I know it has been months since my last post. It's not that we gave up and sold the house... although some days that seems like a really good option. Nope, we got distracted with a Spring Break trip to Park City, Utah, the re-listing and selling of the Hightower house, and celebrating a college graduate! Many of you know that we remodeled 3 of the 5 bathrooms in the Hightower house and re-listed it at the end of March. We were ecstatic to close on that house on May 21st but there were so many things that distracted us from this house and my blogging about it. So I will give you the 50,000 foot version of what has happened here since the beginning of February. Then I will try really hard to write weekly updates so you can all see our progress.
Most of our work in the depths of the winter months was done in the basement. Matt's bedroom and the bathroom both saw a good deal of progress as did the fireplace framing.
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Eventually Matt will call this space home! It now has lights, outlets and heat ducting. |
The fireplace will be a great addition to the basement.
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We will add built-in shelves and cupboards on each side |
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We have also added a gas line and electricity here (but I didn't retake the picture) |
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Eventually it will look somewhat like this! |
The house had a bathroom on the lower level when we bought it but most of the finishings had already been torn out because of the water damage. What was left we had to tear out because it was really poorly built. We started with digging up the floor so that the tub/shower can be installed where it was intended to be installed when the house was built in 1978.
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Getting at the drainage pipe |
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Tub/shower drain pipe ready for the plumber |
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Bad plumbing and framing that we ripped out |
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Ready for the fire pit! |
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New framing on the bathroom walls and ceiling |
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Ceiling framing so new sheetrock can be hung |
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Mostly cleaned up and ready for the plumber to put the new stuff in |
A bit of work was done on the first and second floors as well. The messiest job that we did was taking the texture off of the ceilings in the kitchen, dining room, lower part of the living room, hallway and the office. We went from this:
To this:
It really wasn't that bad once we discovered that there was a sprayer (previously used for weed killer on the yard) in the garage that worked great for wetting the surface and then it practically fell off. Scraping it wet really helped cut the dust but boy did it make for some fun cleanup. Luckily I had some left over tyvek laying around so I spread it out on the floor, wet away, scrapped it off the ceiling, let it dry on the drop cloth and then swept/scraped it up and dumped it in the garbage. Not really that bad if you have the patience to let it dry.
We also spent quite a bit of time installing lights, re-wiring outlets and light switches and working with an electrician, HVAC guy and plumber to do the things that we are opted not to do ourselves.
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I learned how to "pig tail" wires. Who knew such a thing even existed? |
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Cutting holes for new lights in the kitchen |
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Ready for the fixture |
A really great HVAC guy fixed all the bad heat ducting in the house. Thanks to him, Emily's bedroom is actually connected to the heating/AC system. No longer does her vent lead to never, never land.
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Heat duct leading to Em's room |
He also ran 5 gas lines for us. My favorite one of all is this one:
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Gasline on the deck ready for the grill |
We also have lines for 2 fireplaces, the new cooktop (the old was electric) and dryer (also electric in the past).
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Main floor fireplace with gas line (yellow), electricity (white) and tube for TV/Cable cords (black) |
Our neighbors are having a wedding reception for their daughter in their backyard at the end of June so we took some time to improve things on the west side of the house. This meant completing some more siding and removing a broken down fence. At the end of April it was finally warm enough to get outside. We had to remember how to hang the siding. We quickly learned it's like riding a bike.... just get back on and it all comes back.
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Putting on trim |
Many people have asked us if the exterior is all done once the siding goes on. No, it's not. There was an option to get pre-painted siding but we opted to just get the primed boards. We will have the house painted sometime this summer. No, we are not doing it. It's time for some expert help to speed things up.
The other giant eyesore on the west side (besides the weed-filled lawn) was the falling down fence. We saved this job for when the kids were back from college and it just so happened that Matt's girlfriend, Kylie, was visiting from Vermont. She fit right into the chaos of this family.
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Is this a city road crew.... 1 person working and 3 watching? |
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That's a big board, Matt! |
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Prying the clips that hold the chain link fence from the posts. |
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Kylie doing her part. |
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Matt breaking out the heavy weaponry - pry bar and sledge hammer |
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Fire wood! |
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There's no shortage of "house parts" to burn around here |
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Matt and Grandma Nancy goofing around on the rolled up fencing |
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2 of 3 rolls of fencing ready to be taken to the metal recycle center. |
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Kylie, Grandma and Emily relaxing after a hard day's work |
This work was completed on Saturday May 17th, 4 days before we moved in. Moving in was our next focus but I will write about that in another posting. (soon, I promise).
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