Transformations

After many (okay years) of hard work we finally have a yard! Just in time for it to snow. In case you don't remember here is what our backyard looked like last spring

It took us all last summer to tear down the shed and clean up the huge mess left in our backyard by the previous owner. This spring we added top soil and tilled up our rock hard soil. Here is Jon leveling it with the contraption he welded together.

All ready for planting-- about July.

Here is what it looked like two days ago.

It has been so nice to have a backyard instead of a scary shed and a big mud pile. We've really enjoyed it so much the few weeks and hopefully all the grass will grow back next spring!

I've also been working on re-finishing my dining room table and chairs. It has been a big project but I love how it turned out.

Here is what the chairs looked like before (sorry, Britt, this is the only "before" picture I could find of the chairs)

Ugly huh? Here they are after I painted and glazed them and my wonderful aunt came and helped me re-upholster the seat covers.

I also redid the top of my dining room table. I bought the table for $25 dollars a few years ago because the veneer was chipping off. I sanded it down and painted it, glazed it and put polyurethane on the top. I love how it turned out. It is feels really nice to finally have a table and chairs that actually match.

Jon and I got a lot accomplished this summer and I am sort of glad that it is getting cold because then it means an end to projects. Oh, just kidding. We still have an upstairs bathroom to finish. I guess we'll have projects this winter too. Good thing we like projects.

Old House Delusion Disease

I just had to share this.

I found it on a house remodeling blog and when I read it I couldn't stop laughing. I read it to my husband and it just got funnier and funnier.

We both DEFINITELY have Old House Delusion Disease (OHDD).

The first time the real estate agent walked us through what is now our house we wondered who in their right mind would ever by such a disgusting house. Then we needed up buying it... even after the inspector's report came back with about 50 things that were wrong with it. Obviously we had (and still have) a bad case of OHDD.







We've definitely improved things but it has been quite the adventure. Our house was built in 1916 and as we've worked on it we've actually discovered some pretty cool things in our walls and basement. Maybe someday I'll do a post showcasing all our artifacts. Anyway, if you've ever bought an old house or done remodeling you will enjoy this.

Home Sickness

by Dave Barry

Old House Delusion Disease

More than once I have had my brain paralyzed by what psychiatrists call Old House Delusion Disease (OHDD). My wife and I bought an old house that had every known old-house problem, including termites, not to mention a grand total of one closet, and an entire room that had no electrical outlets -- a clear indication that the house was not built by or for people with a need for, say, lighting. Were we discouraged?

No! We thought it was quaint!

Here's how delusional we were. We had plumbing problems (of course), and in an effort to fix a leak, some plumbing guys were crawling around under our house. They emerged holding some yellowed, crumbling, rolled-up newspapers, which they'd found wrapped around our pipes, apparently as insulation. We carefully unwrapped one of the newspapers and found that it was a Miami Herald from 1927. It had a story in it about Charles Lindbergh.

So there we were, confronted with stark evidence that our pipes, in addition to leaking, were very old. It's like being aboard a boat in the middle of the Pacific and discovering that not only were you sinking, but also your hull was made entirely of Triscuits.

How did we react to this horrible news? We were thrilled! Charles Lindbergh! It was so charming! The plumbers were also very excited, but in their case it was because they knew we would be putting all their children through Harvard.

Our House Delusion Disease is very powerful. Usually, when you buy an old house, you hire professional house inspectors. These inspectors are very thorough: They spend a whole day crawling around the house, and then they give you a detailed, written report, which says "Do not buy this house, you idiot!"

Love Is Blind

Not in so many words, of course. The report breaks the house down by major defects, then sub-defects. The house, according to the report, consists entirely of defects. You read the report, but because you have OHDD, none of it actually penetrates your brain, even when the inspector goes out of his way to warn you about serious problems:

INSPECTOR: I want to show you something in the living room ...

YOU: Don't you love that room? It has such character! The molding!

INSPECTOR: About the molding -- I wanted you to see this. (The inspector takes a screwdriver and taps it against the molding. The molding disappears in a smokelike puff of wood particles. Then a large part of the wall itself collapses, leaving a gaping hole, through which can be seen, in the gloom, an exposed wire that periodically emits a shower of sparks, illuminating a dripping pipe covered with green slime. A rat darts by, pursued by what seems to be a boa constrictor.)

YOU: Ha ha! These quirky old houses! That can be repaired, right?

INSPECTOR: Well, I suppose it could, if you're willing to ...

YOU: I'm not worried about cosmetic problems, as long as the house is structurally sound. (You stamp your foot on the floor to emphasize this point. Your foot goes through the floor.)

INSPECTOR: Um, that's another thing. Your floor joists have been almost entirely eaten away.

YOU: (retracting your foot) Termites? No biggie! A lot of these old houses have termites! We can just have it treated by ...

INSPECTOR: Actually, it's beavers. They're building a dam in the basement.

YOU: (silence)

INSPECTOR: I've never seen that before.

YOU: (recovering) Well, the kids have been wanting a pet!

At this point the inspector, who has dealt with OHDD before, gives up and edges out of the room, taking care not to put too much weight on any one part of the floor.

You, of course, buy the house. As a true OHDD victim, you would buy this house if it were on fire. Once it's yours, you begin calling what will become a never-ending parade of highly paid craftsmen, who will spend so much time at your house that eventually they will become a part of your family, and invite you to attend all their children's graduations from college.

A Few Red Things

Jon and I went on a painting spree this last weekend and got a little crazy with the red paint. Our once ugly yellowish door is now RED

Our rusty old mail box (that use to look like the pole-- which will get painted WHITE soon) is now RED

Our new chicken coop/ workshop that Jon has been working on all summer is now a lovely shade of barn RED

and who knows maybe Baby Bird will carry on the trend and decide to be born with RED hair. It runs in the family. My great grandmother had red hair, but my grandmother didn't, my mother has red hair, but none of her daughters do, so maybe the RED hair just skips a generation. I'll let you know in about a week-- or maybe two... hopefully just one ;)

A Quick Update (Part 2)

So this part of my update doesn't involve any pictures of Asher, but it does involve some drastic changes to our little Cottage Cheese Cottage. The first being this new little building

A CHICKEN COOP!

A few weeks ago I went to Idaho to "babysit" my younger sister while my dad was on a trip, when I got back this little chicken coop was waiting for me. Jon built it out of some of the scraps he tore off the old shed in our backyard. It is wonderful! The chickens love it. Sometime we'd like to build a fancier one, but for here and now this one is going to have to work. It may be a little small for how many chickens we have (right now it is the perfect size but they are still only half the size they will be) but I figure they will survive and plus-- then they will be able to keep each other warm during the winter.

Okay, so I lied there is one picture of Asher. He likes to try to feed the chickens things through the wire-- like pieces of wood, metal pluming fixtures, dandelions, grass, balls, markers, and what ever else he has handy. It is a good thing for the chickens that they are behind the wire because Asher LOVES to chase them and try to pick them up-- which usually ends up with him whacking them instead. So I think the chickens are happier in their chicken run. But I can ALWAYS make Asher happy if I say "Go get your shoes on, lets go see the chickens" then he stops crying almost immediately, runs to the door, and sometimes makes "bock bock" noises. The chickens are worth it just for that!

The other big change at our house is that last Saturday we tore down the 100 year old shed in our backyard. The thing was monstrously huge and it took a crew of about 10 people with axes, hammers and crow bars to tear it apart. We filled two dumpsters and made 4 trips to the dump with all the scrap and junk. It was a big job and we just want to thank EVERYONE who helped us get it down. It was about to fall down any day and it is such a relief to me to know that I don't have to worry about it falling on Asher.

Here it is before the demolition

in the middle of being demolished

and after being demolished

Okay, I know it still looks junky, but it will get better. Our backyard feels HUGE now, I didn't realize how much space it was taking up. It will be such a nice space once it is fixed up-- but I've realized that I need to be patient. We can't do everything all at once and just like the rest of the house the backyard will be a work in progress.

So now you are officially updated on our life. Hope you have a beautiful day!

Laundry Room--- FINISHED!

Yippee! Our laundry room is finally up and running. It was the "last" (yeah right!) big project we had left to do on the house-- well not counting the yard-- and it is now finished! It took Jon most of Christmas break to get it done, but it is fantastic. He got kind of carried away with it though. We initially needed a five gallon bucket with a sump pump in it to pump the water from the washers into the sewer line, but with the true spirit of a water engineer Jon had something much bigger in mind. He dug a big sump pit 5 feet deep (he got WAY carried away with the digging) and bought a fancy pump that can pump 100 gallons of water 30 feet into the air (not that we needed it to do that) and rigged up the fanciest plumbing I've ever seen. His hope is that in the future we will be able to drain all the water from our bathtub and sinks into the pit, treat it and then use it to water the lawn. Here is what the room looked like before ( it use to be an old root cellar)

and what it looks like now!

It is really nice to have laundry capacities in our house now, even though we VERY much appreciate everyone who let us do our laundry at their house for the past 7 months. I especially LOVE having two washers and dryers. We had a set before we bought the house and then the house came with a set. I was going to give one set away, but Jon's unlce mentioned that we could keep them both and have our own little laundry mat. I think that was the best idea ever. Laundry gets done SO much faster! Also, we rigged up a laundry shoot from our bedroom to the basement. When we tore the floor out in our room we found there was already a hole in the floor and decided that instead of patching it up we would utilize it. I am super exicited, even though I am a little terrified that my kids are going to jump down it. I think I saw a Resuce 911 one time where a little girl got stuck in the laundry shoot and I have been traumazited ever since. But ours isn't very long so I don't think I have to worry about anyone getting stuck, and I guess I'll just have to reconcil myself to the fact that it will get played with. Here is a picture of Jon's sump pit before he poured concrete in. I have to admit I was skeptical about it, but it works amazing. I am slowly learning to trust my husband's ideas, they always seem to work out better than I could ever imagine.

Before and After

The long awaited BEFORE and AFTER pictures of the Cottage Cheese Cottage! It isn't totally finished yet, but we got our new windows and blinds (for most of the rooms) and I feel like the house is FINALLY to a point where I'm willing to say that it is "finished." I've realized that with a house there will ALWAYS be some project that needs to be completed.

So... drum roll... after three months of hard work, numerous marital squabbles, way too much dust, and several unexpected set backs.... HERE IS THE almost COMPLETED COTTAGE CHEESE COTTAGE! (if you don't understand the name, click here and here)

The Living Room

Before:



After:



This room had casino style carpet. It was so old and nasty that when we pulled it up to refinish the hardwood floor, the carpet pad had rotted to the floor. It was a PAIN to scrap off. Also, when we pulled off the wall paper we also discovered that the original walls had been painted the same color we were already planning on painting them. That has actually happened several times, we feel like we are just restoring the house back to how it originally was!

The Dining Room

Before:



After:



This room had the least work to do on it, we just refinished the floor, painted the walls and added the antique wood burning parlor stove-- which I consider the BEST CLASSIFIEDS FIND EVER!

The Kitchen

Before:



After:



I swear that the previous owner of this house NEVER cleaned-- EVER. When I pulled the stove out there was about an inch of grease and grime caked on to it. The cupboards were disgusting and it took a VERY long time to clean them and paint them. We just painted over the wood paneling on the walls.

The Bathroom

Before:



After:



We decided to keep the purple tub, 1) because it would have been too hard to get it out, 2) because it would have been hard to find a new tub that fit, and 3) because it is actually a really neat old tub. It was the ultimate test on our interior decorating skills (which I have to admit are pretty sad), to try to find colors and tile that didn't' clash with the purple tub. The sink stand is an old sewing table we found at an antique store. Oh, and we got rid of the purple sink and the half hot pink/half purple toilet-- which sounded like a train engine when it flushed. They are outside in the backyard and next summer I am going to plant flowers in them!

The Master Bedroom

Before:



After:




I think this is the room that has transformed the most. I really don't have a good picture of how HIDEOUS this room was before. You can kind of see in the top picture the awful closet (that they used as the laundry room) and the red shag carpet. The carpet was SO nasty, I don't think it had ever been vacuumed and I am certain it had creatures living in it. We basically had to tear this room apart. We tore off all the lathe and plaster and put up new sheet rock, and rebuilt the closet, doors and windows. We still need to finish painting the closet doors and build the top ones. We moved the laundry room to the basement. Don't you love our beautiful window treatments!

The Spare Bedroom/Office

Before:



After:



This room had blue shag carpet, which once again I don't think had EVER been vacuumed. The wallpaper was fused to the wall and I couldn't get it off. We ended up just painting over it, which worked REALLY well. You can't really tell in the picture, but the paint color is quite different from the other blue in the house. I couldn't decide what color to paint this room; so when were at Lowes I held up three different color samples to Asher. This is the one he grabbed for-- and that my friends is about the extent of my interior design abilities!

The Nursery

Before:



After:



I don't have a good picture of what this room looked like before, but it looked alot like the Office room. It had the same blue shag carpet with creatures in it, and some of the same wallpaper (most of it had already been painted over). My little sister suggested this color and I really love it. It just happens to match his crib set perfectly.
Oh, and the dresser is an antique that the previous owner left. They also left the antique bed that is in the office. Our stairs are REALLY narrow and steep and I don't think they wanted to try to get the down the stairs. We sure didn't mind!

The Basement

Is not finished and is kind of scary and creepy.
We are going to set up a laundry room down there, and hopefully sometime will get a food storage room and sewing room set up. It will definitely be a future project. Oh, but we have found several treasures in our basement. Like old, old, old Mason canning jars, an old bug sprayer, some really neat old locks and keys, and a NEW pressure cooker! It is really fun to learn the history of our house. It was built in 1916 and lots of the people in our ward have lived in this neighborhood their whole lives and can tell us about the people that were here before. I guess one of the original children who grew up here was nick-named Squirrel! I think when I get the chance I am going to interview people and research a bit so I can write a history of our house.

TA DA!
And that my friends, is our new house!

Like I said it still has some work to do, but it has come SO far. It is funny, but when Jon and I first looked at this house, we thought it was nasty and gross (which it was) and couldn't see how anyone in their right mind would buy it. But when we got home that night it was all we could think about. I think the real estate agent was surprised when we told him we wanted to make an offer on it. It just felt right, and it seemed like miracle after miracle kept happening so that we could get it.
Despite the stress of the last few months, it has really been a lot of fun working on the house with Jon. I think my sister-in-law, who has remodeled 2 houses with her husband, gave me the best advice "Try not to hate each other." I pass that advice along to anyother couple who undertakes a remodeling project. :) I told Jon that we are staying in this house long enough to get some good equity on it-- so that we don't have to buy a fixer-upper next time!