Slow But Going

Here's the latest. It will be easiest to give the update through pictures.


This is the first half way finished project. That may not sound like a noteworthy milestone, but all our projects require some sort of demolition/preparation in order to even begin any improvement. This is the floor in the laundry room. It was partially gone and the plywood underneath it was rotted. Derek pulled the entire floor up. He thought he was only going to have to pull up the laminate and maybe replace the bad part of the plywood. He ended up sawing through like 4 different layers of floor!

This is the dining room. It's stripped, puttied, and sanded. All of those white lines are cracks in the plaster that I had to fill. This is the second project that is half way finished. The next steps will be to primer and paint. After I took these pictures I put a sample of the color we picked out on the
wall. We think it's going to turn out really good!













This is the bedroom before demolition.




This is during and after demo.













That picture isn't blurry, it's dust! One wall down and one to go! Our goal is to have the demo done in the bedroom so that the guys can get as much done as possible during our work weekend in a couple weeks. We need to build our closet and after that it's on to "smaller" things like stripping wallpaper, putting in carpet, filling cracks, painting, etc. Eventually we will expand the tiny bathroom too.

So progress is slow but it's progress.

The Adventure Begins

Derek and I recently made two big decisions/commitments (not the New Year type). First we bought a house, and then we decided to start a blog. Both took a lot of thought and discussion about the level of devotion and consistency :)

The house we bought needs a lot of TLC and a friend suggested we start a blog to showcase the evolution of the house into our home since all of my family and many of Derek's friends sadly don't live close to us. The house was officially ours on January 7th. We bought it because we both felt it had a lot of character and potential, and most importantly because Derek's dad is a contractor which meant an endless supply of expertise and the ability to get materials for a great price. It was built in 1936 which we both love, but hasn't really been updated a whole lot, which weirdly enough we both liked also. This will definitely be a process. We will be doing the work mostly on weekends and holidays. Derek is teaching History and Driver's Ed before and after school while completing his masters thesis this month. I am starting student teaching in February and will be very busy by the end of the semester. We're both resolved to do what we can when we can and are both excited about accomplishing it together.

We have a laundry list of things we want to do for just about every room. The house was a foreclosure so even the basic maintenance has been neglected. Our first project, which we started even before we had the keys, was to clean up the yard. We raked leaves, cleaned gutters, and trimmed bushes. In the process we are pretty sure we found leaves that fell off the tree in 1936. Derek's brother Andrew came over and helped us a lot. He's eternally positive. What 18 year old wants to do yard work in someone else's yard, but he never complained even when it started raining.

This project is far from finished. There are still bushes and trees to be trimmed and pulled out, but it's a great yard even now so it will be a long term project.

Next, I began working on the dining room. The wall paper needed to be stripped and the walls prepared to paint. I bought a wallpaper steamer which has helped a lot but I'm still in the middle of that project and am hoping to be ready to paint it by next week.

So this is the beginning. We will be posting things as they are finished, or at least when we make progress that is worth mentioning. We will also be having a family and friends weekend sometime in February when we hope to get a lot done with the help of anyone who ends up showing up which at this point is only my family. We will definitely have something that is blog worthy after that, or at least we better. Future posts won't be this long, we promise :)


Us celebrating with champagne the day we got the keys with our friends John, Jill, and Adam. The candle and bowl with fruit are our first house warming gifts!