Good Bones

We thought our house had good potential- good bones- and this week they were exposed! The workers showed up Tuesday morning and made a lot of progess. It was really exciting to see. The big accomplishments of the week were removing the siding and stucco from the house, opening the front porch, removing almost all the plaster interior walls, and removing the wall that was enclosing the stairway. I think they filled at least two 30 foot dumpsters. They're doing a good job of keeping our home pretty clear, but the dust is inevitable.

Here's a shot of the newly exposed staircase. It'll look even nicer when that door is repaced by a window for morning light. The exterior staircase to that door has already been demolished.

We've been sleeping on the air mattress again, which is pretty comfortable. However I don't like the idea of sleeping right on all that dust (created from tearing down the plaster walls), so before going to sleep, I have to mop the floor. Never did I imagine that part of my "getting ready for bed" routine would involve mopping! We slept in the future kitchen Friday night, as shown below, since we thought it was the most insulated at this point. In some rooms, there are missing windows or exposed gaps in the walls. However, I still woke up freezing at about 3am, but didn't want to go to the trouble of finding my shoes, the flashlight and the heavier blanket in the basement. After shivering for 2 hours, W rolled out of bed and grabbed the down comforter.

You'll notice our 1 lamp without a shade that we transport around the house to where we are.

It's hard to see the layout, but you can see all 3 remaining bedrooms and 2 closets on the second floor in this photo.

We were looking around the house at the progress and noticed some newspapers that were lining the floor of the attic. They were from 1969! I realize that's not all that old, but it was funny to see how untouched the house has been for so many years. Plus I got a kick out of the wedding announcement pictures.

Home Sweet Home

We spent our weekend moving out of our condo and into a few small areas of our house. About 90% of our belongings went from the moving truck straight into the garage. The other 10% is in a corner of the basement.

We were wiped out Saturday after a day full of moving, so we crashed on the air mattress. Although we live next to a fairly busy residential street, it is so nice to hear crickets as we fall asleep.

We're finalizing plans with a contractor, so hopefully big progress will start shortly. W already made big strides and demolished all the walls in the basement. He filled up a third of a 30 foot dumpster with all the drywall, studs and metal framing. It looked cramped and creepy before last weekend, but it almost feels downright airy now!

And here's our temporary bathroom in the basement that we'll be using during the renovation. Note the huge pipe that runs through the shower, over the toilet.

All in all, we've got things pretty well set up. I'm hoping for dramatic changes by the time of my next posting. Have a great week!

And thus it begins...

This weekend marks the beginning of our home renovation project! We bought a 1935 American Four Square home that needs a lot of work. It was retrofitted into upper and lower level apartments and it hasn't been updated (or cleaned for that matter) in a very long time. Our plan over the next 9 months is to gut the whole house, re-side, re-wire and re-plumb the house, build a completely new kitchen, create 2.5 new bathrooms, all while living in the house! I thought this blog would be a good way to force me to record this project, and allow others to enjoy our project vicariously- for better or worse.

So this weekend we managed to gut the basement down to only essential studs. W did all of that while I focused on the making the rest of the house liveable- cleaning floors, walls, & the most disgusting toilets I've ever seen. My other chore was removing carpet tacks from 2 rooms and a hallway. I still have one room to go.

We've got one week till moving day, but it's pretty liveable at this point! If at any point, you'd like to see more pictures, just email me.