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).