P's First Blog

Saturday came and went, 11 friends came to help, dumpster full.  Sunday morning arrived and my father and I went over to the house and realized with all the work we accomplished on Saturday, we still had so much to do.  Overwhelming for sure!  There was a ton of plaster, lathe and the corners needed to be fine tuned.  We also needed to clean up the mess from all the demo.  The most important thing was calling the dumpster guy and getting that picked up and re-delivered empty. 

Monday morning comes and I am on my phone with the dumpster people since I didn't hear back from them yesterday.  I also got a call from work that I had to get up at 3AM on Tuesday and work, which wasn't something I was looking forward to since those early mornings always kick my butt and make me REALLY grumpy (K inserted that).   Later in the day, the new dumpster arrived and we ready to go again.  The garage still had a lot of the previous renters junk in it and so we put that all of it in the dumpster and finally had space to store all our moldings.  They had been stacked against the back fence previously. 

So after work today, we had to make a small detour to the auto body and then went to the hardware store and then finally to the house.  We got to actually do some "fun" stuff!  There also seemed to be rat's nests under the house and so Terminix was immediately called.  We also removed the mantle from the fireplace and sanded it down and it's ready to be stained, one thing complete. 

My Dad introduced us to a tool called a planer, which cuts at a certain depth across the board so instead of using a heat gun or chemicals and a scraper, we can strip all the paint off in a couple minutes vs. 30 minutes per molding.  That was one thing that was going to take a lot of time and so its a nice feeling that it will go by much quicker.

Water was turned back on because Otis and Dad capped the pipes inside and we also checked out the sprinklers which worked with minor glitches. 

We tried to lay out the kitchen but that is going to be tough and we are going to have to ask Home Depot to help us out.

Dining Room

The electrician is going to start on the panel upgrade tomorrow.  Plumber is coming on Saturday.  We are going to Home Depot or Lowes on Saturday to try and take advantage of a 0% credit card and buy all the rest of the stuff including pipes, appliances, tile, etc.  Should be a fun day.  It's nice that we are starting to finally rebuild. 

Finally, we removed the damn Christmas lights from the house which had been there for years according to the neighbors.  We also tore down the gutters which were serving no purpose in their current state.  Good night.

The Journey Begins

Today's Tips:

• Stripping paint - P is preferring the heat gun and scraper for the wood and Jasco paint stripper and the scraper and steel wool for the brick. The heat gun will damage the bricks. 
• Ladies, don't leave the demo for the men.  It's fun, its a great place to release stress and when the boys see a pile of wall on the floor, there is definitely a little respect there.

We officially closed on Friday and have been in the house ever since.  I'll admit, I was much more overwhelmed by this project and have found ways to make excuses to get going.  P was there until 11:30PM on Friday night, again on Saturday afternoon after stocking up at Lowe's and most of the day today.  The plumber came with his estimate and even though it didn't sound like a bad price (to me), P and our friend, who will go by Otis, have decided they will do all the plumbing themselves, even the busted waste line under the house.  I say, okay! 

Let me back up and welcome to you all to our blog.  I plan on being honest and open about our adventures as what gave me hope about this project was reading about what others went through.  The tips and tricks, the unplanned (and expensive) problems, the pleasure of seeing a room come to fruition, the disagreements in tile color, all of it, the good, the bad and the ugly.  P's family is 3,000 miles away so this will keep them updated and maybe we will get a few random followers along the way.

Back to the house, see how I seem to get distracted?  Anyhow, I have put in a quarter of the hours P has already but in my defense, when we were looking at houses my idea of a fun renovation was a house that might need an updated kitchen or bath in a couple years, not one that needed to be gutted on Day 1.  You see, I moved to a small town in Maine when I was nine years old.  My mother and step-father decided an old farmhouse would be a fun project.  Well, it was fun for a couple months.  We all shared one room while the upstairs was being finished and basically that ten year project deterred me from renovating a house until I was rich enough one day to live in one beach house while building or renovating my upgrade :)   So, I couldn't blame P but I can't say I was as excited as he was, I was scared.

Again, back to this house!!  On Day 1, P cleaned up a lot of the junk the previous occupants had left around.  Okay, I am realizing I need to do an About Us and About the House pages as this all has back story.  On Day 2, P started taking down the lovely wood paneling in the living room and dining room as well as starting to strip the fireplace, just to see what was underneath.  Just tearing down the paneling opened up the room so much more.  I took down some screws and then was a little overwhelmed to decided to move outside and hose down the backyard and house a bit to get rid of the dirt and spiderwebs.  After about an hour, I decided a power washer was in order so I went home.  P stayed for quite a bit longer.  Day 3 was more stripping and I decided if I was going to really get into this, I needed the right gear and had to go shopping.  So I went and bought some cute work gloves as well as the "cutest" work glasses I could find.  My lasik surgery was not going to be lost on this house!  I showed up and went to work, about 2 hours after P.  P had the mantel almost 100% done and it was gorgeous.  I have no idea was is original and what isn't, not my specialty but it is nice.  The fireplace is a smooth brick and should look really nice when completely done.  Mind you, this fireplace has taken about 8 hours of work so far and isn't close to done.

I wanted to do some real demo, not just removing screws so I took advantage while P had to run an errand.  He was so sweet and didn't want me to get hurt so was giving me, well, girly jobs.  Demo seemed more fun to me so I went into the bedroom to remove the closet.  My little drill and I weren't going to cut it.  So I moved onto the bathroom.  Hmm...wall linoleum and lovely mirror tiles.  So, I grabbed my new gloves and glasses and went to stare at the toolbox.  I decided on a flat head screwdriver and a rubber mallet.  Yup, I had these in MY toolbox.  I went to work.  See the results of both our projects below.  

Bathroom

Fireplace

Living Room

P showing me how it's done, per usual :)
 

Bedroom #1 Closet