Skip to main content

Then and Now

The wonderful Sara mailed our tax credit application in February and shared pictures she took the day we bought the house. Since April 2013 we spent at least $275,000 on
demo, electrical, plumbing, asbestos, flooring, termites, exterior rot and damage, plaster repair, chimney repointing, new window sashes, installing a single kitchen, and a replacement slate roof.

We sold two houses and a vacant lot in order to make this happen. Then we got a mortgage.

Deep Breath.


The front of the house





When you first walk into the house...


The stairway and windows I saw and fell in love with. 



The view from the stairs. Notice the clear NO TRESPASSING sign taped above the fancywork.




The room where Jazz was born sometime in the late 1990s. This is now our dining room.



From the other side of the dining room. This floor was shot from termite damage.

 



This is a little room off a little hallway that we currently use as storage for the vaccum. brooms, cleaning supplies etc. It has these cute windows and a concrete floor. 

This is that little hallway that connects the kitchen to the dining room. There is a bathroom on the right that will one day become a butler's pantry.

This was Mr. Durham's room. There was a sign on the door that said he wasn't a bank and the RBC was downtown. Found many needles hidden away when doing the demo on this room.  It's now the kitchen.

 


Another view of the kitchen


This room was locked until we purchased the house. It was in remarkably good shape and locked away. We lived here as our bedroom while we were working on the rest of the house. Now, we call it the rainbow room and art room as the glass casts rainbows over the floor all afternoon. Harris turned that bedframe into a bench for the front porch.

 

And upstairs we go!


 


We demo'd that linen closet at the top of the stairs and flooded the landing with light from the floor to ceiling window. 


The upstairs porch, a favorite place of mine in the summer. 
 

This is the front bedroom. Brilliant morning light floods this room. One day, it might get a closet.





 The girls room as it was. we found bricks in the ceiling here. 





And this disaster area is now my room. We left it vacant with the windows open for months to get the smell out of it.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Budget

Dad was asking about the budget and how we're doing so far. Initially we had a total budget of about $350k for the house. As we negotiated the purchase price up and found more information about what the house needed that budget went to a maximum of about $415k. As of today, we anticipate spending around $400k or ~$111/sqft. As a comparison, Oakwood cost us $90/sqft and we sold for $106/sqft and the new owners are doing all kinds of neat stuff we dreamed about doing. So far we're under budget in a couple of areas, within budget but ahead of schedule in some (which can also be read as over budget...) and just going to be way over in a couple of key areas. Our original plan including making a temporary kitchen that we could live with, but would be massively overhauled within a year or two. Instead we decided to do it right the first time and enjoy it the entire time. To this end, our temp budget for cabs, appliances, and counters, was initally $5,600. However, that's g...

Birthdays

It's pretty funny. Harris doesn't check the blog, so I can write all about what we're up to here and it will still be a surprise! Starting around 6 tonight people are going to start coming by to wish him a happy birthday. We're having pie pushers, BBQ, meat, brownies, beer, and ice cream. Most all of this has been procurred in the past 12 hours. Madeline and I strung lights in the trees before leaving for work this morning and took all of the non-fridgerated stuff on up there too. After work, I swing by the apartment to pick up last things, then go up the street to set everything up. And if you're reading this and want to stop by, come on, there's plenty of food and ice cream :)

reflecting, thinking about what's next

Reading through the blog, mainly to look at the ruin that was our house and the wee little babes that were our babies, now walking, running, yelling girls and found this from January 2016 What's left - the girls bathroom, master suite, sunroom, tile patching in 2 bathrooms, butler pantry. Summer kitchen. Landscaping. We've completed the girls bathroom, butler pantry, and landscaping. The sunroom is ALMOST finished. After living in the house with three girls we've changed plans a little bit for the remaining work. We're opting to turn what would have been mine and Harris's bedroom, closet, and bathroom into a bonus room of sorts. We'll also leave the wall there and add the washer/dryer upstairs and some desk space so the girls have a place to work. We also will build a general storage closet up there so clothing doesnt have to go up and down to the attic each season. We've also decided we need a shower upstairs, so the clawfoot that is in bad shape up...