Ho Ho Ho...

We have been home-owners 1 year and 8 days, but it feels like quite a bit more. There haven't been too many posts to this blog for the simple reason that every spare moment has been spent working on the house--and you know, it's starting to feel like home. 

Let's see...perhaps we should do this top to bottom. We tackled rewiring the SW quarter of the house, cutting into the old floor of the attic, getting rid of the old knob-and-tube and replacing it with new romex. 

On the second floor, we took the sunroom's walls back to studs, replaced with new drywall and new window trim. It took awhile to get the windows cleaned out and all the old paint sealed in...but it looks much better now--Henry's studio!

Back in September, Stacey took a 

few days off to scrape the hallway walls. Yes, I said scrape the walls! All of the old texture paint came off and was repainted...we have normal hall walls again...YAY! Both hall closets were also given a facelift and new shelf configurations. 

For those of you following the progression of things...you've seen Henry's room and the Playroom. Here is a picture of our room--finally finished.

Now we will proceed down stairs...and my what nice stairs they are! Stacey spent a few weeks stripping, then sanding, then staining, shellac-ing and waxing the stairs and landing this fall. See the finished project with my toes in it.

On the first floor, we re-painted the dining room "Nantucket" green. It looks good with a Christmas tree!

The first floor bathroom is still our largest "outstanding" project. The walls are back to lath and the floor is down wood--layers of vinyl are gone. Thanks to "Papa" Widga and Uncle Kevin for spending their Turkey day weekend running water lines and electrical! I met with the plumber yesterday and found that we'll probably need to "widen" the hole for the main waste stack in the foundation. That means cutting through two courses of brick around the old cast iron pipe--ouch. Stay tuned for how that works.

Finally, we head to the basement. First thing we notice is...MORE NEW STAIRS! Yep, the old ones had termite damage and some structural issues. The upper stairs were covered by vinyl-over-cracked-lead-paint. So we replaced all of them. That meant Chris spent an afternoon scratching his head over how to cut stringers--and surprisingly enough--got it right on the second try!

There is also a new door. The old one developed new cracks every time we opened and closed it. It also had this crazy steel strut that held the whole thing together--not ideal. For that matter, we also have new storm doors on both front and back. 

While the main punch of the stair project was to remove/replace the stairs, we also took the opportunity to tear out the old coal room. See how open the basement is now! The fewer the dark corners the better. 

I'll close out this blog entry with a tribute to the season. Like I said, we're settling in and the house is starting to feel like not just any home, but OUR home. The fireplace is warm, the kitchen welcoming, and (someday) the Sunday mornings lazy (waffle day as Henry would call it). 

...over the long summer

Soooo, it's been awhile since the blog has been updated. The reason for this is very simple...it has been a very busy summer.

As the summer warmed up, there were daily discoveries in the backyard. In addition to goldfish in the pond, we found that it was also irresistible to mating toads. Every night for a week the toads were chirping as loud as they could...at one point we counted 10 toads, each one was paired up. The squirrels are also entertaining--as long as we can keep them out of the bird feeders...










As for Henry...he's been going through a bit of a train phase...What started out as a fascination with one wagon, grew into multiples as we did more and more yardwork. Finally, he started stringing things together...up to five at a time with bungee cords!




















As for the house, we've chipping away at things.

On the inside, we have new curtains in Henry's room and playroom, new doors on the fireplace and a nicely finished mantle. The office has made it to the "damned close to being done" phase. We added some anti-heat film to the windows and have actually cleaned four! A bit more trim and 3 more windows...and it will be done!



Stacey has been working night and day to refinish the stairs, and both hall closets are "works in progress".












I have been up to the roof...seems that someone had the bright idea that the chimney was a good place to lash down a TV aerial--not so on a breezy day!









We've also been trying to get a handle on the yard...chopping out forests, hacking at stumps, digging holes...but now if you take a stroll--things look a little more tame.
The first obvious difference is that there are flowers EVERYWHERE! Then Stacey put in more! We've also started the process of reclaiming of the garden. Of course we had to remove the 3 story pile of brush first, but we've managed to put in a few tomatoes and peppers--and they're doing great.






















Stacey has built not one, but two brick patios. One behind the garage and the other near the back door. The one near the back door is really a piece of work...complete with "stub" for the grill, it wraps around a couple of flower beds and is an awfully nice place to enjoy a burger after the sun has sunk behind the trees.









While we haven't made it too far on painting the rest of the house, we have re-painted the front porch. New paint over the flaking leaded paint...and a bright green floor. It's nice to spend some evenings in the cool air on the swing.












And...I finally tackled the garage. We dusted off a bunch of old storm windows, dead gutters, and spiders...and sent a few hundred pounds of debris to the dump. After "lightly" power washing down the inside, it looks much better...but we still can't park the car inside. That will have to wait until we can move the mitre saw somewhere else.

April showers...and it doesn't leak

It's time we posted an update. In the last month we've made a bit of progress...and frankly, I'm so tired that I don't really feel like writing much. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are a few million.

Let's start at the top...Henry's room has been done for awhile...but here is what it looks like after it's been lived in, well, when there aren't cars and trucks scattered all over the floor...











Then there's his playroom...which has become a nice gallery for his art...




Of course, there's still some unfinished business. A few weeks ago I took the afternoon off and gutted the sunroom. It's slowly coming back. So far it's at the drywall stage...but perhaps we'll get some paint on it this week.

Before... ...and so far so good...










And on the first floor Stacey has been working away on the living room...it's almost done. There's nice paint on all surfaces, a refinished fireplace mantel, and most of the boxes have been put away. Notice the total absence of the "wine" theme in the recent pics.



















And after months of waiting...we have countertops in the kitchen! Not to mention the cabinets are done (except for a few details), all of the leaks are fixed, and the electrical is finished. Ah, we can cook again!

Remember the wine and roses?













...and what it looks like now...













As the weather has warmed up...we've begun to feel out the backyard. New flowers come up every day...some of which we've never seen the likes of before. Last weekend Stacey moved the patio (yes, it is as hard as it sounds) and we've started to make sense of the debris. The biggest surprise was finding goldfish--alive and well--in the water feature that was frozen solid last winter!















Even Henry helps...













That's it for now...but stay tuned...

Spring Can Really Hang you up the Most...

Ah, well. We've lived in the house for almost a month now--and we love it. There are still a ton of things to do, and there seems to be new things that pop up everyday, but it's so nice to be in our "own" house, even if it comes with its "own" problems.

So you would've thought that the pause in blogging was due to all of the work we've been doing...well, sort of. Actually it has taken us this long to recover from moving. We transported the bulk of our stuff from the old house over the course of two weekends...in the snow and rain!


Once in, of course, the tricks were not over. We're still waiting on countertops in the kitchen. Well, we got tired to the Lowe's guy stringing us along and finally called the fabricator directly--they said the laminate was on backorder for two weeks. That was three weeks ago and we're still waiting. Ironically, one of the reasons we chose this design was because it was popular and could be delivered quickly!

While the tops are still AWOL, I did install the microwave last night--and it's nice. It was a heavy behemoth to tilt in (I've realized that I tend to cut things a little close when it comes to things like leaving space for a microwave in the cabinet configuration).

Regardless, the kitchen is more functional everyday--although last night we realized the main sink drain has a pretty bad leak into the basement (I'm sure that will be the subject of a future blog). We're off of microwave food, and even made pancakes this morning!

Stacey has been busy painting. Our back porch is now a nice vibrant green and the living room (about half painted) is a bright "dorset gold". We really like the living room--it's bright and sunny. We've even had a fire in the fireplace the last few weekends!