New Doors, Old Floors

We scored an awesome deal off Craigslist! A gentleman replaced the doors in his home, per his wife's request, and was selling off some very nice interior doors - 3 bedroom, one hall and one set of 24" bifold doors, all for the low price of $50!

All came in jams, with hardware, no holes and they are even the correct color! Considering they somehow match all our measurements for doors needed, and he delivered them to the new house, we think we got a pretty good bargain! They'll have to hang out in the dining room for a bit, putting my wallpaper project on hold, while Mr. Ireland finishes tearing out the old carpet and subfloor from upstairs.

You wouldn't believe the stench of the old carpet! It was soaked with dog urine and who knows what else. The task of tearing it all out has fallen to the husband (thank you!) and he has nearly finished removing all of the subfloor upstairs as well. If it weren't for the particle board subfloor, we would be looking at a very costly redo of the upstairs floor. Suprisingly, there isn't any mold, which is a relief! One more day of demo and we can probably start construction of the wall to separate the upstairs bedroom from the living room.

The very best part of the carpet removal has to be the last bit. Under the carpet on the stairs we found wonderful hardwood steps! I thought that there was a chance of them being simply plywood, but I'm very pleased that they are not. A little polishing up for now and we will have a very pretty staircase!

Wallpaper Removal

O the joys of scraping off wallpaper!

You wouldn't know it, but these kids, with their tiny fingers, are really good at picking off the soggy bits left behind! We don't call it child labor, it's "character building" and "family bonding"!
Really, we think they will get a sense of pride knowing that they each helped to make the house into our home. Don't worry, they had scrapers and a spray bottle with just water and vinegar in it.

The wallpaper is not off completely, as you can see, but we made a good start. After realizing that some of the paper was being left behind the chair rail molding, I removed the molding. To my surprise, the revealed that the last decorator had put the bead board up OVER what is probably the original wallpaper! Classy. Sure, it's time consuming, but it isn't exactly difficult to remove vinyl wallpaper!

Sadly, I don't think I have the time to remove all the panels from around the room to remove the wallpaper. I really like that feature and if I removed it, I would not want to put it back up. The rail is not such a big deal, since it was going to be replaced anyway (though I could save myself some time there if it comes down to it). So the panels will stay up, covering the wallpaper and I will finish stripping and preparing the walls to be painted. What color?
Well, you'll have to wait and see....

I Spy....

So for fun, I am posting the first of our pictures as a kind of game. If you can spot the differences, you win.... my appreciation? Hee hee! It's probably not that interesting to you, but it helps me to see that we have already made progress.

Before the appraiser would sign off on this house, he had a list of things that needed to be done. Add that to the list of getting the utilities in working order, it became quite a bit of work for "Mr. Ireland." The house was originally a repo, and the bank that owned the house is in the lower-48, so that meant the work had to be done by someone! The furnace is over 50 years old, the plumbing turned into a sprinkler system when it was first turned on, and there were so many safety concerns listed in the appraisal! "Mr. Ireland" put a lot of time into making sure this house would pass the appraisal and it really paid off because most of the things required were already on his list for after closing! Way to get a head start, honey.

Okay, for your viewing pleasure, here is the first round of pictures:
















Front porch area, phase one. Not much is left to be done with the porch, aside from paint and replacing the trellis! The bathroom is also a phase one project, meaning that there will be a MAJOR overhaul after we get everything else done. This is MY bathroom. Im so excited to have my own bathroom! Living with 5 boys sometimes makes for an interesting midnight trip to the bathroom!

More later....

We're Home Owners!

After months and months of waiting, we finally closed on our first house! We are so thrilled! I have already taken tons of before pictures, so this might be the easiest blog to start ever. Here is what our house looked like at the time of our offer:

Beauty, eh? We have a LOT of work to do on this house, but it's ours! It's big, it's old, it's solid and it's ours! The real work begins after Memorial Day. The list is long and our time frame continues to get shorter, if only because my husband wants to move up the move-in date by over a month! It might kill us, but it is ours!

This year we agreed to focus on the inside of the house, as much as we detest the color of the exterior. It is far more important that it be ready to accommodate our family before the end of summer. I might be able to talk him into hiring someone to paint the outside this year, since we can agree that we both really dislike the color outside! We'll see.

Keep checking back to see where we are on renovations! We won't be having a housewarming party until it is completely finished. We're both kind of perfectionists, so things have to be done before we will reveal it to someone else's scrutiny!