First Impressions.

Eventually, one day, we would like for our house to make a good first impression. Right now, it says "Ew, good thing no one lives there". If you will recall, the house looked like this when we bought it.

We did a bit of demo and removed the storm door and surrounding frame and then propped our new old double doors in place.

We are finally moving forward towards what we consider the first real improvement to the front of the house and plan to have the doors installed soon. Before they go in there are a few decisions to be made. Things we, of course, have been thinking about for months and months. So, similar to past moments of indecision, we are hoping someone out there might weigh in. Help us out. Pick one already! This is what we've got.

Hardware? I think we have narrowed it down to these two single cylinder mortise locks. The finish is oil rubbed bronze, which to my understanding should age over time. The differences between the two are thrilling, I know, but that's what we've got. #1 Baltimore. #2 Reading.



Ok, I admit it. The decision is not that easy. You see, we have been planning to sand these doors down and stain them. It seems this could be quite a difficult undertaking. When the new hardware is installed it will actually need to be raised slightly so that bending down to open the door will not be required. That's only a mild exaggeration, it's pretty low. So, to do this, the old mortise hole will be filled in and the new one moved up. Apparently making the patch look good enough to stain nicely is a job for a skilled cabinet maker. Which we are not. Yet. Ha. Then on top of that, apparently the application of marine varnish can be tricky. Sooooo, do we just paint the door? Or maybe paint the outside and stain the inside?

Other things to factor in would be that we plan to do the landing in mahogany similar to this:

And as of today the plan is to reside the house using Hardieplank, in this color:


The trim color is TBD.

So, if we paint the door, what color do we go with? And yes, I do realize I'm not giving any options...because I have no clue. I guess a trip for some swatches is in order? Still. Help! Blue? Red? Green? Yellow?

Christmas 2010

Um, at least it didn't take me until Valentine's Day to do a Christmas post? Right?

So, we stayed in Boston again this year for Christmas, sadly, this time with no family visits. It was a wonderful Christmas and very relaxing, but just not the same without family...or a scene like last year. Still good though.

Anyways, here are some of my favorites taken with one of my favorite gifts I got this year. Enjoy!

We tore open presents and snorgled puppies.

Did a lot of lazing around and got a real tree.

And then finally learned how to turn the camera to a horizontal position to take pictures.


Couldn't ask for more.

ps. P might murder me in my sleep if I don't do a house post soon...so maybe I should do that? Yes.

pss. Looking back, our free tree from last year was the bomb diggity. no?

The Many Faces of Busy.

The biscuit is sick with a tummy ache...so what better way to make myself feel better than to share pictures from an impromptu dress up day I had with the poor little guy (on a day he was sans tummy ache).

Batman!

Bumble bee!

Lobster!

In my defense, we only did this to him to see which ones needed to go in the donate pile...yes! we did keep one. Yes! we are "those people". Target really shouldn't be allowed to sell these things with crazies like me running around...but he looks cute, right?

Upstairs Framing.

Trying to play catch up on the current state of the house before the plumber (HOPEFULLY) finally starts his work this week. It's getting a little old waiting around for that next step to start, and if he weren't such a large man we probably would have physically drug him over there to start the work. But we haven't. So, framing.

This is the wall in between the back bedroom and bathroom/hallway. Built by yours truly (and P). We only messed it up once...not too bad for my first wall.

Another angle. I'm so proud. We opted to frame in a second door going directly into the bathroom, which we will actually drywall over. Crazy right? Well, we wanted to leave the option to easily cut in a door open for the future and this will keep the plumber from running any pipes across this space now.

After getting some more updated structural drawings from the engineer we went ahead and had the contractor come back in and put more LVLs upstairs. This allowed us to remove part of a load bearing wall and open the two front rooms (bedroom and formerly my large closet) into one large office/guest room.

Busy checking out yet another pile of debris.

Those are some seriously huge LVLs...well at least we know we can safely have a roof deck one day.

While he was in there the contractor also put up the other wall dividing the bedrooms and leveled all the ceilings out...while we were downstairs tearing up the poor little addition.

We will also be raising the head height walking down the stairs so the P won't have to duck anymore.


Yay!

Now onto plumbing, wiring, floor patching, fireblocking, window installing, door installing, insulating, drywalling and floor refinishing. Just to name a few.

Laundry Dilemma Brings...More Demo...

What do you do when you score an awesome front loading washer and dryer set for a great deal because a friend hooked you up with an appliance discount website and when it finally is time to plumb them in you find out that they actually won't physically fit down the basement stairs? Hmmm? What? You put them in the addition. You know, the addition off the back of the house that was going to be redone at a later date? The one where you were going to install a door at the threshold so that you could close it and not think about how yucky it is? That's the one.

Since I already mentioned it's general yuckiness it was quickly decided that we would just add this very small room to our list of places to drywall so all that blue goodness had to come down. (don't worry, it wasn't that dirty when we actually lived in the house)

Three! layers of linoleum.

This is what we found behind the old kitchen sink. That's beadboard painted two, maybe three different colors and some sort of plastic tile that I refused to touch.

More multi-colored beadboard and the walls start coming down.

I won't bore you with step by step demo pics of this tiny room...but when it came time to take the ceiling down I unleashed P on it with the floor scraper. Pulled the whole thing down at once. Amazing.

I managed to capture this action shot amidst all the dust...not that you can actually see what's happening, but it was pretty impressive.

Luckily there is a pretty easy to access crawl space underneath so we can reinforce the joists to get rid of the "trampoline effect" the room currently has. I have only been brave enough to crawl inside once...the spiders in there look like prehistoric creatures, very scary.

So, we have now managed to tear every little room in this poor house apart. We are hoping to stack the washer where the kitchen sink used to be and enclose them somehow. This will leave us with enough room for a small kitchen table or seating area at the end of the space...and that hopefully the addition of a skylight and a sliding patio door will make it a space you actually want to sit in!

Paper Wreath Love.

Dying to make one of these with some creepy old books I found in our basement. It's not looking like it will happen this Christmas, guess I'll have to settle for a scraggly Christmas tree (hoping to get one this weekend!). Putting it on the list for next year.

Well Hello There.

So I guess I took a little accidental break from blogging? I won't bore you with any excuses like Thanksgiving, or changing jobs (not me) or the fact that I've actually had some progress pictures to share for the past week, but I can not seem to find my camera cord. You know, the one that connects to the computer at work to upload photos because you can't do it at home because you don't have the internet at home? The one that is, of course, different from the other hundreds of camera cords in my possession or anything that I can find at work? Yeah, I can't find that camera cord. Nope, no excuses. Anyway, in the meantime I will share what we have been up to in the past month (can't believe it's been that long) around here with my lovely writing skills. In bullet form.

-Drank a lot of coffee
-Went to see Harry Potter...maybe more than once (me, gonna take some flak for that one)
-Visited Georgia (me) and Alabama (P) for Thanksgiving
-Watched Auburn pull out a victory over our arch-nemesis
-Did some more framing
-Consulted our structural engineer about the permit implications of removing part of another load bearing wall (this time upstairs)
-Realized that our washer and dryer would physically not fit into the basement
-Made new plans to install them in the addition (this would be location #4 for the washer/dryer, if anyone is counting)
-Visited Martha's Vineyard for a day (P)
-Signed an affidavit saying that we are not loud, terrible, horrible people, so that our landlord could take it to his court date (looooong story)
-Christmas shopped (me) Online only though, I don't like crowds.
-Got another official stamped drawing from the structural engineer so that an amendment to our permit can be filed
-Hired our contractor to come back in and install more LVLs upstairs
-Decided that framing is over rated and got the contractor to finish up the last wall for us (bums)
-Watched the Tigers scoop up an SEC championship. I actually felt a little bad for those Roosters...or whatever they are called.
-Tried not to freeze while working in our house without heating.
-Plugged in my brand new shop light and then jumped out of my skin five minutes later when it exploded.
-Demoed the addition so that plumbing could be run for the washer dryer (and because it was nasty), because, you know, I'm not tired of demo yet

There was more in there of course. I think I hit most of the highlights...pictures will follow for the house stuff. Right when I find that damn camera cable. Maybe Santa should an an extra one of those little guys in my stocking.