Half Bathroom Facelift

The third important space on our second floor that desperately needed renovation was the half bathroom.  Of course if money and space was no issue, we would have loved to make it a full bathroom, but with the limitations of space (we tried and tried to figure out how to fit a shower stall in) and the changes that would have to be made in plumbing, we decided to do a "quick" facelift.  We adore the 1940s sink and medicine cabinet, so we kept that; and the toilet was fairly new and in good working order, so we kept that as well. 

After removing the awful pink plastic sheet of "tile," we discovered that the walls were pretty beat up and had some residual crusty 60 year old glue on them.  We had to make the decision whether to rip out the sheetrock (or at least he mid-century version of sheetrock) or to make do.

We also debated heavily whether or not to leave and refinish the rustic wood attic flooring or to cover with tile.  Since we wanted something classic and clean, we decided on this mosaic tile below.  It looks very impressive when installed, but it's much easier to lay out because it comes in sheets like these.

I've never tiled anything by myself, so I laid out all the sheets and marked where I had to trim the tiles around the toiled and sink.  Then I watch probably half a dozen YouTube videos about how to mix thinset properly.

Here you can see that we did NOT tile directly on the wood floor.  We put down a cement board sub-flooring.  To lay down all the tile it took about two and a half hours.  In hindsight, I shouldn't have started it at 9pm, but once you start tiling you cannot stop!

For the walls, considering all the glue damage, we decided to put up wainscoting and trim to achieve the classic look we wanted.  Mike is the carpenter, so he had the task of cutting all the trim to size and installing it with our finishing nail gun.  We originally bought the nail gun to make center piece planter boxes for our wedding, but it really came in handy for this project.  You can't use a finishing nail gun to put a roof on or frame a house, but for putting up trim it is perfect!

Next came paint and installing a toilet paper holder and towel rack.  The best part about the paint is that it was an "oops" can of paint heavily discounted from Home Depot -- we paid only $8 for an entire gallon.  Now to figure out what else to paint yellow with all the left over paint...

Below is a before and after picture of the project.  Total project cost for materials: $275.  Labor: free!

It should also be noted that we didn't have any of these skills starting out -- we really learned "on the job" and figured things out as we went.

Upstairs Bedroom

When we first moved in, we knew that in a few short months we would begin renovations.  One of the main goals of that renovation was to move our bedroom upstairs.  Initially, this bedroom was a stinky mothball room with weird stains on the walls and far too much laminate on the floors.

One of the features we really liked in this room were these cute white painted paneled closet doors -- very country cute.  However, the one thing we needed to accept was that all the beautiful trim was painted white.  Maybe one day we will replace all of the trim, but considering our timeline we decided to keep it as-is.

Obviously the first part was ripping up and out all the laminate floors to prep them for refinishing.

For months and months before we got this house, I watched far too many episodes of Rehab Addict and watched Nicole Curtis obsess over hardwood floors.  We were pretty certain we had hardwood floors throughout the entire house, so it's all I dreamed about for sixmonths it took us to close.

Even though there isn't any furniture in this picture, it's by far my favorite because of the floor/wall contrast. (*swoon*)  Also, I would recommend installing the air conditioner before you begin painting -- I did a lot of renovation work upstairs in my bra and shorts.  At least there's no dress code for this kind of work!

The day we got to "move in" to the upstairs was a special day because it meant that upstairs renovations were done and we could move down to the rest of the house.

Refinishing Tongue & Groove Subflooring

From watching too many episodes of "Rehab Addict," I was quite excited about finishing some hardwood floors.  The day after school ended, we started demo on the second floor.  We thought that taking up the tile and subflooring was going to take a long time, but honestly we had it all pulled up in about a day and a half.  (Thank goodness my brother came to help!)

Here I'm still in my pajamas and slippers.

Underneath the tile was wide plank tongue and groove attic decking.  It was never really "meant" to be sanded and finished as a hardwood floor, but the great thing about owning a home and doing your own renovations is that you call the shots.  This flooring was beautiful and rustic and exactly the character that we like to surrounded ourselves with.

Since the floor was never "meant" to be finished, all the boards were nailed in place using top nails.  And to run a sander over the floor meant that every single nail needed to be driven below the surface of the board.  With the help of some coffee and a good weighted hammer from the wood shop, we worked for about three hours just driving nails.

Because there was no previous stain or poly on these boards, we didn't need a heavy duty sander.  So we went to Home Depot and rented the buffer sander with some rather rough paper.  That combination did the trick of smoothing out the boards without being too harsh.  After a rough sand paper pass with the sander, I moved up to a finer sand paper to finish off the sanding job.

The first sander I had the pleasure of renting.

There's a clear difference, even with a light sanding.

The next step was staining, which I did by hand, with a rag.  After a day or so of letting that dry, I put on two coats of polyurethane (non glossy finish).  And, voila! the first refurbished hardwood floors in our new place! 

The Dream Garden (Planning, Construction, & Planting)

Even when we temporarily moved to the condo weren't sure if the sale was going to "go through," I started seeds anyway.  I know now that wherever I am, I need to have a garden.  It gives me such pleasure, I couldn't live without it.

Seed starting operation.

Dark & stormys on snow days are perfect for garden planning

I had an idea of where I wanted to garden to go and about how big we should make it.  To put things into perspective, when Mike and I first moved in together in Hippie Village we had two small raised beds and mostly did container gardening.  Then in Lambertville, it was a similar set up with some slightly larger raised beds and lots of container gardening.  So with this place, the space is endless and we wanted something fantastic.

Playing around with garden bed layout.

There's no better feeling than seeing these little seeds pop up.

Building the boxes and securing them into the ground was certainly harder than it would seem.  What helped enormously is getting a pallet of lumber delivered from Home Depot so that we always had wood on hand to build new boxes.  Leveling the boxes was kind of a nightmare, because this part of our property has a slight slope.

The arbor in the garden was made by my brother-in-law and we got married underneath it.

When it was time to get soil we ordered a dump truck full and had it delivered to the house.  Unfortunately, we had it delivered to the other side of the property, so we took dozens and dozens of trips with the wheel barrow to move the soil.

This is the view from our bedroom upstairs.

And finally we were able to put in some plants and seeds into the beds.  I did my best to make an optimal companion planting plan so each plant would do as best as it could!  For the most part, that was true.  However, we did run into some soil deficiencies, such as calcium, and we did have some crops that just didn't take very well (like lavender!).

These zucchini plants produced an insane amount of fruit.

Here you can see a few weeks into our season, the garden was filling out.  Also, we got a super late start on the season because of septic work, etc.  It should be a nice treat to garden right after the last frost this year!

The Search for a Property (Part III)

When we arrived at our closing, after it being postponed three times, we were bursting with happiness.  We got there early because we stopped over at the property to quickly do a walk through and leave one of our cars there -- our timeline was so incredibly tight that we had to start moving in immediately!

We finally properly met the sellers after dealing with them through lawyers for months.  They are an older couple in their seventies.  The husband grew up in the house and the couple still lives next door.  So, essentially we met the sellers and our new neighbors in one fell swoop.

The closing went smoothly -- the closer arrived, gave us a mound of paperwork to sign, our lawyer (a family friend) made sure everything was good, and we walked out of there with a collection of keys and a garage door opener.

Over the next 24 hours we made dozens of trips between the homestead and the condo (where we were temporarily living).  It was also raining.  We rented a big uHaul truck and packed it to the hilt, after clearing out the condo and also getting a lot of stuff from my mom's house.

It was a day to remember.  I'm pretty sure Mike hit a couple of things with the huge uHaul truck.  We moved all of our belongings by ourselves in the rain on a weekday (having to work the day before and the day after moving), and we nearly got into a fistfight over getting the couch in the front door.  It's the only new piece of furniture we own, and it's awful to move.

Four days after moving, we celebrated our first wedding anniversary in our new home.  Cheers to us!

First Night in Our New Home

Yes, after closing we moved everything in 24 hours.  In the middle of the week.  By ourselves.  In the rain.

We had to take the front door off the hinges to get our couch in -- funny enough, it's the only piece of new furniture we own and every time we move, it's the one item that drives us to the brink of a fistfight.

We literally drove to the real estate closing with one car and one borrowed minivan packed full of belongings, and then rented the big uHaul the following morning.

After unpacking a few key items, we laid down to go to sleep around midnight (this is very late for us on a school night).  Then we heard a pack of coyotes (or coywolves) yelping and howling in the distance.  It was eery and comforting all at the same time.

We were home at last.

The Search for a Property (Part II)

Truth be told, my father-in-law first showed us the property listing at least six months before we went to see it.  I vividly remember saying something to him like "what do you think we're rich?  We can't afford that!"  But the price of the property dropped dramatically in that six month time period.  So, one chilly Sunday morning we found ourselves looking at two houses on five acres with a huge garage and partially collapsed tractor shed.  The place wasn't exactly a complete mess (in our opinion), but it certainly needed TLC.  One saving grace of the situation is that both houses had been rented to tenants for a few years -- that kept all the systems running in the houses and people inside to notice when something was leaking/broken.  After looking at a lot of vacant and foreclosed houses in our property search, we learned that an occupied house is the safest house.  That Sunday morning, we fell in love with the place in all its fixer-upper glory and endless possibilities for the land.

After talking over the property with our parents and crunching some numbers, we drove out to the realtor's office after work the following week, put in an offer, and within thirty minutes we settled on a price with the seller.  Wow, that's was easy! we thought.

Then the real work started.

First off, we scheduled the home inspection.  For reasons mentioned in my previous post, we love our home inspector because he really protected us from buying a damaged house.  Also, he's a fun guy and knows that we are a little nutty.  There was nothing that turned up in the home inspection that was extremely detrimental, but there was a list of repairs we would need to take care of, including the septic system.

The next step was getting a whole bunch of paperwork in order to obtain a mortgage for the property.  This entire process took us five months.  Seriously.  I had bought a condo back in 2007 and because of the housing and mortgage market crash, buying a property had become much more difficult.  The mortgage company wanted everything they could get aside from a DNA test.  And we had a mortgage broker who was a complete idiot, lost paperwork we sent him, and pushed our closing date three or four times.

It was also a particularly a tough deal because we did a 203k FHA building loan rolled into our mortgage to account for some necessary repairs, like a new septic system.  Not only did the building loan make the mortgage process more complicated, it also raised our closing costs considerably.  The other really nerve-wracking aspect of doing a 203k FHA loan is that the property had to appraise for both our purchase price and the building loan.  It was a nail-biting, phone screaming, micromanaging kind of situation.  I spent countless hours on the phone with the mortgage broker, the bank, our lawyer, and the realtor.  And then I had to spend a lot more hours on the phone with family members to talk us off the ledge.

Let me quickly break down why this deal was so tricky:

1.) Some things took a long time because the sellers are in their 70s, have no cell phone, don't "do" email, and take long trips.  A lot of times it was difficult for the realtor or their lawyer to reach them.

2.) There was a partially collapsed tractor shed on the property.  You can't have partially collapsed structures around with an FHA loan, but we expressed that we wished there was a repaired tractor shed.  So, we were able to negotiate that the sellers (with some of our labor) demolish the tractor shed and then give us the insurance claim check at closing.

3.) The cost of a new septic system for this size property was so exorbitant that we wouldn't progress with the deal unless there was an agreement met for the sellers to contribute money to the new system.  The lawyers handled it and made it work and now I know more about septic systems than I ever thought was possible.

But as I said before, five and a half months after settling on a price, we got to show up to the closing.