Our Home Sweet Home

This weekend was interesting! We always said on a bright and sunny weekend that we'd take down the chimney in the back of our house and this weekend was it. Take down a chimney?! Yes, begrudgingly we *had* to take it down. I was in love with this feature, but 1) it was non-functoning, 2) had a ton of wood rot behind it, 3) creepy crawlers akin to small aliens were coming in between some of the cracks [shudder] and 4) our insurance company gave us a deadline by next weekend to take it down. Sigh. Also, when it was touched, it moved... no need to have a widow(er)-maker on our property!

So, my father-in-law is as close to a saint as it comes. He has been teaching us how to re-do a lot of our home, and hopefully we will be able to download all of our knowledge to our children when it's their time to buy their first place. We will, like our parents suggested, to buy something a bit newer because as we've discovered (and were previously told by just about everyone) old house, old problems. The saying is true. Don't think it doesn't pertain to you!

We still have the other half to take down, but will only do so after we clean up some of the first mess. You can't see in this picture, but we will also now need to fix our retaining wall... it was blown out by the tumbling chimney. Looks like we'll have a new outdoor seating area sooner than we thought (yes!!!!)!

But, the good news is out of all of this - the brick is in really good shape and we are trying to save as much of it as possible. We desperately need to do some updates to the front sidewalk, and think that these original pieces to the home will be absolutely perfect! Where you can reuse and recycle, it's always best. Also, saves a good deal of money.

Here's what we did! I swear, at some point, it will all look like it's coming together rather than just coming down :)

The chimney went all the way up past the top dormer's roof line! You'll also may be able to see where part of the chimney impaled our retaining wall and pushed it out about a good 12" in some spots. We had to dig it out by chipping off brick by brick. 

And here's the other part of the chimney in our back lawn. The force when this came down was incredible (and kinda scary!). 

When we were in the beginning stages of planning our our master bedroom remodel, we truly had to plan out every stage. Developing a floor plan (there's a great, and FREE, room modeling/layout program named SketchUp - go get it people!) that was a life saver while trying to see how our room would look. Below is a 3D model - SO COOL - of what we were thinking it 'may' look like. Of course, ideas evolve, but this is kind of what we were thinking. It might help make sense of some of the pictures in my previous blog post from today. 

Here, you will see the tiny built-in's we are planning to create. Although I'm not sure I did this completely to scale, you still get a good picture! We'll be placing sconces on either side of the bed as well, to add different levels of light - from what we've seen on the blogs known as layered lighting. Sounds cool - will see ;)

Oh, our house has taken on quite a transformation since we first received the keys and walked through the front door as first time home owners. We have gone through happiness, tears, fears and phobias since we've moved in. Can I tell you how much BIGGER bugs are in the suburbs than city living?! They are on steroids... which I thought were illegal... end of thought as I digress... 

However, through it all, we have been able to start turning this house truly into our home. Our only bathroom is nearly complete! We only need to make the custom shower curtain and then pictures galore will sprinkle the pages of this blog! 

For those few - I know who you are - that are following my page, here is some of the MAJOR progress that has happened on our master bedroom. Overall plans for this space are as follows:

Gut room

Try to level some of the crooked spaces, walls, flooring, windows

Make the room LARGER

Tear out the only closet in the room to make more usable living space

Bump back walls to increase square footage (we have sloped ceilings, so coming up with a solution to use all of that unused space was a must)

Install insulation because in 1900 when the house was built, such a thing just didn't exist

Put in additional electrical outlets and a light switch to bring the room up to code

Install new windows

Put in new walls

Build a new closet in some of that unused space under the sloped ceiling (we have a 10-foot closet space and it's going to awesome!!)

Reroute the plumbing for the baseboard heaters

New floors

All new baseboards and moldings 

Pretty much, NEW EVERYTHING!

NEW EVERYTHING comes with expense, however, if you take the time, and do it yourself, you save thousands of dollars! Plus, it's rewarding :)

Here's some of our progress so far:

This is the teeny tiny 'master' bedroom from the previous owners. Completely dated and space was not optimized. So, we found some good nooks and cranies to turn into major usable space! 

This is us ripping up the evergreen carpeting that blanketed our ENTIRE home... it was at least 40+ years old, and we aren't joking. This is my lovely husband who is tearing back years of wear and tear.

The start to something fantastic! Again, the hubs ripping away at the plasterboard walls and revealing no insulation from the elements:

After all of that, this is what the room looked like. The only insulation was the batting we installed in our attic because yes, we did not have any insulation above ANY of the rooms either and we were literally heating the earth with thousands of dollars of heating oil... We learned our lesson that's for sure!

And, this is where we are now... just the finishing, decorative touches left - i.e.,moldings, new floor, paint, custom closet doors created by yours truly, and built-ins on either side of our bed to increase storage in our humble abode!

This is where we knocked out the closet (far left) and bumped back the back wall by 2 feet. Makes the room feel SO much bigger. This is the wall we are placing our bed between two built-ins on either side to create more space in the room! 

New windows (we put in two, thanks to my father-in-law)!

This is one of the closet door openings - we have a his and her's closet under the roof line. 6 feet tall, 5 feet deep, approx 10 feet wide.

Welcome to our 'old home sweet home'! We hope you enjoy your time here as we update our first house, learn first-hand from our successes and mistakes, and how us DIY home owners experience the good times, trials and tribulations of fixing up an old home!