One room down, five more to go.

As of last night, we have one room completely done.  Sort of.  I still need to do some touch up around the edging, but it's done enough that before and after pictures can be shown.  We are so close to being done with all the rooms, which is really exciting.  We have been painting for about two weeks now.  I have most of the trim/bead board painting done, so the chunk of painting left is color, and we officially have all the colors picked out (deciding colors for an entire house is not easy.)  There was so much to do before we could start painting, but first let's show a before picture.


I didn't have a good before pic of the dining room, but it looked exactly like these walls. 

So first we had to do an insane amount of scraping.  Even with all the scraping we did, it's not perfect.  We finally just had to let go and remember that this is an old house.  We can't fix all of the past owners mistakes unless we want to buy all new trim or spend three or more months scraping and sanding.                                                                                      

We also scraped off loose drywall from the ceilings and walls in the entire house, which meant we had a lot to patch up. Past owners textured over wallpaper, so we had some big areas to joint compound.   I don't have a picture of the dining room before the patch work, but here it is before we textured. 

 I discovered there is something I hate doing more than scraping.  


SANDING DRYWALL.  


Nate said working on the house is turning us gray.  


I came a little more prepared the next few days of sanding drywall.  But it still gets everywhere.  Even after showering, I'd find it in my ears.  Gross.


I HATE it.   I'm so glad that part of working on the house is over. 

After doing the nasty crap work, we textured and primed the patches.  

Nate was very proud of my texture work. 

Then we painted all of the ceilings and crown molding. 

Then I started painting the never ending trim and bead board. I love the chair rail and trim around the windows, but my wrist is tired.

And then....COLOR!!!

Ta Da!

It's so nice to see the fruit of our labor now.  We also have the kitchen, hallway, and girl's room painted, but there are a few things we still need to do before we can take an after picture.  Here is a little sneak peak at the girl's room, though!

The girls are excited about their room!  I'm hoping we'll be done with all the painting and other projects to start refinishing the floors this Friday...but I had also hoped to be done painting on November 25th...so here's to a miracle.  

Our Troopers

Oh my.  I feel like working on the new house has completely consumed our lives.  If you minus sleeping we probably spend more time up at the new house more than our current home.  The kiddos have been troopers.  I told Callie this the other day, and she got very serious and said, "no, mommy.  I'm not a trooper, I'm Callie." They spend about half of the time doing this-

And the other half doing things like this-

Hopefully we will not find her doing this in 10 years. 

I'm really excited about our neighbors!  They have two boys the same ages as the girls.  They are the cutest family ever !  Everyday when the Dad goes to work, the whole family walks him to the car to give him hugs and kisses.  I'm secretly planning ways that the mom and I can become best friends.  

And the swing has been the best at keeping Toby content.

I also discovered the old baby walker in the garage, so that's been fun.  He can actually move himself backwards in it. 

Because we have been consumed by the fixer-upper, things at our current home get overlooked...for example..

On the bright side, they are all clean.  

Having a Good Foundation

Wow.  We have been busy. We closed on the house two weeks ago and since then there has only been one day where we haven't gone up to work on it.  And when I say "we," I really mean Nate.  The days that Nate works, we can only work on the house for a couple hours, so I stay home with the children.  It's interesting working on a house with three kids in tow.  Usually one parent can work without being interrupted, but the other parent works in 15 minute or less increments because some crisis arises.  But, we are making it work and progress is getting made.

Monday the foundation company came.  It is the norm down here to have foundation problems.  I didn't know what to expect as far as how they go about fixing our foundation, but I was amazed.  This crew worked hard, and they seriously did an awesome job.  Here are some pictures.

Nate joked about how we went all out for Halloween by digging grave sites.

Apparently, we live on a lot of rock!  But they came prepared with jack hammers of every kind.  They also hauled off the rock and replaced it with soil.

 

 

 

 Here they have already leveled half of the house and are starting to fill the holes back up.  

 Yay, our house is level!

Holes are filled back up.  They left our yard looking better than it was before they came!

They cleared out brush/bushes that we were planning on getting rid of to get access to the foundation.

Here they are working on mortaring the cracks in the brick.  They also re-cemented the porch, chalked the windows, and make sure all doors opened and shut properly!

In raising the house we discovered we had a fourth step!

Here is Callie digging a hole like the workers.  

Hanging out in the new front yard.

She's very good about holding his head.

 

It's tiring work watching other people work :)

He's happy about having a good foundation.

Now that the foundation is good, we can really start the cosmetic work of the house.  Before, it was pointless to start fixing cracks or painting, because the house would have moved and the work would have been ruined.  It's been fun to ponder on that and compare it to having a good foundation in Christ.  We will never be thwarted if we have a good foundation in Christ!  I love The Message's version of Luke 6:48, "If you work the words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who dug deep and laid the foundation of his house on bedrock. When the river burst its banks and crashed against the house, nothing could shake it; it was built to last. But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don't work them into your life, you are like a dumb carpenter who built a house but skipped the foundation. When the swollen river came crashing in, it collapsed like a house of cards. It was a total loss."  Great words!

It took three days for the foundation people to finish.  We were very pleased with the work they did.  Now if only the plumbers we hired would show the same quality work....

 There will be another post for the plumbers, but they did not pass the city inspection on Wednesday.  They are up there again today.  $$$$$.  We'll see. 

Our Fixer-upper

Nate and I bought a house this past Thursday.  It's a great fixer-upper.  We got a deal on it, which allowed us to pay cash for it, and because of this we signed three papers at the closing.  THREE.  If you've ever bought a house with a mortgage, you know how crazy it is to just sign three papers.  The day before closing I even practiced writing my signature, because I usually just do the M squiggly, and thought for a bunch of important documents I should have a better signature :-) 


We are excited about this fixer-upper, because it is one house closer to our married life dream of living on a chunk of land.  It's also exciting because this house is closer to Nate's work, an Aunt and Uncle, and a Nature Area.  It also has wood floors and interior closets (our current home does not have an interior closet, which should be outlawed in Texas where we have tornados.)


Our goal is to move in by Christmas.  We have A LOT to do, and we're doing most of it ourselves.  I'm glad I married a handyman.  
  

Front porch.  Forgot to take a full exterior house picture.

 This is the front room looking from the dining room.

And this is looking into the dining room from the front room. 

A view of the front room from the little hallway.

This is a view of the dining from the kitchen entrance

Looking into the kitchen from the dining room.  Callie helping Nate throw away the old flooring.  

The kitchen.  The door leads to a laundry room/mud room.

The entrance to the garage is by the kitchen. 

From the kitchen is a door that leads to bedroom #1. 

Bedroom #1 has two entrances, one from the kitchen and one from the little hallway which is here.

Looking at the bathroom from the hallway.

Our awesome sink.

The hallway is "L" shaped.  This is a view from the hallway looking into bedroom #2 and #3.

Bedroom #2

Bedroom #2 was called the letter room by the girls.  I hope they aren't sad when we paint over this. 

Bedroom #3.  Who paints the walls black and trim red?

This is a view from the kitchen into the laundry room/mud room.

We will have to rebuild this.  The wood is rotten from water damage. 

We have a big back yard!  Lots of room for the pool and garden!

Elliott sitting in the front planter. 

I'm looking forward to when I can show you pictures of the freshly painted walls and refinished floor, but there are so many projects to do before we can start those.  My plan is to keep record of our progress using the blog.  And hopefully by Christmas you'll see a decorated tree through the window!!