Home Sweet Home! We're Bouncing Off the Walls...

So admittedly, it's been a while (too long) since I last posted an update. It turns out when you're rehabbing a big house, working full-time with a husband who does the same, parenting two young children and generally trying to keep it all together -- well, as it turns out, you have less time and patience to keep a regular blog. But I love sharing our project with others, and so here's a long overdue update.

I won't bury the lead any further for those of you I haven't talked to - we moved in! The pictures here won't reflect that because they're from several months back. And while, in theory, there will be more updates to come - I am trying to stay in order of where I left off. When I last wrote about floors, I admitted to leaving some big pieces out. And by big, I meant walls. And so I wanted to offer a little insight. You know, as if these walls could talk.

First and foremost, the majority of walls existing when we bought the house, had to come down. At least to the studs, if not altogther. We changed a significant portion of the interior layout. But even in rooms that weren't changing, there was so much about this house that was just in bad -- sometimes very bad -- shape. So down they came, as detailed in a previous post about our fun demolition days.

Then the rebuilding started, with our crew working around the clock. These first pictures show what's now a bedroom (which we use as an office) on the second floor. This is one of the areas in the house where we completely changed the floor plan.

But as I said, even in cases where we were keeping the layout intact, we had to replace some walls. This was the case in the largest room, a two-story great room which we sometimes refer to as the ballroom or the echo room.

Here's how that wall looked originally (don't mind the scaffolding). The discolored patch in the upper left corner of this picture shows the spot where the wall was badly damaged.

Here's what it looked like once the wall was gone.

And here's what it looks like after the new wall was mudded and taped.

We ended up making several interesting finds within the walls of this crazy house. Never did we find any money or secret diaries or anything quite that fun. But inside this particular wall, we found pieces of newspaper from 1949, when roast beef apparently cost just nine cents a pound. Pretty cool.



Turns out, the newspaper was being used as a patch where the wall had been damaged. Not sure if they ran out of plaster in the late 40s or what. Newspaper wasn't the only thing we discovered. In another room, we tore off down plaster walls only to discover beautiful cedar siding buried underneath. It's in good shape, so we're keeping it.

There are some other things we discovered for which, sadly, I don't have photographic evidence, like men's underwear (ew!) and a flask (empty!). We actually found an entire door -- complete with hinges and knobs -- between two sheets of plaster inside one of the walls. Last but not least, we also found a window, once again actually inside the wall. This one's tricky, as you can see in the picture below, because it was inside an exterior wall, and there's still stucco on the outside. Eventually we'll cut that stucco so you can actually see *out* the window, but for now, here it is.

For as much as we removed from the walls, we did add a lot of stuff back in. Important stuff like modern-day insulation, ducting, wiring, all new pipes, ethernet cable and all that stuff.

We had actually gotten so used to our walls being open, it was a little like culture shock when the crew started putting them back together. This photo shows the hallway on the other side of the open wall in the great room.

And here's the dining room (top) and foyer (below) with fresh new walls, mudded and taped.

According to my phone, I took these pictures back in February. I promise you we've come a long way since then. Once the mudding and taping was complete, it really started to look like a real house. At that point, the writing was most definitely on all the walls...

I'm Floored.

I promised pictures, so here they are. And while these don't do any real justice to just how beautiful they are (and smell!) in real life, I'll take this opportunity to update everyone who's curious on where we stand. (On the floors, of course.)

The truth is: I am burying the lead. The lead is that we're moving in THIS SUMMER. We bought this crazy place a year ago this month, and the progress we've made, well -- it's gone by both fast and slow all at the same time. (Kinda like life, eh?)

I should (and hope to) have more blogs in the days ahead because I know I skipped some important steps. Like walls. But I can't help but share these now because I am overwhelmed with how beautifully this house really is coming together.

I took all of these pictures just within the past few days, after most of the hardwood had been sanded. There's an amazing inlay I didn't even really know existed. And most of this wood is original, which is incredible. We've only had to patch in a few places. The staining happens this week, so they won't look like this when they're done done; we're leaning towards a look that's a little darker.

Second floor bedroom. For guests. Any takers??

Second floor entryway (sometimes I call this the "west wing")

Third floor foyer

Cade's room because his floor is in incredible shape

Family room

For a good sense of the before and after, take a look at the pics below. These show the same spot at the edge of the family room, from slightly different angles, where you can see the floor guys hadn't quite finished. Amazing!

After & Before

 

Looking down at the doorway between the family room and the sun room

We're finally on the home stretch in our journey to turn this old house into the Becker family home.

Plumbing, Electrical and Beams, Oh My!

So much has happened since demolition started, it's hard to know where to start this blog. And I know, I know, I'm late with an update once again. This whole project has a good-things-come-to-those-who-wait feel to it, so why not this blog too? Most of you know, we're hoping to move in next summer or even spring, which means everything is happening pretty fast. But also slow. But mostly fast.

Demolition, by the way, is not over. I mean the bulk of it is done; it had to be before the real construction could begin. But just about every weekend, there are still bits and pieces of the house that still need tearing apart and hauling away. A new window here, some space for wires needed there.

More demolition in the kitchen where we're adding a window.

Some tricky demolition in this room, just enough for the electrician to get in there.

In the meantime, our contractors and subcontractors have been hard at work. One thing this house needed a lot of: new beams. As much as we're trying to preserve the history of this house, we don't really want to rely on a few nails from 1897 to hold the roof over our heads. Then we'd probably all be history.

New beams, ready to go in.

Beam me up!

A couple more upstairs. Exciting stuff.

This is an old beam we actually removed in the kitchen; this wood will be used for our future dining room table.

And then there's the plumbing. We ripped out all the old pipes, and started from scratch. Hot water and good water water pressure are musts. And for those of you into this sort of thing, our plumber used a bunch of PEX all over the house. More on how I'm adding all kinds of new terms - like PEX - to my vocabulary in a future blog. But, yeah, good plumbing is a priority.

The boys' future bathroom.

Master bath shower. It's going to be awesome.

PEX and stuff.

The kitchen sink will go here, on an island in the middle.

We've never had a whole laundry room before.

And finally, power! Our electrician, Bill, has been hard at work running what I'm sure is miles and miles of wire. As you might recall from a previous blog here called Power Play, we have big plans for the electricity running through this house. Not to keep you in the dark or anything, but we have about 90 can lights in the whole house.

Just one of many.

Can't have lights, without light switches.

So much wire.

The indoor electrical box. Tiny though, compared to the one we will have outside.

Bill isn't the only one who's been running wire. Ryan's been busy pulling at least a mile of speaker wire, ethernet cable and other things, making sure this house can be all tricked out when we're ready for that step. The bottom line is that all this stuff has to be done before the walls go in because once those are up, access goes away. And walls are just around the corner. Lots of corners, actually. Stay tuned.

Correction: an earlier version of this blog misidentified the kind of pipe were putting in to run water through the house, known as PEX -- further proof that although I am adding a lot of new words to my vocabulary, I still have a ways to go. (Just like the project.)