Our House Adventures

When Nat and I moved to Lexington, our main goal in finding a house was that we wanted to find a house that was within our budget, no exceptions, but that was not the cookie cutter type house. After quite a bit of searching we realized that most of the houses in our budget were as cookie cutter as they came. They looked exactly the same as all the houses on the block and were made quickly with little attention to detail. We knew that if we were not going to settle it meant we would need to buy a house that needed some work. We found a foreclosure with a fabulous backyard in a really nice little neighborhood. We knew it needed some work, but since we got such a good deal on it we were not too worried. Our plans for the house were to take out the wall between the kitchen and dining room, remove all the wall paper, change the fixtures, patch a section of the ceiling that had some water damage, and see if we could remove the popcorn ceiling. When we removed a part of the ceiling to fix the water damage we realized the chimney needed to get fixed to stop the leak. Then that revealed MASSIVE termite damage to the wall. After tearing out 2 walls to try to fix the damage, we realized that the damage was worse than we thought. We made the crazy decision to gut the entire house. WE ARE GLUTTONS for punishment. We were glad we did in the end because there wwas termite damage throughout the entire house and we would have been dealing with it down the road anyway.  It was much better to just deal with it all at once and have the peace of mind to know it was all taken care of. One thing Nat and I really work hard on is to not take out any loans besides the loan on our house. We finally have all of our college loans paid and have worked hard to get a savings built up. We decided the house renovating would be the same. In order for us to do that we needed to do as much of the work by ourselves as possible.  We knew we had a newborn and a toddler and it would be a lot of work, but we really did not know how much work it would be. I am TRULY amazed we are all still alive and married at this point.
Her is a video of the house when we bought it.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RtD-3WZT94

Yes there is a house in there!

In the beginning Nat and Nate did all the demolition. We are eternally grateful to Nate for all his help and to Amanda for letting us cut into her time with Nate weekend after weekend. We could not have done with out them. Nat also had quite a bit of help from Jesse and some other friends. I know that for Nate and Nat, this was the most fun part of the project. They got to break stuff and rip out walls. What guy doesn't like that? For the most part Nat would work all day long and then I would come in and do the clean up at night. With no heat in the house as well as limited electricity this made things a little bit more challenging. The hardest part of this stage was that we spent almost every weekend working on the house and that meant we didn't see each other much at all. One was at the house and the other was with the kids. I do not miss this time at all!

Here is a video of the demo....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoEbsArLtBw

Nate and Nat admiring their work...OR trying to catch their breath.

My little man working so hard.

Once demo was done we started building the walls back up. For me, this stage took forever........We hired someone to do the drywall as well as a crew who did plumbing and electrical. Because Nat was at work during the day, I had to deal with the workers a lot more than I like to. I hate making decisions about things that I am not totally knowledgeable in. I learned a lot very quickly, that's for sure!

After the walls were up we had a lot of help from my mom and dad. Mom provided the babysitting that we really needed so both of us could work at the same time. It was almost like date time for us at that point. Pathetic, but true. Dad provided lots of muscle and experience. He helped paint the ENTIRE house as well as working on the tile in the bathrooms with me. Nat then installed the flooring in the entire house as well as all the cabinets. The cabinets still amaze me. I am SO lucky Nat is an engineer because they would have been the death of me. They came in FLAT BOXES from Ikea. Nat, Nate, and Jesse had to put every single piece of the cabinet together. It was like a Lego project on steroids.

Getting the floors ready to install flooring. I think both dad and mom were happy to leave after this week.

The flooring

 

The cabinets...AKA Lego Project on Steroids.

Our makeshift nursery/playroom/kitchen/living room

It was around the cabinet stage, 3.5 months into the whole project, that I was at my breaking point. After dealing with this house every single day for 3.5 months AND trying to take care of 2 little boys to the best of my abilities as well as 1 big boy, I was done. The hardest part was being at the house trying to help and deal with construction people as well as taking care of the boys with no running water and spotty electricity. It was too cold for Myles to play outside and being in a construction zone left unattended was not an option.We were SO fortunate that our neighbors were SO generous because they let us hook their hose up outside and string it to our backyard to use their water. That meant we had FREEZING cold water, but at least we had water. I don't know what we would have done without them!!!  The FINAL straw came when Ty decided to poop through every ounce of his diaper and clothes and  I ran out of wipes. With NO running water and poop up to my elbows (TMI I know....) I was done.

My breaking point. Ty's as well I think.

 

At this point the boys and I went to MN for a good 10 day vacation over Easter and Nat finished the floors and got the plumbing hooked up. After that we moved in and did not have to deal with the commute to the house each day. We have been working on projects ever since we moved in and are simply waiting on the new windows to be put in before we can say we are "done".  It has been a little hard to be in the house and NOT work on the projects. When you see what needs to get done around you every single  minute it is hard not to be constantly working on it. (At least for me it is hard). We are finally getting to relax a bit more on the weekends and do very few projects during the week. After all our hard work it feels amazing to just be a family and focus on our boys.

My favorite part of this whole project was discovering how good Nat and I are at working as a team. We really work well together. We just pick up where the other one leaves off. It was funny when I realized we never sat down and said, "This job is yours and this one is mine". We just kind of figured out what the other one was good at and and not good at and filled in the gaps. I remember when we had a pipe break and we had raw sewage leaking in our crawl space. (BTW their was a small crack in the pipe and they fixed it with DUCT TAPE!! No joke!!! Who does that?) We had a guy come out and quote what it would cost to fix and realized we could do it ourselves for a FRACTION of the cost. I got a shovel and dug the hole while Nat bought the materials and started fixing the pipe. In the end we saved about $500 on that one little project. Nat jokes about starting a house flipping business together and I think we would  be good at it, but after this house, I need a good 10 years before I want to do this again. :-) Maybe by then the market will be better too :-)
Here is the video of when it was almost done. I will update it when we get the new windows in. I assure you we have no more boxes left to unpack. :-)

Sort of Done....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UMqmSKg0qY

We will attack the landscaping in the spring. Right now we get to "rest".