Projects, Projects, Projects

Since we closed on the house last week, Jeremy has spent every spare second gutting the inside. The electrical wiring needs replaced, and we eventually wanted to change the floorplan, so we decided to save money and do it all at once. He's tearing down all the walls & ceilings (the roof has a number of leaks that have damaged the ceilings), then Jeremy is going to frame in new walls where we want them. While everything is still open 2x4s, we'll have an electrician come in and rewire everything. Then we get to put up new sheetrock for new walls and ceilings and go from there. I keep saying I'll be happy just to get electricity and new walls. At that point, if we need to or want to, we can move in and slowly finish each room. I know Jeremy would rather get as much as possible done before we move in, though, so I don't really know when moving day will come.

It's exciting to actually be able to be working toward that goal, because the process of acquiring this house has taken so many months. Our big focal point is just to have it liveable and be settled in before the baby comes. I think (but our plans change on a daily basis, so who knows?) we're planning on just finishing out the "master suite" (except the bathroom - we'll just get the one on the main floor going), so that Jeremy and I can live up there, the kids can be next door in what will eventually be an office space off the master, and the baby's crib will hopefully fit in our master closet. :-) We'll eventually finish out the downstairs so that we have the kids in their own space with bedrooms and a bathroom of their own.

We are very thankful to have had lots of help this first week. Our friend Adriel came up last Saturday and spent a very long wet day in the rain helping Jeremy frame in some windows and doors that we are moving/eliminating and working on siding. A coworker of Jeremy's who used to work in construction has come on board to help us during the weekdays when he's not working on the tugboats, so the two of them have gotten A LOT done this week. By the end of today, we expect them to have the upstairs and downstairs bedrooms completely gutted and new walls framed in and possibly have some of the main level stripped down, too. Next week, in addition to finishing up the gutting and reframing the new walls, Jeremy will be building up a new subfloor to accomodate some of our remodeling plans. Previously, a portion of the garage had been converted to living space, but the living space was all a step down from the rest of the house. To accomodate our new plans, a portion of that garage space must be raised - we will still have a "sunken family room" but we need the main hallway to be level with the adjascent spaces. Jeremy will definitely have had his fill of destruction and construction by the time next week's work is finished. We'll also have an excavation company come in and dig all the way around the basement portion of the house, have a waterproof barrier applied, and then have the dirt backfilled. That will hopefully address the problem of wet, moldy walls and floors in that area and make it a liveable space again. We'll also hopefully get a trench dug and wire laid to convert our overhead power to underground power. Then, we'll just be waiting on the roof and the electrical. Once all the new wiring is in, we'll be stuck waiting for a stretch of decent weather (multiple sunny days are hard to come by in this region in the winter - it rains nearly every day) so we can get a new roof on. Because of the many leaks, we think it would be foolish to put any new sheetrock or insulation in place until the roof problem is addressed.

In addition to the expected issues that we are planning to remedy (50-year-old electrical wiring, mold issues downstairs, roof leaks, etc.), we have discovered a number of unexpected issues since digging into the guts of the house. Jeremy had discovered what he thought were termites in an outside wall and carpenter ants on an inside wall. We were very concerned about the bug issues, but thankfully, a pest guy came out yesterday and told us all the problem areas were old and that none of the damaged wood was caused by termites. We are so relieved and THANKFUL to not have to deal with an active pest population! Jeremy also made some other interesting discoveries related to creatures - there were a number of very large bird nests in the ceilings and there were a number of mouse nests downstairs in the walls. I suppose that in a 50-year-old house, some of that is to be expected, but it's really nice to know we won't have any "skeletons in the closet" when we move in - everything's getting cleaned out and dealt with. Our other major unexpected discovery has to do with the windows. All the windows in the home had been replaced with energy-efficient vinyl in the past few years, so we were thankful not to have to worry about replacing them. However, when Jeremy and Adriel removed one of the windows we're moving, they discovered that it was installed in such a way that water gets trapped behind the trim. The wood around the window they removed was rotten and had to be replaced, so that means we will probably have to replace wood around all the other windows, too. Hopefully, the wood won't be so rotten as this wood was and we will just have to readjust the windows and trim so that water isn't trapped, but it could be another major headache. Time will tell.

All in all, though, the house hasn't been that much worse-off than we expected, and Jeremy and his various helpers are making great progress. It's always an adventure to rehab a house, but we like it. The kids are big enough that they've been able to "help" with some things and they are always so proud of themselves. Now that the electrical is all exposed, we're keeping them away from the house for obvious reasons, but when we move into the next phase, I'm sure we'll have more jobs they can help with.

We'll try to keep you posted on our progress at regular intervals through the blog. We hope you enjoy this adventure with us.