now that we are in, some beauty in the mess

Now that we are in we are learning some things about the house.  For instance here are some pictures of our window.  This is how we gauge how cold it is outside...the more beautiful frost pattern on the inside of the window, the colder it is outside :)

On the left there is only a little bit of frost so it's not very cold out.  On the Right there is a beautiful pattern!! It must be VERY cold!!!!

I am sure you have all seen a house where someone has just moved in but just for giggles and kicks, here are a few photos of our unpacking mess!

And Below is our first supper here at the new house!! My wonderful friend brought me the tulips as a house warming gift! Super thoughtful and made our mess look so much prettier :)

Our first meal was spaghetti, super easy and yummy!!  However our next couple of meals were more just whatever you can find until I get this kitchen organized! lol

One of the first things we did after moving in was to get a newish faucet.  The one that we had was brutal, I couldn't get a pot under it because it was so low to the sink and there was something else but now I can't remember what :)

Anyways we found a faucet on Kijiji!! Love that place.  We didn't want to spend a lot of money on a new faucet because I had plans down the road to get another one like I had at the highway house.  So my husband met the person and came home and installed the faucet, perfect.....except the next day I saw this:

Yep, it was dripping :(  So some more fiddling ensued.....Eventually we just came to an agreement, the faucet and us, that it just was not a good quality tap but it will do in the mean time!

Well there is not much more we can do at this point.  We are in, boxes are half unpacked everywhere, it's February 2015 and our house on the highway will be closing at the end of the month so I will have to go and do a final clean of that house.  But other then that we are on hold.  We know that the house is sinking on one side but until we know if it is still sinking or has sunk and is not moving anymore then it is no use to start doing any Reno's on the one side of the house.

So here we sit on hold, dreaming of ideas......who knows what we will come up with.

Kim


ONE TIP FOR RENOVATING!

Maybe more for moving then renovating but having someone to watch your kids so that you can unpack for a few hours in peace and quiet is priceless!!!

quick recap, getting ready to move and saying goodbye to appliances...

So let's do a quick recap. ( I will use actual dates for those that have asked :) )

Dec19th 2014
- we officially owed 2 houses, the one on the hwy that we totally renovated and then put on the market and this "new" one in town on the river.

Dec 20th 2014 
- renovations begin!  We ripped out all the carpet in about an hour!

Dec26th 2014 
- removal of part of the all between the kitchen and the living room

Now what?

It's around New Year's and there is not much more we can do to the house before we move in. Sooooo guess that means we can start packing and moving stuff over.  Also we thought we had better look at appliances as the offer on our hwy house includes our appliances. :( Sad for me, I really love my washer and dryer... and truly i was struggling with having to give them up

here is a pic of said washer and dryer:

here they are!! we have been through so much together, it's hard to imagine not having you :(

Trying my best to look on the bright side, truly new appliances should be exciting!  And remember this was last year around new years so there were plenty of good deals!

Armed with a couple of hours, off I went to all the stores in our town that sell appliances.  I know we could have gone to the city but due to time we decided to just try our best to find something locally.

The first place I went to seemed expensive and did not give me the warm fuzzies, so I left.  Then I hit up Leon's thinking they should be good, wrong!! That was one of the most frustrating stores!! They didn't have prices on anything!!! and I had to wait FOREVER  for a sales person to look them up.  Finally she said we are really busy and she will have to try to get back to me in the next 24hours with prices.  Sorry lady that is way too long.  So off to Home Depot and.....they were OK.  They were available and could help me.  I had to do most of the research as quickly as I could but they certainly were very accommodating.  I still don't love that store but I had to give it to them, they did take the time with me that I needed.

Here was my other issue, see the pic below, on the left is a custom built desk my husband made me.  it spanned that whole wall and i really loved it!  So I would have to tell myself, it's really just a desk, I can't take it to Heaven, so enjoy it now and let it go! :)

this is from our house on the hwy, to the left is my desk that my husband built, it's hard to really see the detail in the picture but it was truly awesome!! :)

So when we weren't buy appliances, visiting family, cleaning up Christmas, starting Basketball, celebrating birthdays, etc, we where packing and getting ready to move!! Boxes everywhere! The nice part was that as soon as we had a trailer full we could take it over to the new house :)  However, somehow every time I took a load over it seemed to be one of the coldest days of the year :( BRRRRRR !!!!!

In the end, I ended up wearing a long pink jacket that my husband thought was ugly.  But at this point I could care less, it was warm and long:

It was a very busy and cold time, and I was so thankful when we moved that last box over. :)

Kim

ONE TIP FOR RENOVATING!

Buying Appliances.....Now that I have some hindsight here is what I would recommend.  Buy the extended warranty, any and all warranties available, you will need them!  Unfortunately appliances are not as well built as they used to be :(  At this point (Dec 2015) I have had my appliances for 11 months and I have had to call to have each one serviced...not a fun experience.  So if you are looking for appliances you are welcome to come look at mine and I will give you the nitty gritty on each one. :)

that wall has to go!!!

Carpet out. Next step that wall between the kitchen and living room has to go!!!

So of course on Boxing Day we decide to take that wall down.  Most people shop, not us, we renovate!! :)  Nothing like waking up on a holiday and thinking "hmmm what can we do at the new house today?"

Here is the before shot:

this is the view from the corner of the kitchen.  I am standing next to the wall that needs to be removed

Standing in the dining room by the window

I know, not amazing before shots.  But when I took them I had not anticipated how quickly this area would change.  My Husband is super fast.  He said part of that wall is coming down and by the time I got there to take pictures he was already at this point!!!

Before the dust even settled I took this photo... so sorry it's not very clear!

This was a quick project.  We knew we wanted to open up the house some more but before we ripped out all of the walls we needed more of a plan.  So this was our temporary solution.  What a difference taking down this section made!! :)

Messy? Very! But also very exciting! I see endless possibilities with this wall down :) 
So up next.... well, you will just have to come back to my blog to find out!

Kim

ONE TIP FOR RENOVATING!

I would not normally suggest to someone that renovating during the holidays is the best thing to do, however this house was empty and all my decorations and such were not affected by the demolition! We also had a plan, short term, but still a plan.  So arm yourself with a plan and time and then when you get a minute go for it!!  Just don't start knocking down walls willy nilly ;)

Let the games begin!!! Demo time...day 1

So, now we own 2 houses :/  This is exactly what we said we would never do.  Lesson learned, never say never! lol

I certainly had moments of oh no, what if this house floods in the spring when the river rises?! But then i thought, well at least we will know the reason for it :) and we will deal with that when it comes.

Now this house has a few issues, the biggest being that half of it is sinking.  So when you walk on that half you tend to feel like you are going to fall over.  However winter is not the time to deal with that, so we will deal with that later.

Where to start with demoing?  well that was easy for us, the carpets!!!!  We went in as a family and ripped those suckers out in about an hour!! the kids were awesome! Everyone ripping up sections, pulling out the underlay and then using pliers, hammers and screwdrivers to pull up the nail strips!!  It was dirty and soooo gross! Especially the carpet in the bathroom! EW!!! My Husband did that one really fast ;)

Here are a few pictures of our family outing:

love how the all worked so quickly!

NEXT is the main floor and anywhere the green carpet was:

AND NOW THE BATHROOM!!!

I realize that was a lot of pictures, but we were so fired up to get started because I knew we were going to be making drastic changes and I just had to try to capture every moment.  It was amazing to discover all the hardwood floors underneath the carpet and it was all in decent condition. :)  Hard to believe that someone wanted to cover up hardwood floors!

Working together as a family helped us to all get excited about this new house (kids haven't been super on board because they will be leaving some good friends that live across the road at our old house) and I am so glad that my kids can learn some life skills along the way.

Day one of demo down, many many many more to go :)

Kim

ONE TIP FOR RENOVATING!

Some jobs require a dust mask! This probably could have been one of them.  So I suggest you use a dust mask for removing old gross carpets.

Our reno story

So here I am writing a blog in my spare time between 12am and 6am..just kidding.  

Actually after months of thinking about it, I thought I would take the plunge and share our renovation story.  Thanks to a friend who asked, how do you live through this mess and remain so peaceful???

What a great question!  I have since been thinking about that question and what my response would be, because I am pretty sure at the time I mumbled some unintelligible answer lol.

So my friend, I thought I would take you through the process....here's how it started:

The long and short before we came to this home...setting the scene.

We built a house. ..we finally finished it and sold it to move closer to town. ..then through a series of moves we ended up completely gutting and renovating a house to the point we couldn't do any more because of resale value.  

There were a few issues at that place that made me crazy! ! So we put it on the market and spent just over a year hemming and hawing about what to do. ..then I reached my breaking point on the day we came to see our current house... I had just spent hours cleaning up a crazy mess with the help of my 4 kids.   So the state I was in when I came to see the new house was completely exhausted, absolutely frustrated and ready to move immediately into anything that did not  have the issues I was dealing with.

 It was dark rainy November day and all the snow we had was turning into about a foot of slush.  Utterly Defeated I entered the house and was assaulted with this!!

Dining Room and Kitchen...i just can't find the words to describe these rooms

Yeah, it's pretty ugly!! Yet somewhat comforting...reminds me of my childhood I guess lol.  As we continued the house tour we came across more cosmetic issues....

Notice the pink carpet in the bathroom!! GAG!

this doesn't quite show the depth of the shag

But then we came to this....

A DRY BASEMENT!!

Perhaps this won't mean a lot to you, but to me it was huge!! Just seeing a dry basement on such a horrible day was enough to make me want to move immediately!!

So within a month we took possession of this beauty, but had yet to sell our own.  Big risk buying another house without knowing for sure your current house is sold, but here is where we saw God's hand control the whole situation.  You see our house had a conditional offer on it and those people had a conditional offer on their house and then those people had a conditional offer on it  and so the cycle continued about 5 houses back.  Everyone's sale was depending on the one before going through.  There was nothing we could do but wait and watch how only God could orchestrate all these conditions to work out.

Love how during this time there was this song that kept playing to remind me that we won't be able to move unless it was with God. :)

 click here to see the song by Kristian Stanfill

There you have it, the beginning in a nut shell.  There is obviously much more to the story and more to share, so I hope that you will join me for our messy life journey.

Kim

ONE TIP FOR RENOVATING!

Truly though, we spent hours praying and we're reassured that even though this new place would be a huge reno project and would probably extremely overwhelm us, we were not panicked. ... so my first tip would be to choose a house that needs work...but won't send you into panic mode!