Today’s the day! The day I get to introduce our new house to you!! Yay!! I’ve been waiting so long for this.
Well, we’ve successfully moved… and by successful, I merely mean that we’ve removed all of our stuff from what was previously referred to as ‘our 100 year old house‘…
However, unlike the last renovation project we did when we moved into that 100 year old house where we had 6 months to renovate it before moving in, this time we had 2 weeks!
Truth is, 2 weeks is just enough time to make a huge mess in a reno project! Therefore, though we moved all our things out of the house we just sold, we really weren’t able to move much into our new house, because it’s all pretty much getting ripped out… So, 95% of it is packed away in storage, while we are living out of boxes and plastic bins in the middle of a renovation project with the items we absolutely need.
We’re living in limbo… It’s an unsettling feeling. But as unsettling as it is, it actually has made me feel more thankful for a home, even in it’s reno-ed state. Though we’re inconvenienced with not having a kitchen sink, I’m so thankful we still have a working bathroom, and a room we can sleep in… Compared to the disaster of the recent hurricanes and storms in the the south, it’s like what my husband said this morning, there’s a huge difference in it happening to you or you actually choosing it… we chose and caused this disaster upon ourselves.
So…
Wanna see our new house?!!! (It’s very different from ‘our 100 year old house’!)
Ta-Da… This is the front of the house. Yes, we live in the midwest, northwest Wisconsin to be precise… But, no we don’t have snow on the ground. (yet) LOL! This pic was from last March when the previous owner emailed me from Florida to say she was ready to sell to me.
The house is a mid-century, well built home… with some quirks and styling that I don’t care for. I’m not going to go into all it’s faults right now, I’ll slowly do that as I work through each room and try to fix the things and styles that aren’t working for us.
Here is one of the things we really like about the house:
It was originally built with 2 rental apartments below!
Our plan is to incorporate one of the apartments into the main house living space, opening it up for a family room and a guest suite area. But the other apartment we are maintaining as a rental, with the hopes that if my parents ever decide to get old, there will be a wonderful place for them live close to me, yet in their own space. (Mom, Dad, you listening?)
In the meantime, in the very near future, that 1 bedroom apartment is where we plan to live while the rest of the house undergoes a remodel. Then once the house renovation is completed and we can move into it, we’ll look for just the right person or couple to have for tenants.
Somehow I thought we would be able to rush in and renovate that basement apartment in the 2 weeks we had before we had to be moved out of our old house, and be able to move right in it. Rounding into our third week of when we started renovating, that’s a laughable thought I had.
We hit a few snafus once we got started.
As should be expected with any renovation there are always surprises. Some of the surprises we had in this apartment reno were things like bad plumbing, plugged sewer lines. (thanks to a flushed t-shirt that was discovered by the clog unboggler man… weird, huh?! No one could figure out how or why a t-shirt got flushed) A clogged gutter that overflowed and caused a leak in the basement corner. I’ll get into all that in the next post…
Here’s what we really LOVE about this house:
Our view! Out the front windows is a constant water view, and out the apartment front window is another lovely pond view.
It’s really quite lovely and although we still live in the same town, same street, just 3 blocks down, the setting is so different. I love it!
So besides an introduction to our new house, I’ll give you a quick painting tip…
I needed to prime and paint the closets in the hallway of the main level with BIN primer, to seal the old cigarette smell. (the rest of the main level is being dealt with later) Bin primer works wonders, but is super thin and runny. I didn’t want to get any on the beautiful wood floors, so I needed to tape drop cloths down.
Here’s the tip:
Tape around the trim on the floor first:
Then tape the drop cloth down onto the tape you just placed on the floor. That way, the taped border gives you a little grace with sizing the drop cloth to fit.
That way you can be sure the very edge of the floor is covered with tape and be able to make your drop cloth 1/2″ smaller around the edges and you don’t have to try to deal with the bulky drop cloth being in the way while you’re getting the tape exactly on the edge.
I hope that makes sense. I’m honestly exhausted today, so I’m not sure if I’m making much sense at all. It’s a chilly, rainy day that I’d love to be making soup and nestling up in sweats and slippers… but that’s not an option. So I’m going to go work on installing some beadboard wallpaper for the apartment kitchen backsplash like what I installed in the cottage in Maine. (you can see how I did that beadboard wallpaper here)
One way I’ve been saving a ton of time is online shopping. Here are the 3 places I’ve been shopping the most, and either taking advantage of the free shipping or site to store and picking it up myself.
Home Depot… I should have stock in the company. They know me by name now, I’m there every day picking up an order I’ve placed on line, they’ve either pulled for me and have ready at the service desk, or I’ve special ordered online and it’s come in ready for pick up. Home Depot has figured out how to do customer service right.
Then of course between
Walmart.com which offers free site to store delivery as well as many free delivery items right to my door,
and all the things Amazon.com. has to offer, I haven’t had any problems finding pretty much everything at my fingertips. I’ll show you items and where I bought them as I go through each room.
Next post is the before and after thus far in the apartment!!! Wow! What a transformation!!!
You can keep up with all the posts on our new house at this page: Mid-Century to Colonial Revival.
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