Our House! First Week. (image heavy)

  

This song is what makes everything worth it. Our House Cover.  Let's just start with that. This is sums up all the reasons why we are doing all the hard work we are doing.

This is our house. The front yard is charming, and we are excited it is ours.
We fell in love with this Foreclosure. We knew it was the house for us.

We officially became homeowners Friday May 9th. Catch up on that stuff with This post!

 Let's pick up where we left off.

This is our front door knocker, I'm going to take it down, take a wire brush to it, and then repaint it. It needs a fresh face, and the current door, may keep bugs out, but it's in rough shape.

We started with what looked ok, but soon enough we learned that there were some issues with the addition in the back of the kitchen, so turning that lemon into lemonade we are going to have a definite Kitchen and a definite Dining Room. Which in my mind means, MORE COLORS!

These are some shots of our BEFORE DEMO Kitchen. I want to keep you updated as possible, so you know that this is not a day project, this is a long haul project, considering it's only been a 4 man crew over the course of 5 days, it's impressive.

 This is 3/4 of the Kitchen. The floor is torn up where we were checking structural issues.  Not too shabby, right?

This is the part that's not pictured. The Cabinet on the right was taken down, to check on the structural issues. So That's the before. 

  Can we talk about my amazing BAY WINDOW! It looks out  over my 1/2 acre back yard. Do you want to build a Tree House? Because We just may do that too! 

This is the super happy Home Owner, and a great photo of Larry sitting in my favorite spot in the house. Love the Living Room's Bay window! 






We were all really excited, until we had to start working. I mean we tore up from the floor up. Saturday was the start of Demolition. We took down the cabinets, then the walls. We had some electrical boxes that made us swear some colorful words to the past home owners.

STEP ONE: CABINETS!

This was between the cabinet take down and before the walls came down. It's so insane thinking about how different this is going to be. I get a little teary-eyed because I know it's all worth it, the sweat, blood and tears, they came with a reward of making this house our home. For the first time in a long time, I've been so incredibly drained and emotional. It's worth it. I keep telling myself that this way it's going to be my dream kitchen and I don't have lingering thought of who could have cooked in this house before. I love when there's a history to the home, and this home had a great one. The original owner was a Mailman in the town I was born in. He used to help my mom out during the winters and drive her home from work if it was snowing. He was amazing. He did a lot of work, not much of it permitted. When he passed away, his wife sold the property to a family. A couple and their daughter. I guess the husband was a little strange and would take his 4 dogs to the back of the property and just sit. That couple got a divorce and the wife moved out and the home went into a foreclosure. That begins our Legacy and the Kitchen Facelift.

So now that you know a little of the back story, let's share Demolition photos!

STEP TWO: WALLS

Jay doing the taller parts! 

They say many hands make light work.
We can all admit we love a man that cleans.

He really is a blessing of a future Brother in Law

Larry doing his part.

John and his Brother taking care of business.

It took about the full 24 hours to take down the walls and clean it all up. It was a big difference in the kitchen's appearance. 

STEP THREE: THE CEILING! 

John's Brother went over after he got out of work, with Dad
and got the ceiling down for us, this is clean considering what it looked like.

After about 1.5 hours of clean up. Cement board
and sheet rock is a bad combo, NEVER DO IT! 

Found in the ceiling, which means, a mask is more than a must
Mouse droppings are really bad to breathe in, it just got a lot
more disgusting in here.

Welcome to Home Ownership. Suck it up and get to work.

 So that's where we stand, today, Thursday May 15th 2014!

What's the worst thing about owning a home? Share your horror Stories with me below!

<3 nbsp="" p="">Manda

New Home!

So, we did it! We took about a year, we looked at almost 100 houses, we were outbid, we had rejected offers, we had a hard time hearing no! We are happy to have this beautiful house, with an amazing yard and a lot of work to be done.

We bought house! We got the keys yesterday! The thrill of a house was short lived, we went changed the locks, bought a bunch of demolition items and had our first 2 guests! We came back to my current home and slept, ok I didn't sleep, I laid awake and tossed and turned last night. This morning we went to Target, I bought snacks, water and starbucks COFFEE. We got to the house around 9am, we didn't hesitate a second. We started tearing apart the kitchen.

We posted the stove and the dishwasher on Craigslist, we are going to try our hardest to reuse the cabinets. We are on a budget despite how it may look. We took the moulding down, popped up the countertops an tore the cabinets off the wall. A lot of manual labor, and can you believe that it took 5 hours to tear apart a kitchen that measures 21 feet by 13 feet! Our living room is now cabinet city!

We are so excited and really want to just finish all the hard stuff so we can get to the fun stuff like painting!  We are hiring friends to do the HVAC and the Electrical, and my dad is building us bookshelves (for my library)

The kitchen was stripped to the posts and beams today, and when Larry and I left at 1ish, it was only 1/2 done.

I'm not allowed to help with the wall stuff, I do have medical issues that are making it hard to keep up, but I will be posting pictures all along the way, and I will be sharing colors, tools and prices in future posts! Keep up with us!