Wrapping it Up! The House, that is.....

Surprise, surprise, everyone! I’ve been keeping a little secret again. We’ve been secretly doing a little work on our house this week while the hubs has had some time off work.

Some of you may recall that last year, we put new siding on the house and added a large deck off our second floor where we often spend time grilling on Matt’s charcoal beast. Admittedly, the deck was not my idea, nor was I terribly supportive of it. Why? Well, frankly, I thought the deck should be downstairs off the kitchen and not upstairs off our bedroom. I mean, really, who wants to have people over for a cookout and have them facing your bedroom the whole time. Not me.

I did, however, grow to really appreciate the deck as a sort of sanctuary for the three of us.

That being said, for several years I’ve been talking about wanting a patio outside the kitchen where I could put my gas grill and a couple of chairs and be able to work right outside the kitchen. For some reason this spring, the hubs got it in his head that we needed a deck....get this....outside the kitchen.

Really? Hmmm....well, I wasn’t going to tell him that it wasn’t really an original idea. I find that in some cases, its better just to let them believe they’ve had a brainstorm and run with it.

And “run with it” is exactly what he did. Not only do we have a lovely little deck off the kitchen that now houses my grill and two of the chairs from our upstairs patio set, but it also connects to the back stairs with a lovely little walkway.

And that’s not all....

Our front porch has always consisted of this gigantic concrete block that came with the house.

(lovely, no?)

Sturdy, yes, but it also boasted a large gap between the porch and the house, that had a very rough edge with a pointy piece of metal sticking out. Twice now, guests of ours have lost their footing and slid a leg into that gap, leaving very nasty scratches and bruises. Frankly, I’m surprised those are the only accidents we’ve had.(view of the NEW front porch and a peek at the Adirondack chairs that need re-painting)

Well, no more! In addition to my lovely new patio, the hubs and the guys covered over the old porch with decking and angled the new steps toward the driveway instead of out into the yard. Now I have a nice respectable front porch, as well as enough room for my two Adirondack chairs, which will be getting scrubbed and receive a fresh coat of paint over the holiday weekend.

If all goes well, I may have yet another surprise in store....if I can get my butt in gear and get one more outdoor project done over the long weekend break. I’ll see you next week, hopefully with more news and pictures to share!(view of the new kitchen patio, complete with Mommy's grill)(a better look where you can see how the two decks connect together)

(view from the back of the house. on the left side you see the entrance to the upstairs deck.)

All in all, a very successful project! Hey Mom and Dad - what do you think of my surprise??

FINALITY

Ahhhhhh the sweet sigh of relief is felt around the world.....or, at least, the neighborhood.

The construction at my house is FINISHED! I came home last night to find a yard free of work trailers and tools, and not only the siding completed, but also the back deck. I am too exhausted physically and emotionally to go into much more detail about it, so I'm going to let the pictures to the talking for me.(the garage, obviously.)
(main view of the house)(stairs leading to the back deck. Now all I need is to lay some pavers between the kitchen door and the base of the steps.)(and finally, a view of the enormous deck we replaced our old deck with. I really hate to admit it, but I like it. I may even be willing to cook out there.....you know, since I won the fight about which direction the stairs should face.)

So, there it is. My new and improved house! Now, we just have to get a grill so we can start partying!

A Foreboding Sky...and Progress!

On the way to town this morning, Ty spotted my camera on top of my purse and asked if he could take pictures. This is something I've been letting him do periodically lately, and since the windows were rolled up, I figured "why not?" We ended up with 41 pictures. Pictures of the seat in front of him, of his legs, of his bowl of cereal, of the back of my head, and, among other things, of the "storm". It is not raining here...yet....but it is most definitely a foreboding sky. I just hope is doesn't stick around long so that the guys can get my house done today. This is what the sky looked like through the lens. not bad for a four year old, shooting through the closed window of a moving vehicle...

And, as I said, PROGRESS! Barring any natural disasters (or a whole lotta rain) the siding on the house itself will be done today. The front and back are done, and the sides need a little more work. Friday, Matt hopes to have two guys working on the garage and two on building the new deck. I may be taking tomorrow off again as well, to try and clean up the inside while all of this is going on.

Here are a few shots to give you an idea of what my house looks like now.

(The front of the house, with the new gable vent at the top)

(The road side of the house, nearly complete)(The rear of the house, with the header for the new deck installed, but otherwise complete, also with a new gable vent)(The southwest corner. This is where they will be starting this morning, to finish off that tricky spot between the two sections of roof before moving on to the other sides.)(The kitchen, desperately close to being done as well.)

All in all, a very productive day and I am looking forward to coming home tonight to find the house finished! The garage and deck are all secondary to me, especially since I really don't like the idea of the deck anyway, but I'm at the mercy of the husband on that one. We are talking about painting the concrete blocks later this summer. I'm thinking about going forest green for that. It should blend in nicely with my garden....and maybe disguise the weeds. Hopefully, we'll also get some of the landscaping done that I want to see done as well so that I can finally hang a "finished" photo of the house on the wall downstairs.

So, yeah....big sigh of relief. If I am not around tomorrow, I'm hoping to have BIG progress to report on Monday. In the mean time, have a great weekend!

P.S. I'm officially on "baby watch". My little niece is due to be born any day now, so I am waiting on pins and needles for the big call to come through! Everyone cross your fingers for a healthy baby and as easy of a labor and delivery as possible for her mama.

Under Construction

Well, the time has finally come. The siding is going up! It has not really stopped raining for more than a couple of hours at a time, but we’re managing to work through. I’ve taken a few shots to show you some progress, so I’ll include captions as we go. This first set is what the house looked like last week: (This is the North, or road side of the house)(This is the west side. Our bedroom is through the patio doors on this deck, which is also the deck we tore off yesterday morning.)(Southwest side, with a window to Ty's room, and one to the kitchen. That's our well you see in the corner.)(South side, which used to be the back porch of the school house, but is now my kitchen)(Finally, the East side, or front of our house)

Saturday, Matt’s good buddy (also a Matt) came over and we spent the day cleaning up the property, clearing a bunch of junk, an old clothesline, some existing grapevines that we didn’t want or use, and we made good use of the dumpster we ordered to clean out the garage, which was desperately needed. I also managed to send a couple of old recliners home with the brother in law, and get rid of some other things inside the house.

Sunday, we had several of Matt’s buddies over and got all the old siding torn off in a matter of about 2 hours. This is what that job looked like. After the tear off, the contractor came over Sunday afternoon and the guys that were left wrapped the house in Tyvek since we were expecting nothing but rain this week. In the process, we decided that we really couldn’t afford NOT to remove the old deck that sits off our second story bedroom. SO, Matt and I both took the day off yesterday to get more work done in that area. Here is the back of the house, with and without the deck.
(with the deck, obviously.)(aaaaaand....without! The hubs had to remind me last night to stop him if he tried to go outside and pee during the night. Yep, we live in the country, peeing outside is pretty common.)

Yesterday morning, the contractor and his crew showed up and started work. The deck came off while they were setting up around the house, and the rain just got heavier and heavier until they couldn’t work anymore, and called it off at 10:00. Fortunately, they were sitting at home watching the radar, and they came back at 2:00 after the rain stopped and got a few more hours in. The siding was starting to go up on most sides of the house. This is what it looked like as of 5:00 yesterday evening.
Most recently, Matt decided to take today off as well, and he just sent me THIS picture of the front of our house, which was untouched as of yesterday.
One other very large part of the day was the "rainout". Yep, we were a tad discouraged when the crew left that morning, and proceeded to dig into the 30 pack of beer we had iced down for the "after party". This is what THAT looked like!

(the other Matt insisted on taking this picture. He thought it was pretty funny that we both put on green shirts that morning and we coordinated so nicely with the new siding. I also just noticed that the siding is pretty much the same color as the background of my blog! Ironic...)

He also told me that since HE’S been getting rained out at work so far both days this week anyway, he is thinking about just taking the rest of the week off to make sure everything gets done. After the siding is finished, they will also be building us a new deck to replace the old one. My job now is to get the INSIDE of the house cleaned up so we can have the family over for breakfast on Sunday and surprise them all. We decided not to tell his mom that we were finally doing the siding this week, so it’ll be a surprise when they come over.

One last shot, a picture of my two happy boys, posing for the camera, and actually SMILING.
That’s all for now, but its not even 2:00 yet, so I’m hoping by the time I get home it will look even better! More to come tomorrow, if all goes well!

The Countdown

Okay, folks! We have the final word from the contractor! Here is the countdown to a fully sided house:

TODAY he has ordered the materials from our local lumberyard.
FRIDAY there will be a dumpster delivered to our house for all of the refuse.
SATURDAY the contractor is picking up said materials and delivering them to our house.
SUNDAY all of Matt's available buddies are coming over for a demolition party. We provide the beer and food, they bring the crowbars. All the old siding is coming off!
MONDAY the contractor and his workers arrive on site to begin RENOVATION!

I will start taking pictures when tear-off begins and hopefully I will have a completely new image to show you by next Friday!

After recovering from the siding job, I am hoping to get the landscaping done over the course of the summer and early fall so I can have the entire exterior finished before the cold weather sets in.

Everyone cross your fingers that Mother Nature is in a good mood and keeps the rain away for a few days so we can get this all done quickly!

Confession Time

Since the birth of this blog, I have been posting about various projects I’ve done around my house (along with lots of food, posts about my little guy, and a bunch of crafty things), but there is something about my house that you don’t know…

Ok, here goes….

My house SUCKS.

Yes, its true, if you’ve been to my house, I either really trust you not to be judgmental, or I didn't know you were coming over.

About nine years ago, we bought an 80 year old schoolhouse that the previous owners had been in the process of converting into a home for a number of years before they divorced and left the house in its unfinished state. If my experience is any guide, I'm betting the house ate them alive. Lord knows it has put a strain on my marriage from time to time. After that, the house laid vacant for several years before we bought it. Imagine the amount of dirt, insects, and ummmm, yeah, rodents, that can build up in an abandoned country house over a period of several years. You have the picture in your head? Yep, that's it. To put it nicely, the house was rough.

On the bright side, this is the view out my back window: I mean, there was little to no drywall inside, plywood floors through most of it, junk windows that didn’t do much for protection from the elements, and a roof that leaked so badly there were mushrooms growing out of the kitchen floor (literally, I’m not making this up).

The kitchen, as it was, happened to be an extension of the original building and was built around the old back porch of the school. That being said, the kitchen floor was made up of the original planks from the back porch, just closed in, but never treated or covered. It had to be ripped up, one tiny, rotting chunk at a time when we replaced it. Fortunately, we did manage to get the roof replaced before Matt's job went down the toilet, so, I guess you could say, at least we had a roof over our heads. Our relationship was still young, and we had a lot of energy to take this shell of a house we fell in love with (it had a great “loft” area that was the selling point for us) and put our hearts and souls into renovating it and turning it into a wonderful country home.

That dream suffered a long, painful death.

Almost immediately after buying the house, Matt was laid off for 18 months. We had no money for remodeling. We lived in the shanty of a house for quite a long time with very few of the comforts of home that most of us take for granted. For the first several months, I didn’t even have a stove, cooking solely by way of microwave, crock pot and electric skillet. (and you all know that was incredibly painful for a foodie like me.) Over time, and the course of several years, we have managed to bring the house up to livable standards, a process which got pushed into overdrive when I got pregnant and we had to consider whether we could raise a child in the armpit that was our house.
Most of the major interior work was completed within a few weeks of Ty’s birth, but we have been wrapping up loose ends and miscellaneous improvements in the four years since then. Naturally, when you think about bringing a child into a house, you think about the inside of the house first. Well, that’s what we did, too.
What am I getting at? The siding, of course. The siding on our house was never even 100% finished by the previous owners, or painted (at least not so far as you can tell) and it has been a great point of stress for me, knowing that it did not provide much protection for the house during severe weather season. I rarely invite people to visit, because, frankly, its embarrassing. We live waaaaay out in the country, so it hasn’t been a major issue until now. I have even been very adamant about not taking pictures of the house, because I simply don’t want to remember it the way it was.
BUT, the time has come. At long last, we are going to be FINISHING our house. The siding is going up, and the only thing left to do will be landscaping. I cannot even begin to describe to you how happy and relieved this makes me. So, I think I can do it. I can finally share with you what my house looks like, and show you some of the changes that have taken place. The pictures in this post are really the only ones I have of the house as it was before we started fixing it up, so that's all you get. But, being as the siding is the hot topic of conversation right now, I'll give you the exterior as it is today.

Here it is…..my house. Fooled ya, didn’t I? Really, though, that IS my house….or at least, that’s what it looked like 80 years ago. More accurately, this is the Mount Vernon School, Hettick, Illinois.

Now….HERE is my house. I’m gonna give you one good look before the siding goes up. Its going to be a very dramatic change, to say the least.So, there you go! I confess! I live in a crappy, crappy house….but it is well on its way to being the dream we once imagined. Next up – the interior! I don’t have many pictures of what it looked like before the changes, but I’ll give you what I’ve got. Stay tuned!

Introducing.....Cypress!

Yep, its true, this country girl finally got her way and we've hired a contractor to get our house re-sided in three weeks. What do you think of my color choice?