Demolition Derby

A status report from our second weekend at our new (old) house...

Here is the downstairs 1/2 bath when I left for work Friday morning. Steven had just removed the washing machine from that back corner, and was fixin' to do a LOT more.

The same little bathroom, on Saturday evening...
And, finally, after a weekend of doing the Demolition Dance with Steven...
With some help from a Mister Radl, he demo'd the whole room and also took out the wall that was separating the bathroom from the kitchen. The plan is to steal a couple feet from that kitchen area (which will eventually become the pantry) so there will be room to install a simple shower stall in the back corner of the bathroom...crucial in a house with only 1 full bath. And with all of the debris from the bathroom demo, the dumpster is O-fficially FULL...
And on my end, I finished scraping the adhesive off of the floor of our future bedroom, which also called for the careful excision of approximately 1 million staples, and finally, removal of the tack strip. (Which, btw, was installed as if it needed to survive a nuclear holocaust. BIG nails, in addition to the tacks, about every 5 inches. Next time you encounter a carpetinstallerman, kick him in the shin for me.) Awesomely, my mom (aka: the wallpaper czar) went to town on the wallpaper in there, removing all of the vinylized portions, and about 1 wall's worth of the paper backing.Now we just need to talk to our floor guy about refinishing the floor, and I need to focus on removing the rest of the paper backing & adhesive on the walls. Apparently hot water with fabric softener is the trick (per the czar). The BR as it stands right now:
And using that method with great success, my BIL Brian, removing the wallpaper in the parlor...
I'd say it's about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way done, and then we'll figure out whether we can just prime it or we need to do a quick skim coat over the plaster. So excited to paint this room! I already have a "vision". :)
It was beautiful out this morning, so I decided to get some garden time in. (Which means the wallpaper removal in our BR is not as far along as it could be. But it was totally worth it.) I did some weeding around the lupine growing behind the house...
And I planted an impatiens that my grandmother brought up for me under the big maple tree in the side yard. Hopefully this puppy survives...I'd be quite mortified if the first thing I try to plant croaks on me!
I particularly love this impatiens, because it has double blossoms, which look really full and almost like mini roses. Pretty, yes?

Well that's it for tonight, but I'll be posting again soon...

We Own A House!

Well, a mortgage anyways, which is good enough for me.

Anyways, it's awesome! We are so happy to finally be homeowners, and furthermore, this house was definitely "the one" for us. (HA! Wait til you see the state it's in, you'll think we're nuts.) There's so much to do, and so much to write about--but not enough time...so for now, a bunch of pics from our first weekend in OUR house:

The Happy Homeowners

Not the most flattering shot, but such an event must be documented, so whatevs!

One of my favorite parts of the house--the front staircase with the original woodwork. (BTW, the painting is the wedding portrait of the previous (late) owner's parents, painted by her younger sister. More about that in future posts.)
This house was an estate sale, and we ended up getting the house with ALL of the contents. Consequently, we spent the first 2 days of homeownership sorting & clearing (as seen below). We managed to fill a 15 cubic yard dumpster in that time! But, we also "inherited" some pretty nice stuff that we'll either keep or sell at auction to help fund our renovations. The auctioneer is coming this weekend, so hopes are high that we have some treasures!
Steven checking out the oak HW floors on the first floor...I can't WAIT to tear out that nasty wall-to-wall carpet!
Caution: Biohazard. Steven scrubbing the upstairs shower, which had chunky, crusty black stuff growing on the grout. Looks pretty good now, for an ancient bathroom. (Second on our major renovation list.)
Pulling up the w2w carpet in one of the bedrooms, to reveal fir HW floors. But don't you just LOVE that purple carpet? ::gag::
And this is my current project--liberating the fir floor in our future bedroom from some mystery adhesive/binder that was used when they put the w2w carpet in, probably about a thousand years ago. Some of it is really brittle and scrapes off with little effort. Other parts have to literally be CHISELED off. Hoping to wrap this up this weekend and start the wallpaper removal, as we want to have this room completely done ASAP. We need a nice room to retreat to when the workzone gets to be too much! :)
The 4th bedroom (our future office) after clearing out all the junk and tearing out the orange/yellow/brown shag carpet:
Our luxurious accommodations until the bedroom is ready...twin air mattresses on the living room floor. What, no mint on my pillow? I can't work like this!!! ;) ;) ;)

Stay tuned...