Monthly Archives

August 2018

Status Update: The First Weekend

Hey y’all! Thanks for stopping by! I’m starting a new series called “Status Update” today. The point of this series is going to be to recap the small things we’ve accomplished over a period of time. This isn’t going to be one tutorial or reveal, it’s not going to be for decorated rooms, it’s just going to be a gauge of progress on the house, and all the random things we’ve worked on.

If you haven’t seen the before pictures, you may want to start here because it has come a long way already. This was our first weekend in the house, so all of what we’ve done so far has been accomplished within a few days. We’re anxiously trying to get things done, as we’re under pretty tight time constraints (we plan to move in at the end of the month, so there are several projects that need to be done ASAP).

We closed on the house on Tuesday, and got to work on Wednesday. We started in the living room, which looked like this:

The carpets were infested with the smell of cat urine (#nevergettingacat). We rolled them up and got them out, which was a sweaty and incredibly stinky task.

We then started pulling down the upholstery on the walls, which also smelled of cat urine. It was stapled to the wall behind the trim and baseboards, so we ended up having to remove all the trim. By the end of Friday night, we had all the wall upholstery down, and pulled out the staples in the wall, which wasn’t easy.

Saturday we got up bright and early ready for a long work day. Ethan wanted to start with some plumbing issues, so while he replaced a pipe on the exterior of the house and a piece on the inside of the toilet, I started tearing down the textured wallpaper on the ceiling of the dining room.

The wallpaper on the ceiling in the living room and dining room both needed to come down, but it was so difficult. It actually still isn’t 100% done. We tried several different methods, including water and vinegar with a scraper, scoring the ceiling with a knife and pulling it off dry, and sanding it off with a sander. Eventually, we ended up getting a heavy duty wallpaper remover, applied it with a pesticide sprayer, and peeling it off. It was time consuming and took the majority of the day with one or both of us working on it.

(This was taken after about 12 hours of working on the house. Which explains the look of death on our faces. 🙂 )

Sunday morning we arrived to this, which is all the paper we had scraped from the ceiling. We cleaned it and turned our attention to the floor. So far we had removed the carpet and carpet pad, and planned to scrape the linoleum. The original parts of the house have the original hardwood beneath them, so we assumed they were beneath the linoleum. We (and by we, I mean Ethan. This was all him.) started scraping, but we couldn’t tell what the condition of the wood was because there was so much glue on it. I took a hand sander to it just to test it out, and we realized it was just a large sheet of plywood under the linoleum. Subfloor.

We were super bummed because we really wanted hardwood, and we didn’t have it. We made a plan to put in carpet until we could afford traditional hardwoods at a later date. I started researching wall to wall carpeting, and we planned on scrubbing the floor and painting a layer of Kilz over the linoleum to mask any remaining odor before having carpet installed. I did not like this plan, but I knew it was one of those things we were going to have to compromise on in the short term.

So we are prepping the floor to start painting, and Ethan sees along the edge where we removed the baseboards something that he thinks might be hardwood under the subfloor. So then this happens:

So before we know it, we’re pulling up the plywood to find the original hardwood underneath. Praise the Lord. In modern homebuilding, a plywood subfloor goes below where you would lay hardwoods. But, this house has had 123 years of different owners and different repairs and additions made, so there’s no telling who did what and when they did it. Ethan kept asking me when I was going to stop asking questions…because when it comes to this house, nothing makes sense! Our current plan is to refinish the hardwood in this room, as well as the other rooms that have the same wood.

So this is where we ended the weekend. The plywood came up without too much difficulty, but Ethan is going out of town for work this week, so we had to call it quits early. Overall, we did a lot more destruction than construction, which makes you feel like you haven’t really done anything but make a mess. Overall though, we got a lot done. Now we just have to start putting it back together. No pressure.

Next weekend Ethan’s family will be in town to help with some projects, so we’re hoping to knock out a few things. We’re currently in a race to get things moving so we can get this place as livable as possible before we have to move in. There is so much to do, but I am optimistic that we will be able to get done the top priority things. Everything else can be done after we move in, and we will be working on this house for the next few years, but for now, we’ve got our work cut out for us. Stay tuned for the next status update. That’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

August 5, 2018 by Fawn Rumfield

The New House: The Before

Alrighty, friends, I shared the other day that we just bought a house, and we are so so excited about it! If you didn’t read that post, you can check out the entire story here.

Today I wanted to share some of the pictures of the house as it is, and talk about our plans for some things. Be forewarned though – these are rough! The rest of this post is going to be a whole lot of ugly, so scroll through at your own risk.

The Exterior

Let’s start with the exterior. It needs a bit of work, I don’t love the color, and the yard is a mess. But, of course it is so charming with all the gingerbread trim, and so it’s not hard to envision what it could look like with some love. It’s a historic home on our city’s register of historic buildings, which means there are some regulations about what we are able to do to the house. The interior is basically fair game, but the exterior facade has to remain the same for the most part. Thankfully, this does not include paint color.

The Foyer

When you walk in the front door, you walk into this small foyer with a stairway to the second floor. It’s teeny tiny, and definitely over a century old because the stairway doesn’t have much headroom, but it does have some gorgeous craftsmanship.

The Master Bedroom

The master is the only bedroom on the first floor, and it is what was once the original parlor of the house. It needs some serious work, as you can see there is an archway that leads out onto a porch here. The porch has a plexiglass cover, but it is definitely not a permanent solution (although I believe it’s been that way for about 30 years). We plan on putting in a functioning door, and walling in the arch. Then we’ll remove the plexiglass on the porch and have a porch off the master bedroom.

The Living Room

The living room is eerily quiet when you walk in. That’s because it’s one of the few rooms that has carpet, and the walls are upholstered. From my understanding, upholstered walls are period appropriate for the era of the house, but this was a reproduction done in the 80’s or 90’s. Under the carpet is linoleum, and hopefully below that is the same gorgeous hardwood that’s in the master bedroom. Pulling up the linoleum is going to be a pretty serious job though, so we’ll see how that goes.

The Dining Room

The dining room and kitchen were actually added to the house later on, they are at the far back of the house. I’m not sure when this portion of the house was added, but none of the features are original. The family that lived here from the 1980’s to the mid 2000’s did add the fireplace, and they definitely chose thoughtfully something that would work well with the original portion of the house.

The Kitchen

The final room downstairs is the kitchen. Like I said, this is not original to the house, and is a true homage to the 1980’s. This is where the back door leads, and it is actually a very large kitchen. We aren’t sure exactly how we want to use the space yet, but we plan on doing a “Phase One” cosmetic remodel to the kitchen, before doing a full gut job and reconfiguration of the space. Some thoughts we have may be to build out a laundry room/pantry/mudroom, and to eventually add a traditional stairway here to replace the spiral staircase. Since these things require some serious construction, it’ll probably be a few years before that happens.

The Upstairs Bedrooms

Upstairs, there are three bedrooms and a creepy little carpeted bathroom. The bedrooms all have hardwood, which is original to the home, but in need of some TLC. The layout is a bit wonky, but what old house isn’t? The bedroom that is currently painted blue will be used as the nursery, although it may not be finished before baby gets here. Which is just what my planning personality can handle. 😉 The other two bedrooms will serve as guestroom and office, until we have need of more bedrooms. Thankfully, all the rooms have closets, pretty doors and hardware.

We’ve started doing some of the work already, so these photos are already outdated. We have been waiting for such a long time to start a project like this, it is so incredibly exciting for us. I’m sure it will be stressful and frustrating at times, and things will be dragged out far longer than we anticipate. As of right now, we plan to get as much of the “top priority” work done this month, and move in at the end of the month. We haven’t done much to prepare for baby’s arrival this fall, because we’re going to be moving! God sure has a sense of humor when it comes to timing! The entire project will take several years, but we are going to do things at the rate of the cash we have to spend, and so we know it’ll take a while. It’s going to be a long lesson in patience, contentment, and hard work to say the least!

Thanks for checking out the before pictures. Make sure you check back as we continue the process! That’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

August 2, 2018 by Fawn Rumfield