Lots of pictures...

I obviously haven't posted for a while. A lot has happened (surprise). So let's get this started: after the drywall was mostly done, we moved on to painting. Thanks to Jay and Noelle for lots of help with that- here they are painting the east front bedroom wall green:

We rented a sprayer for some of the larger areas, but a lot still had to be done by hand. I have pretty much come to hate painting. It took a lot longer than expected... way too much masking, the walls sucked up a lot more paint than expected so we kept having to buy more, way too much cleaning of painting tools, etc, etc, etc. But, I can only imagine how many thousands of dollars we saved by doing it ourselves. Here's a photo of the front bedroom showing the accent wall, the main wall color, and the main ceiling color (50% lighter than the wall, but kinda hard to tell):

After the painting was finished, it was time for finish/trim work to start. So, I made one of the most useful purchases of the whole project. I bought a well-used but well-cared-for dual-bevel sliding compound miter saw from a contractor in Truckee. It came with a stand, and I also got a finish nailer and a pin nailer as part of the deal. Not bad for $280. Here's Wheeler enjoying the new saw:

We also got an amazing deal on some laminate flooring that was being closed out. It's called Dream Home Nirvana Allegheny something or other. It took some time to get accustomed to the installation procedure, but we eventually figured it out. Here are the first few rows of flooring starting in the back bedroom (note the ever-present drywall dust... that crap got everywhere):

We decided to add some difficulty to the flooring situation by running it continuous throughout the upstairs (i.e., no transitions at doorways). It took a bit more mental effort to do it that way, but I think the end result is a much cleaner and professional looking installation. Once we got the flooring installed through the laundry room, Pete started working on the baseboard and door casing. At this time, it was still somewhat of a wet Spring here in Tahoe so we had the miter saw upstairs the whole time. Luckily, we were able to rig up the shop-vac to the saw so it could suck up a lot of the dust while cutting... but still, things were pretty dusty up there (and pretty much everywhere else too). Here's a photo of the first pieces of base installed in the laundry room:

We then decided that it would be really nice to finally get the washer/dryer out of the kitchen, so the only thing we needed for that to be possible was to wire up the 220V outlet in the laundry closet. All things considered, it was pretty simple, even though I had never actually added a circuit to a panel before. I also had to swap out the power cord on the dryer to newer, safer, 4-prong cord rather than the olde 3-prong cord. Here's a photo of the dryer being moved out of the kitchen (the washer has already been pulled out from under it). Peanut can be seen scrounging for eats:

And here's the momentous occasion of Pete and me moving the dryer upstairs:

By now, it was getting pretty old having to lug the work lights all around upstairs, so we finally decided to tackle wiring up all of the finished electrical items (outlets, switches, fixtures, etc.). Again, Jay's help was vital, and we were able to get most of the circuits successfully wired into the new meter panel. It is absolutely awesome to actually have light and power everywhere upstairs now (especially in the attic). Also, I needed to make progress on the upstairs shower. I hadn't completely finished all the waterproofing, so in between working the flooring, and while Pete was doing lots of trim work, I installed the rest of the Kerdi around the niche and the window:

I had planned to do the tile installation myself all along, but time came to be in short supply, so Renée found a local tile guy to install the tile. He only does Kerdi showers, so it was nice that he was familiar with the system. Overall, the shower came out really nice. There were a few things that I would have done differently, but I also probably would've done a few things wrong too. Anyway, here's the shower, before the final wipe-down:

Here's Pete in the process of installing a window sill in the back room (note the functional ceiling light, and the flooring and base all installed):

While trim work was going on upstairs, we also were working on flooring on the stairs themselves. We peeled off the underlayment, and glued all the stair flooring down, alternating stairs so that one set could dry before being walked on, then doing the next set the next day:

Here's the front bedroom with everything pretty much finished:

And just after that photo was taken, we took a trip down to Ikea in Sacramento (I think it was Memorial Day weekend, if it matters) to pick up some new furniture. Here's a photo of Renée assembling dresser drawers:

And here's a photo of Renée on the almost-finished lower section of stairs, with the old crappy vinyl all cut out of the dining room. In the dining room, we had to tear out two layers of vinyl/linoleum, each with a 3/8" layer of plywood, and then another final 5/8" layer of plywood under that. After that, we discovered why past owners had installed all the extra wood: the existing subfloor was quite spongy. So, Pete and I added in another 2x6 floor joist in between each of the original floor joists, effectively taking it from a 24" OC framing situation to now being 12" OC. Needless to say, it's much better now.