Weekend one, the startening

Well, the first weekend in over and we are pretty sore.  In no particular order we have done the following:

• Moved over some non-essentials, this is stuff like our holiday decorations, folding chairs.
• Received a fridge and patio furniture from a friend who moved out of town this week, we are happy for her, but sad to see her go.
• Took down the window hangings from the upstairs bedrooms, this in preparation for both painting and bringing in our own choices for the windows.  I need black out curtains in the master bedroom so I can sleep in.
• Did several trips to Home Depot and Sherwin Williams.  Ended up picking up some painting supplies, nail hole repair, a garden hose (got to have one), and exterior caulking compound.
• Started stripping wallpaper from the upstairs bathroom.
• Removed face plates for outlets and switches upstairs.
• Pulled almost all hanging nails from whole house, left a couple we felt were in good locations.
• Proceeded to use nail hole filler in all above holes.
• Decided on a paint color for the master bedroom, painted a wall.
• Decided that paint color sucks, bought another color.
• Did a first pass of painting on the guest bedroom since the master bedroom annoyed us, it is in the timeout box for a weekend.
• Got water / power hooked up.
• Got internet installed, even have WiFi!
• Have two tired humans resting.
• PX90 has nothing on us.

Spicy (Gail's car) is packed with the first load of stuff, mad Tetris skillz:

First Wallpaper Removal:

Test painting -

Guest bedroom:

 
 Living room, the left sample is the sand color we are planning for most rooms, and the right color is our downstairs accent wall:

Taping off the rooms to get clean lines, we'll see how well that worked:

Removing nails, from every room:

Patching nail holes:

Painting the guest bedroom:

Trash pile from the first of the removal, drapes and vertical blinds:

home

Explosion of pre-reno pictures

On a side note, we signed the loan documents today, we are days away from having keys!

These pictures are courtesy of our friend and realtor Garon.  http://www.realtorgaron.com/

Front of the house (much better picture than the listing photo, all of them are):

Entryway and Stairs to the 2nd floor:

Living Room:

What will be the dining room. In the first photo, the door on the back left wall (past the drawers) leads to the garage:

Small old kitchen, pretty wallpaper... unfortunately, probably year 2:

Small downstairs bedroom (future Art Room for Gail), interesting swamp cooler in the ceiling, must go:

Downstairs bathroom, simple fiberglass stall, probably one of our first 6 month projects, at least replacing figures and pulling out wallpaper:

Large downstairs bedroom (future computer room/office)

Upstairs guest bedroom (northwest facing):

Upstairs bathroom (this one is going to be a lot of work, all of it will eventually have to go):

Upstairs master bedroom (northeast facing), we love the details with the sloped roof and inset windows:

Our fairly large back yard, the previous occupant had done a lot with the yard, we will probably slowly peel away the layers to something more our style.  One nice thing, very old trees, so lots of shade for the house:

Let us know what you think!

The house...a teaser

Since people are asking for photos, you get one. :) more to come when we get the keys!

Final walkthrough

We had the final walkthrough today and it looks much different without furniture in it. The living room/dining room feels larger than i remember, and the downstairs bedrooms feel a bit smaller, but i'm ok with that.

I've already been doing some mental space-planning on the final furniture layout for the living/dining areas, and I walked out the spaces today, and I think they'll still work for what I have in mind. The area I have in mind for the dining room used to be their sitting/family room and is very large, with ample room for our existing table, and possibly the baker's rack we currently have. It will have easy access to the kitchen and direct backyard access close to where a bbq grill will be (there is an existing gas hookup for a grill).

The living room was the original owner's living/dining area and will be redesigned to have two seating areas with a bookshelf we make on one end and the fireplace/tv on the other end while maintaining good flow from the kitchen to the sliding doors/main patio area.

The art studio will be in the tiniest room (excepting the bathrooms) but it has one of the best views of the back yard and i'm excited to have ANY room that I can set up just how I want for workspace and storage. Even better, it'll be right next to the computer room, so I can see what Eric is up to or vice/versa throughout the day. I'll have to wait and see what type of flat files and drafting table I purchase for storage before I determine the final layout of the room, but that will be a while. I have 4 walls full of wallpaper and a swamp cooler to extract from the ceiling before I need to worry about what goes where. The interim art studio will be upstairs as we start making changes to the downstairs area.

The only bad news of the week is that it looks like our closing has been delayed, so there's a good chance we won't be getting closing next week and we'll need to reschedule some work we've planned on the place.