702 McKinley - A Remodeling Journey

A Green House

No internet, I'm not speaking of the eco-friendly green, but rather the color. The house is finally 100% sided!

 

 

Note:
-The foundation looks horrible! We plan to fix it!
-The yard needs mowed, weeds need treated, and in general we need to address the landscaping!
-I think we desperately need shutters.
-We still plan to do the wrap around porch, assuming we're allowed...something with zoning....?
-All of the above and other exterior updates are really secondary to the interior right now! We want to move in ASAP!
-We won't always have trucks & trailers in our backyard!
-And lastly, we won't always have every light in the house on! (but it's in that last photo, it's kind of fun to see it lit up like a Christmas tree!)

Kitchen Floor & Doors - Old Stuff

I realize I haven't written in awhile. I can assure you it's because we haven't done anything in awhile! (sad face) Sean is still healing, and it's an extremely busy time for me at the Gateway Arts Council! I thought I would share a couple of projects from the winter that I never wrote about. The first is the kitchen floor, and the second, new doors all around!

One evening in January, Sean called and said he & Brad (Dunham) were going to tear out the original kitchen floor. The very same kitchen floor I spent a significant amount of time on my hands & knees pulling out staples and hammering down nails. Thinking back, I don't recall being too upset by Sean's new proposal. Maybe because the entire time I had been pulling out staples and hammering down nails I had a gut feeling that my hard work would eventually be pointless. I had prepared myself for it. I did, however, ask why it was so essential for those floors to come out, reminding him of my hard work. His response was something along the lines of...the floor bows in the middle...completely uneven...will make it extremely hard to set the cabinets...it HAS to happen. And so it did.

Brad & Sean spent one night tearing out all of the kitchen floor, up to where it meets up with the dinning room. Half of the kitchen sits over part of the basement, while the other half sits over the crawl space (where dead bodies may or many not be buried! ha! that's just a hypothesis of mine!). When they tore up the floor over the crawl space, they did not find dead bodies, but they did find old treasures–an old walking cane, perfume box, egg basket, possible milk basket, shoe polish, an old skate–probably dating from the 1920's-40's. Pretty cool, eh? I remember Joni, Brad's wife, told me how excited Brad was when he got home that night. Apparently Joni didn't think all of this stuff sounded that great, but Brad knew I would love it! Some day when the house is done, some of those old treasures will be the knick knacks that fill our shelves!

At any rate, for a few days, to walk through the kitchen, you had to have great balance and no fear of heights, as only the floor joists remained. Myself & Mitch (brother) helped Sean get the floor joists to be level and lay down new sub-floor. I would love to explain the technical process of actually determining what level is, but it involves tying strings from each edge of the room, and every time I've asked about how it's done, I only get more confused. But I do understand everything following. Though now that I attempt to write it out, I can't explain it! (I'm a lost cause! ha! A poor student in the world of remodeling!) It involves a huge level, 2x4's (drilled to the existing joists), some glue, plywood, a nail gun, and hammer...I'll just let the photos speak for themselves! In the first photo, you can kind of get the jist of it–new 2x4's screwed into existing floor joists, evened up with the level, plywood glued & nailed to the new 2x4's. If you've been to the house since the new floor, I'm sure you would agree, it's a HUGE improvement!

 

 

Also, we put in new doors. Obviously, Sean put in the front door after Christmas, as that was his present to me. But Lowe's was having a huge contractors' sale on interior and exterior doors one weekend. Sean bought the two other exterior doors for the down stairs, as well as all of the interior doors. (I have yet to see them.)  Turns out, he didn't even get them at Lowe's...Menard's price-matched the doors, plus was able to get us the satin nickel finish (the finish we plan to use everywhere) for no additional cost. YAY! The doors will eventually be painted to match the front door, and the jams will be painted white to match the rest of the trim on the exterior of the house! What a huge different new doors can make!

 

The top photo is of the old back porch door and the busted up screen door! They looked so sad sitting by the trash trailer! 

My hope is by posting this, it will ignite a tiny little fire under Sean's butt and we'll start working again! Yeah, he still hurts every now and then, but he's been back to work for a few weeks now! It's time we finish this puppy! (at least enough to move in!)

Exciting Siding

Now that Old Man Winter has quit dumping snow on us and is giving way to Lady Spring, things have started happening at the house again! (Not anything that Sean & I are doing...he's ribs are still healing!) I stopped at the house on Sunday to meet my grandma, aunt, and cousin. Surprise, surprise, there was siding! With each day, more is up around the house! It's 5" (Sean tells me it's actually a little more than 5"), vinyl, wood grain, green (I forget the actual color! Eeek!). If you're in the area, drive by because the color in the pictures doesn't quite do it justice! (ps., check out that gorgeous blue sky in the first photo!)

 

Google SketchUp

Sean and I, along with some of his cousins and friends all went to Mad River Mountain (big hill) this past Saturday for Midnight Madness. We all chose to snowboard. Apart from a couple, we were all pretty much beginners, and some were even first timers. Needless to say, we were all a little slow to get the hang of it. Sean has been a couple of times (of course, not in the two+ years we've been dating), so he felt pretty comfortable exploring new things, like jumps. Though he has snowboarded a couple of times, he really is nothing more than a slightly experienced beginner. Long story short...Sean did a jump, and from about 5 feet in the air, fell on his side, with his elbow between him and the ground. This pressure was enough to break 5 ribs. He was pulled down the mountain and taken to the hospital in the rescue squad. His left lung was collapsed 10% (if it were anything more than 20%, it would have been bad). The ribs he broke were numbers 4-8 (if it were the lower three–10, 11 or 12–there was a greater chance of having lacerated a kidney or the spleen, which would have possibly meant surgery). Also, his rib fractures were not overlapping, which means they'll heal a bit faster. All in all, he was really lucky it wasn't worse. Needless to say he's in a lot of pain. Also needless to say, he won't be doing anything physical for a few weeks, and when he does, he'll still be in pain! That means the house is on temporary standstill. Booooo!

Given the situation, I gave Sean the opportunity to write a few entries, but since he hasn't jumped at the chance, I will. Saturday before snowboarding Sean & Earl put in new doors on the side and back porches, and new hardware on all of the doors! They're not painted yet, but eventually they will be red like the front door!

Sean has been busy playing with Google Sketch Up the last couple of days. In fact, below is the drawing he did of the house. You'll notice we'll be having green siding, red doors, white trim and a wrap-around porch! It's really going to look awesome! After seeing this, I can't wait! (And in Google SketchUp world, we're in the middle of nowhere!) I'm voting for shutters on the upstairs windows! What do you think?

Porch Update

Just wanted to provide a few photos of the porch since it was completely taken down yesterday. The house looks a little bare! Helping us the last two days was our neighbor Earl. He's nice! Apparently he and Sean have some work experience in common–from what I gather, Earl worked with dozers, back-hos, etc. when he was young. He's probably in his 60's now. Earl was a saint to have worked on Monday in the freezing drizzle! And really, we probably couldn't have done the work without him. To show our appreciation, we let him take all the scrap metal we had sitting around, as well as a ton of scrap plywood sheets! How kind of us, eh? Actually, with all the copper & lead pipes we had laying around, he probably made out!

 

 
 

My Aunt Deb said something to me via Facebook yesterday after seeing the last post–"Tiff, I'm glad he's yours and not mine, I'd have split by now :). JK, love him to pieces and really respect the "getting it done right" attitude you guys have!" To all who are wondering...my patience is greatly improving every day! 

A story to prove it–yesterday after taking down the porch, I began to clean up the yard and sidewalks. As I was doing that, Sean was explaining to Earl his plans to put on a wrap-around porch, going from the old side porch around to the front door. Mind you, I'm aware of these plans and expect them all to go down in the Spring. Inside first, outside later. I'm sweeping away and Sean yells over to me, "What would you say if I said I wanted to do the porch now? Pour it and everything?" I was a little caught off guard, but the new go-with-the-flow Tiffany could only say, "Seriously? Really? Seriously?" No outrage, cuss words, dirty looks, etc. None of that, but instead a slight smile and a "Really?" Yep, I'd say my patience is greatly improving! I did tell Earl about our original plans for the house–inside, move, then outside. Earl smiled and chuckled. Here in the next few weeks we may be pouring concrete for the wrap-around porch. *sigh*