Let there be light!!!

Notice anything different?

For the first time in several months, we have lights!!!!!!!!!!! (!!!!!!!)

We have lights in the basement and the attic, and it only took one weekend.  ONE WEEKEND. 

We bought a ceiling fan for the playroom upstairs and are hopeful that we won't actually be threading new wiring through the plaster, just making new connections and putting new outlet boxes on. So we could be ready to paint in the bedrooms in another week or so. 

SQUEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

*That's the Kid's new-to-him bedframe in the picture above. $100 on Craigs List. Solid vintage brass. Score!

Also, I painted the exterior doors. Palladian Blue, Benjamin Moore. Apparently I suck at cutting in so I never took real pictures for you. See how the angle of the shot completely obscures my crappy edging?

Not all our internet purchases are happy ones, unfortunately. 

But I got a great deal and fast shipping on one half of a Gerber Viper toilet with elongated bowl! I'm going to order the tank tonight but apparently I need a fair amount of extra pieces and such. And a toilet seat. I'll have to consult The World's Most Meticulous Plumber before we make our weekly (or thrice weekly, depending) run to Menards.

We left the attic light on because 1) we can! and 2) you have to climb into the attic to turn it off and 3) we have the fancy ugly florescent bulbs so it's using a minuscule amount of power and 4) it's really nice to have the house look inhabited. With a broken window. Cause we keep it so classy like that. 

Outdoor Update

We've been making a lot of interior progress - pipes! Wires! Boxes! More insulation floating from the attic! - but lately the outside things have been a little more photogenic. 

The Mr. bought himself a new toy. Because he was going to cut down the branch using just the pole? In the dark? With me and the Kid to help? Or something more deceptively logical yet equally implausible.

So of course Casey came over and was dying to try it. His kid helped the Mr. hold the rope and they managed to get that branch down. It was completely hollow in the middle, of course. Unfortunately (?) the tree hasn't toppled over yet so we're still applying for permits and such to get it taken down. 

Casey really came over to work on the inside of the house. There goes the water heater. 

We don't have a lot of trees at our old house (85% of the reason we need to move) so the Kid has only experienced leaf piles at Grandpa's house. Which he LOOOOOOOVES. Total win that we could make one happen in the front yard. 

You would think with all the Pinterest research that I do, I would have realized that two doors = two wreaths. Oh well. It was a fun fall break craft project that the Kid and I whipped out in half an hour or so. I was sober when I took this picture. Seriously.

We had a bit of a challenge in that we have no porch lights (nor any lights except work lights on extension cords for that matter) and it was time for trick or treaters! Our original plan was to create tombstones for the front yard, but our expectations were a little high and there wasn't time to craft them appropriately. 

The Kid and I trawled the Target aisles for weeks trying to figure out what we could do. We ended up going with one large spider web light and a longer, three swag spider web light. The lanterns were end of summer clearance at Target ($4 each, maybe?) and have proven to be super useful in our pioneer lifestyle. We've given notice on the storage unit and the first load of tubs to come over were the Halloween decorations. The fake jack o lantern is from my parents house (I only know that because my mom wrote her name on the bottom... no idea why) but we use the little Target battery tea lights inside. 

We had between 150-200 trick or treaters, so it was well worth the effort! Such a great night, and the Kid had a fantastic time walking around the neighborhood and seeing his friends in their costumes. It was a timely reminder of why we want to live in this house and how these months of hard work and bleeding money are going to pay off. 

Eventually.

Outside excitement

Kite flying in the park

After at least two months of phone calls, visits, contractors, assistant managers, etc., we have a new door! I say A new door, because naturally they brought a door for the back that was about 4" too short. Despite the fact that we paid them to measure the doors, and special ordered the doors, etc. etc. So they just extended the door jamb to make it fit and are going to reorder the correct size door and reinstall it for free. In four weeks. Of course. They also spent a lot of time on replacing the garage door, but I didn't get a picture of that. Way to go, blue store.  

This is the door on the side of the house. I wanted something with some glass to get some light on the stairs but not so much glass that I would have to put a security door on it. I had about three options in the special order size. I hope this is a workable compromise. I also distinctly remember saying I wanted the nickel hardware, and yet this brass was installed. Oh well. It is a door. A special order, super short door. I want to paint it green. 

After several weeks of absence, our masons have returned and started building this scaffolding in preparation for fixing the chimney. We hope to see some more progress on the masonry soon. 

In less visible news, round one of new electric has been installed, so we have a new line from the pole, a new service, and new circuits for all the mechanicals and the eventual alarm system. 

Downtime

We've reached a point where we just don't have the strength or the energy to push through, so we've had a few days off from the house. It feels awful to not be making progress, but it also feels awful to push yourself farther than you have the means to go. It's a holiday weekend and we have a lot to celebrate, but I had to spend one full day on the couch last week from exhaustion/allergen overload and the Mr. jacked up his arm after his fight with the laundry chute and it still isn't right. So we're trying to rest up and relax so that we can make a big push next week. We also need a little time for our heads to catch up with our hands, and make a lot of decisions about what comes next and how our priorities play out.

All that being said, we actually made a lot of progress this week:

• Dining room side of the plumbing wall down
• Laundry chute gone
• All the carpet, tack strips and staples gone from the ground floor and stairs (only the landing upstairs still has carpet pad and tacks/staples)
• Mold remediation complete!
• Porch swing (HUZZAH!!!)
• Mason has delivered replacement bricks and will be hard at work this week
• Surveyors staked out property lines

We did not accomplish this by ourselves, of course, but the point is that we don't personally have to be working every single moment for progress to be made. This job is too big for that, and if we tried it that way we'd be even more busted up than we are now. Also, we have a small child and a large dog and the Mr. works full time and I'm studying for my big test (and I got a job offer this week too - hallelujah!) so it's good to step back and refocus a little bit. We have a family friend who is an amazing helper, and he has accomplished a lot of this week's progress for us while we put out other fires. We are so grateful to have his help and his free time and his good right arm. ;)

We have a few bids for the plumbing (completely replacing) and electrical (also completely replacing) and we don't feel like we have enough of the right information to pick someone and get started. Every bid is a little different, and we want to make sure that our priorities are reflected in their bids and that we're comparing apples to apples. So our estimator from way back in the day will be dropping back by in the next few days to help us write up specs for the bids. We'll take that back to our existing bidders and maybe call in a few others. It seems like it should be simple - look up Angie's List, call companies, walk them through the house, decide, move forward - and on a certain level it is. It's also a multitude of interpretations of what are probably two $10,000 jobs that will affect every other job in the house for the next thirty years... no pressure. So we're going to take our time and feel good about moving forward when we're ready to move forward. We have no offer on our existing house, so we aren't homeless and we can afford to take the time.

In the mean time, I'm going to look into renting a floor sander and working on the upstairs hardwoods. I have refinished floors once before, in a large commercial space. It isn't a very complicated job and I want to do it right, but I can also throw down a rug if it goes horribly awry. I've also been googling ideas for next year's garden, as our garden at our old house is in glorious full bloom... because we're leaving, of course. Our roses are the best they've been in the decade we've lived here. C'est la vie. 

Demolition Progress

We're mostly demolished, both in terms of the house and in terms of our physical status. The Mr. is putting in yet another late night loading up a dumpster (we filled the 20 yard ridiculously fast, I expect the 30 yard will be full tonight, and we still haven't taken out any first floor carpets). He's taking some updated pictures for you all, but in the meantime here are a few pictures of the upstairs bathroom from mid afternoon on Saturday:

Down to the studs (laundry chute door has been removed since)

Charming. Historic! We found many pieces of concrete with newspaper attached to them. Most of the newspapers dated from 1947. 

One million razor blades. I have since been told by a classmate that old time medicine cabinets included a slot to 'dispose' of your razors. Pretty sure the 1970's cabinet we removed didn't include this, but who knows. Maybe they thought it was a gift they could leave for future renovators. 

Pathetic dumpster. It could have been completely filled before lunch. We seriously underestimated how overbuilt the basement was. 

Huge thanks go out to all of our volunteers this weekend! We were able to get pretty darn close to our goals for the weekend and would have been closer still if we'd had another dumpster. We are very grateful for the skilled and enthusiastic help with taking out the bathroom (Andrew, Laura and Katelin!) and ripping out the basement (Kyle, Mike, Terry, Bruce and Andrew!) Those are two different but equally awesome guys named Andrew, and my apologies if I've forgotten anyone. It was a pretty long day and we are thrilled that no one was injured. (Mostly. We got out with a few cuts and scrapes.)

We are very tired and I am personally relieved to have been 'clean' since Saturday night, although I managed this feat by hanging out with the massively tantrum-ing, possibly sick Kid. Saturday afternoon we were ready to pack it in and had collected him from an awesome day playing at the neighbor's house with their 5 and 7 year old kids (for which we are so grateful!) when some friends pulled up ready and eager to help. So we turned back around and went back to it, setting the Kid up with the iPhone and his Legos on the porch. The Mr. was surprised when the neighbor kindly returned him to us, as he had wandered back to their house to talk about Legos. Whoops. So we have been keeping a tighter rein on him. He clearly loves the new neighborhood and is becoming quite the local celebrity, since he is perfectly willing to talk to everyone and knock on people's doors if they don't come out to hear his thoughts on light sabers, Death Stars, and battle reenactments. We are having lots of talks about boundaries and what is street and what is park. 

We're at the stage where it feels like the life we envision for our family gets farther and farther away with every hectic fast food dinner and bungled house showing, while the layers of dust and grime (and shattered tile collecting in my decolletage) seem like 'the new normal'. It's always darkest before the dawn, it gets worse before it gets better, etc. etc. We could use a long nap and a good meal. I've discovered that my optimism about this project has a direct relationship with my blood sugar. I'm consuming a lot of sugar as a result. I would really love to see just one project coming together at this point. Soon and very soon. 

This week I'm finishing up the last few days of my second bachelor's degree, and we'll be taking the weekend to celebrate graduation. My personal next project is most likely floor refinishing, which shouldn't be too big a deal but may be complicated by the knob and tube wiring we discovered in the bathroom. It's not throughout the whole house and we were hoping it had been completely updated, but alas, no. So there may be a lot more holes in walls coming up. Fun times!