Adventures at The Bunny Manse

We have pest apocalypse happening on Tuesday. We have remaining plaster scraping starting on Tuesday. This leads to plaster re-adhesion and new skim coat to be completed prior to October as that's when our plaster artisan will be going to carve in Europe for several months. I really like this guy. For now, some pictures of the rooms can be seen over at http://www.opendurham.org/buildings/801-cleveland-freeland-markham-house?full and http://fouroverone.com/2013/04/23/cleveland-street-youre-up/

Interior Plans from the amazing Sara at 4/1! We've been talking, dreaming, and kvetching with/to Sara since the day we closed, trying to figure out what's important to each of us and how to make our family home in this huge beautiful house. We're so super close now it's amazing. Very small, if any changes from here on out we think... The first floor which will have sunroom, living, dining, and kitchen. There's also a room that could one day be a first floor master or suite if we need it.  We're changing the small closet we found into both a coat closet and linen closet. Such luxury!  I've secretly wanted a coat closet since my first winter at Little House in the Ghetto and now I'm going to get it! (Eventually...) On the second floor there are four bedrooms and three baths. Each side room gets a bathroom that is accessible from the hall and the bedroom; this gives you privacy within a shared space. Having grown up as the youngest sibling, I fully ...

Our current plan is to create a smallish apartment or suite on the first floor in which we can live while we work on the rest of the house.  This will include a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a living space. It will be clean, beautiful, and safe while we finish plans, get permission, and raise funds to complete the house. We will most likely have a small detour to complete the Bunny Manse, we are going to flip LIZZY first.  We've tried to sell it this summer, turning down a really low offer after saying no to a more competitive offer this spring. The shear fact of the matter is right now selling it as is we would double our money, or we can flip it and triple our money. While it will mean that the Bunny Manse takes longer to finish, it will also mean we have less debt on the Bunny Manse when we're done and more cash to make it perfect. We met with Ed Rokosz on Saturday to talk about the plaster repair. He showed us how to prepare the walls and to determine ...

 Oh, removing the painted wallpaper can't be all bad. Look what I was able to do in two hours!   Of course, this is the rest of the one wall I was working on...

Spent an early lunch meeting with different people who may Fix flooring in the eventual dining room Repair termite damage on the first floor interior Within the next six weeks we have to get the wallpaper off of the plaster, the floors up where the termite damage is, and a whole bunch of other very tedious work done. Right now, we have time, not money, and we don't really even have very much time. Once the due diligence period passes for our other house, we'll have about 2.5 weeks to get everything done. Totally possible if it's all coordinated ahead of time.  Don't you dare tell Harris otherwise. While they were crawling around looking at bug damage I sponged wallpaper. Tonight, Madeline has a grown up playdate /we have a babysitter and there will be more wallpaper sponging, more paint scraping, and more tedious work between me, Harris and potentially Bill.

Thanks for the invite, but I'm not much of a blogger.

Our house is once again under contract! This means we have about six weeks to carve out a space in our Bunny Manse that is safe, clean, and functional.   To this end, on Friday night I loaded the pick up truck with 80% of the metal that's remaining from our previous three metal runs. Bill came over around 7:30am Saturday to help me get the broken range (shredder steel) and weird old blower motor (shredder steel) onto the truck.   During the process, I asked him how I was supposed to sort it all, the magnet just picked it up before and today I have copper. Bill schooled me on 'precious' versus steel. I'm supposed to say in the steel yard that I have other types of metal. They'll test it and then send me to the precious sorting facility.   I now understand why people steal copper.   Truckload of metal - $24 (240 lbs) The two skinny copper pipes leading up to the stainless sink we removed + two stainless sinks + random pots and pans = $13.4...

  The wallpaper I'm removing is Union Made. Wish in this one thing they had cheaped out. It's been on the walls for at least 50 years and it's still largely wallpaper.