The Clampetts

September 22, 2011

Although I'm sure our neighbors were happy when we first moved in, let's just say that they are probably getting a little sick of the outside of our house with its numerous colors, random weeds, and piles of lathe on the driveway.

We made a slight attempt to get some of it cleaned up. (And by slight attempt, I mean, paid someone to come out and do some weed wacking).

Our right side of our house looks slightly better than before:


No more 4 foot tall weeds here.... although all of the green here is still weeds.


They've been smashed!

He also took down some of the weeds along the side of our garage:


Kinda....

Let's just say there is a little more to go:



Our driveway


No, those are not flowers.



Those bushes need to come out :-) Regardless, we need to put the wood siding on the back here. I kind of forgot about that one.


See that weed to the right of this Japanese Maple?


Look at how tall it is?! Seriously, it must be 7 feet tall. No joke. We officially have the cities tallest dandelion.



More mutant weeds

I can say that I've been too busy to work in the yard, and while that is 97% true, I also loathe any sort of yard work. Yuck. Maybe next weekend :-)

Alok says he doesn't care about the outside of the house until the inside is liveable. Fair enough.

Oh, we also set a date to get the foam insulation sprayed in. October 10th. Think we can make it? Then we can start on drywall!!!

Jessica

House of a thousand nails

September 19, 2011

Alok has been making progress on the house. The massive cabinet that was formerly from the butler's pantry (that was here) has been moved so that it is no longer in the middle of our new hallway:


It was where that lovely wall is on the right

Here is the lovely wallpaper that was behind this:


He has also been working hard on tearing up this nasty old floor, as seen here:



Like everything in this house that we want to remove, it has about a thousand nails holding it down.


Close up of the multi- layered floor

Here is the busy little bee:



In fun news, we ordered a ton of speaker wire today for our surround sound/outdoor speakers, as well as wire for cable and internet. We are slowly moving into this century. Very, very slowly. Alok even went ahead and bought a few speakers that were on sale, despite his argument that in ceiling speakers are "horrible" and not worth listening to:


Speakers

Now, our house is continuing to resemble that of a lumber store... or maybe a haunted lumber store. (Alok swore he heard footsteps in the attic today).


Living room


Dining room


Apartment area


Foyer

Almost liveable, right? 102 days sounds good. ;-)

Jessica

We want you!

September 18, 2011



Well, probably not exactly YOU, but we need help! Professional help. (No, not the psychological kind). For the first time in the history of our house, we have money to hire people and no one to hire. Seriously. Here is what we are looking for:

1) Construction crew who can work quickly to prepare for drywall (leveling out the walls/ceilings, moving the stairs, reinforcing the stairs, framing out the attic, putting down the base for the floors)
2) Drywallers. We have a few quotes but are looking for more. Preference to those who can hang and finish drywall quickly and well.
3) More construction help for the outside (I forgot that we have one whole side without siding! That may help for the winter).

Suggestions? We need help that is available now. Like, this week. Seriously :-)

We have the air/heating system and insulation picked out, but that is about all that is solidified.

Jessica

Just a little magic.....

September 17, 2011

Alok and I have been watching a whole lot of Harry Potter. Although we don't have the use of magic (or haven't figured out where to get a wand yet), we have a move in goal. December 31. Yes, 2011. OK, stop laughing. We only have a little bit to go. We can do it in 3 months and 2 weeks right?

This is all we have to accomplish (in no particular order):

1) Fix these stairs. They are apparently detaching themselves......






2) Fix the floors. Just sand those on the right that are good and put down a new floor in the areas like the one on the left (oh, and dust! yuck!)


3) Fix these windows. We only have 61 of them :-)


OK, so that really doesn't need to happen right now

4) Take care of this brush on the side.... we must have some good soil here. Geez! In all seriousness, we have to level this out and get a new pad for the heating/air conditioning unit for the top 2 floors. Plus, then we can get the termites taken care of


5) See that lovely boarded up window? That is in our bedroom. We need to get a window. Ideally, we'd also get more of the outside painted, but who am I kidding!?


6) Get a new heating/air conditioning unit for the top 2 floors. We need to put up some drywall in the closet we built first. There is no way we'll be able to get it in there after that.


7) Frame out the attic


8) Fix these lovely attic floors. They just popped up and are full of holes.


9)Fix the laundry room floor and put in the washer/dryer (that we have owned for a year)


10) Put in a floor in my office and get these things out of here (like the bathtub and washer/dryer)


11) Finish the master bath




12) Fix the butler pantry floor, which Alok has been ripping up (back to random underlining that I can't fix)



13) Move the stairs so they open on the other side and build out the hallway closet





14) Finish leveling out the ceilings and walls and drywall the ceilings and walls. No biggie, right?


15) Insulate these lovely walls. We are getting the spray foam for the outside walls, but we will be insulating the rooms/ceilings for sound too.


16) Tuckpoint and/or do something to the fireplaces (3 or 4 of them). They probably won't be working yet, but just get them so they don't leak, etc


16 steps. No problem!!!

In other news, Alok and I were going through This Old House magazines, ripping out ideas or things we liked. Here is what he discovered:



Instead of putting up wood on every beam, he could have been putting wood across the ceilings. Oops. Here is Alok contemplating his discovery (after banging himself in the head):






104 days (if I'm adding correctly....and I may not be at the time of night). We can do it, right? Maybe we can start a betting pool :-)

Jessica

We have color.....

September 8, 2011

Oh boy, does our house have color! Light blue, dark blue, white, tan, hunter green, and dark brown. What a lovely house :-)

We had our deck painted/stained last week (part you walk on stained, other parts painted). Here it is:


Multi colored house




Porch and poles











Looking good! Or at least it will be when we paint the rest ;-)

Jessica