A Verry Productive Weekend

Thank  goodness for family and friends! 

Landon’s mom and stepdad, his cousin Marg, and her husband & son all came. Then, my parent and brother and sister came from Virginia to help!! We worked hard, but had so much fun!!! My mom brought be our first home-warming gift….a big planter in our wedding colors. :)

When everyone arrived, we got right to work. 

Matt and Keith worked on removing the half walls in the dining room, and then the strange built in wall that divided the living room and entry way. I was hesitant to remove them. I loooove built ins, and hated the idea of removing some that were already there. But....it was a great move. It ovens up the space, making the room seem lighter and bigger. 

G-Man was a huge help making sure everyone stayed  hydrated. Stephan was a hug help sanding the bedrooms pretty much the whole day!    Marg sweeped all the sawdust and sanded edges.  

            

My dad worked on removing two flower boxes on either side of the garage doors. They were continuing to the moister issues we had in the cellar. 

 

Matt spent a lot of time up on the roof, cleaning out gutters that may have never been cleaned before. How much does he look like John in this pic??

 

It was a double-fisting XS kind of day. Theresa did all kinds of things.....like spray paint all the registers a snazzy textured silver. 

Saturday Night - surveying our progress. This house is going to be so awesome!! This is the only pick we got of the whole fam....

I guess we'll need to get together again!  

 

I have the best family!!! Sunday they stayed past midnight to get everything done!

  

I love them. And they love me, too. :)

Let's go!!!

We are well into the renovation, so I thought I would post a few pictures of the work we have done so far. Day 1 we took our first load to the house....cleaning supplies! 

We ripped out all the carpets in the whole house....Here Landon is removing carpet from the Dining Room. We also removed it from the enter living room, the mudroom, and the master bedroom. 

 This poor floor. You can see the pet stains that we found under the carpet. 

I'm learning all sorts of things! Here I am using power tools. :) We took down parts of these half walls to open up the dining room. It will make the area feel bigger and less dated. 

Once the carpet was up, we had to remove hundreds of nails & staples from the floors. The previous owners really didn't want the carpet moving anywhere! Luckily, we had lots of help! It took days....

  
With help from Landon's Dad & uncle, we started working outside. Here is one of the huge bushes we had to rip out...this one was growing over the septic!

  

We sanded and sanded and sanded...

 Cleaned.....

And sanded some more. 

And found a Carpenter ant colony in the corner of the house. 

We'll be working on that. :)

Home!!

Finally...we got it!! It took forever....over 6 months to finally close on the house. We ran into lots of issues, but we were determined. SO EXCITING!!

Would you like to join me for the "Before" tour....It's pretty eye opening....not for the faint of heart. :)

From the front entry to the right was a solid wall...

the back of some built in bookshelves in the Living Room. 

View to the left....down the hallway to the 4 bedrooms. 

You can look into the spare room from the hall. 

 Also down the hall is the main bathroom. It had had a little work done to it, but we will still need to do some sprucing.  

The Master Bedroom....tiny and boring. It has the smallest closet in the whole house, and a super tiny second bathroom...but a pretty view of the back yard. 

From the front door, you turn to the right into the main living area. Icky....it was covered in moldy, stinky carpet full of pet stains. There was a sticky film over everything. ....shutter.....Lots of potential, though...ambig window, fireplace, and cook wood beam!

Another view from the door. You can see the corner of the dining room and the door to the mudroom and garage.

 From the Living room, you walk into the dining room 

(and Pantry & Laundry Closet)

And right into a tight kitchen with tons of storage.

 We will normally enter the house from the mudroom. The door didn't all the way....turns out it was just because they had stacked indoor/out door carpet instead of removing it! 

That leads right into a two car garage...it will take some demo to get both cars in, but it will be worth it. 

We are blessed to have tons of loving family and friends who are ready and willing to help......I can't wait to make this HOME!