We've been busy...

I finally have a night to post an update and I don't have any up-to-date pictures of the new house! Everything I have is a month old. I guess I will post some anyway, but these are really not current. Right now the house is stripped down to the studs. There is no plaster and no lathe left. The floors that needed to be replaced have been removed, joists repaired, and new subfloor installed. Most of the framing is done - new walls and doorways where they should be, and old walls and doorways removed. A lot of work has been done to level ceilings and level floors.

Andy started stripping vinyl from the outside of the house this week, and stripping paint as well. It's good weather for outside work right now. We were happy to see that our front porch columns were intact under the vinyl siding. They will need some trim at the top and bottom, but that's all.

Things are a little slow at the moment because our carpenter has gone off to another job, and we can't begin electrical and plumbing until the interior framing is completely done. We are going to give someone else we know a call this week and see if he's available to help. If not, there's plenty that can be done while we wait for the carpenter to come back.

We are now budgeting about $30k more than we had originally planned for this house. Between missing foundations, rotten joists, unexpected contractors fees, and gigantic rotten trees, we have run into some unexpected expenses. Our original budget was a best case scenario, though, and I am not too worried about the extra money. Home prices in the neighborhood are doing very well, and we have plenty of wiggle room.

I posted some floor plans below. Basically we are going back to what the original floor plan would have been, with the addition of bathrooms and closets, of course. Also knocking down a lot of walls to give it a more open feel. Houses this old always had every room closed off so that a fire could be lit only in those rooms that needed them.

So that's what's going on with the house. Everything else is fine. School is fine, my job is fine, the dogs are fine. Not much going on with our house - we spent most of the day today stripping our new old front door. As in new to us but old in general. It still needs a lot of work. No photos of that, sorry.

I will try to post another update when I can. It will be easier when I don't have to do homework on Sunday nights anymore (that should be over in a couple of weeks).

Becky

This is in the hall looking toward the back of the house. On the right you can see that some of the wall is gone between the hall and the living room. This is an old photo - all the doors have been taken down now as well.

This is in the hall looking towards the front door. On the right is where the bedrooms will be.

This is in what used to be a bathroom and will be the pantry going forward. We tore up the floors and found that there was no foundation underneath. We had new footers poured.

Dirt floor...

more pictures of torn up floor

Andy, very dirty again, with a pack of "Blackblack" chewing gum, which seemed appropriate. At least his teeth are still white.

This is the original floorplan, sort of. When we bought it, it was split into a duplex, with the top half of this plan as one apartment and the bottom half as another. The hall was closed off and split up into closets.

Here is the new floor plan. You can see most of the wall between the hall, living room, dining room, and kitchen has disappeared. The bay window is only shown in this plan, but that's just because I didn't draw it in the first one. It already exists. We are adding two baths, one at the back of the house and one in the hall. What used to be the bathrooms in the duplex are now pantry and closet space. You can see the back bedroom is very small and it is the only one directly connected to a bath and has the big closet. This presents a problem, because no one wants a 9 x 12 master bedroom. So we decided to add a connecting door between that bedroom and the one next to it. That way if someone wants they can use the middle bedroom as the master and use the back bedroom as sitting room / office / dressing room / nursery if they want. The whole thing can be closed off as one large master suite. Or if they don't care about the size of the bedroom, they can just use that one. You can see that it will hold a queen size bed, dresser, and nightstand. This plan is not totally accurate - there are some windows missing and the actual square footage is closer to 1800. I am not exactly an expert at drawing these. The line between the living room and the dining room is supposed to represent the fireplace, which is of course about three feet deep. It will be freestanding between the two rooms and open to both.

Eventful Times

A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks. Andy turned 41. He quit his job. Our dog Lily died. And of course Christmas.

Happy birthday to Andy on the 22nd! We didn't do much - just had a couple of friends over. The 21st was his last day of work - what a birthday present! He will have to go back on the 3rd to turn in his badge and debrief, etc. But basically he's finished.

On the 20th, I came home from work and went to let the dogs in as usual, and Buddy came running but there was no sign of Lily. I went out into the yard to investigate and found her in the dog house. She was alive and awake, but couldn't / wouldn't get up or leave the dog house, not even when coaxed with food. I had to drag her out of the dog house and carry her inside. We took her to the emergency clinic and her temperature was 10 degrees below normal. The vet listened to her breathing and couldn't hear her left lung. It turns out she had a diaphragmatic hernia. This means her diaphragm was torn, probably as a result of being hit by a car several years ago before we took her in. Her organs that should have been in her stomach cavity had moved into her chest cavity.

Anyway, they said they would keep her overnight and get her warmed up, and in the morning, we would probably need to drive her to Knoxville for surgery at the UT veterinary school. We left her there and went home, and they called in the middle of the night and said that she had died. I don't really know what triggered it suddenly that day. Maybe the cold.

I am just glad that we found her before she died, and that she wasn't alone. If we hadn't taken her in she would have died on the street a long time ago, so that's some consolation. We will miss her.

We went to Indianapolis for Christmas and got to see everyone but Susan. An uneventful trip this time - no bad roads and no dogs to deal with. We came back late Christmas day. On the 26th Andy and I had our Christmas here. I got a cappucino machine which I have really been wanting and have gone through most of a gallon of milk already.

I had this whole week off and of course Andy did too. We spent the entire week tiling the kitchen floor. We are not quite done yet but almost there. See photos below. I am very pleased with it. It doesn't have grout yet, and I think that will make it look even better.

I will be back to work on Tuesday. I am not looking forward to it much, but it will be good to see everyone there again after such a long break.

I guess that's all. Hope everyone is doing well.

Becky

our little baby Lily

we will miss her

you can see the original floor here - it was linoleum made to look like brick

this is what the floor looked like when we bought the house

this is what the floor looked like after the linoleum had been removed but before we cleaned it

My friends Stephanie and Heather helping me clean the floor after the linoleum had been removed.

This is the plywood floor that was under the awful linoleum. It took a lot of work to get it just to this point. We painted this beige and that is what we have had for 6 or 7 months now.

floor in progress - no border yet

floor in progress - border is partially done

more floor in progress - border has been started - another layer of the dark tile to go

another floor photo - border is finished

another floor photo

detail view of the border