Adventures at The Bunny Manse

We planned for months to work on the kitchen in March. Welp. We went ahead and did it. Nights, weekends, after I finished my paid work, while the girls were napping, while they watched their 4pm tv, while they played in the yard, stolen hours to create a whole.   For the past 6-7 years of living in the house, this is what our kitchen wall looked like. Not bad, not amazing.  And wait until you open the door to the other side.  March I say WE but Harris did all of this. He took what was a messy and dangerous and dark/cluttered cramped section of the house that used to be a porch and utility room and turned it into our breakfast nook/solarium/kitchen annex/glorybeautiful light filled space. We don't even have to turn the lights on most days. The first part of the project focused on deconstructing the pieces/rooms and salvaging almost all of the wood to be used in portions of the project or in other on-going projects. If I had let him demo it he woul...

I just posted a ton of pictures without any content. This is because I see this as a place to collect and frame my thoughts about the house process with some images to trigger the ideas. We're so close. After this last stage (paint, gutters) we have some tile repair in one bathroom, some tile work in another bathroom + installing new fixtures, and then we just have PHASE 4 which is master bedroom + sunroom. We're not doing PHASE 4 for awhile. We need to pay off some credit cards and the like. Oh? You didn't know that at some point everyone who is not independently wealthy puts part of their renovation on credit cards balancing who has to be paid in cash and who you can float? You didn't realize that 0% interest for 12-18 month cards will provide you an interest free loan to buy materials that you then pay off in installments or move the money to other 0% cards? Yeah. We've got probably $30k of our project sitting out there on 0% credit cards right now + an equ...

Staying busy! We found a pair of lights for $25 at an estate sale. Between the two there was enough for Harris to make one really nice newel post light. He has a flicker light in it. I don't like the flicker light. Owel.  He also installed the fretwork in the hallway!  And upstairs too! From the landing and then looking down the hall.  Everything is getting ready for interior trim paint! So very close to having painters come in and tear the house up to place the final touches of wonderful.  Thoughts on which white to use for the trim?

 Yep. That's how much eastern light floods our house, you can't even see the new wood on the upstairs porch. These pictures just make me happy; I'm definitely a 'house should face east' kind of gal. The exterior carpentry will be totally done today. As of this afternoon - hell, maybe right now- there is no rotten wood on the outside.   Once we have more money...PAINT!         New slate up top, repointed chimneys, metal roof on the porch, chimney caps, wood rot fixed, chicken wire screens removed and gutters. Lots and lots of little things.  

 I went back to work on the 17th so have blissfully quiet surroundings. We started with three carpenters fixing the rot. Basically, they started on the porch and have worked their way around our house fixing any rotten wood they find. Along the way, they've found -literally - 400 lbs of squirrel nests. Squirrels ate through the crown molding and made nests in the eaves. At one point, these were fixed with metal soffits. We've replaced those with wood and are encouraging the squirrels to stay very far away from our roof and attic. We then added to the fun a set of roofers who are working on the total restoration of our slate roof. It was not leaking, it had been patched and tweaked over the years, but it had maybe 10 yrs left on it - and those 10 yrs would be full of $1,800 repairs when slates blew off (yes), the metal flashings finally gave way (yes), and the rot from water running in at weird angles. We decided to go ahead and do it now while we still have access to the s...