Old House.....During

Or perhaps more appropriately titled,

"What the heck were we thinking????"

It was such an adventure leading up to the purchase of this house, I kept asking Jim, "Do you still want to go through with it?  It isn't to late to back out.........But I really, really want this house."

Just getting the water and the electricity turned on was an adventure in automated voice directory hell.

Yes, I said hell.

3 days of it to be exact.

Anyway, let the pictures begin!!!

 Is it possible for this pool to clean ever again??

We will see.

 Bill and Mark doing what they love best......

sanding,

sanding,

sanding,

and sanding.

Followed closely by.....

staining,

staining,

 staining,

and more........

staining!

 The roofers!!

We put a new roof on the house and the portable.

The portable had damage from a tree limb.  Also very gross inside because of rain damage.

Mold is not your friend.

 You can never have to many pictures of yucky pool water.

I think it may have been possible to walk on the water.

 Hours and hours of wallpaper removal.

Piles and piles of wallpaper.

Some bright spark had put the wallpaper directly onto the drywall and didn't texture the drywall first.  This makes removal very difficult.

Never put wallpaper directly onto untextured drywall.

On second thought........

After this experience........

Never Wallpaper......EVER

 In the hallway they had wallpapered directly over the original wood.

 Yucky, gross, very disgusting bathroom.

There is also a 2nd yucky, gross, very disgusting bathroom.

I would drive home if I had to use the facilities.......

 Sam hard at work.

He loved peeling off the wallpaper and dropping down the stairwell.

 Ceiling

In some of the rooms the wallpaper started to come of very easily.

Why?

There was more hideous wallpaper under the hideous wallpaper.

The original layer did not come off easily.

Cue psycho music and watch Sally-Ann run screaming down the street.

This is where we got Jaimie, wallpaper removalist extraordinaire to step in.

This is where Sally vowed to ban all wallpaper.

 The house across the street.

Not sure why this is here.

Next project??

HA HA HA HA HA.......

HAH!!!!

 Wallpaper, wallpaper........layers and layers and layers

 New roof

 The original wallpaper!!!  An exciting find.

 I actually preferred it to the wallpaper used to cover it up!

 This is what we found when the wallpaper was removed from upstairs.

This is also where we discovered that 1/2 of the house had insulation and 1/2 didin't.

1/2 of the house had been redone with dryall and 1/2 had not.......

 Remnants of original wallpaper

 Roof going on.

There is a huge fan in the side of the house - the ladder has it covered.

It is being removed.

 New windows.

Loved the old windows - original to the house.

Just to rotted and to expensive to restore.

 A hint of the new color......

 The stairs were a real pain.

But, my hubby indulged me.

Originally it was planned to have hardwood floors throughout.

But........

the floors are so uneven it would have been a major, major project.

Upstairs the floors slope quite a bit well, a lot.

That is a future project.

Everyone assured us that they were quite safe as they all jumped around and the entire house shook.

Very scientific this house inspecting stuff!

 No more huge big fan, venty thingy

 Original plan was just to "freshen" up the bathrooms.

Nope, there was no amount of "freshening" to appease me......

New toilets, new floors, good-bye gross smell........

 Yep, the verandah was out of there as well......

Sam LOVED playing with the caution tape.

Light at the end of the tunnel?????

Well, there you have it.

A mere taste of the adventures in fixing up a house built in 1880.

Are there things that we wanted to do differently?

Yes.

But, compromises had to be made.

We found a lot of things that made us scratch our heads.

Why did someone take one of the inside doors and make it a door on the outside of the house??

No pool pump?

Wallpaper??

The hot water pipes were cut?

Layers and layers of wallpaper??

This house was a tea house and a restaurant at one stage.....

why such a tiny, tiny sink in the kitchen?

Oh, my list could go on.

But, stay tuned for the AFTER photos.

Sally-Ann



Our Old House.......Before

I have been promising  photos of our 1880 house......

here they finally are!

Here are the before photos.

You will have to wait a few days for the

"during"  

photos!

They will be worth it.......I promise!!

So will the 

"finished"

photos.

But, will we every truly be finished???

 

Front view from Lenna Avenue

Side view from Seffner Avenue

Back view from the parking lot

The Barn, complete with flowery mural!!

Portable, the future use for this building??  Who knows!!

I laid odds that there would be a dead body in the bottom of the pool

Kitchen

Dining room - but wait - the wallpaper gets better!!!

Looking through to the living room

Downstairs hallway

Stairway

Living Room

Hallway again

Front bedroom

Upstairs bedroom

2nd Upstairs bedroom

Told you that the wallpaper got better! Ha!

So, this is the beginning.

A lot of work some may say.  We agree.

But, the house has such a great feel to it.

It needs to be taken care of.

It needs a lot of 

blood  

(a little bit was spilled here and there)

sweat 

(copious  amounts, buckets in fact)

tears  

(I'm not saying who shed the most......Jim trying to rein everyone in, or me, not wanting to be reined in!!) 

One thing we have learned when fixing up a house built in 1880......

take what you think it will cost and double triple it - at the least!!

But, we love the house.

I want to retire in this house.

Of course, that would mean gutting the kitchen and bathrooms.

Completely redoing the landscaping.......

Can you hear that sound??  I think it is Jim crying....

Sally-Ann 

April 23rd

On Monday, April 23rd, 2012, we were having a fun time together as a family.  We were in Utah for Joshua's graduation and wanted to spend some time together before we left the next day.  Joshua had a job interview in the morning, so after he was done we went to the new mall in downtown Salt Lake to grab a bite to eat and to let Samuel ride up and down all the escalators one more time. 

Then we headed off to This Is The Place Heritage Park

It was a fun time wandering around.  Sam had fun because there was a little train that took you around.
But, my mind kept turning back the time to another April 23rd.
Eight years ago.
Could it really be eight years?
It doesn't seem possible to me.
What a contrast this April 23rd was to the one eight years ago.

Today as I was driving home from dropping Sam off at school, the tears started to flow.
Tears that I wouldn't let come this past Monday........

I usually visit Emma's grave once a week.
It is peaceful there.
The birds are usually chirping and there is sometimes a nice breeze.
We choose to keep Emma's graveside very simple.  No plastic flowers or whirly gigs.
Nothing that fades in the harsh Florida sun or is ruined by the elements.
On her birthday, Mother's Day, Father's Day and other special occasions, we choose to place a simple rose.  We know that it will wilt quickly in the heat, but we pick the most beautiful rose we can find.
This just seems right to us.

This year has been particularly hard for me.  I think it is because this would have been one of those milestone years.  Emma would have been baptized this year.
I close my eyes and I can imagine her standing here in her white dress.
No time for tears or "what if".
I know we will be together again as a family.
That promise is what brings joy to a broken heart.

That, and.........

heading off to get Sam from school, give him an extra hug and buy him fries and a chocolate milkshake without  a cherry...........

Another Day In Paradise.........

This week is spring break for Sam.  Last year we went to Captiva Island for the week.  We enjoyed it so much, we decided that we would do it again this year.

This week, we are staying in Marathon, Florida.

The inside is very nice, but, this is the reason we came...........

This isn't even the house that we booked for this week.

We drove and drove and drove to Marathon.

We endured the most awful traffic back-up for the last 30 miles or so.

Pulled up to the house that we had booked.......and......there were already unloading their car!!!!

Well, it appears that there was a date mix-up and the agent scheduled us for last week instead of this week.  Luckily, they had had a cancellation and the house we are currently staying in was vacant.

So, here we are.  The only bad thing is this one is only 3 bedrooms instead of 5, so not everyone gets their own room.

The gulf is 5 steps from the house.

Life is good.

Sally-Ann

PS.  after checking our e-mails, etc., it was the vacation rental people who mixed up the dates.......but what the heck, I think we ended up with the better end of the deal.