One Sixty: Captains Log

Captains Log - Monday

Just another manic muffin... er, Monday. Feels like Friday never really turned into Saturday and Sunday. There was no weekend, just one loooonnng night. I tell you.

Work continued in the mud room. Mike hammered away. Our friend Tom made it over on Saturday to help hammer and to provide some much needed muscle. He and Mike brought load after load of cement pieces out of the house and piled them next to the garage. Meanwhile I cleaned out our new home away from home slide in camper.

Sunday we made a run to the dump and then spent the afternoon rearranging vehicles in the driveway. Sounds very easy, but not so when you have a slide in camper, boat, truck that doesn't run, two car garage with only one door and a '69 camaro on one side and 3 motorcycles and an ATV on the other.

We put the truck that doesn't run in the garage, then moved the slide in camper where the truck had previously been. We stuffed all the bikes around the truck in the garage, then toed the boat to Mike's grandparents' house so it wouldn't get in the way during the house lifting.

Now, all that may not sound like a lot, but it's like those word puzzles where you're the peasant and you have 2 sacks of grain and a sheep that you need to get across the river and there's a wolf involved so you have to do it without the wolf eating the sheep or the sheep eating the grain in a certain number of boat trips - it's confusing and takes a million years to figure out. That was my weekend.

I'm nervous about getting everything accomplished. I want Bob to start ASAP and I know that a whole lot more needs to happen before he can.

We have to

finish the mudroom floor
take down the back chimney
put up the hay bales/silt wall
make all necessary disconnections to plumbing
get water shut off
remove oil tank from basement
remove hot water heater from basement
move out

Will it all get done in time for the end of this week? Time will tell.

Blog Story

My now husband Mike and I purchased this quaint home back in spring of 2004 - our first home - and, being the handy folks we are, expected to have the entire thing renovated in about a year or so.

And here we still are... renovating away.

This house needed a complete overhaul. Its plaster walls were uninsulated, its attic floor covered in 2" of bat guano, its basement - dirt and snakes, its exterior - asbestos siding, and lead paint windows in every room. The electric had not been updated and light sockets hung bare from the ceiling. Plumbing featured cast iron radiators - and only one for the entire upstairs.

We began by gutting almost the entire house from top to bottom. (sans bathroom - we needed to pee) We rebuilt the entire upstairs, with a new floor (not new carpet or wood - the once unstable framing underneath) and turned 3 small rooms into two. We reinvented the downstairs by turning a closet into a hallway and eliminating interior exterior windows and doors from old half-assed additions.

New insulation, windows, electrical wiring (including phone and CAT-5 internet), plumbing and baseboards, and drywall were all added.

We purchased kitchen cabinets from a yard sale. (None existed previously.) Our families helped us replace and purchase new appliances including the once also missing washer & dryer.

Then we had the entire house lifted - straight into the air - dug out the dirt, and had a real basement foundation poured. We updated our oil tank and burner and created heating zones.

Outside, we took down trees and planted grass. We dug out an awkward hill to create a 2nd part to the driveway and used the rocks our house once sat on as a retaining wall. We electrified and repainted the garage.

And of course, we spent many an hour on finish work like paint, trim, closet doors, lighting fixtures, hardwood floors, curtain rods, dimmer switches, and many other things everyone else takes for granted. We are still working to complete all this final finishing, but happy to report that we are FINALLY nearing completion of all little things in all rooms!

In 2008 we began overhauling the exterior by creating a new french door entryway and building a farmer's porch and garage addition. We replaced our roof and then stripped off our siding and replaced with new clapboards. We then planted two new flowering trees and a maple in the front yard - our first major landscape purchases. I'm happy to report that here in 2011, the porch is nearing completion and the back yard is on the road to recovery with some new loam and grass. More plantings soon to come!

In 2012 we plan to attack the last MAJOR (emphasis on major) job in the house - the dreaded BATHROOM! We plan to first add a second bathroom in the basement. Then, demolish our current bathroom and rebuild it, adding a second bathroom on top for the upstairs.

And that pretty much brings you up to date. The battle continues day to day as we try and complete everything.