Windows arrived!!!

Yay!!! First one in and it looks really great. Thanks, Alan!!! Also, my scaffolding is in at Home Depot so I can finish removing wallpaper without killing myself going up and down ladders. It will also be useful for painting and hanging my beautiful fixtures! 

Post Thanksgiving work

Kind of slow, to be honest.  Maybe I'm still in a Turkey coma! Lol!!! Wayne didn't seem to mind a low key couple of days. 

Meanwhile, I was steaming multiple layers of wallpaper thanks to my BFF Clyde. Previously, I had been using a squirt bottle and a scraper. Thank God for good friends with stuff! I got some weird rusults though. One wall was a golden color under all the layers and the steamer kind of messed up the woodwork slightly. Oh well, just another thing to fix.

The vents are completed though on the first floor and should help keep the temp in the house more modified for the season. 

I've been thinking about custom roller blinds for the 4 casement windows in the dining room. I thought taping the samples would help but, not so much!

They're just too small to get a good idea of the final result!

For a final word, thanks to our grandson, Davonne, for being such a big help getting organized today...in between texting and a nap! Gotta love teenagers! 

Tomorrow, the upstairs windows are supposed to be delivered, so that's the next thing to check off our list. 

Hanging in there. 

If it's not one thing, it's another; as Emily Litella used to say!

We've been working like dogs... Okay, Alan's been working like a dog! I've been working like a hamster... or maybe a cat. Just kidding!!! We've both been working hard and it's driving me crazy that the appearance of progress has been kind of slow. Anyone who has done renovations knows that the mechanicals behind the walls takes the longest amount of time and is the least noticeable.

On a positive note, we do have the first furnace going (although the vents aren't hooked up quite yet) so there is heat in the house. Kind of. Lol!!! The hot air is blowing out into the basement and coming up through the holes in the floor the hubby cut for the new ducts. Those will go in next week. And I LOVE the vent covers I found at Home Depot...on sale!!! Score for me!!! And they look beautiful.



One thing that has taken forever is preping the main bathroom for the new shower, moving the sink and toilet and adding a wall. Nothing was vented correctly! But it's coming along and the copper goes in tomorrow for the all the water supply. I love that the main bathroom is going to be so much larger than it was! We bought a beautiful antique pedestal sink from our friends LuAnnn and T-Bone (yes, you read that correctly!) and I've been researching how to refinish the original clawfoot tub from the bathroom. I'm going to use Rustoleum Tub and Tile Epoxy Refinisher and can't wait to get started on that project. The interior of the tub and the feet will be white and the exterior blacl. Here's a picture of what I have in mind... We'll see how it turns out!

In the meantime, this is what the bathroom looked like tonight with all the new pipes and the shower stall. Trust me, it's going to be fabulous!!!

In the meantime, since I know NOTHING about plumbing, I've been working on getting pesky plaster removed from the lathe in all the upstairs rooms so that new wiring and blown in insulation can be added. And removing all of the wallpaper, which is quite annoying at times. It's like they used some kind of super industrial glue!!! But, slowly but surely I'm overcoming it. I'm going to try to use our clothing steamer this weekend to work on the living room and parlor downstairs to remove the layers of paper. Promise I'll take pictures. It should be fun!!!!



 

 

Slow but steady progress

We've learned a lot about this amazing house during demo! For example, there are no fire walls so we won't need to remove the plaster on the exterior walls on the main floor. When we're ready (soon), we will just drill holes at the ceiling level and blow in insulation. Of which there is NONE in the house. Except a bit in the attic. Great news as that saves quite a bit of cash on drywall and finishing. 

So today I spent some time chiseling channels between the woodwork and lathe to drop in drywall when we're done running the new wiring. Also, spent a few hours scraping off old wall paper to prepare the downstairs for whatever comes next! 

Meanwhile, poor Alan has spent almost every day working on the house!!! He and his friend, Glen, removed the old leaky 2nd chimney and repaired the slate. 

I knocked all the plaster off this chimney where it comes through the dining room and we think it will make a great accent wall. 

We also are adding a shower to the upstairs bath since we expanded it quite a bit. The old wall between the bath and dressing room can be seen toward the right side of where the shower is sitting. Can't wait to get this room done!!!

And we're ready to start the wiring! The new meter is mounted outside and the box has been placed behind the back door in the kitchen. 

Things are coming together!!!! Yay!!!!

Front porch

Spent the day scraping, power washing and priming the front porch. A lot still to do, but it's great when neighbors stop by and express their appreciation for us tackling this huge project! More in the coming week since we'll be painting every evening until dark. 

Back at it...finally!

Now that Alan is retired, he's spent many more hours at the house working. His latest efforts include enlarging the upstairs bath to accommodate adding a shower. We're just stealing a 10 by 1 foot section of the new closet and it made a HUGE difference. 

Downstairs, I'm trying to finish removing the remnants of wallpaper on the inside walls and exposing the brick in the dining room. And repairing and painting the front porch! 

Thanks to CU Woodworking for a great reproduction of our column bases! And last but not least, I scored two Strawberry Vanilla hydrangeas and got them in the ground. 

Getting by with a little help from our friends...and family!

Thanks a million!

Incredibly busy Saturday knocking out the upstairs plaster by Angie, Kirk and Geri, Eric and Kodi, and Pat. Can't thank them enough, especially since my back was in terrible shape! They were all dynamos! Here are the rooms after (I'm just sorry I didn't get shots of the actual workers!)

Luckily, my son in law, Pat, brought over the porch swing so we could relax a bit!

And I scored a doorbell from 1896 to fill a sizable hole on the front door. Works like a dream, fits great, and is beautiful! 

Demo slide

My husband is a genius! We built this chute to use for the second floor demo and it works like a charm!! 

Baby steps!

Lots of little things have gotten done and it really does give you a sense of accomplishment! Finally got a real doorknob that locks with a thumb turn and now looking for an old twist doorbell that still works. 

FINALLY got permission from my hubby to start attacking the walls with my hammer! Yay!! I find I like doing that on some strange spiritual level. 

But the best part of all is my hubby cleaned up my new/old fireplace surround and summer door!! And my incredible son in law, Pat rebuilt the awful porch swing I bought in a weak moment. Those guys are awesome!!!!

Slow going!

After a week off, due to my hubby getting poison sumac exposure in the yard, we started in kind of easy tonight. 

He worked on hauling old pipes and boilers out of the basement. I worked on stripping layers of paint off of the replacement fire surround. 

Why a replacement you might ask? The week before we closed on the house, someone jimmied the lock and stole the door off the summer cover!!!! Who does that???

Anyway, after trying unsuccessfully to find a suitable replacement door I found a beautiful one on eBay that fits the opening. Yay for me!!! Sadly, it's covered with numerous coats of paint so I've been stripping all of that off. Then we'll sandblast it and repaint. Should be quite beautiful when it's done ! Lot's of detail. 

More "pre-demo" demo!

Well…. No removal of plaster yet and no dumpster sitting in the yard for demo yet either. So much for my big plans! Big sigh! I really want to start slamming my hammer into cracked plaster. But I need to be patient and do things in the correct order. VERY hard for me, to be honest! But with prior weekend commitments and the town we’re moving to is having its little festival the end of July (blocking off our street in the process) it makes more sense to have our dumpster delivered closer to the beginning of August. We’re only getting it for 2 weeks, so we need access!!

In the meantime we’ve spent another few days of cleaning up the yard, weed eating, removing stumps, power washing the front porch and general clean up outside. On the up side, all the radiators and pipes are now gone, as well. (Thanks Justin and Steve!!!!) But if we don’t get the yard under control, it will take a lot more time later in the summer to get it to a manageable state. So now is the time, in spite of the humidity levels right now.

By the way, another score on Craigslist, too! A decent 42 inch Craftsman riding lawn mower so we don’t have to pay someone to mow the rest of the summer! I’ll try to do a better job of taking “during” pictures, but sometimes you just get wrapped up in projects to complete and totally forget! Saturday would have been a GREAT time for a candid photo of me, actually!!! I was power washing the beautiful, but filthy front porch which was great since it was so hot. But the painted ceiling, columns and trim had been painted with lead paint, followed by latex over a dirty surface. Since it hadn’t been cleaned first, the latex came off in little fluttering sheets, covering me from head to toe!!! Another missed glamour shot!

Getting ready for the REAL demo.

Another evening at the four square!!! I'm afaid we're going to burn out before we're done, and we've just gotten started!!!! My amazing husband is a great planner though. Tonight he fininshed the loading dock and the off ramp for the upcoming demo.

A little background: The lady who owned the house previously passed away last August at the age of 100 (amazing woman, walked the Great Wall for her  90th birthday!!! Who does that?) and a handicapped ramp was built for her but never used (according to the next door neighbor). Our new neighbor Helen would REALLY like to see it go away since it's such an eyesore. But he had the great idea of reconfiguring it to help during the demo work. Great idea!!!!! It should make the work much easier now that we have an on ramp, off ramp, and loading dock that works with the truck tailgate. Easier removal of the radiators, plaster, and other assorted demo garbage.

Another thing I'd like to mention is the amazing power of Craigslist!!!!!!! I got some estimates from some box stores on kitchen cabinets and couldn't believe what they were charging for crappy, particle board cabinets! So I kept looking. The major issue was that I wanted to have upper cabinets that went up to the ceiling, or as close as possible, which is unavailable in standard box store cabinets and very expensive when ordering custom. Craigslist to the rescue!!!! We ended up driving about 3 hours total on Sunday, but scored 31 kitchen cabinets for $800 from a really nice couple!! They're beautiful! Solid oak with upper cabinets at 42 inches so I can maintain the integrity of the kitchen. Of course, we won't need them for months, but they found a temporary home in our garage until needed. I even loved the craftsman inspired hardware with a leaf motif so that saved us another $400 to $600 on replacements. Yay for us!!!!!

Getting started!

My (thankfully) incredibly talented husband and I closed last Thursday on a beautiful, but long neglected, brown brick Four Square home. I've been lusting after this house for months! As a matter of fact, the first time we were able to walk through the front door my first statement was, "You WILL be mine!"
And since there are so many extensive renovations to do, I thought it might be helpful to some of you other insane people out there for me to start a blog about the experience. I've never blogged before, so hang in there...I'll get the hang of it eventually!!! I've taken many, many before pictures and will post those as soon as I figure all of this out. And your comments are much appreciated!!!!
To give you an idea of what we're facing in the first several months of this project, here's an uninclusive list of tasks!
New plumbing and add a bathroom.
All new wiring.
Kitchen reno from the studs out.
Relocate some windows and replace most others.
Insulate.
Two new HVAC systems.
Sand and refinish all the wood floors. Which means every floor in the house.
Landscaping. None really exists at this point.