One Sixty: No More Hairy Grass

No More Hairy Grass

You know that point in which your grass is just waaay too long? It looks like hair, neatly combed down the hillside. Yeah... we've been at that point ever since the beginning of the summer when Mike fixed a lawnmower for our neighbor and then tested it by mowing the hill.

Well, lucky for us we now have a push mower to take care of that. Figures right? All the lawn tractors in the world - even one with a motorcycle motor on it, and not one of them is manly enough to mow the hill... it's just too steep and uneven. So our new, self propelled push mower is just the solution. That and the weed whacker - you know, for those hard to reach places.

Check yet another task off of the Why-Haven't-We-Had-Time-To-Do-This-Yet list!

Speaking of the WHWHTTDTYL, I'm proud to announce that we finally finished the hallway drywall! You may ask, what? Well, this was so long ago that I'm too ashamed to even look it up in the OneSixty blog post archives.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far oasis, we had a harry potter closet under our stairway. Then we raised the house, poured a basement, and built a staircase to the new basement under the old staircase... thus obliterating said closet space, leaving a gaping hole in the hallway drywall. We lived with the hole for who knows how long until our neighbor Rich helped us patch it.

And then... well, it sat more than half finished for I don't know how long. I'm even more ashamed to report that it took Mike about 10 minutes to sand and finish it, and another 15 minutes to prime it... and that time includes a trip to Benny's for a new paint brush!

Now we just have to paint it - hopefully this weekend, although you all know how that goes lately....

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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.

One Sixty

No More Hairy Grass

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