Let's celebrate!

Well, I didn't do a very good job of keeping up with this blog.  I guess it's because I've been super busy with the renovations/end of school/etc. and couldn't find the time.  Enough excuses.  Here's my best attempt at doing a recap of the last couple months.  Let me start with this post about last night and then work my way backwards.  We had a big house-warming party to celebrate everything being done.  It was so great seeing everyone and finally being able to entertain.  Our new cook-top was installed Friday, and the party was Saturday....talk about waiting until the last minute! 

Here are some pictures from the party.  Unfortunately I was so wrapped up with enjoying everyone's company that I completely forgot to take pictures until nearly half our guests had left.  Oh well.  But here are a few of the shots I did get:

 

Lance, Brian, and Jamey.  Two of our groomsmen from our wedding and Jamey's good friends from college.  Thanks guys for making the drive to come see us!  It really means a lot!

Nothing like a good game of corn-hole.  Nice toss Zach! (p.s. love the pants)

Sorry this photo is out of focus but I had to put Hannah in here.  Hannah is our babysitter and next door neighbor.  She was such a big help last night helping look after the kids.  Thank you!

 

 

 Uncle Mike, Jada, Dad, and cousin Kevin.

 The Bausanos and the Tanners

 Kids, Kids, Kids!!

 Reagan enjoying the back deck

 My party life-savers!  Aunt Mary Anne and my Momma.  Thanks ladies for all your hosting help!

 The Bagwells aka best beach buddies ever!

 Me and Jamey

 The Brothers - Dad and Uncle Mike

 The Hudsons and Jay

 Kevin and Helen

 

 Sarah, Dave, and Ava

It's not a party until the Crenshaws are there

Me and Jenny doing a sorority pose

Thank you so much to everyone for helping us break-in the "new" house.  It has been a long rode since we closed on the property in February.  I had my fair share of a few tears with the stress of it all.  Now that it's done, I can say it was definitely worth it.  However, I hope to never do it again.  Just having workers in my house all the time was enough to drive me crazy but then add to it the effort of keeping a 3 and 6 year old out of their way while also having to eat out every night, doing laundry at my in-laws house, not having any furniture to sit on, the fridge in the garage, no kitchen sink for a month, yadda, yadda, yadda.  I'm getting stressed all over just thinking about it.  Last night was such a great time simply because we are DONE and I could let out a big sigh and just relax.  Whew!  Now what?  Well, my brother and his 4 kids are coming on Tuesday and we can't wait!  Right now I need to go clean up the house from last night and get ready for our house guests.  When I do get it cleaned up again, I'll be sure to take some pictures and post the finished product.  I'm not making any promises that it will be any time soon though!

~Kelly

BUSY day!

Today is crazy at the house.  I had a tennis match this morning and when I got back to the house around 11am it was full of people.  This is definitely a good thing!  At one point we had Michael & Jason, tile guys, painters, granite guys, electrician, and window guys all at the same time.

 

  

The cabinet guys are still a no-show.  They have been holding us up for weeks now.  It's very frustrating.  Every time I'm outside rinsing out a pot with the hose I am silently cursing the cabinet guys (I've been trying to work on any type of cussing for Lent but does it count when you do it in your head??).  We can't hook up the kitchen sink until the granite is set and we couldn't template the granite until the cabinet guys set the end panel to the fridge (which they did on Wed. which is why the granite guys are here today doing the template).  But my painters are here today and will be back tomorrow but they can't paint the cabinets until they are installed by my no-show cabinet guys.   ARRGGH!!

On a positive note, my ever faithful plumber, Terry, was here today and it looks like I may be able to take my long anticipated bath in my claw-foot tub!!  woot! woot!

We finally have a surround to our fireplace!  Things are starting to come together!

 The majority of the house is now painted, including the foyer!

 Mudroom is certainly coming together.  Notice the space not painted?  Yep, waiting on the cabinet guys to put in our built-in cubbies.

I got the feeling from my parents that they were sad by all my negative posts about the house.  (think back to rotted wood, rusted-out electrical boxes, leaking doors and showers, etc.)  I tried to explain this is a blog about the "hardships" of renovating as well as the joys.  So the majority of this post has been about the joys.  Here's one negative: ANTS!  Two of the windows the guys replaced today were full of ants.  GROSS!  (sorry mom and dad - love you and LOVE the house but had to put this picture in here)

A Quorum

We have a quorum! There is nothing better (during a renovation) than looking out my new window at 9am and seeing several work trucks. It tells me work is being done today and we are that much closer to being done!!

 Here's how I spend most of my spare time...removing wallpaper.  I've become quite the expert!  It just takes a ton of time and a LOT of patience.  It's actually become therapeutic for me - I get the music turned on and with each piece going in the garbage I see progress.  We are keeping some of my mom's wallpaper - in the dining room and half bath.  But the rest is coming down - and it's my job to do it!

 Yesterday they moved my tub into the bathroom to dry-fit the pipes.  This took 3 guys to do and I'm sure their backs are hurting this morning.  I'm so excited to see that it fits well (good thing b/c I don't think the company I bought from in Canada takes returns....plus I can't imagine the shipping cost for this).  It was exciting to see it in there - although now it's on the back deck serving as a large birdbath until such time as it makes it's final move.

 The guys came to remove our granite on Wednesday.  We are keeping the granite but it needs to be re-cut to accommodate my farmhouse sink.  The 2 gentlemen pictured below were in rapid-fire Spanish as to how to move this nearly 300lb slab.  Finally I asked if they wanted me to get Michael and Jason from off the roof (where they were fixing the rotted wood of our dormer windows).  "Yes, Please!" was their response.  So 4 men were able to move it to the truck.  Good thing Jason and Mike were here!

 No kitchen sink makes for an added inconvenience.  Luckily we still  have a sink in the half bath that works (although not right now because the plumber has the water turned off).

I came up with the ingenious idea of using one of our old doors as a counter top.  It fits perfectly and even has the added ornamentation of a door handle.  I'm thinking this door counter-thing may take off and be the next hot thing!

When Helen saw we had no counter top this is what she said:

Helen:  Mommy, where'd the table go

Me:  It's called a counter top and we are getting a new one

Helen:  Are we getting a batman one or a princess one?

Me:  Umm...neither.

Though my parents built this house out of mahogany (which is a super strong hardwood), we've decided to go back with hardi-plank on the dormers because they are along the roof and are constantly exposed to water.  Although you can't tell in this picture, the new boards are not touching the roof line.  There is also flashing running underneath it.  Hopefully we won't have anymore issues with rotting wood here.

 This is what all the boards looked like - rotten.  None of the boards were sealed on the ends that had been cut and were exposed to water.

A smidge of progress...

Well, there's been a smidge of progress this week.  The most exciting thing (for me anyway) is my rustic wall in our new mud room.  These boards came from an oak tree that fell in Jiggy's pasture (our beloved horse that passed away when I was in college) many years ago.  My dad had a guy come out and plane out the boards.  They've been sitting in the basement ever since.  So I had Michael and Jason (our handymen) put them on the wall.  LOVE it!  He made the window sill wide enough for my future herb garden.

 The plumber has been here too.  I thought it would be so easy to move the laundry to a half bath.  Sure, why not?  There's already water lines in the wall...piece of cake!  Well, there's also water lines for the two sinks to the master on the other side in the same wall (which makes limited room for the lines for my washer).  Somehow Terry the Plumber made it work.  Also, moving the laundry involved running a new dryer vent to the outside, widening the doors to the bathroom to fit the washer/dryer, and moving/installing appropriate electrical.  I hope having my mudroom was worth all this effort (and expense!!)

 Michael and Jason also added trim work to the master ceiling.  We are having it painted white but you can get the idea from the picture below.  This is nice because the trim pieces cover up all the dry-wall tape that was peeling at all the seams in the ceiling. 

I thought I'd throw in a picture of our "dining" table.  It's an outdoor table covered with a blanket.  This is where jamey and i have our meals.  the kids sit at the island in the kitchen.  Notice the fireplace with the ripped out marble surround...nice.

Junkyard Dawgs

It's a good thing we don't have neighbors close by, or covenants for that matter. This place looks like a total junkyard! I know it's driving Jamey a little nuts to have things in such disarray. He's a bit of a neat freak and likes for everything to be in it's place and looking nice. Well, it certainly isn't looking nice right now.  You know things are bad when there's a toilet and a dumpster in your front yard.

My tub arrived on Friday and there it sits on the front side walk...all 440 pounds of it.  Yes, it's cast iron.  Next time I get 4 guys at the house at the same time, maybe it can make it's way onto the front porch.  Which brings up the ginormous mirror already residing on my front porch.  What does one do with such a huge mirror?  Maybe I'll stick it on craigslist for free.  That worked really well for my parents' old piano.

Our garage is serving as our staging area.  It's pretty empty now but come Monday we receive our doors and windows order.  Should fill up nicely.  I'm super excited about our farm house sink which is in the big box below.  Hopefully it will make it's way into the kitchen soon.

New Project!

Ok, obviously I haven't kept up with this blog at ALL!  We sort of took a break on house flipping since the big housing crash.  We've only done one house since the last posting.  Maybe one day I'll write about it (but probably not).  Our new adventure is for our own home.  My parents actually bought this house over 20 years ago when I was 12 (not to date myself).  Jamey and I moved in over the summer when we sold our house and we hadn't found a new house.  Basically we fell in love with the place (or for me, fell in love again) and decided we didn't want to leave.  My parents were open to selling and it all worked out.  It's truly been a blessing and I feel like we are following God's plan.

In order to make this home "our own", there are a few things that need tweaking.  So, the renovations begin.  We've been in demo mode since Monday and already a few surprises.  This is what makes renovating so fun - no 2 days are the same and you never know what's going to happen next.

A big thing I wanted in our "new" home is an awesome mud room when you come in our side door (which is the main door that friends and family use).  Before, you would walk in to this narrow hallway all the way to the kitchen.  My parents had a coat rack hanging on the wall but it's not sufficient for me, Jamey, our 2 kids, and all the coats, jackets, book bags, purses (me), and other stuff that we have.  Basically, I want a drop zone when we come in so it doesn't all end up on the kitchen table.  In order to do that, we have to move the laundry room somewhere else.  Luckily, my parents built this house with 2 half bathrooms.  We figured out which one we use the most and are moving the laundry to the other one.

Here's a pic of the hallway with door to laundry room before demo:

And here it is with the wall down.  I love all the light that comes in now from the window that was in the laundry.  You can see all the way down to the lake when you first walk in the door.  (Yes...we are fortunate to have an awesome fishing lake behind our house). 

 

The other big project is the master bath.  Let me tell you...I am soooo glad we decided to re-do this bathroom.  We had debated just leaving it because it wasn't that bad and it was certainly functional.  As it turns out, it was just a matter of time before the shower gave way to the basement.  Again...feeling God's blessings.  You know that nagging feeling could sometimes be a message from above.  "Sure it's expensive but let's just do it while we have the guys here" turned out to be our saving grace.  When the guys took out tile in the bath they discovered the floor completely rotted out.  The reason you couldn't see it from the basement is because it was covered up by HVAC piping and the basement garage door.

 

Check out the before:

And the during:

 

I don't think we would have necessarily crashed into the basement but who knows?  There's also a ton of black mold everywhere which we had removed.  Jamey and I sprayed what was left on the studs with bleach.  We had to lock up the room that night so the kids wouldn't fall to the basement.

Our next big fortunate discovery was made today when the flooring guys came to put hardwoods in the master bedroom.  They ripped out the carpet to find that the doors leading to the porch had been leaking...it was still wet from the recent rain we've had.  They can't install the new hardwoods until we get it fixed.

 

 

Notice the round outlet in the floor next to the window on the right?  Turns out that junction box is completely made of metal, and because of the leak, was totally filled with water.

 

Check out how rusted out the junction box (above) was.  Our workers said that we are lucky we didn't get electricuted just walking on the wet carpet (which we didn't even realize was wet).  My 3 year old has been playing in that room a lot lately since it's been empty of furnature.  Counting my blessings again that she didn't get shocked.  Not only that, but when the deck was originally installed, they had bolted right throught the electrical line.  Apparently he had just pinched the ground wire and missed getting electricuted by milimeters.

On a good note, my hardwood floors in the great room look awesome!  I can't wait until the end when we sand everything and refinish them.  Yay!

It's been an adventurous time.  All our stuff is still in storage (and has been since June) since we can't move in yet because of the renovations.  My parents took all their furniture whe we closed on the house (Feb 13).  So, we've been sitting on the floor, and poor Michael (our 6 year old) has been demoted from his bed to an air matress.  Jamey and I took his bed and Helen has my bed that my parents gave me for my 16th birthday (no new car for this girl...nope, just an antique bed...but I'm loving the fact my baby girl gets it now).

That's all I have for now.  My ears are full of the soothing noises of hammers, nail-guns, and table saws.  For now, this is my life.