Some work to the front door...

So, this weekend we did some work to the front door. We replaced the door hardware with a new lock set and handle. It looks quite nice, I think. We also replaced the mailbox, the address numbers and the wood frame around the door. The old one was peeling and the wood had big chips almost like someone had tried to pry on it at one time, or they bashed furniture into it that caused a lot of damage. We also painted the aluminum around the door way so that it was bright white again. The pictures really don't do it justice, it made a HUGE difference on the front of the house.

Before:


After:

Mystery plant is some sort of milkweed!

Atleast, that's what it appears to be. They are supposed to attract butterflies, too. Ironic since I saw two butterflies last weekend in the yard and can't remember the last time I have seen one anywhere else. It's been years!

http://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/savanna/plants/pur_milkweed.htm

Kitchen Demo Begins

So far, there are 5 layers of flooring in the kitchen that have been ripped out. The old wood paneling was removed to expose a layer of drywall from probably the 70's. It was put up with 7,000 nails. Plaster walls are being ripped up from behing the stove/sink/fridge wall. That's got to be a fun job. Glad I'm here in NY for that!

Living Room is Almost Done!

Okay, we still need to put up a few pictures and replace the ceiling light fixture, but the living room is actually a real living area! Finally, we have a place to sit besides the stairs or on top of the air matresses!

Grrr, glue under the stair treads. :(

I was SO looking forward to removing the stair treads from the stairs in the hallway...but when I got to work on pulling them off I found that they were nailed and glued. I swear, everything in this freakin' house has glue on it! Of course the glue removed the finish on the stairs, so for now my only choice is to just replace the stair treads with new ones. Bummer, I was really wanting to show off the pretty wood steps. Maybe someday we will refinish them, but that is certainly not a priority or part of the current plan.



New stair threads (not what I wanted to do, but they are clean and more neutral then the last ones):

Mystery Plant is Finally Blooming!

So, finally after weeks of watching this plant grow taller and taller, it has finally bloomed. It's got to be about 3+ feet tall now. I have no idea what this is and now I'm on a mission to find out.

Here is a photo of the pretty flowers:

No pictures, just ranting about yard work.

Okay, seriously. It seems like every weekend all I do is yard work. It never ends. This weekend we bought some more tools, an edger and few other things. Matt edged all along the sidewalks, walkways, driveway and street and it surprisingly was a huge improvement. We have been using that Scott's EZ seed in multiple spots where there is literally no grass. The stuff actually works. I was pretty impressed. We picked up a few more bags. At $15 a pop for the tiny little bags, I sure wish it came in larger sizes! But...it's working, so we'll continue on until we get all the spots patched up.

There is a strange looking plant surfacing from the front yard. The are bulbs of some sort, with thick stalks and seem to be growing quite tall. The top looks like there will be large bunches of some sort of flower. Right now there are these strange buds all clumped together and it's quite a mystery for me as I know nothing about plants or flowers.

I do know there is an Azalea on the side of the house and it only bloomed for a few days before dying off. That's not right. Gotta look into that.

Hardwood is finished in Living Room

And, boy did they come out really nice. I'm SO happy with the end result. The covers on the baseboard heaters have been painted white as well. Huge difference! Now, once we fix the shotty repairwork they did in the ceiling and then paint the ceiling white we can start setting up the living and dining room area.

Floor is going in today.

Late last night I got a sneak peak of what the floors might look like. Matt was playing around with the layout of the wood and sent over a quick snapshot via iphone. I LOVE the color. Not too dark, not too light. It's perfect.

Hopefully later today I'll get another photo that shows the real deal...atleast partially done! In any case, I'll see for myself tonight. We are headed back up there as soon as Bren gets home from school!

The original (sabotaged) wood floor

It's a sad day in house restoration history (okay, maybe it's just a sad day for me). Matt sent me a photo of the floors today after removing the sub floor from on top. I can't believe someone would neglect and ruin a beautiful hardwood floor this way. He says there are about 30 nail holes from each piece of plywood and on every plank. Add to that the glue, paint and god knows whatever else that's on there and there isn't much hope.

We are kind of past the point of no return on this. I did ask again if we could salvage it, but there is some decent sagging in some areas and with all the damage from the nails, we don't know how it would turn out if we had someone attempt to refinish it. Spending the $ to take the chance on *if* they'd even come out decent, not to mention the 20% restocking fee we'd lose on all the new hardwood we have piled up in the next room ready to go and it's just not feasible. But, really, someone should be ashamed for doing such a thing.

What I do wonder about is why the upstairs floors are a light pine and the downstairs floors are so dark? Strange.

New Paint on the Stairs (again)

Well, Mr. Patience of a Saint took the time to repaint the brutal staircase again. This is much more along the lines of what I was envisioning. Makes the woodwork around the stairs and hallway really pop. Once the upper portion of the walls are painted - it will look really nice.

Great job, Babe! I think I will keep you.

Hardwood Surprise

For some reason I guess I forgot to take pictures of this, but Matt ripped up the laminate floor in the living room this morning in preparation for our new Brazilian cherry floor installation. It was an easy job really, I think it was more tiresome to transport the laminate outside than it was to lift it up.

Though close to the end of this project Matt called me into the room to inspect something. My heart sank, I knew what he was calling me for. I kept thinking to myself "say it isn't so". Yep, in the corners of the room and around the fireplace you could see the ORIGINAL hardwood floors. Oh, how heartbreaking. Someone had screwed the new sub floor right OVER the old hardwoods. For a moment or two I contemplated trying to salvage it and then I realized that we'd have to fill in several screw holes on each plank and it would inevitably look terrible. How could someone do such a thing?

I have an affection for old houses and anything that can be salvaged I will save. Ah, that reminds me, our bedroom closet door is an old 5 panel door with an old brass doorknob. It had been painted about 3 different colors and the doorknob had paint on the knobs, but the old brass plate that fits onto the door itself had layers of paint caked over it. I managed to pry it off the door and after about 4 bouts with paint stripper and a toothbrush I got it all off. This will be going back on next weekend after we paint the closet doors white to match the window trim. I know to many it's just a doorknob, but to me it's a little piece of the past that belongs in this house.

I planted some geraniums in an empty pot that was left behind on the front porch and also put some hanging baskets on the porch this morning. I think they came out kind of cute. Those hooks on the porch were just begging for attention.

Imposter Mantle goes bye-bye

We thought the fireplace mantle was ugly and stone,but as it turns out it was ugly and wood! It seems that the previous owners distressed a piece of wood and then covered it with gray flecked spray paint to make it look like stone. Why? Oh why? The real kicker is that they sprayed it AFTER they had already attached it to the brick fireplace wall. So, there is overspray on all of the bricks and I have to remove it! Argh, paint removal is one of my chores. Darn.

Once we discovered that the stone mantle was in fact an imposter...she was a goner. Off you go for your Sunday (trash day)departure. R.I.P.

Mid-week update

Matt is at the house now during the week. I think I finally bugged him enough to see what the stove looks like in place, because he sent me this picture this morning with the subject line titled "Happy now?". Hmm, somebody is a little crabby!



P.S.
Yes, Dear! It looks great. And, when we get rid of that faux brick backsplash, we'll really be in business!

Uh oh, I hate the paint!

It took Matt several hours today to paint the bulk of the textured walls of the staircase. I've never painted textured walls before. Apparently, it's not a fun job.
So, when do you suppose is a good time for me to tell him that I hate the color? It's just not popping like I wanted it to. I think it needs to be darker. Oh boy, he's going to hate me for this one!



He was a busy little bee today, he also started replacing the old outlets and light switches with more modern ones. Just getting rid of those ugly wooden outlet covers and switch plates would have made me happy, but he wanted to replace the entire outlets. I gotta say, he was right, it really does make a big difference!

Let there be color!

Matt spent a whole day painting trim white around windows and doorways. The difference is amazing. I can't believe someone painted these beautiful bulls-eye moldings the same color as the walls. You could barely even notice them. It's criminal!

Someone must have loved this home at some point in time, and I feel like it's coming back to life again. Finally there seems to be some progress and it's feeling a little like "home" already.



A few things I notice from looking at this piture:

- Living room light fixture has got to go.
- I did a good job cleaning those fireplace bricks!

Bren and I spent a lot of time outside this weekend while Matt was painting. We moved the lawn, bagged up more leaves, learned the rules about "yard waste" from some nice neighbors and dug up lots of dandelions. Boo.

The stove, dishwasher and fridge were delivered this weekend as well. Though we are unsure if we will tear up the kitchen right away or wait a few months and get settled. So for now, they are sitting in the middle of the kitchen. I think I will ask Matt to at least hook up the stove and fridge so we can eat when we are up there on weekends.

We decided on a color for the living room. It's called "restful" - it's a sage like color and I really like it. (Surprising!)

First Weekend in the New House

Phew, this was a long weekend. I think we got a lot accomplished, but it's increasingly evident that we have a lot of projects and a lot of work ahead of us. The funny thing is that this house was pretty move in ready - at least compared to many of the others we looked at. Now, that's a little scary!

I also came across the rest of the pictures from the MLS listing before we bought it. Let me post those now, they are good for "before" and "after" comparisons.

Living Room:



Dining Room:


Self explanatory, but here's the kitchen:


I don't know why they showed a microwave and dishwasher in the photos of the kitchen, because there wasn't one! There were NO appliances in this house. Anyone else noticing a theme with the color (or lack thereof)? This muted beige color is throughout the entire house...walls, trim and even the ceilings. I HATE this color - it will be one of the first things to go!

Friday we cleaned the house from top to bottom. After about 8 trips to Home Depot, Lowes and Wal-mart (welcome to home ownership, I know) we started to get organized. One exciting thing was that we ordered all of our appliances. Some were in stock, some were deliverd on Saturday.

After giving precise measurements for the basement door to the Lowes employee and asking for the smallest washer and dryer available to get through the narrow old doorway, we were assured there would be no issue getting the machines into the basement. I wasn't so sure, but after asking about 3 times if he was "sure" and getting reassured each and every time, I gave the guy the benefit of the doubt. Too bad, the machines were still too big and we had to pry off (and break) the 100 year old molding from around the basement stairs to get the washer through the doorway. (I knew they wouldn't fit!! Next time, I'm going to make sure they listen to me.) So, now we have an extra project; fix the molding around the basement door. Hmm, that's looking pretty low on the priority list.

We did a lot though:

Cleaned, cleaned, cleaned
Started stripping the paint off the front porch
Cleared out all the leaves and debris from the backyard
Gardening/Picked weeds
Put down some grass seed
Tested out the washer and dryer
Cleaned the bricks on the fireplace
Unloaded a big truck of only about half of our stuff
Slept on an air mattress for the first time (not fun - worse than camping)
Cleaned out the shed
Found an awesome sandwich joint

Hmm, for some reason that doesn't look like a whole lot, but I swear we were non-stop and my legs are super sore from climbing all those stair stairs!

Meet Old Blue

WE CLOSED!

After jumping through quite a few hoops and sitting on the edge of our seats for 3 solid days ready to take the 3+ hour drive to our closing, we finally closed on our first house! FYI - for those that think now is the 'best time to buy', prepare yourselves...it's like the Wild, Wild, West out there! In any case, we made it. Now the real adventure begins.

She may not be much to some, but to us she's a charming old colonial (built in 1910) located on a friendly little street in North Providence, RI. For the next month or so we'll be driving back and forth from NY to RI to work on the house so that in June when we officially move in, some of the big stuff is done! I'm sure this plan is going to get tiring, but we're ready for the challenge. Or should I say, Matt is ready for the challenge? (Love you, babe!)

Without further ado, I introduce you to our old blue house.