Feel free to add comments and give suggestions. All opinions and ideas are welcome.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Tragedy

This blog has been full of ups and downs, which everyone who has ever experienced house restoration knows. We have been fortunate to have a few family members who are very handy. Lately, they have been in full force, trying to get our house ready for tile so that we can move in shortly.

On Thursday, one of those family members experienced a horrible accident that resulted in the loss of his hand. This did not occur while he was working on the house, but he is someone who has spent quite a bit of time working on it. Outside of the work on the house, his profession was as a roofer/contractor. I hope that all of you blog readers can send some positive thoughts his way as he goes through a long recovery.

That's unfortunately all for now.

Jessica

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Moving along... just not moving in.... yet

February 18, 2012

We're moving along.... Slowly...but surely.

Alok (with some help) cleared out the kitchen and front room. All of the junk (and by junk, I mean all of our possessions) went to a part of the house that does not have to have the floors refinished. So, this is the first time we've seen these rooms in awhile!

Front parlor:


This lovely area still needs to be fixed by drywallers. You can see where the old air conditioner was.


Oh lovely paneling....


New(ish) opening to the foyer


Hmmm... how can we make you not look so ugly?


Front room.....


Ceiling...

OK, you can't really tell from this picture, but we somehow overlooked a parlor ceiling issue. And by issue, I mean picture hundreds of cracks on it. Sigh. The next debate- rehang drywall over this (fairly easy) or leave it and call it a day.

Alok has been hard at work tearing out the kitchen floor, which required removal of these oh, so lovely appliances.


1982 called. They want their dishwasher back


Somehow in the 12 foot move, the handles went missing and the fridge looks like it belongs on Criminal Minds. How long has the body been in there?

Here is the actual kitchen:


Bye-bye hunter green, nasty tile. Now, we may have to deal with hunter green counters for awhile, but we'll survive


No more backsplash with creepy people on it


Another view


We still need to get rid of that stupid heater thing that isn't vented... anyone interested?


Clean kitchen!


The kitchen looks so much bigger without appliances.... but then I guess it's not really a kitchen then...


This cabinet was built around the existing fridge. It will be too small for any other fridge, so we need to figure out where to put it.

Now, the apartment area is the new storage room.... antique mirror, old fridge, doors, molding and a ladder. Typical living room stuff.





Media room..... can we pretend like this room doesn't exist?


That window looks so weather sealed. No air is getting past that baby!


OK, one positive picture, the laundry room:

Just waiting for sealing and grouting.

In other news, we spent most of the weekend at about every big box store trying to find apartment bathroom tile, bathroom under the stairs tile, and kitchen tile. We were successful for the first two and the order was placed.

Penny tile for the small bath under the stairs


Basket weave for the apartment bath

The kitchen tile is still TBD, but I think we know what we're doing.

The other search is now for appliances. We decided to wait for countertops (we're just going to paint/do everything else in the kitchen ignoring the hunter green for now) because the ones we want cost about a zillion dollars and invest in some new appliances. The problem is that we haven't found any yet, but we have some time.

We are still being asked about the move in date. Answer: We don't know.

We are going to get the drywall fixed in a few areas, lay/seal/grout the tile in the kitchen, apartment bath, bath under the stairs, laundry room, get the floors refinished, get appliances and move in. Well, and then CLEAN A LOT, move stuff around and then move in.

We'll see!

Jessica

Saturday, February 4, 2012

The heat is on!

Feb 4, 2012

Our 2nd furnace is officially up and running. Let's hope that reduces our heat bill from the $500+ bills that we are getting per month. sigh.


The lovely new furnace, installed by Bruenings.

In other news, we officially have 2 new windows! We had new windows built for the 2 windows that were rotted out.... the window in the yellow bedroom and the moldy window in the master bedroom. Here they are:


New master bedroom window. This is where the mold all started previously.

Alok, with his assistant- my mom, has completed tiling the laundry room. Here it is:






Alok finishing the tiling in the laundry room

The attic is also painted, drywalled and waiting for us to .... well, do something. Here it is:







We also had a few rooms painted. These are rooms that we don't need to refinish the floors in, so we should be OK. Here they are:

Media room-




Media room looking into the rest of the apartment area:





Apartment area:




In ceiling speakers:



As many of you know, we constantly have house debates. Sheep wallpaper vs. peeling it (I won). Wood paneling vs. removing it (Alok won). Buying the house vs. not buying the house (numerous vendors won a lot of money on that one!).

Our newest debate is to re-do the kitchen floor now or wait. The kitchen floor is current partially ruined and is a mix of wide-plank pine wood (see below) or really cheap laminate. We plan on tiling the whole thing. I think we should tile it now so that we don't have to tear up another floor later. (Just the floor- we will do everything else later- that's not in debate). The cost would not be a ton, but it is more time. Here is the lovely kitchen:





That's all for now.

Jessica