House Renovation

I haven't written on my blog in a long time...and yes, that may be a bit of an understatement.

I started this blog a few years ago doing small projects - a chandelier and some other Ikea Hacks, some awesome birthday gifts for my friends (I custom made them, of course they are awesome), and sharing my different passions (like my newest love/addiction: Pinterest - where I have 52 boards of inspiration @ ChristinCupcake).

Now, I'm moving into a bigger direction: a whole house.  I bought my very first house--a real fixer-upper!  My polite friends who have seen it try to say something nice and end up saying, "It needs a lot of work..." with their voice trailing off as they look around at the holes and half-finished projects.  I'm not going to lie, it does look lilke that right now.  There are a few visionaries who have made comments such as "It is going to be really nice when you finish it" and "This place is cute".  That's how I feel - put me in that category - I'm sold (in more ways then one).

My dad, or my right-hand man (or maybe I'm his right-hand man at this point), describes it as follows: "Your house is in shambles, how can you be looking at paint colors?". That's my futuristic thinking (or part of my strengths according to StrengthsQuest).  It has proven to be a valuable tool throughout this project as I am already assessing problems like "Why is the garage light switch behind the door that goes out to the garage? You have to shut that door again just to get to the light switch."  That is bad planning.  This house is a series of bad planning.  No offense to the previous homeowners, but sometimes, we can't even figure out what you were thinking.  And this is not my first house I have helped renovated either.

So I have set a goal: to have this shambly house ready to move in by my birthday.  This means I am only going to have to make one mortgage payment without actually living in the house --  sigh, it's not so bad.  My birthday is March 9th and is also right around Spring Break at work (I think we get 2.5 days off, but I'll take it.  Most working-folk don't even know what Spring Break is anymore.  I get an extended weekend to move in - and I feel very lucky for that).

So follow me along this journey as I work on getting this house into Wow -  Bam - "I can live in here"- status.  I will come up for a better name for this end-point as we go along, but it will be beautiful <3

The Pictures
So you're probably wondering what it looks like and what I have to do.  I'm only going to breeze over this now and upload more pictures later (I have a lot of other pictures, organized into folders by room of course).  Here's a few to hold you over. 

That's my house inspector down the hall and this built-in had to come out - along with the wall behind it.

Yes, this wall.   This wall blocking the fireplace view and shrinking the living room

After I bought the house and was waiting for it to close, this showed up on my outside wall.  Affectionately named "Ahhh Frog" by Rylan, this will have to go as well.   If not for me, then for my neighbors.

 This is more of that bad planning. (1) The wood is exposed and not sealed on the ceiling. (2) The security door hits the light and it is now bent

I finally scrapped all this wallpaper off the guest bath, which makes the ceilings look taller.  That light fixture is going to go too.

This room is pink, green, and purple (you can't see that side from this picture).  Oooh joy!

But it might be the future guest/exercise room.

 This room might be the future office/craft room.

 The master is lavendar and blue right now - these don't even go together...

 Yeah, that will be my kitchen. We took off the cabinets and today I am going to sand them so I can restain them.   Also, there is a fireplace in my dinning room, which could be cool.

We took out the wall.  The whole space flows better - you can see.

We took out the flooring.  My future pantry is going to be next to the support wall which has to stay (next to the wall we took out)

Pretend those 2 rooms aren't there.  This is his patio that he enclosed that we are tearing back down into the patio again.  The rooms aren't to code, there is mold growing, everything is wet from the rain last week because it rains through the roof into the rooms, he used styrofoam to insulate parts of it, other sections weren't insulated, and there is no heating or air conditioning in these rooms.  As cool as it would sound to say I have a five bedroom house, these bedrooms are gross and coming down.

We're getting the inside done before we tackle the outside.  But there's holes in the siding we need to fix.

I have to get over to the house and get to work.  Doesn't matter that I have a cold and my nose looks like Rudolph.  Time is wasting - I have to go back to work on Wednesday and like my friends say, "This place needs a lot of work..."

♥ Create a space you love fellow crafters.  

And as always,  I ♥ Do ♥ It ♥ Well. 

Love, Christin