9 days

Wednesday afternoon I get a call from a realtor asking to show the house Thursday at 1 pm. I say that is not a problem, show away! The realtor then explains the family is closing on the sell of their home at the end of the month and needed to be in quickly *insert large gulp* I ask “How soon?” The realtor says “May 29th.” I stay calm. I breathe deeply. I reply, “that’s not a problem, we can be out in 10 days.” I keep breathing. My gut says this is it. God said this is it. He said “I am here” in the clearest voice to date.

Thursday, I get up, go to work (I started a new job this week by the way), and try not to puke. Success. No puking. 1 o’clock comes and goes. I glance at my phone every 5-10 minutes. Finally, 4:30 my phone rings. It is the realtor. With an offer. It’s happening.

The offer was a little lower than we were comfortable with, so we counter. We get advice on the counter offer from my Dad (business man) and a realtor friend (who we bought the old friend from- we love her). Then we wait.

Thankfully we had plans with some great friends last night and I had a friend in town staying with us. It helped make the waiting less painful.

11:30 the realtor calls with a final counter. We ACCEPT!!!!!!

We have to be out of our house in 9 days. 9.

You have seen pictures of the other house. Living there isn’t possible yet. The room I thought we would finish and live in is the one with termite damage. So yea. There goes that.

We do not know where we are moving yet. We have a few days to pack and figure that out. It has all happened a lot later than we ever expected, but we are so grateful for the way everything has fallen into place.

All who want to help us move are welcome next Saturday!

Peace.

Open Sesame

Poof!! Walls are coming down every where. Upstairs. Downstairs. All over. It is really exciting to see the entire house plan open up and get a peek into what lives behind the exterior walls. Luckily, we haven’t found a live animals in the walls! Hurray for that. So instead of me yapping about it (which I do a lot when it comes to house projects), let’s just look at pictures, k? Ok. Here we go!

One small closet upstairs…

Another small closet upstairs….

One future big closet!

Goodbye all four closets under the stairs….

We even said good-bye to the tiger room last week…

Lots happening!! I’ll be back with a termite update soon! Hope you are having a good week.

Give me a T!

Give me an ERM! Give me an ITES! What do you we have? T-ERM-ITES! *The crowd goes wild*

I might be the only person who is actually thankful for termite damage. Confused? I can explain.

Before we purchased the home, we had a home inspection (mentioned here) done. The biggest concern that came up was water damage around a window (the storm window was broken and collecting water – awesome), the footers underneath the window, and the foundation beam underneath the window. Let’s just call is the “Bad Wall.”

Here’s the Bad Wall in all it’s glory.

Immediately following the inspection, we had a foundation specialist and carpenter come out and give us an estimate to repair the damage. Not a big deal. It has to be fixed, no reason to get upset by the hefty estimate. Repairing the damage was going to cost right at $4,000. We knew we could not afford to repair the damage immediately, so it would have to wait until we had the construction loan.

Alright, back to termites. Our first Saturday working on the house, I’m working downstairs, my parents are working upstairs. She yells down to me asking me to come up and take a look at something. I don’t think anything about it. I walk up the still very narrow stairs to find mom examining a window. Mom then points out the tiny ant-like critters with wings crawling around the window sill. I then googled what termites look like on my phone.

Here’s my thought process “Hmm. What do you termites actually look like? *Insert google images* CRAP. Termites kind of look like ants with wings. Ugh.”

Monday morning I call Cooks to have them come out and look. They do not see any indications of active termites, but they do find a lot of damage in the downstairs bedroom. Ryan and I just thought it was all water damage (and lack of attention from renters).  Boy, we were wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Thankfully the house has a termite bond meaning Cooks is checks the house regularly for termites and will cover the cost of any termite damage. Repeat – COOKS WILL COVER THE ENTIRE COST OF TERMITE DAMAGE. This is where I begin my termite cheers!

So, this Tuesday a contractor comes out to begin working on the damage. Because there was damage in the floor, he had to remove some of the hardwood. Initially, plan A was to leave the existing hardwood and just replace the needed hardwood boards. Since we were already planning on sanding and refinishing the floors, it was a pretty easy task. The contractor and his crew get to work on removing the damaged floors…which led him to discover more termite damage on the hardwood underneath (so we have hardwood on top of hardwood). He tells me he has to rip up the entire top layer of hardwood to look at the hardwood underneath. My response ”Ok, whatever you need to do.” My thoughts – “As long as Cook’s pays for everything, I don’t really care what all you have to do. Looks like I am getting new free floors.”

He uncovers the second layer of hardwood. Oh. My. Goodness. So much termite damage. He then begins to remove the second layer of hardwood, uncovering a THIRD LAYER OF HARDWOOD which is completely eaten away by termites. So much damage!! I mean, these termites must have had a Thanksgiving or Christmas feast on this floor. For real.

The removes the third layer of hardwood and finally gets to the sub floor, also damaged, and rips that up to. Now, this is the same room where the water damage is also. The contractor then tells us that the beam under the window also has termite damage, but is mainly water damage, but Cooks may cover it because part of it is termites (the contractor also can’t put the room back together without that beam fixed). His team calls it a day and we wait for the Cooks inspector to come give the contractor the go ahead to fix it.

Cooks comes. Cooks said go ahead. I do a happy dance inside.

So the beam and footings that we were going to replace because of water damage, will now be replaced by Cooks. FREE TO US. We are paying the contractor to go ahead and add additional footers under the kitchen (which is more preventative than anything) since the floor is already up making it a heck of a lot cheaper.

So this is why I am currently running around the house doing termite cheers. Ok. Not really, but I am grateful for the termites and for Cooks.

Have you ever had termite damage? Water damage? I know there have been much worse stories than ours!! I’d love to hear your stories :)

Thanks for reading! Have a great weekend,

Brittney

And The Best Grandparents’ Award goes to….

MINE. That’s who.  Let’s meet them, shall we?

My Grandma

My Papa

They VOLUNTEERED to come scrape wall paper! I’m not sure if Grandma was completely serious at first, but be warned – if you volunteer to help us work on the house WE WILL take you up on it, sooner rather than later :)

Grandma and Papa spent half of Saturday scraping off four or five layers of wall paper in the future living room.

They definitely made progress on the wall paper situation. Look! That’s a whole five feet of wall with no wall paper. Yea!!!

Lots more to go! While my grandparents scraped wall paper, Ryan and I got busy taking down the wall between the stairs. I let Dad take over for me when my parents got there. Ya’ll, on Saturday my Dad morphed into some kind of crazy demolition BEAST. For real. He was like taking down walls with his bare hands. There was wood flying left and right. Coal dust galore. It was pretty awesome to watch.

Here are the stairs, one last time, before demo began.

Isn’t that black plastic covering just lovely? I know you are all jealous. It’s ok.

Let me tell you one more thing before we jump into stair wall demo. We were told before buying the house that the wall between the stairs was added after the house was built and was built so it sits on top of the stairs. Keep that  in mind as we go through the next photos, k?

Stair wall demo began with a lot of excitement, but was dampened when we realized the wall was NOT built on top of the stairs, but thru them. Kind of a bummer. Actually, not kind of. It was a bummer. Add fixing to the stairs to our growing list of things to do

I’m going to call this the stair’s glamour shot. You can see how wide the stairs will be now that the wall is gone…69″ wide if you would like to know. Much better than the previous 30″ per stair, hmm? (yes)

After the stairs, Dad took on one of the fireplaces. This fireplace we plan to expose the entire brick fireplace all the way around. The wall will be removed, so all that’s left is a walk around fireplace. Last chance to view the fireplace before Dad attacks!

Here is where things start to get a little scary.

Eek!! The inside of the fireplace was not nearly was pretty as we were hoping for. We had no idea what the inside would look like with the wall down, but we are optimist

Don’t even get me started on the coal dust.

The brick was as pretty as I hoped though! The view from the future dining room into living room was pretty awesome.

Ok, so it’s slowly working its way towards awesome. Baby steps. Lots of progress for one Saturday. Thank you to my family helping out! Also, thank you to anyone and every one who is supporting our adventure! We are excited to be sharing it with you all.

What did you do this weekend? Any demo action? Fireplace drama? Peace and quiet?

Brittney

Breaking News!

Attention ladies and gentleman. There is a wall down in the Saffell house. I repeat – WALL DOWN. I need you to stop what you are doing and look at these pictures. STAT.

It took almost 12 hours of hammer and crowbar action, but it finally happened.

*Please forgive the photo quality & lighing – it was rainy and cloudy – and we do not have lights on the first floor*

I spent a couple hours Tuesday morning and all day Thursday chipping hammering away at it. Mom came and worked with me Thursday, along with the puppies of course. Mom will probably be upset she is in this photo. I see this just as more proof she is the best mom ever (thanks Mom)!

Since this is all tongue and grove, we have to remove each piece individually. None of this HGTVhammerthroughthewallandbedonewithdemointhirtyminutesnonsense. Each piece of tongue and grove must be taken of seperately, attempting not to break it into a dozen pieces. We are trying to salvage some of the tongue and grove and beadboard to reuse in the house. Key is SOME. So far we have been able to salvage about 30-40%. I can’t say if that is good or bad, but it is much better than none!!

Bella has to approve our salvage pile of course.

Now, removing a wall is really like removing two walls, because you have to remove all the tongue and grove from both sides, hence why it took 12+ hours for one wall.

Seeing through the wall was pretty glorious! By the end of the day Thursday, we had this!

HURRAY! Now, do you see something wrong in the photo above? Anything? Common now. No? Ok, let’s take a closer look.

So yea. That’s the door framing…yea…most people these days like to secure framing you know. Apparantly it was not necessary in 1900. Proof it’s not load bearing wall I guess…

I was pretty pumped (and pretty dirty) to see it go.

I did have one little temper tantrum on Thursday…a momentary loss of composure because of this little piece of molding here.

See all of those nails? ALL SIX OF THEM. That is a two inch piece of molding. TWO INCHES WIDE.  WHY?!

While I was trying to pry off this tiny piece of chair rail, the wood just kept flaking into pieces. Lots of pieces. Like any person would do, I just began to whack it with my hammer out of frustration. There might have even been some grunting. Mom noticed my almost-mental-break and told me to back away from the molding. So I glared at it one more time, put the hammer down, and stepped away slowly. I then looked at the clock to see it was 4 o’clock. I knew the problem. I’m surprised I hadn’t collapsed from exhaustion because I MISSED SNACK TIME. No Joke. If I don’t eat every 3-4 hour I get cranky, like a two year old with nap time or Ryan without bacon, . It’s not a pretty sight. I collected myself, ate some wheat thins, and quickly recovered from my aggresive state.

Ryan came after work and started removing the beautiful vinyl flooring in the front living room.

Poor hardwood!

It blows my mind that people put vinyl on top of hardwood. Just look at all that glue we have to scrape/sand off. Blah!

Of course Bella is helping Ryan.

We’ll that’s all for progess this week. We are off to work at the house today!! Peace.

Hello and Goodbye

Hello Mr. Dumpster. Welcome to our front yard.

When I drove up to the house Monday after work, I was pretty darn excited to see that dumpster there, not going to lie. Dumpster = demo = removing the ugly = mission accomplished. However, my excitement quickly left when I walked closer to the dumpster and realized it spelled like poo. Complete and utter POOOOOOO.

Oh well. Either the smell has gotten better or I am used to it now because I barely noticed when we left Monday night.

So with saying hello to the dumpster, we were able to say goodbye to the beautiful ceiling tile in the front living room, kitchen, and one of the bedrooms upstairs. Hurray!

It reminds me of an office building. A really ugly, office building. Why would you want this in your house? Anywho. Goodbye ceiling tile!

It came down really easy, just a little tug. The worst part was the black dust that fell on us with each removed tile. Yuck. The fireplaces were originally coal burning, so my guess is that it is coal dust.

In about half an hour, the kitchen  ceiling looked like this:

It looks like an animal tried to move in. Not really sure.

After we took down the ceiling, Ryan went back to working on removing the vinyl and particple board upstairs (you can see here where Dad started this fun project) .

How did that get in there?? Oops

Site supervisor Bella giving her approval.

So while Ryan man handled the floor, I finished up removing the ceiling tile in the upstairs bedroom. And wallpaper. MORE WALLPAPER.

Mom helped me get started with removing tile and wallpaper on Saturday. All I had left to do was move the giant pile of trash downstairs. Hmmm. How do you get a giant pile of crap from the second floor to the dumpster outside when the windows don’t open?? You hurl it down the stairs. That is what you do. Or that’s what I did.

Worked pretty well. I kind of scared the dogs though. You can see supervisor Bella running for cover.

While Bella did not approve of my hurling-crap-down-the-stairs technique, she did approve of our donation pile. Thanks, Bella!

Good day at the new-old house. Day 5 complete.

Out with the old (and nasty)

Day 3 – Saturday – Out with the old (and nasty) and in with…well…nothing yet. We are a long LONG way from moving anything in, but we did get a lot of stuff out today!

Ryan and I started the day off with ripping out the disgusting green carpet.

The carpet came up really easy, along with lots and LOTS of dirt. Goodness gracious. Clouds. Of. Dirt. It just required a little bit of muscle to get it started, but once we got part of the carpet going, piece of cake. Then, we got to the fireplace. *Don Don Don – scary music sound*

So, the fireplace was closed up with some sort of shelving unit?? I’m not really sure what to call it. Is it a tiny bookcase? Coffee mug storage? Climbing wall for toddlers? Who knows. Hopefully not the last option. You can see in the photo below that the shelving unit (we will go with that) is sitting on the carpet.

Cutting around the shelving didn’t work so well, so we decided just to go ahead and remove it completely. I backed away (in case something can running or flying out) and supported Ryan’s shelf removal from the doorway.

Praise the Lord! Nothing came running or flying out! Just an old, dirty fireplace.

Removing the carpet didn’t take long at all. We had all of the carpet out in 15 minutes, at most. We then made our way onto taking up the pad under neath.

Yea…so we aren’t really sure how old the carpet is…therefore we don’t know how old the pad is. I can tell you that whenever this was installed, they secured the pad into the hardwood with staples. Lots and lots of staples. Like 200 STAPLES! Into my precious old hardwood. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE??

We had some wonderful helpers – our puppies Tori and Bella!! Bella thought it would be helpful to lay on the pad and carpet while we were trying to put it up…

At least we did confirm the hardwood is still there and in decent shape, if you just ignore the awful paint job and staples. Hopefully the paint will come off when we refinish the floors. *Fingers crossed*

Goodby carpet!

While Ryan and I were taking care of green carpet, my mom bravely tackled the one and only bathroom. By tackle I mean clean. I had warned her the day before that this is what I wanted her to help with. Mom could have come over and done nothing else but clean that nasty bathroom and I would have been one happy little camper.

Brave woman. It actully felt safe for human use after she finished cleaning, but she didn’t stop there. She even started a little demo action. Mom started removing the faux green tile (plastic sheet that looks like tile) from behind the door, which led to discovering this.

Moldy plywood. No need to panic people. Mold in a bathroom is a pretty normal discovery, even more normal when people who remodel or install bathrooms don’t use correct materials (like plywood behind faux tile in a bathroom). So, mom continued on with demo and took out the plywood to discover this little surprise.

Yea. Shocked us, too!! Ryan and I know that the bathroom was an addition. When the house was originally built, there was an out-house, but to find the original exterior still hanging out in the bathroom?? Not planned. Kind of cool. coolish. Almost cool. Ok, more like shocking, confusing with a hint of neat-o/cool.

We decided to leave the rest of the bathroom surprises for another day and move on else where in the house.

While the three of us were working downstairs, Dad was upstairs doing some damage (good kind) to the Tiger Room. One tiger down, one more to go!

Not only did Dad conquer a tiger, but he removed every shelf, cabinet, art piece that had been previously screwed or nailed in place by the previous owner. Look at him go!

Since my parents were so awesome to help, I treated them to a really fancy lunch….hot dogs compliments of our toaster oven. Who needs a real kitchen?!

Dad’s real work started when he began pulling up the vinyl flooring.

After pulling up part of the vinyl, we discovered particle board flooring laid on top of the original hardwood flooring. Awesome. More to scrap/dig/hammer up.

Yea. Removing that flooring was HARD work. Ryan took a stab at it after lunch. We will be working on removing the flooring for a while. We will keep you posted!!

Overall, I would call it a pretty productive Saturday! A big thanks to Mom and Dad for helping! We got a lot done, but have PLENTY more to do. We are so excited to see the ugly slowly leave  We are renting a dumpster this week so we can start taking down the ceiling tile and even some walls, yea!!

What did you do this past weekend? I’d love to hear.

Brittney

Day 1 = Welcome to the jungle

There is one room in the new-old house I haven’t shared…..The Tiger Room. Why have we lovingly labeled the tiger room? Well. Let’s take a look.

Roar!!

Top it all of with a little 70s flair…

Snazzy, right? The Tiger room is one of the upstairs bedrooms, and obviously, decorated with lovely, large tiger and 70s artwork. And paneling, can’t forget the paneling. The previous owner or renter must have really loved these tigers because one is GLUED in place, like with construction adhesive. Not moving. At all. One tiger won’t budge, so it will have to hang around until we get to removing the paneling.

Anyways, we were very happy to close on the house Tuesday afternoon, hurray!! Thank you for all of your encouragement and kind words.

Work officially started yesterday. First step, clear out miscellaneous stuff left by the previous owner.

I have a whole truck load of stuff (cabinets, shelving, curtains, blinds, hairbrush??) to take to Habitat Restore today. It was pretty exciting to start taking out remnants of the previous owner. It is starting to feel more like ours already!

We also had dinner for the first time in the house. Take a peek at our new dinner routine

Crock pot to the rescue! You guys already know about my love for my crock pot, and my love will probably only grow during this renovation process.

Our new dining room is pretty nice. Some people would call it a porch…

Lastly, I think it is going to be really important for Ryan and I to celebrate the small victories during this entire process. Let’s celebrate this small victory.

A clean sink!!!!!! I now feel sale to wash hands. It was pretty nasty. I will save your eyes from a before picture. Trust me, you don’t want to see it.

We will be back at the house Saturday clearing out a few more things. We are having my parents over for dinner to celebrate Dad’s birthday tonight, so no new-old house work tonight. What are you doing this weekend? Anything around the house? Dinner party? I’m making fried chicken tonight for the first time. Fingers crossed all goes well!!

Scratch that. Closing has moved….

We got an e-mail from the realtor saying the closing date had been moved…
 

Ya’ll. I about peed my pants when Ryan read the e-mail out loud last night. My response: “Are you serious? Tomorrow? TOMORROW???? AHHH! *insert sounds that are kind of like a squeal* Are you being serious? WE ARE CLOSING TOMORROW?”
Ryan: “Yes. We are closing tomorrow.”

How is he always so calm?

So yea. We close TODAY!

2 Days and planning…maybe…

We are still hoping to close on the New-Old House this Wednesday- more on that here, here, and here. The only thing we are waiting on right now is the underwriter. We are hoping to hear some sort of confirmation tomorrow. Key there is hoping! *Fingers crossed*

I’ve had a lot of people ask if we have a plan for renovation work. Will we go room by room? Will we gut the whole thing right off the bat? Are you crazy people going to live in it? Are you using a contractor? Are you actually doing this? Do you just lay away at night thinking about everything that needs to be done?

First off, yes we are actually doing this, and we are actually excited about it! Rare breed, I know. Second, yes, I do lie away at night thinking about everything we need to do. The first week after we made an offer, neither Ryan or I slept well. We both had nightmares about the house. Ryan had a dream just last week that Mike Holmes (our hero), from Holmes on Homes, came to our house and wanted to knock the whole house down because there was a hole in the window screen!!! Crazy, right? (Answer is yes)

So here is our plan, or plans – plural.

We’ve breaked it down into “preconstruction loan/before we sell our current house plan” and “after we sell our house/construction loan/let’s-get-on-it plan.” Lets take a look!

Obviously, the construction loan plan is really just a reader’s digest version of where we are starting with renovations, but it will give you an idea of what we have in mind. I’ve probably even missed a few things.  I think our preconstruction loan to do list will keep us plenty busy for a good 6 months, so no worries if our house doesn’t sell for 6-8 months! We have lots to do while we wait :)

We do plan on living in the house as much as possible when it does come time to renovate, which is why one bathroom and kitchen are first on the list to complete. If we can shower, use a toilet, and cook, we can live there. Basic needs for survival = clean water, roof, food and clothing. Hopefully Ryan’s allergies can handle the dust! The “Easter Bunny” (aka my mom) brought him a respirator in his Easter Basket (yes, I still got an Easter basket – don’t judge – mom loves me). The Easter Bunny knows Ryan has terrible, terrible allergies. The boy should live in a bubble 6 -8 months of the year. For real. Pollen. All Grass. Trees. Dust. Cats. Mold. Allergic to everything except dogs really. I bet we use more toilet paper and tissues than the Duggars.

What did you guys do this weekend? Have any to do lists for your home? I’d love to hear what you are working on in your home! Want to come scrape wallpaper soon?? Would you like a plastic bird bath? I have four :)

Brittney