Home Sweet Home

I realized I should probably do an update on the status of our home, and where we're all with all of that mess. It looks like the last time I gave you an update on the house situation was in early April, and I'm happy to report we've come a long way since then!!

March 2013: Here's some pictures of the damage, you have to look pretty closely to see it, I'll try to point out where to look:

The south wall of the house pulled away in the middle, at the ceiling
in the kitchen

Plaster damage in the living room ceiling

Blown out windows

You can see more damage from the wall pulling out
along the right side of the door frame in the stairs

This is inside the closet of the guest room, you can
see the gap at the floor and cracks on both corners

Guest room upstairs, you can probably see the most
damage here, the windows, frame and all, were leaning
out of the house!!

April 16th, 2013: The demolition began pretty quickly, they had to take apart the whole south wall to see exactly what the damage was to the wall entailed.

Kitchen Demo

Guest Room Demo

April 18th, 2013: Along with demolition came the dumpster! Which arrived in mid-April, right around the same time my daffodils sprouted up!

Dumpsters & Daffodils

April 23rd, 2013: Luckily, once they had the inside of the south wall exposed, they were able to fix the damage and did not have to take the wall apart on the outside too!

Kitchen wall completely exposed - Notice that boarded up window?!
Apparently the kitchen had 2 windows at one point!

A tiny bit of original wood floor peeking out at us

Check out the old school "red brick" linoleum that
was underneath the linoleum we had!

Original wood floor revealed, but not in good enough
condition to keep & use :-(

April 26th, 2013: More movement...

Kitchen stripped down to subfloor

Two tiles cracked in our downstairs bathroom, so the whole shower
has to be re-tiled.

Staircase & wall stripped down

We found more wood on the staircase & landing

Even though they didn't have to take the outside wall completely apart, they still had to repair around two windows & replace some of the cedar shingles that were damaged.

May 13th, 2013: Another thing our contractor took care of pretty quickly was new doors & reinforcing the door frames. Although they just replaced them with the exact same doors, it was a relief having the doors to our home secured again.

New front door

New side door

New back doorwall

June 15th, 2013: Although the damage to the wall was repaired pretty quickly, it was basically a hurry up & wait game after that point, as we waited for the city to approve the permits & come out to inspect the wall repair. That probably took about 3 weeks total, which we didn't love, but obviously had no control over. Once our contractor got the work ok'd & the permits, his team got right back to work, putting in insulation & drywalling our wall back together. 

New insulation in guest room

New insulation in Kitchen wall & ceiling

New insulation in Kitchen

June 20th, 2013: Drywall!!

Kitchen drywalled

Guest room drywalled

In addition to putting drywall on the exposed wall, they also began repairing/patching the drywall damage in other places in the house.

Dry wall repairs in our room

June 27th, 2013: One of the upgrades we decided to do was adding a wood floor in our kitchen. Eventually the wood floors in the living room, dining room & office will be sanded down & refinished, and then the floors on the whole first floor will be stained together. We're pretty excited about it, just one of the silver linings of this whole ordeal I guess! They also did the wood trim & door frames in the kitchen.

New wood floor in the Kitchen

New wood floor in the kitchen & new trim

Window & door frame re done in the staircase

Plaster cracks being repaired

Plaster damage repaired

Despite all the mess & chaos that is in and around our house right now, my flowers seem to be doing just fine!!!

July 9th, 2013: The latest & greatest is our new cabinets!! Just installed today!! I haven't seen them in person yet, but Dan took these pictures for me! I love how they look, but even more I love the fact that things keep moving forward!! 

Cabinets being installed by our Amish cabinet makers!

New spice racks!!

Having the cabinets installed has made us realize we need to get going on ordering our appliances! We picked them out well over a month ago, but we didn't order b/c we weren't sure when we could have them delivered. I think now would be a good time to go ahead & get those ordered! We are ordering a new dishwasher, stove & microwave, but keeping our old fridge, which we bought when we moved in (almost 3 years ago!). The microwave & stove will be stainless to match the fridge, and the dishwasher will have a white cabinet panel on the front.  We also picked out a new stainless sink & faucet, we're getting a gray & tan colored granite counter, and doing white subway tile for the back splash. We still need to pick out little things like hardware for the cabinets, and new light switch plates, but we're getting there!!

In addition to just being tired of being out of our home, things here at the rental are not going so great lately, making us REALLY want to get out of here!! In the past three weeks we've had terminix come out because there were ants, the air conditioner broke (and was fixed), the power went out, the fridge sounds like its working overtime, and oh yes there were mice in the basement!!! I mean come on!! How much are we expected to deal with in one year!? All I can say is I'm glad this house isn't ours, and I can't wait to get back to our HOME sweet HOME!!