All work on the inside of the house has stopped as we take advantage of the summer weather to focus on everything related to the exterior of the house. One of these projects is the continuation of the window restorations. Yes, that project is STILL going on. I completely restored the interior sashes more than…
Tag: how to renovate an old house
How to eat an elephant
This spring we began the overwhelming task of renovating the exterior of our house. It is a massive job that we will tackle “one bite at a time.” Up to this point, our work on the exterior of the house has been pretty limited. We have removed the asbestos siding from the gables when we…
Lucy’s room is done!
From the first moment we saw the space that was to become Lucy’s room, we had a pretty clear vision of what it could be. It has been one of our favorite projects and it couldn’t have turned out more perfect for our little girl. Of course, we couldn’t really blame people for not…
Aiden’s room is done!
For more than a year Amy and I were motivated by deadlines dictated by contractors, mother nature, school, vacation time, and the sale of our old house. But once we were able to move into our rehab house the deadlines suddenly disappeared. This is NOT to say that we haven’t been working our butts off…
Back to built-ins
The built-in craze continues with yet another IKEA hack! Aiden’s bed is in a unique area of the upstairs which most people assumed would be an oddly shaped closet. We decided this was an ideal nook for a bed, despite the thoughts of the occasional contractor that lacked vision and creative thought. But those same…
Book nook under the stairs
It might be small and not very significant in the big picture of our rehab project, but we have officially finished one “living” space of our house! As we mentioned in our previous post, our top priority recently has been to finish all storage spaces so that we have places to put things as we…
Storage Wars!
We’re back! We never intended for the move-in to be the end of the blog, but I’m sure it must seem like that considering how long it has been since the last post. A year ago our intention was to try to be done with the rehab project during the summer so that we would…
Big Tour after the Big Move
We have had a couple posts about the moving process, but not many pictures of the house. As promised, this blog post will have more pictures of the current state of our house. Be warned: It is not pretty. It is still cluttered with boxes and we still don’t have things like fixtures, trim, paint,…
The Big Move
As you would expect, moving day and the days leading up to it were hectic, long, and stressful, but also full of anticipation and excitement. By the time the day had actually arrived the vast majority of boxes and small items had already been relocated to the rehab house. The movers were going to take…
Sprinting to the finish line
We have finally reached the most important milestone of our rehab project. We have moved into our new home! (pause for long applause) Thank you. This past month has been one of the most brutal of our rehab year. This is evident by the fact that we haven’t even had time to post one…
Floors finally finished!
The floors are done. Finally. I started sanding the floors three weeks ago today and thought I would be able to finish in one week. We did actually finish almost all the sanding in one week, but applying the three coats of polyurethane and sanding between took some time – especially because I am now…
Adventures in floor finishing – Days 5, 6, 7 and… I’ve lost count
So much has happened since our last post that I had to go back and reread it just to figure out where I left off. On the 5th day of sanding we were finally done with the drum sander and edger, finishing up with the 80 grit. On day 6, the Saturday of my last…
Roller Coaster Adventures in Floor Sanding – Days 2, 3, and 4
Day 2 A long time ago when I was researching everything about refinishing floors I found something online that calculated how long it would take to do the project. Turns out that 2000 sq. ft. is supposed to take 105 hours. I remember thinking, “Whoah! That’s a lot. How could it possibly take that long?” …
Adventures in Floor Sanding – Day 1
Sanding and refinishing the floors was a job that had been looming at the very end of the first stage of our home renovation. It marks the end of major mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and structural jobs and also acts as a bridge to the next stage of our project. I woke up this morning relatively…
Prepping the floors, priming the walls, and cooling the air.
While Joe has been busy continuing window reglazing, door restoration, and plaster repair, I have been chipping away at the floors….literally. I talked a lot about the mastic tar and horse hoof glue removal process in this blog post when I was about half way through the job. Now that job is officially finished and…
Doors (Part 1) and Weed Moats
As we look back on the past year of our rehab project it is obvious that the stages can be neatly divided into categories: Stage 1 – Planning (and lots of thinking). Meetings with architect, contractors, skilled friends who can give advice. Stage 2 – Demolishing (knocking stuff down and taking it out). The demo…
Is that light I see at the end of the tunnel? Nope. Just another window…
I told myself that I would not do another blog post about windows until they were done. I mean, how many different parts of the rehab process can I really show without repeating myself? Well, this week there were a couple big developments (relatively speaking) and I thought they might just warrant another update. This…
Completing the Cycle: Re-installing the rehabbed windows
The renovation of our beautiful 100 year old windows has been the most time consuming single project (by far) and the biggest money saving DIY project (by a mile) of our home renovation project. Those of you that have followed this blog from the beginning have read about these windows off and on for…
Pressing the Rewind Button
Over the last 100 years the waves of what’s hot and what’s not in home decor usually leaves many layers of work to be subsequently undone in future home renovations. Each decade brings a new layer (literally) to the story with floors and walls acting like layers of sediment that reveal the past. We are…
Taping, mudding, scraping, and washing
One year ago this week we still hadn’t even picked up a hammer, decided on floor plan revisions, or even lined up any subcontractors. Everything we have done since that time has been towards one big goal – drywall. Last week our drywall was officially completed. Let’s pause for a moment to celebrate…. Okay, time…
Taming the backyard… again.
Week 53 (Joe) One of the very first projects we did a year ago was to try to make the front and backyard of the house not look so… abandoned. The house had been vacant for more than 10 years and it definitely looked like it. Weeds had turned into trees. Parts of the yard…
Happy 1-year anniversary!
Week 53!!! (Joe and Amy) One year ago TODAY we took possession of our new house! How fitting that the 1-year anniversary corresponds with one of our biggest milestones – drywall! By coincidence, another small milestone will be passed today – some lucky reader will be the 10,000th view on our blog! We wanted to…
A better drywall experience
Week 52 (Joe) All of our drywall is now up. It only took them 2 1/2 days to finish and (for the most part) everything went smoothly. In my last post I commented on a couple issues that occurred after the 1st day of drywall. The reality is that most of those issues have nothing…
Drywall finally begins
Week 52 (Joe) Amy and I spent last weekend and Monday frantically preparing for the drywall crew so that they could begin on Tuesday. The big day finally arrived and we drove home after work like a couple of kids on Christmas morning. Except… there was nothing under the tree. Sadly, no drywall. The drywall…
Prepping for drywall
Week 51 (Joe) Once the insulation crew began work we gave our drywall guy a call and scheduled him to start on Tuesday. We knew we had some small jobs to take care of before drywall, but we wanted to get the drywall finished soon so that we would be able to work in the…
Insulation!!!
Week 51 (Joe) Insulation just doesn’t seem like it would be that exciting, does it? But to us, it is! It is a huge job that gets us one big step closer to drywall. As a reminder, our house had no insulation anywhere. As tempting as it might have been to save money by doing…
Preparing for insulation
Week 51 – (Joe) Last week I met with our insulation guy to walk through the house before they begin work. We decided he could go ahead and start this week on the blow-in insulation for the existing plaster walls while we were waiting for the arrival of our loft window. Then we got the…
It’s cold and snowy, but we plow ahead
Week – 50 Joe After the excitement of finally connecting to the service panel last weekend, we naively thought we be able to get all the lights on that very same weekend. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Then we experienced a frustrating week of sub zero temps and a broken furnace that made work slow and…
Mission Electrician Part Three: Making up and Hooking up (It’s not what it sounds like)
Week 48 – Amy A lot has been accomplished in the past couple weeks. The rough-in of cables is complete! WOOT, WOOT! (minus one more for the upstairs furnace- but who’s counting anyways?) Joe already hard-wired all of our recessed lights and I already met with an electrician for a “pre-inspection” inspection. The circuits were…
The Great Recession: How Recessed Lights Took Over Our House
Week 47 – Joe The pace of our work is picking up as we get closer to another major renovation milestone for us – electricity! Amy and I took a personal day from our “day jobs” last week so that we could work together on the house and make a few more final decisions that…
A Morale Boosting Saturday: Windows and Wiring
Week 46 – Joe After many weeks of typical winter weather we were blessed this weekend with a day of 50 degrees and sun! My mom took Lucy to the Children’s Museum and Aiden hung out with a friend all day which meant Amy and I could both work on the house and take advantage…
Top 10 home renovation time sucks
Week 45 – Joe We are smack dab in the middle of winter in Indiana. We never see the light, it’s always cold, and our winter this year is just full of moderately cold days with barely any snow. Just bleak, chilly, wet, and depressing. Not exactly the type of weather that inspires working on…
Mission Electrician: Part 2 (Roughing in)
Week 43 – Amy If you read Mission Electrician Part one you know I’ve decided to do the electrical work myself. The first part and probably most important part of any big project like this is the planning (also mentioned in part one). After planning out all of the circuit loads, deciding what kind of…
Framingpalooza!
Week 38 – Joe We are now in our 2nd week of Christmas vacation and our 3rd week of having our wonderful carpenter at our disposal. This is the last push to get everything wrapped up before we insulate and drywall. That means finishing all the little details of framing and blocking. Besides the loft,…
Treasure in the attic!
Week 36 – Joe The “loft” area is located above the master bedroom. It overlooks the common area of the 2nd floor and would normally just be considered attic space. It has been an area much discussed, but up until now, not touched. Amy and I determined a long time ago that we would like…
Mission Electrician: Part One
Week 35: Amy [Edit from Joe: Before my wife tells you about our latest progress you need to know something important. My wife is amazing. Seriously. She is one of the most determined people you will ever meet. Just try telling her she can’t do something and see what happens. I dare you. Amy and…
Under New Management 