This is why...

Some of you have been grumbling that our house "didn't look bad enough" to gut to the studs.  Here are a few reasons we are...

This bathroom is so small you would probably hit your chin on the sink if you tried to use the toilet.  And helllooooo!  Grossest floor ever and do you see the amount of caulk holding that sink up?!

See that floor?  Yep, rotten. The whole wall is because that window they put in cost about $38 and it leaks like a sieve.  The door is so swollen it takes major muscles to open and closing it is near impossible.

Gross.

Grosser.

Leaky window due to shoddy repair work on a gutter outside that was pulling the siding OFF the house and just letting rain pour right on in around the window.

Is that floor bowed?  Why yes, yes it is!  More water damage from a cheap window fix.

Enough caulk for you?

Now, these are just a few things, I know.  But, there was enough damage here and there throughout the house on the walls, the plumbing needs to be completely re-done, and we have some major electrical updates.  Plus we're redesigning the floor plan to change it from a double to a single, which requires moving some rooms around and knocking walls out.  If we needed to gut 80% anyways, we figured we might as well just do the job all the way and start over doing everything correctly so that we're not messing around with patch up jobs later.  We also didn't want to get almost done with an area of the house and discover some major problem, only to have to create another giant mess we weren't expecting. Might as well just start from the beginning and discover any issues that might exist, and deal with them immediately.  That's our philosophy anyways.  Hopefully it pays off.

A feast...

for the termites.  

There's a few places in our house they used to like to party.  Unfortunately for them, we're shutting the clubs down.

The House, so far

Here we go kids!  (I apologize ahead of time for the funky layout and formatting - Blogger and I got in some serious arguments trying to get all these pictures laid out.  Also, click on any of the pictures to see them bigger)

First - this is one of my favorite parts of the house - our front porch.  Right now it is dusty and so dirty, but I know it will be back to this again someday...

Another favorite feature is our new back yard!  We have so much room and the potentials are endless!  I know it doesn't look too special now, but it was even more of a dump when we bought this place.  That's the garden in that back corner - our tomatoes are almost ready and one of the pepper plants is blooming...just a few more days.

Next we're going to do some before and nows:

This is the living area on the right half side of the once-double (as in double shotgun)...yes, that is a staircase you see in the corner.  It goes outside and is so random and will be going away.

  

The studs where that wall is directly in front of the camera are coming out and this will be the living/dining/kitchen area - all open and airy, our favorite.  

The kitchen as it used to be on the right half of the house and what it looks like now - this is where the new kitchen will be as well

Scott at work when we were first getting started - some of these walls had THREE layers that needed to come out.  Cheap, icky wood paneling that was bowing, on top of sheet rock, on top of the slats and plaster. SUCH a pain and SO dusty

First room on the left side of the double before....

  

       
And the view now!  You can see all the way down the house now almost!  The bedrooms will be on this side.

And this is what the kitchen on the right side looked like - somewhat liveable.  Our favorite is the random pipe coming out of the counter and going up through the cabinet next to the sink...

We discovered beadboard in the back two rooms on both sides of the house and half way up another random room under the plaster.  We're trying to figure out what to do with it - how to use it to it's fullest potential.  The cabinets on this side were custom built in and are proving to be quite the hassle to get out.  A project for Friday I guess.  This area will be our master suite.









We're trying to decide what to do with the chimneys/fireplaces.  They are non working (illegal to burn in actually now) so are functionally pointless.  And they would be a lot of work to clean up and make pretty, and safe (they are crumbling in some areas.  However, we love the character they add all at the same time.  We have three - two in the front rooms and a small one where the original kitchens used to be

I know I skipped quite a few rooms in between, but it's hard to understand it all in pictures.  I'll keep adding more here and there as we go.

House Work

We are over half way done with gutting everything down to the studs.  It's exhausting but SO satisfying.  I will try and post a few pictures tonight...

Should I start a new blog just for the house?  Anyone even care or interested?

Birthdays!

Today is my lova's Birthday.  His 28th.  He's such an old man :)

We had a little surprise party for him in the neighbor's back yard and it was the perfect evening for grilling out.  Wendy (another one of our awesome neighbors) baked a FABULOUS Champagne cake for him and some of our dearest friends came out to celebrate.

In additional news, we closed on our second mortgage today and now have a line of credit on the "new" house. We can now start the gutting and remodeling!  If you're looking for us this weekend, you will probably find us hard at work over there tearing walls out.

Mmmm

The homemade chicken pot pie I made for dinner

It didn't make the headache go away, and it sure didn't help with the heat factor in our house, but it did seem to make things better all around sitting on the porch eating it with Scott.  I'll count it as a win.

Manic Monday

It's gloomy, windy, and the hottest, most humid weather yet this year, due to a big old storm cruising our way.  Scott's sleeping his night shift off before heading out to another one (meaning I've been tiptoeing around, not playing music, having hushed phone conversations, and constantly scolding noisy dogs).  I started term two of midwifery school and have a wicked headache.  I think I'm ready for Tuesday now, thank you.

Spring Break

On Tuesday morning I flew up to Chicago to visit Scott's brother and our sister-in-law.  We've been wanting to go see them and figured we'd better squeeze it in while I had a few days off.  Unfortunately Scott got stuck here with work, and then a sinus infection and bad flights.

Kinzie (2 1/2 yrs) and "her babies"

I love being an Auntie and it was great to be able to spend almost three days with the family loving on my nieces and the new twinsies.  Kurt and Adrienne brought home preemie twins from the hospital about five weeks ago they are foster parenting. I really am so impressed and don't know how they do it every day.  To give them a little break, I got up with the babies on the nights I was there to feed them, change them, and let everyone else get a little sleep.  Now, I've done this at various times with babies over the last few years for friends or when I nannied in college, but two infants, who are still playing catch up in the growth department (and take for.ever to eat, it seems like) are a completely different story!  We all survived though and actually got some sleep.  I definitely got my baby fix for a little while, but still felt like the visit flew by almost too quickly.  

Becca and I went on a little date to see a movie together

Me with all the kiddos

Angel and Michael

Our good friend Ellen came into town last weekend.  We ate lots of delicious food and enjoyed our beautiful spring weather to the fullest.  We wandered our neighborhood porch sale event on Saturday morning and found all sorts of wonderful deals for our new house.  Cypress columns that I went and bartered for and got quite the deal on, a beautifully redone 1920's pedestal sink for one of the guest bathrooms, a set of shutters, and a gorgeous window (cypress frame, glass, and all) for free.
We spent two evenings on our "new" front porch with neighbors and other friends eating wedding cake (sometimes our neighbor has a "disaster" when making her cakes and we all reap the benefits) and fried chicken and drinking wine.
On Saturday we went to the NCAA Elite Eight Basketball game here in town and watched the Butler Bulldogs beat Florida State.

For Ellen's last evening in town we went down to the Marigny and enjoyed dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Adolfo's, before ending the evening at our favorite little Jazz spot, The Spotted Cat.  It was the perfect kick-off for this break!