This last weekend was amazingly productive for us. What with finishing up the bathroom tile/paint on Saturday and painting the side door and foyer on Sunday, we were quite content to sit down, watch TV, and pat ourselves on the back.

Monday night we continued our productive streak by picking up a fridge (free!) from a house that was about to be bulldozed. Mom came out to help us load it and then Chris unloaded it single handedly. It’s a nice KitchenAid with stainless steel doors and an ice maker which we may or may not get to work. Even more exciting then our new fridge was to come home in the dark, squint at the house, and say “PRIMER!” We no longer live in a naked house! YAY! This means paint is only just around the corner and paint is really going to bring this old house to a whole new level. 🙂

This bathroom, in the back of the house on the first floor was one of the most awkward areas in the house. You can see that the shower came out of a wall built in the middle of the room leaving a little alcove between the entrance wall and the tub. But what can you do with a 5’8″ x7’2″ space?

Well you can take things out…

…and put them back very deliberately. There’s no denying that this will be an economy bathroom but we’re thinking we can do more with the space then what we started with.

The first thing we bought for this bathroom was a pedestal sink off craigslist. I had my Mom pick 2 of them up in one day ($70 for both of them– both less than a year old and included fixtures) and they’ve been hanging out in the living room for a couple months now. I’m pretty sure we did not actually own the house when I bought them. I think pedestal sinks look great in historic homes but they also make the room feel bigger. I was a little worried about giving up the under-sink storage that the original unit had, but most of that space is wasted on pipes and gets pretty gross.

The second thing we bought was a stand alone shower. Since we’ll be living exclusively on the first floor for a bit (renting out the upstairs units) we couldn’t get rid of the shower altogether, but we don’t think we’ll be missing the bath portion. We went for a rounded unit because we thought it would make the room feel bigger (Although Chris says we don’t want it to feel bigger, we want it to be bigger.)

We still have to buy a washer/dryer which will put us at a solid 3/4 bath with laundry room in this little space. It’s definitely not going to be a lounge-around-spend-the-day-in bathroom, but it will be functional and I think it will be perfect once we no longer have any bedrooms on the first floor and the shower only gets used by occasional out-of-town guests.

So tiling this bathroom was our first real DIY project and all the satisfaction that goes with that. We measured our tiles and then got them cut at Lowes (fo free!)

The yellow we picked out is one of the historic colors Valspar does, based on the Homestead Resort where we spent part of our honeymoon. I’m going to have to replace the light in here with something whiter, but I’m really quite pleased. We painted before the grout since we’ve heard it is easier to clean paint off the tile then the grout.

The contractors installed the baseboards, I’m not sure if they’re going to finish the left side to match the right? Hopefully.

New dry wall. We’ve enclosed the stairs again so they are only accessible from the outside. Eventually we’ll take this out when we stop renting the upstairs.

New crawlspace door, I quite like it!

We installed a toilet in the upstairs unit Mary Kyle will live in. It was very satisfying.

New side entrance door. We bought paint for this, but it’s been raining a lot and we need to wait for a dry day since the door is getting wet.

I’d like to say we’ll never take floors for granted again, but it’s probably just not true. Aren’t they gorgeous?

Nothing very exciting seemed to be happening at the house this week. They did pass the plumbing rough-in inspection, have the termite treatment done, scrape some more paint, tweak some small electrical concerns, and get this frame built. We’re at a point where some of the last things remaining are big dramatic things (floors, exterior paint) so we’re chomping at the bit to get some of it done. With the floors we’re just waiting on the planks to come in from the mill, so heres to hoping it comes in this week.

Home Sweet Home 🙂

We will be painting the porch ceiling blue like the sky in an attempt to fool insects into thinking it is the sky and not building nests there. Sound far fetched? Well the internet seems torn, but at the very least it’ll be pretty and southern 🙂

http://www.sherwin-williams.com/home-builders/color/education/sw-article-pro-thewhysbehind.html

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/look-painted-ceilings-of-the-s-82029

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/repel-insects-with-color-145178

Hopefully the title didn’t fool you into thinking that we now have them. Instead we’ve ripped out some more. This room had an elevated carpeted floor where someone had tried to offset the balance of the house by building the floor at an angle to the floor joists. The best part was that the house had clearly settled since they’d done this and the floor was still slanted.

A bit of original? or at least very old hardwood found in the corner. They’re going to save what they can and stagger it with the new wood. To save money they’re going to leave it unfinished and we’ll have to tackle that DIY project (eek!)

It’s gotten worse since this, so we currently have no access to our parking area, so thank goodness we have understanding neighbors.

All our gutters hanging out in the foyer (which now has floor joists!)

**I posted this a bit ago but accidently made it a new page instead of a new post**

More new siding! They’re still not quite finished because they ran out of siding, but they’re very very close!

I’m note sure how they’re going to fix this guy, since when they raised the house he was suddenly too short to reach the porch.

This window sill was completely rotten and had to be replaced.

2 years ago Chris and I took engagement photos and 1 year ago we took wedding pictures. Noah Magnifico (http://magnificophotography.com/) took both these pictures.

2010:

2011:

It seemed like a shame to break our picture-taking streak so Chris and I had a photoshoot with Amy Allen (http://www.amyallenphotography.com/index2.php#/home/) for our 1 year anniversary. I love the idea of doing one of these every year so we can look back through the years. My stipulation would have to be that it would be possible to place the pictures in time based on ___________. So our engagement pictures should be easily placeable since I had an engagement ring but no wedding band and we were in Blacksburg, our wedding pictures should be easily placeable because of every single thing in them (wedding dress and suit, fancy hair, flowers, makeup, fake eyelashes, etc.), and this year’s pictures should be easy to place because of the house. Once we have kids their ages will help place the years as well.

2012:

More siding!