Remember the carport? It turns out when you take down a big cement wall holding up the earth, it’s a good idea to put something in its place….because it’s kinda scary when your backyard looks like this:

Our same guy that tore down the carport took on the job of putting up a retaining wall. This guy – who is super nice – also got very busy with his actual job toward the end of the carport project. So we figured that we could keep him on at his reasonable rates and hope that the project would be done by summer(ish) OR we can wait until spring to hire someone and have the project done by summer(ish). So we kept the same guy and most of the winter, our backyard was covered with concrete blankets to keep the ground unfrozen:

We asked him to put in drainage tile too, because that’s what caused the problem of the bowed carport wall in the first place. Water was just running against our house causing all sorts of issues, so now that the weather has cleared up, he’s been digging and burying tile and pipes. Woo! This is hopefully the last “have-to” project that we are doing in a while and the last “major” disaster area that we were aware of before buying the house. Yay!

And the wall is going up!

It’s about time! I have SEVERAL updates for this blog, but something special happened today that was extra motivating to write about.

Before we get to that, however, I should update a couple of things. First, we’ve moved in! On January 28th, our house of 4 months became the house that we lived in. It’s a great feeling. Secondly, the Pistachio Suite is now officially a future nursery! Because of that second fact, I spent most of February on the couch sleeping instead of unpacking and blogging. Now that I’m awake and feeling a bit more productive, you should be seeing many more updates here soon.

So today contained an AMAZING EARLY BIRTHDAY SURPRISE from my husband! We had decided that it would be really nice to get the upstairs bathroom redone sooner than later, especially when I haven given some friends a tour and had to ask, “please ignore that room….it’s…ummm…..on our list”. But in my mind, that is where this project was….on our future list. But Jesse started thinking that it would be great to get a contractor in there while we were on vacation for a week. Then he started thinking that it would be even better not to tell me about it. Talk about a gamble, right!? Luckily, he knew a guy from church that was getting a refurb business up and going and wanted work for this week. Then, our friend, Lucas, was going to watch the house for us and Jesse recruited him to let the contractor in and take pictures. YAY!

So here’s what I left:

This is actually quite a flattering before picture. It does not show how the stick-on pink tile was falling off the walls, the floor was stained and paper thin, the ceiling was cracked and stained, the window frame was peeling….you get the idea. Plus, the lights flickered and popped like an old horror movie when they came on. I know, I know….why would we want to change this??!

So, even though I knew this was coming down the road, the best birthday present was not being here during the demo, gutting, and well, this:

And in perfect, Chicken in Flight style, we solved another mystery – or found one. We had wondered why the floor in this bathroom was saggy and hot in the middle. It turns out, when the last people put a new floor in (several years ago) they had a choice between cutting the flooring or just covering up the heating vent. Seriously. Guess what they chose…A floor vent was discovered this week!

So here is the bathroom as of today. New floor – new vent – new sink – patched walls – lighting recycled from the old downstairs bathroom. To do: paint, replace medicine cabinet, reconnect plumbing. WOOOOO!!!!

Hip hip hooray!! We’re on a roll again. Thanks, Husband!

We hit the home improvement ”pause button” for the holidays, and we still haven’t moved in yet. I know this is shocking – but we found some more projects to work on! Yet, we are getting back on track. And since Mom put this website in the Christmas card, I figured I should take time to update the blog. 

Here’s the basic update of victories:

Our upstairs floors have been completed and refinished. They look awesome. Now we just need to get some new quarter-round trim installed around the edges, and those rooms will be good to go!

We finished painting the ground floor bedroom!

Our roof no longer has direct access to the sky! After several delays (months) due to scheduling conflicts with our handyman, our roof is almost completely done. We’re just happy that it is not a blue tarp any more. Check it out:

We also decided to take advantage of a winter painting special that a guy we knew was offering. We looked at the walls of the living/dining room and decided that:
1.) It was weird – the color was technically taupe-esque, but it changed throughout the day…sometimes with a purpleish/pink hue. It was also really shiny/slick paint.
2.) We were getting really tired of painting and patching walls.
3.) Let’s do it when we don’t live there and we can get a good deal!
So we hired this guy and he got the job done in less than a week. He mudded the cracks and did a great job….The same task upstairs took me three months of off-and-on work, so it was totally worth it for me to hire this done.

Of course that did give us another decision….what color?? And as Jesse and I stared at the swatches while in the condo, we looked up and said, “Well….we like this color!” So our new house will have exactly the same color paint as our condo walls. Here is a “during” picture of the walls to show the old color and the new…

Another victory is: CURTAINS!! I have had an extreme love/hate relationship with curtains over the last two months. It was a little overwhelming to pick them out. We also had to start from scratch with all hardware/curtain rods. But I am happy to report that all the living/dining/kitchen curtains have been pressed and installed. The upstairs hardware is ready to go, once I get around to ironing those curtains.

Victory #5: We purchased a washer/dryer off of Craigslist and my lovely in-laws helped bring that over yesterday. Two whole carloads of our stuff is over there now, so we’re practically moved in! (Cue optimism and wishful thinking)

I know we have had several move-in goals, but we really are starting to see the light of the moving tunnel. We just need to clean up more of our construction mess, install the quarter-round in the bedrooms, and have our handyman put in a new banister for the stairs, so that we don’t have a 10 foot free-fall to the ground floor. You know, the little things…

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Here is the story of the room that is next to the ground floor bathroom. It is where we spent a lot of our Thanksgiving vacation.

**Names of the room and past owners have been changed to protect the innocent.

Once upon a time, there was water damage in Voldemort’s Lair. “What should I do?” cried Voldemort. “I know! I will cover up the damage with a wooden grid and put in a drop-ceiling under it! No one will ever know! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

“But what about the fact that we didn’t fix the problem and there will be damage to the new drop-ceiling too?” said Snape.

“Quiet, you! Now go flash the Bat Signal…I mean….Dark Lord mark thingy…I mean, whatever we do when we cause mayhem – it’s ceiling time!”

Yep. I’m pretty sure that’s how it went. And that’s what we got – two crappy ceilings for the price of one. To go along with our motto of “We shall not band-aid this house any more!”, we decided to tear it down and start over. Go team go!

We also used this as a chance to update the insulation and wiring. With the help of Jesse’s dad, we now have more outlets & insulation that will actually insulate! Unfortunately, I don’t have shots of them climbing in the rafters to wire and tack fluffy stuff to the walls, but I do have this gem of Jesse discovering what insulation looked like in 1929:

With yet another wonderful contact from Jesse’s work, we have a new ceiling. I never thought I was the kind of girl to get excited about dry wall. This house is transforming me!

Here’s a little before and after shot of the kind of damage that was fixed. Unfortunately, I can’t find a picture of what was under the grid. Just trust me, it wasn’t pretty…unless wavy ceilings are in fashion.
Oh, and we double checked to make sure that the roof’s original problem was fixed, and it was. Whew!

This is the room in the painting process… We just need to finish the trim work and clean up and we will check another room off the list!

And then we shut the door and proclaimed our other motto: It’s better than when we started!

For a while, we had Thanksgiving as our move-in goal. Even though we didn’t make that, we were very thankful that we have the flexibility of move-in dates and our first completed room!

At lunch today, we discussed how the “before” pictures of the bathroom did not do it justice. In fact, I can’t find any pictures taken of the inside of the shower or shower ceiling, because it must have been too gross to photograph. Anyway, here’s why we are loving our “oasis of completion”.

This….

became this….

and then…….!!!!!

The bathroom used to be really claustrophobic. Here is one way that we opened it up:

Also, avid readers, remember the razor slot/magazine hider/linen closet? Here is that space:

Our bathroom!!!

While tearing down the carport, we also found this leftover souvenir from Chicken in Flight. Just remember, if we pack up your dinner, it will take 4 minutes. If we bring it to you in the dining room, it will take 10 minutes. Your choice.

Also, let’s play the game of “what is the combination of ________ & shrimp?”

We also found a fryer basket! Between that and the $.14 we found under the trim of the floors upstairs, this house is pretty much paying for itself!

Between school, my 10 week fitness challenge (extreme!), and working at the Chicken in Flight Headquarters, I haven’t stopped to write about it all. So now that the first trimester of 5th grade has ended, it’s about time for an update!

Our bathroom is almost done and it just needs another coat of paint. Well, it also needs window coverings and a door…but hey, we’re working on it. 

The ground floor bedroom now has a ceiling! That just happened, so I will try to snag a picture of that soon.

Here’s our new door – isn’t it pretty?

Jesse’s job gives us some connections to very talented people that also like to pick up jobs – like installing doors. We were lucky to find a very patient man to help us out, since this job – like many quirks about this house – tended to take longer than expected. Our original door frame was more of a parallelogram instead of a rectangle…silly door frame… so he basically rebuilt our door. And of course it allowed us to discover something new: A SECRET ROOM!

This space is just a walled off brick room with no other access than ripping off the door, so I realize now that I missed the most amazing place for a time capsule ever. Oops. We were slightly disappointed that there was not any buried treasure, but that feeling was vastly overshadowed by the relief that there weren’t any bones or bodies.

And now for the part that I meant to start blogging about in the first place – we have an inside that is almost in a condition to show other people! Hooray!

Here’s the deal with the upstairs. It needed a whole lot of love. The walls were dirty, the paint was flaking, and there is evidence that the upstairs used to be neon green. Here are the before pictures of the upstairs bedrooms. The first two are of the east room and the third picture is of the west room.

(This photo is from when we first walked through…with one single flowery chair…)

First, the old plaster walls needed to be repaired, so I became a pro at this:

 I am a putty master.

Next, the walls were washed and ready to be taped up and painted. Some lovely during shots are next. Shout out to the brother-in-law Nat and Mr. Lucas Brinkmeyer for helping with the painting. Yay!

And hopefully by the end of this week, our floors will be refinished too! Yippee! Here are the before/during pictures of that. See?? We totally almost have an upstairs.

Slow and steady wins the race, right? We’re not rushing the move and are enjoying doing the projects and not living in the mess. We’ll get there eventually. 

I promise to have some good interior shots soon of our actual living space, but by the end of the post you will realize why I am posting about the basement. There is something that cannot wait to be posted. Best find yet!!

Today’s work involved about 9 hours of painting in the upstair’s bedrooms and clearing out things in the basement. We are having some beams put in the basement to stabalize our 82 year old walls that are minorly less than perpendicular to the floor, and we had to clear out the workshop and storage room to get ready for this. Luckily, Jesse and his dad were able to clear out the shop and haul things away.

Here’s their work on the random storage room where we found an antique hockey stick and lots of old window parts:

The workshop (also known as our Mexican restaurant room) can be described as…..well……looking for an adjective that means awful and amazing and hideous and interesting at the same time. Once upon a time a guy wanted a shop and just kept nailing wood together until he got some shelves. And then he had more wood, so he just nailed it to whatever was there. And then he ran out of wood, but he had plenty of nails….so he just randomly nailed those spares into the wall. And that’s how we wound up with this:

Some features of this room:

Random drawer of hose parts!

Jars screwed into caps nailed to boards!

Board of nails!

More nails!

Scary old machines!

But the best thing that we have EVER found in this house….(drumroll please….):

OUR HOUSE USED TO BE A HOME OFFICE FOR A RESTAURANT CHAIN CALLED:

CHICKEN IN FLIGHT

Not joking. Jesse found rubber stamps and a newspaper ad print block with the logo for this restaurant. One of the stamps says our address on it as the office. This will now be our Christmas letter return address stamp forever. Check it out:

As you can guess, this totally made my day. We will be framing this somehow and going to the county records office to investigate. I love this house.

And even though we love this house, we sure are destroying a lot of it. Some more progress:

When we purchased our house, it looked like this:

I was not a huge fan of the bushes out front. My father-in-law gave me an electric saw to trim them. Instead………

And now our house looks like this:

Yay! Someday we will find something nice to plant out front, but for now I will just enjoy not having those bushes there. I also learned that electric saws are REALLY FUN.

I’m starting to think that Jesse and I aren’t very observant people. Because somehow, while walking through the basement before buying our house, we missed THIS:

That’s right….part of the ceiling in our basement is NEON purple/pink with a butterfly glued on it! In our defense, without the flash of the camera, it’s a very dark ceiling. My parents didn’t notice it either. Plus, before we bought it, the basement was packed floor to ceiling with the prior resident’s stuff. Okay, okay….I realize there is no real good excuse for missing this. I should never be a police eye witness for anything.

Just like the green closet, changing this falls very far down on the priority list. So for now we will just smile. Oh, and I double dog dare you to scroll up and stare into the butterfly’s eyes. It’s like it can see into your soul. Do it. Mwahahahaha.