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.