If you like Peña Coladas...

Lowes of Seabrook, NH

2009-12-01T07:59:00.024-05:00

Lowes of Seabrook, NH has the most incredible customer service I have EVER encountered and with all the shopping I have had to do lately for both our bathroom and attic projects, I am really noticing how much the employees at Lowes stand out from and above the rest.

I will digress for a minute to rant about how badly I have been treated in some of the other retail locations I have frequented lately. What really gets me about these places is that I am quite sure they all work for a commission off of the sales the make and considering this, I have to wonder how they can keep their jobs. I have been shopping for tile lately; it's the part of these projects that I have really been looking forward to and it really burns me that these terrible sales people have taken the joy out of it for me. It is a miracle if I am even asked if I need help in these places and when I seek out a sales person, they couldn't be more indifferent and difficult. Now, maybe at 25, I don't look like I mean business(I think I actually look more like 16, so that could be part of the problem) - maybe they don't realize how much money I am about to spend in their establishment? Tile is one of the biggest parts of our "design" budget. Bottom line, I can't go more than 5 minutes in one of these tile stores without having the thought run through my mind: do you actually WANT to make this sale? Its amazing that some of these places are still in business.

The sales reps at Lowes, however, are completely the opposite. They are always friendly and helpful - they love seeing the baby and always ask about her when she isn't there. They want to know how our projects are coming and are always happy to advise us in their area of expertise when we are clueless on how to proceed. These people are certainly not making a commission of the sales and are likely being paid very little for their time and yet they couldn't make me feel more welcomed in their store and I am always treated as a customer should be treated there.

So, CEOs at Lowes, your employees in your Seabrook, NH location deserve a big raise and a Christmas bonus. Work ethic like that should really be rewarded!

The History of Our House (part1)

2009-11-05T16:47:00.024-05:00

When we bought our house nearly 2 years ago, Eric and I decided that an important part of our restoration process would be determining the original owners of our house, learning about who they were and then learning at the very least who, if only their name, the subsequent owners of the house were. Well, it turns out that there is a lot of research involved and many different steps in obtaining the information we seek, so it is only now that we are getting around to learning our house's history.

This morning I took a trip to the local county registry of deeds and researched all the deeds for our house back to what I believe is the first record - this being the owner of the land on which our house would later be built. And so, the story of our house begins:

On September 22, 1860 Hiram D. and Lucy F. Wentworth of New Bedford MA, sold 1/5 of their property in Amesbury for $333.45 to a William Proudman, who at the same time purchased land touching one side of the property line at "Sandy Hollow Road." The land was situated in an area known as "Amesbury Mills." Only 3 years later on May 17, 1863 William Proudman sold both the property on which our house is located and the additional land he purchased, to an Enoch Stevens.

Enoch Stevens, though probably not responsible for the construction of our house, turns out to be important enough to have some information given about him in 2 of the deeds I came across. I learned that he was a Shoe Manufacturer and seemed to have an interest in the town's development because I learned in the deed where his land is sold, (by auction after his death) that he "laid out" at least 2 of the roads in the surrounding area of our property - which roads they are are yet to be determined.

Now, at this point I cannot be sure if Enoch Stevens is responsible for the building of our house, or whether it is a later owner of the property who built it, because in the deed the statement: "a certain piece or parcel of land containing...four small dwelling houses standing thereon" appears for the first time. Its tough to determine if one of those four houses is ours, or if they are one of the others in our neighborhood or if those houses no longer exist at all. Because the property size is so large and some of the roads have either been renamed or no longer exist(like Sandy Hollow Road, mentioned above), knowing exactly where those houses were would require more research and not something that can be resolved from reading the deeds alone.

The owner who purchased the property and houses( in what was then known as Mill Village) on July 31st, 1869 by auction of Enoch Stevens estate was James W. Briggs. He is a very significant figure in Amesbury history, being one of the manager's of "The Brigg Carriage Co." While googling I came across an interesting bit of information about him and his brother:

source

Our house was later deeded to Edward R. Briggs who we believe to be James Briggs' son. It appears in the records I came across, that Alvira A. Briggs, presumably the wife to James Briggs, is deeded his estate on April 27th 1903. On this same day she breaks up the large piece of property she has just been deeded amongst what can only be presumed to be James' remaining family: Richard Briggs, William Briggs, Edward R. Briggs, George Briggs, Clementine Briggs and Arthur Briggs. Edward gets "one hundred and thirty five and one half rods more or less together with four small dwelling houses standing therein." The reoccurrence of the phrase "four small dwelling houses" makes me wonder if our house may be one of those dwellings James Briggs bought from Enoch Stevens, but there still is no way to be sure. We currently own 21 and a half rods, not even a quarter of what Edward Briggs is Deeded and we own one of the larger plots on our street, so it is a toss up as to whether our house is one of these four or if it is one built by Edward Briggs after aquiring the land.

Edward Briggs is another important figure in the history of Amesbury. The Briggs Carriage Co. evolved into a street car business which in the early 1900's was willed to the Southern Car Co. at High Point, North Carolina. It is stated in the property deed that Edward R. Briggs, is from High Point, North Carolina and presumabley connected to both the Briggs and Southern Car Co.

At this point, our house's history is then riddled with a number of strange deeds all around the same time. The property is first deeded to Richard Briggs by Edward on November 18th, 1907. It is in this deed that, for the first time, the description of property sounds like where our home is located. It mentions not only the street that we live on, but the nearby cross street. Then only 10 days later, Richard deeds the very same property to Kate Briggs, the wife of Edward Briggs. Then on September 26th, 1913, Kate deeds some of the property back too Edward who then, on the very same day deeds this property, 51 rods worth, to Ellen Briggs, perhaps a daughter.

Then only two years later on January 2nd 1915, the property which I have now learned contained both my neighbor's house and my own, went into forclosure and was bought by Robert C. Clark for $430 by public auction. Robert then sold my neighbor's house to Richard Briggs, thus creating the property boundries of today.

I have all the deeds for the house to present day, but have not been able to research and read the deeds entirely at this point. There seems to be some interesting information there, but its hard to decifer as a layman and will need some direction to understand some of the ins and outs of it all.

I plan to do many posts on future findings with regards to more recent owners of the house and the ones I have already discussed. I want to know: when exactly was our house built? Could our house be one of the "small dwelling houses" mentioned in a deed as far back as 1869? I will be visiting the local library and the assessor's office. I want to find old sketches of the house or old pictures so we can finally know what this house looked like when originally built and what elements were later additions. I think it will be a long time before I can have many of these answers, but at this point I feel satisfied knowing what I now know.

Discoveries

2009-10-18T10:02:00.008-04:00

My neighbor sparked my interest in learning more about my house's past when she shared a picture with me of her house, circa 1900 I would guess, and just a sliver of our house could be seen on the right side, enough to know that there was once a decorative widow walk
on the roof of our house and that the front of our house, which I had always assumed was an addition because of its awkwardness, was actually original to the house, but as an open porch - actually a beautiful open porch that Eric and I are very sad was changed. We hope one day that we can make the now mud room something that enhances our houses appearance and doesn't detract from it, but we have a long way to go before that happens!

This discovery made me want to know more; like who originally owned/built the house, could we see complete pictures of what our house once looked like, did our house have any interesting history. I knew we would have to go to the town library and the county's registry of deeds to learn most of that stuff, but I decided a google news search of our address might turn up something of interest...and it did, but not exactly what I was looking for.

Sadly, on February 27, 2000 a woman, one of the previous owners of the house, was strangled by her boyfriend who lived with her. She was killed in her/our home. Now the saddest part: she had 4 children ages 11, 10, 4 and 2. After making this discovery I looked for a few more articles about the incident and found that her boyfriend had killed her because he caught her with another man. Of all the things I had hoped to learn about my house this was not one of them.

Now this bit of information is something that we already half knew/suspected. We had two different people make reference to this, but until now had not been able to find any more information about it. When we were looking at our house our Realtor told us that he thought a murder had been committed here, but we couldn't be sure about it and it didn't really change our feelings about the house. Then shortly after Dalila was born a man stopped by our house who claimed to be the victim's brother. Because he wanted to come in and see the house, we had to turn him away( I wasn't comfortable with having a stranger in the house, especially with a newborn), so we weren't able to get any more details than what he provided with his introduction.

I know some people might think that our house is cursed or haunted, but I don't feel this way. It was a horrible thing that happened, but our bringing new positive energy into the house I think helps reverse any negativity from that event that could still be lingering. I also don't think her ghost is haunting our house, or if her spirit is here, I think she protects the house more than she haunts it.

A Few Improvements!

2009-10-12T08:23:00.011-04:00

Our new bathroom is taking a long time to complete and there is a lot of waiting in between steps, but that doesn't mean we aren't keeping busy! We recently have been working on giving our house a little more curb appeal because considering the vinyl siding falling off our house, the peeling paint on the window trim and the crumbling brick steps - we have become( if were not already) "that" house on our street. It only took 3 days to complete( well its almost done) but the entrance to our house is finally looking nice! Below are a few befores and afters and some explanations of what we did :)

Before

After with new granite steps

We honestly didn't have to do much to get the steps installed( we paid the granite company to do that), but the prep work was pretty intense. We had to demo the old brick steps, which was the easy part, then with a sledge hammer, remove the concrete beneath it. Then we had to level and compact the ground so it could handle the weight of the granite. We also had to get rid of all the old bricks and concrete. That turned into quite the event when the only place we found that would take the materials was a gravel pit - we paid a guy in an excavator

to scrape the rubble out of the u-haul trailer( hell yes we paid the $8.95 or whatever it is for insurance!) which was super scary - I dont think I could ever accurately describe what this experience was like!! You really don't know the strength of one of those things until you are in a car being pulled back by one of them as it scrapes bricks from your trailer! Maybe we were taking a risk by doing this - but after spending hours loading that thing up, we just didn't have the strength to unload it ourselves and luckily for us, we made a good choice - the guy didn't even dent the u-haul trailer! It was seriously crazy.

Ok so on with the improvements. You can see from the pictures of the new steps that our door is "a contractor special" straight from Lowes or Home Depot. This door isn't all that bad, but it really didn't fit our old house and because the do it yourselfer before us took all the short cuts he could, it leaked and let tons of cold air in during the winter. The water leaks were damaging the floor of our mudroom and we decided we couldn't go another winter with the door like this.

My Dad's friend, Steve, works construction and at a demo job he removed a wonderful old stained glass door that he saved for us. It has been sitting in our mudroom, waiting to be installed for about a year now and we finally got to it this weekend. This wasn't a straight forward install - because the door wasn't prehung we had to hang it ourselves, make sure it was weather tight and of course, make sure it looked professional. We had to cut the opening for the door 6 inches wider and because of this had to remove much of the vinyl siding. We have put up some primed thin plywood for siding( we are still finishing this part) as a temporary fix - we plan to take all the vinyl siding off our house next summer and restore and replace the clapboards underneath, but the mudroom was an addition to our house and it does not have the clapboards like the rest of the house. Unless we removed all the siding, we wouldn't be able to match the new clapboards up to the old ones and this would make the house look very funny once we removed the vinyl siding on the main part of the house. So maybe it doesn't look the best that it could, but we have to take baby steps towards the end result and sometimes that is going to mean temporary fixes. Ok, so on with the pictures...

Here are the pictures after day one of the install:

And here is the picture of the nearly finished project after day 2:

You can still see some of the black ice and water shield behind our makeshift siding and trim, but we will be covering that today. Regardless, it completely changes the look of our house - it really restores that "old house feeling." More pictures to come as we finish the project up!

Completely Off Topic

2009-09-19T09:31:00.002-04:00

I just have to laugh at this:

I just downloaded Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3( I am giving it a chance, but I have very low expectations for hip hop these days, so I don't expect much) and I couldn't help but LMAO when I saw that there is a track featuring Kanye West entitled "HATE" and though I haven't listened to the song I know its going to be about haters. Ironic much? Kanye West has to be THE.BIGGEST.HATER.ON.THE.PLANET(I don't think I need to remind/inform anyone of his hating ways)! I think his self absorption has him confused - people aren't hating on him, they are just hating him and that's assuming ANYONE cares that much.

Do you ever?

2009-06-15T23:56:00.003-04:00

Sit up late at night thinking about how you really should check your credit card balances but are to afraid that you have spent WAY too much? That's what I'm doing right now. Life feels very expensive these days and this bathroom project isn't helping...

Plus my sleep deprived brain allowed the man at the lumber yard to order us 8 feet of windows instead of 6. 50% fee to cancel order at this point so I guess we will have 8 feet worth of window somewhere in our house, but it won't be in the bathroom!

Ok enough late night rambling.

Laundry Room

2009-06-03T17:18:00.004-04:00

In spite of our plumber troubles, we still ended up with a great laundry room. We just finished it yesterday and it couldn't be better! Here are some pictures:

This is What Happens When You Don't Do It Yourself

2009-06-03T16:25:00.007-04:00

So its been a very long time since I last posted, but that's because its been along time since we did any work on the house! Right before Christmas we welcomed our first daughter, Dalila, into the world and have been so busy enjoying her and caring for her that we have neglected our projects. But now that she is a little older and we are more adjusted to being parents, we decided we needed to get back into it or we would never finish our fixer upper.

We decided the next project to tackle would be the laundry room, which would allow us to begin working on our new bathroom. My parents, knowing how hard parenthood can be, offered to pick up the tab on hiring plumbers to do this work so all we would have to do was the cosmetic elements to the projects. Eric was reluctant to give up on plumbing, but after weighing the benefits we decided to hire the plumbers we had always called in an emergency to do the project.

Initially we felt the quote for the work was a bit high considering how long the project was projected to take - roughly 2 days, one day for the laundry room and another for the bathroom. We had talked to other plumbers in our area and none were able to get working right away, so we decided the steep price tag was the price we ( well my parents) would have to pay for the project getting underway immediately.

Things did not go as planned, however. The laundry room took 2 days instead of 1 and when it was inspected it failed, so bringing the work up to code required another day's work. The bathroom ended up taking about 3 days to rough in. For us, this was not a problem; we were grateful to have the work done as soon as requested and the mistakes that had been made when the laundry room failed to be fixed right away.

For the owner of the plumbing company, however, this presented a problem. He now felt he was being underpaid for the job based on the price we had agreed on and without warning or discussion, charged us an addition $2500 on the last day of work, stating the job had taken longer than expected and had been "delayed."

The man apparently could not see reason. He felt we should be paying for the time his guys had to take to fix their own faulty work and for the fact that they worked half days two of the days they worked which made the job take longer(obviously). After an hour long discussion about it, Eric had to tell him we would discuss it further after the weekend. We couldn't see how this was possibly happening - we had signed a contract which he had asked us to sign. We signed it, he signed it and right there on the contract it stated that the cost of the job was fixed. No where on the contract was there anything about how long the project would take, it simply listed the tasks that would be completed for the amount listed.

Come Monday we received a call from the plumber's secretary about how we would be paying for the remainder of our balance plus the addition$2500. Eric told her we were still in negotiation about it and would call her back when we had reached a conclusion. Later that day I received a call from my dad telling me that an enormous charge had been made to his credit card, putting a hold on his card. He wanted to know if we had authorized the charge, which of course, we had not. Can you imagine this company, with out any consent, decided to charge the credit card which we had paid the deposit with?!

My dad put a stop payment on the card and I called the state licensing board because it was getting out of control. When speaking to the licensing board representative, not only was it illegal for a plumber to charge for work that didn't pass inspection, that they were not able to charge more for a job if a contract had already been entered into. These were things which common sense told me, but having the licensing board confirm it prepared us all the more for the next conversation we had with our plumber.

For an hour he tried to convince Eric we still owned him money and finally Eric had to tell him that we would not be paying it and if he perused it further we would not only take him to court, but we would report him to the licensing board and better business bureau. He stated he didn't want to go to court and that he would talk with his guys and be back in touch - we haven't heard from him.

Its sad that my parents gift of what should have been minimal time and hassle over this part of the project turned into something that caused us more frustration than it would had we just done it ourselves. We really are do it yourselfers at heart and I think this experience just further solidified that for the rest of the work that needs to be done to our house, we will be doing it ourselves.

Second Closet

2008-11-25T09:29:00.009-05:00

We are getting pretty good at closet building! This project took only a few hours over a weeks time to get fully installed and organized.

Before

After

After: organized and in use!
After: organized and in use!

First Closet

2008-11-15T13:21:00.008-05:00

Because nesting has taken over my life, I convinced Eric that we needed to work on the closets in our house. If I cannot keep my house organized before the baby arrives, how will I ever manage after? I figured if we worked on custom walk in closets, there would be no excuse for the closets to ever look the way they do now. We have 3 closets and so far the one in the nursery is finished. Check out the before and afters!

Before
After
After

Plumbing nightmares

2008-10-29T23:38:00.000-04:00

The complete remodel of the half bathroom has been a great challenge and learning experience. Needless to say I am not ready to quit my day job, but there is something satisfying about doing the work yourself. Many of our friends and family always seem to have complaints about how a contractor did a job differently from what they were asked to do. It is this very reason that we have decided to do many of our home improvement projects ourselves.

The biggest plumbing problem with the half bathroom prior to the remodel was the cast-iron radiator. This thing was old, rusty, smelly and unsightly. Removing it was a gift and a curse. Once it was removed we gained significant space in the room but then we were left to install a new heating element. Since the whole house has baseboard heat with force-hot-water, we decided to replace the big heavy radiator with a small 2 foot section of baseboard heating element with the small aluminum plates. This heating element takes up little space and can provide a good heat source for a small area.

After we installed all of the bead board, trim and baseboard; the toilet (which took 2 tries to get right) and the sink(which took a day to figure out. Pedestal sinks are trickier than you think) it was time to tackle the heat. There is one thing that I had wished I had not done for the heating. When we installed the floor I decided to drill holes for the heating pipes, where they originally were, prior to polyurethaning the floor. The theory was that we would work around the heating element, but when it came time to put the heating system together it became clear that the original setup was poorly executed and difficult to work with.

It took me a good day to figure out how I would get the pipes installed without burning the house down. The main problem is that the heating pipe actually comes out of a small whole in the wall which is not big enough work in and definitely not safe enough to sweat (solder) copper connections. Because of this space constraint I was forced to put together as much of the heating pipes so that I would only have to solder a few connections in the basement and avoid the dangerous hole in the wall. Because of my work schedule I had to do this work over the span of a few days and each night I would have anxiety dreams about plumbing. If you have every seen the screen saver that has the pipes running in all different directions and multiplying at an alarming rate, image dreaming that with a real project which you have to wake up to and deal with.

After much preparation I had decided to go ahead and put together the heating system once and for all. I started working at about 6pm and finished at about 12:30am. After sweating many connections, running out of solder, making a trip to Lowes just minutes before they closed to get more solder, and finishing the remaining connections, the heating system was finally ready to be tested. In my excitement I turned up the thermostat and waited for heat to come, but it never did. At 1:30am I gave up and went to bed. I still had the plumbing nightmare that night which was unsettling because I had just worked so hard to get the job done.

In the morning I gave the heating system another test and within minutes I heard the unmistakable hiss of water leaking out of a faulty connection. To my dismay it was in the one spot that I could not fix easily. It was a disappointing moment and for the first time I felt like I could have paid someone to deal with the problem and be done with it, but I knew that I could fix it myself. To fix the problem I had to take apart about 50% of the work I had done the night before and go out and buy some special copper fittings that do not require solder. These fittings push together and hold tight. I decided to go with this system because I could not image re-sweating connections only to have another leak.

The new system finally works without any leaks, yet I am still haunted by plumbing nightmares...I think it will be some time before we tackle another plumbing project!

About the duct tape...

2008-10-15T17:49:00.008-04:00

My friend Brittney has questioned the duct tape on the toilet in my "before pictures" twice and though the reason its there is not super interesting, I decided she was owed an explanation ;)

So, when we bought our house it had been on the market for a LOOOOONG time. It was also a foreclosure. Because it costs so much to heat a house in the winter in MA, not to mention the risk of burst pipes, owners who do not occupy the house often "winterize" it which means they drain all the pipes of water so they cannot freeze. This was the case with our house because it was bank owned and had been vacant for so long.

The plumbers put these bright orange stickers all over the house warning that it has been winterized and they duct tape the toilets. I believe this is done primarily to make sure that any squatters looking to live in the house temporarily know the water isn't working. I am not sure if duct tape would seriously stop me from using a toilet if I were a squatter but who knows!

So, Brittney, now you are in the know about the duct tape :)

Also, thanks for your compliments on the house - you are always so very sweet!

Picture Post

2008-10-14T18:50:00.005-04:00

I thought instead of actually describing the step by step of our remodel, I would let the pictures do the talking!

And stay tuned for Eric's very first post...it's currently a draft waiting for publication :)

Before Picture

Eric ripping it all out!
Remember "Sub Floor Secrets"?

Installing some new sub floors

Me installing the new floor!

Ok...Eric helped a little when my belly got in the way :)

It's electric!

The bead board installed
Even Tiger wanted to help :)

After picture!
After picture!
After picture!
After picture!
After picture!

INTERESTING DISCOVERY!

2008-10-08T15:33:00.009-04:00

While tearing out the back side of the half bath wall to remove the stinky insulation, we made an interesting discovery:

OUR HOUSE USED TO BE PAINTED PINK!!! The wall we opened up is where our house originally ended and where a very poorly executed side addition begins. I guess now I understand why subsequent owners covered the house in not 1 but 2 layers of tan vinyl siding!

A Mystery Smell No Longer!

2008-10-08T14:32:00.013-04:00

The whole point of the half bathroom remodel was to rid that room of a terrible urine stench that we could not eradicate through less drastic means. We had tried EVERYTHING we could think of and yet the smell remained, so in our minds, the only fix was to rip out all the floors, radiator and the lower portion of the walls, paint the walls and floor joists with BIN and hope for the best.

Well after doing all this and installing the new hardwood floors we felt confident the project was a success. Not only would we have a beautiful new bathroom, but we would have accomplished our primary goal of eliminating the smell for good.

It didn't take long before we realized that though the smell was almost undetectable, it was still there. While sitting up close to the wall while installing the bead board, I caught a whiff and knew we had a problem. Eric and I couldn't imagine what else we could even do to fix it after removing the floors, sub floors, parts of the walls AND sealing the entire room. What could the source of the smell be? Where was it coming from?

I sniffed the whole room and finally found a place where the smell was the strongest. It was right by a hole in the wall that was left for the plumbing. At first I was sure it was the pipes that smelled, but Eric noticed that there was old fiberglass insulation surrounding that area in the wall. When removed we realized that IT WAS THE INSULATION THAT SMELLED! There had been some in between layers in the sub floor and it was in behind the walls on one side of the bathroom - the side that smelled.

We really couldn't believe that the insulation had been causing the problem all along. Since when does insulation smell like urine? We googled it and interestingly enough, this problem is more common than one might think! Here is just one of the many examples that we came across:
http://www.ytmag.com/cgi-bin/viewit.cgi?bd=toolt&th=216180

After ripping it all out the smell is finally gone! But I am still in disbelief over the cause.

"Screwed"

2008-09-27T23:29:00.003-04:00

Our bathroom remodel was going great, until yesterday Eric had the bright idea to screw a screw ( a very LONG screw I might add) into the wall to hold a piece of beadboard in place. I told him I thought it was a bad idea - but you know boys with their toys; he was itching to use his drill ;)

Long story short: he screwed right into a pipe which immediately started spraying water everywhere! Luckily we were able to turn the water off for that pipe before any damage was done, but now our washer is out of commission and we are in desperate need of clean laundry!

I have a handy husband so it will get fixed - but what a set back...

Sub Floor Secrets?

2008-09-24T23:37:00.000-04:00

The Half Bath Project Begins!

So Eric and I have this little joke that started when we first bought the house. We were tearing off so much wallpaper and finding so many interesting things underneath that we would say in a sing songy voice when we found something of interest " walll paaapper seeecrets" to alert each other of the finding( yup - we are dorks - just accept it). We found wall paper covering anything from holes in the wall to more wall paper to just plain bizarre stuff( like a ruler?).

Now that we have started tearing up floors, we have discovered the house is full of "sub floor secrets" as well. The mere fact that in our half bath remodel we have had to tear up 4 layers of sub floor so far is indication enough that there are secrets to be found.

Besides the oh so fun beaver board that I mentioned in my previous posts, we have also come across 2 different of layers of linoleum, we can only guess date back to the 1950's. What else did we find from the 1950's? Newspaper used to level and dare I imagine - insulate? It was actually a pretty neat find. Its a Newspaper from our area that is long gone and one of the largest pieces we found had an article about Walt Disney. Its just a little glimpse into the history of our house and community which was an unexpected treat.

The project is moving along at about the pace we expected. It took Eric 3 days to remove the old floor and to put in the new. We are finally ready to start the beautification process - which is where I come in :)

Eric worked the reciprocating saw a little to hard...

Tomorrow I will be laying the hardwood floor, hanging beadboard and moulding and finally painting! I have felt so left out of this process. Usually I am in there with a crow bar ripping out the floors along side Eric but pregnancy puts such limitations on what I can do! Not only was the work dangerous ( Eric nearly fell through to the basement a few times but luckily was able to steady himself) but I can't even bend over to tie my shoes let alone rip up boards! I am, however, still excited that I can still at least contribute to the process...stay tuned :)

My baby ticker...

2008-09-24T14:18:00.002-04:00

is totally rushing it! I too would love to have a week of time pass in a matter of a few hours, but I know that I started off this morning at 28 weeks and 2 days and now I am suddenly 29 weeks along?

Maybe the ticker is trying to tell me something...

Rookie Mistakes

2008-09-22T18:45:00.006-04:00

Lately ever project we do goes very smoothly, but our most recent project reminded me that this was not always the case - there was a project where Eric and I screwed up big time. I got to thinking about this because we are working on updating our half bath downstairs. Currently this bathroom reeks of some sort of animal urine and we decided that since we are on a "bathroom update kick", we might as well tackle this one next. So, let me not get off topic, you can read more about the bathroom renovation in some upcoming posts, but for now let me tell you about the project we screwed up. You will see how the bathroom project ties in later...

Back when we first bought the house, the kitchen was our first major project. We had this notion that we would find beautiful hardwood under some old linoleum because we had that kind of luck in every other room when we ripped up carpet. This was rookie mistake #1; we assumed the best when in home renovation you should ALWAYS assume the worst and then be pleasantly surprised by anything better.

This mistake resulted in a weekend of me crying as I ripped up sheet after sheet of old linoleum finding only really nasty sub floor beneath.

Which leads me to rookie mistake #2; that sub floor was totally awful and should have been replaced. Half of it was "beaver board," a material I can only describe as compressed sawdust that rots if someone even breaths near it. After a grueling weekend of pulling up linoleum, Eric and I just couldn't see ourselves then also pulling up old sub floor. We needed a kitchen and still had hardwood to lay, not to mention removing the sub floor would have meant we would need to remove our cabinets that had been installed on top of the sub floor which were also full of all our dishes, pots and pans and food. We knew we were in over our heads, but we should have stepped back and recognized that doing the job right would have been better than doing the job quickly.

This mistake resulted in a bunch of issues. The first is that after laying the hardwood floors, we realized the kitchen was a good 2 inches higher than the rest of the house. We now have to make our own custom thresholds for the 2 entrances which hopefully will fix the "tripping trap" we created.

We also realize that the likelihood that we will one day have to rip up the floor because of a rotting sub floor is great. This is where the half bath renovation comes in. We are currently ripping up all the sub floor in the bathroom in order to remove anything that could be causing it to smell. In this process we found that the bathroom( which is off of the kitchen) is also 2 inches higher than the house because it has 4 layers of sub floor, 2 of which are completely rotten. Try and guess what those sub floors are made out of - yep that's right - BEAVER BOARD! Its a total mess and we realize that its only a matter of time before our kitchen sub floor rots to the point of needing to be replaced. On the scale of serious rookie mistakes, this was probably our biggest - "haste makes waste."

Our final rookie mistake is that we listened to advice from someone at a paint shop about how to match our new hardwood floors to the existing ones. The guy took a piece of wood, slapped on some stain and polyurethane and told us it was a "perfect match." Well, after staining and then sealing our newly laid hardwood floors, we discovered that they couldn't be further from a "perfect match." Every time I look at our kitchen floor I ask myself how we could have been so stupid. Eric and I usually have a great "checks and balances" system for our projects. He and I often have the opposite opinion on how a task should be completed, so we end up having to debate and discuss our projects at length before coming to a decision about how to execute. Why we both unquestioningly followed bad advice is a great mystery.

The kitchen project has become our great do it yourself learning experience. We screwed up at almost every junction in this project and we both know it. Things have been going so great since then and I almost forgot about the kitchen disaster. This bathroom project has reopened those old wounds. We again were faced with needing to replace the floor and again were disturbed at what we found under the linoleum, but this time we decided to do the job right, so when that bathroom is complete there will be no question of its value.

UPGRADE!

2008-09-16T21:15:00.007-04:00

So I am ready to admit it - Eric and I are perfectionists and we just couldn't leave the old vanity after the bathroom overhaul. So we looked around for something that was cheap and attractive that would get the job done. Luckily we found one at Lowes and within a few days the project was underway!

The very before picture of old vanity

There are ALWAYS interesting elements of any job we do in this house. There seem to be little "secrets" hidden everywhere just waiting to be found and this was no exception. Below is a picture of what we found when we removed the old vanity. Guess we have an explanation for why things were smelling a little funny - a half rotten book used to level the old vanity would cause that!

So after a few hours of figuring out the plumbing, caulking the sink in place and installing the new hardware, this is what we ended up with!

Looking back 6 months ago, we would certainly have hired someone to do this job. It's beyond rewarding for us to be able to improve our home and to be able to do it for $100 and an afternoon - UPGRADE!

Baby Steps...

2008-09-02T11:17:00.015-04:00

Work has been REALLY slow on our house lately. Since I got preggo, there have been very few projects that I can really participate in and without me, Eric gets side tracked and nothing ever gets done! Well, not this past weekend! We decided we had had enough of our disgusting upstairs bathroom( note: downstairs bathroom is also gross) and that something had to be done!

So before I even get started on what we did, let me tell you, this is no fantasy bathroom. We updated it so we could live with it while we create an entirely new bathroom for the house which will be more luxurious. Eventually we will do a complete remodel of the existing bathroom, but with a baby on the way and other priority projects - who knows when that will actually get done!

This all started Friday night when I announced to Eric that I thought something had died in the bathroom. It smelled really really bad and once we both evaluated it, we knew this was something that could not be ignored. Now, you know how they say "a picture is worth a thousand words" ? Well this is more of a "you have to see it to believe it" situation. The picture just doesn't do it justice...
We knew already that the smell that got this project started was probably a result of the bathroom fan which, although was originally put there to keep the bathroom smelling fresh, had been improperly installed and truly needed to be replaced. Upon removal, we saw it wasn't even hooked up to a vent and the mold growing in it made me wonder if it had been safe to use that bathroom for the past couple months!

After removing the fan we( as in Eric - he he!) painted the bathroom with mold/mildew resistant paint and patched some holes( yes i said holes) in the ceiling, which again were the result of the former owner's improper drywall installation. Then we installed a new fan and replaced and fixed all of our electrical outlets, light switches and installed a new light. While Eric was doing stuff my preggo body couldn't do, I worked on getting some new hardware, accessories and a shower curtain for the bathroom. I also built us a new radiator cover, and though it only cost me about $10 and some time to make, its a million times more attractive than what was there! We both had to do a lot of tedious little things to bring the project to completion.

So after a few days of work, the bathroom is finally in presentable shape. It no longer smells, its not appalling to look at and though its not our dream bathroom, it's baby steps in the right direction!

the house part 2: the work begins

2008-06-21T13:06:00.024-04:00

We worked for 3 months, every day after work and every weekend to get the house in to its current condition. Because this is our first house, we discovered how little we knew about the time, energy and money it took to renovate a house. We also couldn't have anticipated the troubles of owning an old house during a cold, new england winter. We had a pipe burst within the first couple of weeks and the biggest issue with that was, in a small rural town, it is very hard to find a plumber! They only see regular customers, and since we were new to town, we didn't "qualify" for service. Our neighbors were kind enough to call their loyal plumber for us, but unfortunately the side stairwell was badly damaged by the water - we are currently pretending that area of the house no longer exists until we can figure out what to do with it!

We went a month without a kitchen because that was the one room i really needed to have done - unfortunately it was also the room that needed the most work. We thought we would be lucky and that after ripping up 2 layers of old and rotten linoleum we would uncover the beautiful hardwood floors we found under the carpet throughout the house. BOY WERE WE WRONG! There were rotten boards, plywood, beaver board( its almost more like cork/cardboard than actual board). We decided the best thing we could do in this bad situation is buy and lay new hardwood floors ourselves. It was actually ALOT easier than i thought it would be! We also needed to replace all the appliances - none of them worked. Check out the results:

We did A LOT of painting! That is what we have done the most of - here are the befores and afters of rooms we have completed! First the entryway( both colors are mores subtle minus camera flash):

The new living room:

The dining room:

Our bedroom:

Our work has slowed - significantly - because when i found out i was pregnant with our first child in the beginning of April 2008, i decided it would be best if i take a break from climbing ladders and other equally risky activities. Also, Eric hurt his shoulder playing basketball( i'll save my rant about this for another post) so he recently had surgery and will be generally out of commission for the next couple of months. We still have work ahead of us, but we have made huge accomplishments for only a few months time AND we had the house appraised on Friday and the appraisal is coming back AT LEAST $100,000 more than what we paid for the house. We are satisfied with that for the time being!

about the house part 1

2008-06-21T11:46:00.017-04:00

So, before i even get to who Eric and I am, i have to share what has consumed our lives since October 2007. We decided it was time to try to buy our first house shortly after getting married last summer and in October we finally found the "perfect" house for us. Let me tell you though, this house was so imperfect, it had been on the market for nearly a year after having been foreclosed upon when we found it. We were looking for something first, that we could afford, but perhaps more importantly we were looking for a house that had something special about it and had just been too neglected for the average home buyer to see its potential.

During our first "walk-thru" of the house, it was obvious that it had not been lived in for a LONG time. Everything was filthy, animals had inhabited it and there were so many things that needed repair. The bathrooms were disgusting - it took me 8 hours of straight cleaning to get just one of the 3 bathrooms just to look clean, another 5 for Eric and i to feel comfortable using it. We didn't even attempt to clean the toilets, we replaced ALL OF THEM. I haven't even mentioned the fact that the house was HIDEOUS; walls covered with awful wall paper wall to wall carpeting (again hideous) that was covering fabulous original hardwood floors.

( a good example of the work ahead of us)

Our Realtor thought we were nuts to be interested in this house, but we saw its potential. It is an 1880, very large Victorian ( with perhaps some Colonial Revival influence) with some nice original elements, in a very good neighborhood on a quiet street. We just knew we could give it the face lift it needed and turn it into a place that we would be happy living for the rest of our lives.

( look at the BEAUTIFUL original hardwood floors)

After months of dealing with problems with scummy mortgage brokers which resulted in starting over with a different mortgage broker, then dealing with trying to get people at banks to focus on doing their job during the Christmas season - WE FINALLY BOUGHT OUR FIRST HOUSE! We started our move on dec. 28th 2007, only days before needing to be moved out of our apartment. We finished moving at 10 am new years day having not slept at all, after moving all day and night of new years eve. So, let me finish by sharing some more pictures of "before." ( I'll put before and after side by side in next post!)

So here it is!

2008-06-10T17:39:00.000-04:00

The blog has officially been created.