My Adventures Where in the world is ….

Finally our front porch is done and we have painted our door to match the shutters.

What do you think?

The railing is being built and will be in soon!

 

 

  

Seems weird to say we can taste it but we truly are so close.  The small things that are left will take more time than we like but we are down to the small things.  I thought it might be interesting to show then and now photos so I dug out our photo from when we first moved here in 1986 to show the wide differences.  Amazing what we have done – it is a new house.

Today (July 28 2012) our mason started work on our front porch.  It started raining (again) so he didn’t get as far as he had planned but it is all ready to reface.  He is using blue stone (not actually blue more of a grey) on the top, landing and treads and cultured stone on the front and sides.  The cultured stone looks a lot like our bricks in color.  I think it will look really nice when finished.  Then we will have a new railing made (down both sides) in white.  When done it will be great.

So here we go with the comparisons:

Outside First

 

Front door then and now (we plan to paint it red again – funny!)

Going inside – old and new stairs

Living room then and now (notice the old blue room)

Dining room and new sun room

The sun room – no comparison!!!

Memory Lane – our old kitchen and the 2008 renovation

And down the hall

The main bathroom then and now (renovated in 2003)

 

Small Bedroom which Carla and Angela shared when we first moved in – now my craft/study room.

 

Other bedroom which Rhonda and Becky shared when we first moved in – was Angela’s room – now Carl’s work at home room/guest room.

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom then and now (renovated in 2003)

Then downstairs we go….

The family room now mauve guest suite – renovated in 2018 but still has some computer room furniture in it.

You may notice that in the old pictures the laundry is in a closet at the end of the room as of 2008 we have an actual laundry room as shown below:

Basement Bathroom

Front Room – Computer Room

We are beginning to believe that we are going to actually finish – so much is done already.   This week we expect to be able to finish painting the computer room and put it back together and then we will work on the garage and hopefully by the time winter comes we will be done with all our renovations and able to just enjoy them.  It has been a lot of long hours and hard work but we really like the results and are enjoying the new space we have.

Hope you enjoy seeing the results.

 

Well, we are definitely making progress but it seems just as we think we are getting somewhere something else needs to be done.  Here are just a few more current photos to show where we are going.

First, the dumpster left last week and it was really full.  Dad is a master at finding ways to get more in.  Under that flat wallboard in the back is all the carpeting, the bushes that used to be behind our house by the deck and a whole lot of wood and other stuff that we stuffed in to get rid of.  Might as well make the most of the dumpster we are paying for.

Also, in there is our old indoor railing and our old outdoor railing.

A temporary wood railing is up until we can get our porch fixed and a new railing installed.

 

Just to show how we have been living here are some more pictures of our house inside.

Painting new doors is easier if I can move from one to the next so here is the Hall of Doors.

The sun room has disappeared for a while as we have moved everything out into it from the living room so we can paint and have our new carpet installed.  Hopefully we won’t need anything in the back.

That last picture is our living room/dining room where Dad is forever patching holes and fixing bumps and problems – a neverending job it seems.

Well we are really beginning to see the end – at least for the contractor – there is still a lot of work ahead for us – a great deal of painting (living room, dining room, hall and stairs walls and all the trim throughout the upstairs), staining our new railing, and general put it all back together stuff.  Before we can paint Dad has to lift the heater coil/pipe up so the carpet will fit under it (the carpet is our almost last step in all this – the front porch fix up being the very last).  We also have some fix up stuff to do.  Dad has been busy early mornings and evenings finishing the install of our new hose for our water softener and cleaning up the garage and getting the front porch railing ready to go into the dumpster before it leaves on Friday.  He had to cup up the old railing from inside as well so it would fit easily into the dumpster.  So much to do!

First some pictures of what we have been living with.  When Dad finished with the attic we brought down all the wood he had been using to lay on while he installed the baffles – it sat in the hallway for several days.  One night I came out of our room to get a drink and jammed my toe (the one I broke last summer) into the wood – I was more careful after that.  It doesn’t show here that I also had to step over it to get into my room.  Also here are some pictures of how we are living right now – not such a pretty picture.

Dad’s wall is beautiful – it is amazing what a careful and knowledgeable person can accomplish.  It is so smooth and even – a masterpiece for sure.

So on Wednesday, May 23rd our tile was put in and we really like it a lot.  The tile guys really liked it as well.

Thought you might also like to see what our attic looks like now – almost empty!!!!

So on Tuesday of this week the railing guy came and started our railing.  It was a more involved process than he expected.  He had to find out why there was a bump – turns out the wood shrank over time but the wallboard supporting the edges did not.  So he had to cut back the wall board.  The floor is not perfect but is better than we had hoped.

 As you know Dad has the title of frugal king and it shows in our dumpster – you cannot even imagine how much stuff he has stuffed into crevices in the dumpster to get as much of our old junk in as possible.  To get our carpet in and to save on the charge of having the carpet guy take it out and haul it away, Dad measured the dumpster and cut the carpet into the exact size needed to be able to stack it in the dumpster – so that stack is all the carpet from our house except a few small pieces he saved to save his knees as he works on the heater coils.  Pretty amazing!

 So the deck is now finished and it is much nicer than we ever imagined.

Today when I came home this is the new railing that greeted me.  Notice the new hand railing to the basement as well.

So the outside of our house is almost all finished – just a few last details.  Tomorrow he will finish up inside and perhaps have a little to do on Friday.  We are truly happy with all that we have had done – it is now like a whole new house compared to what we moved into 26 years ago.  Wish we could have done some of this sooner but it is almost done now.