Holes!

First, there was a hole in our posting schedule, since I got halfway through a blog post on the mobile app, but didn't finish it and it didn't save. oops! So just in time for this weekend, I'm posting LAST weekend's adventures.

Eric went to the house a couple of times during the week to prep for the asbestos removal. That included removing the remaining grandma drapes, and unscrewing every faceplate in the house:

And then this happened last weekend:

Trench in the planter bed

BIG hole!

view of the hole that goes under the walkway and into the planter bed

The hole was not dug by us, but by the plumber who was fixing the sewer line and eliminating the multiple root intrusions from the tree on the other side of the yard. go roots.

While the plumber worked on the outside, I kept busy with (re)painting the master bedroom, to cover up the one wall of dark blue we didn't like and the rest of the white walls with a nice midtone gray:

Starting to paint over

I apparently don't like to paint with my shoes on.

I even made a friend!

When I finished the first coat of paint, I was about done with that task for the time being, so I moved on to making a mess stripping wallpaper in the art room (which I'm not supposed to be starting working on yet):

Wallpaper layers 1 + 2

The first layer came off very quickly!

And then I found layer 3. 

For now, the art room looks worse than when I started, thanks to the retro 70's wallpaper. 

From there, I moved on to something that was bugging me (literally) since the day we got the keys. All the windows in the house were cobwebby and many had dead flies lying around (ick.) So I popped out the screens and started sweeping down the window frames to get rid of all the built-up grime.

sticking my head out the window to peek at the other dormer.

I couldn't resist having some fun and sitting on the roof, since I had very easy access from the dormer that is shown above, where the two parts of the roof meet.

We did take some time off from working to celebrate my birthday and eat a LOT of food! It was yummy. When we got back to working on the house, we found a few more holes that we missed filling the first time around and filled those in, started on the second coat of paint in the master bedroom, then shifted work to the kitchen. We started pulling out all the old and dirty kitchen liners from the cabinets. We will be living with the kitchen as-is for at least a year before we make decisions on how we want to renovate it, so we plan on washing down the cabinets and adding a coat of paint for a cosmetic update to the kitchen. We plan on painting the wood white and the back wall a bright turquoise. If we think that the hollow doors won't handle putting on new hardware, then I will most likely spray them with an enamel spraypaint.

This lining is being a bit pesky and will take some extra work.

A paint scraper, some patience and a lot of ripping sounds lead to fairly easy removal of most of the linings

On Monday, the asbestos guys started their work in sealing up the house for removal. They work FAST! By lunchtime nearly every room was sealed off with plastic, and I forgot to take pictures but it is reminiscent of all the scenes in alien movies where they quarantine an area. :) By the time the gas company guy showed up to turn on our gas, everything was fully taped to the point where he couldn't turn on the gas because there was no access to the furnace. So we have to wait another week for the gas to work.

The asbestos work is done at this point, and tomorrow we get to see more holes. We will now be without flooring in the kitchen/dining room, a ceiling in the living room (too many asbestos layers), and some drywall and all the air ducts and registers that were insulated with asbestos. Photos to come.

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.