Adventures at The Bunny Manse

 Plaster repair should start again any day now! To get ready for that, Harris has been spending his mornings finishing the demo and lots of little projects here and there. The most important one so far is the suit bathroom downstairs which will give Madeline and me a proper bathtub again.   The floor joists were existing, but the layers of nasty plywood had to go. Harris also found and fixed a broken pipe while he was down there.     Putting the ceiling up. We're using tongue and groove wainscot boards for the ceiling in the suite bathroom.   Finished!  View from the doorway. We're going to use the leftover boards to make a boarder at the top. It will be the same height as the window casing/top moulding would have been were it still in place. Once the plaster has been finished here we can install the tile, tub, and toilet and have a beautiful bathroom downstairs.  Meanwhile...upstairs.... At some point they enclos...

We met with Sara again yesterday to put the final touches on the design. We have a couple of rooms that are...odd and two porches that were enclosed in strange ways. Figuring out how to use these best and integrate them into the house has been fun and Harris and I think we're both there. From there, she takes everything to the city for them to determine what the scope of work is. There are a couple of things we're asking to do that we have to get permission to do because of the local historic district we bought into. Then come the tax credits. North Carolina gives homeowners who do qualified restorations of homes in National Register historic district 30% back on the restoration costs. For Oakwood we ended up with $59,100 in tax credits (30% of $197,000 in expenses). Over the past 5 years, that's meant Harris and I got back $23,604 in state income tax we would have otherwise paid. Pretty sweet! The tax credit program is set to sunset at the end of the year. So far,...

Harris has been getting everything ready in the bathroom which means we need to find the tile we want in that bathroom.  Think this is the Hakati pattern we're going to go for, just need to confirm with Paul at Common Ground they can get this and it will work like we think.

The Elizabeth St house and lot closed on Friday! HOORAY! So...PROGRESS WILL BE MADE! 1. Asbestos 2. Electrical 3. Bathroom (with tub) 4. Living room 5. Plaster work in hallway, entry, living room, and hopefully at least one other bedroom upstairs 6. Misc plumbing work for bathrooms upstairs 7. Misc carpentry all over the place We might actually have doubled our living space and or completed stage 2 of the house work by the time our daughter arrives in September. Phase 3 = Roof + Painting Phase 4 = Sunroom + Master suite porch conversion