“How’s the house coming? Is it done yet?No…. But you all have moved in upstairs now, right?” ”Where is the new blog post? its been a while…”
This is the questions Evan and I have been getting lately from well meaning friends and neighbors. And we get it! On the outside it looks like we have been slacking…. That we have lost our ambition to finish such a large scale remodel. To be fair this is true, we did LOSE it. We HAD too actually. The funny thing about life and GOD is when you think you have the best laid plans God says “ I see you made plans… which is GREAT, but, I have also made plans and mine is in PERMEANT marker and yours can only be in pencil.”
First and foremost this is my Blog about our home remodel and I plan on keeping it that way. But as it is MY blog I felt this needed to be shared. Life is messy and exhausting some times and 2019 has been a difficult year for me personally.
My Grandma gave me the call on January 5th 2019 before the news released anything my cousin died suddenly in the line of duty. Eric, was a firefighter through and through. Just like his Grandpa before him. I have always been proud of ALL my family lines( even the nutty ones:) . But something about my Grimm side always made me a tad bit prouder with Uncle Dick and Eric being so active in their community. Shoot! I even encouraged my husband into joining our own local volunteer Fire Department over 14 years ago because of my Grimm family… and now he’s hooked! With the loss of Eric I needed to take time just to see family more and deal a little with my own sadness on it… When one loses a young family member those gatherings will never be the same. But he has left us a sweet little girl and a wonderful wife to help fill the space some.
Late February we started gutting our upstairs. With much needed help from our besties Rob and Katie. Here’s what we did during our week off of work…
-the upstairs kitchen now ALL GONE we even opened up a few walls to see “what was going on in there”… what WAS going on is cool old brick and no installation cause that brick is thick enough for there not to be any installation! This was new to me but that’s what they did.
-Found the original lath and paster is covered by drywall( popular to do).
-NASTY “was wet” floor in the upstairs bathroom under tile
-Fir floors found in 3/4 of the upstairs rooms
-THE WORST PART removal of the tile, every square foot had around 50 nails securing it to the subfloor/fir floor…. did i mention the tile removal took us our whole week off of work to remove? yah it sucked the life out of us!!! ( we properly disposed of and wore masks)…PS still have some in the kitchen on main floor to remove…. hopefully that is it!?!
After this rough week of demo ( which we thought would have been faster but those DAMN floors! We soon got busy again with life and had been getting bids for the chimneys( leaking) and new HVAC for the attic( second floor only we have two furnaces and two air condition units actually, we will do those units when we move to the main floor demo).
Life has going on as normal, really busy time at work for me, kid functions and birthday parties to run too… you know normal. Until early morning on April 26th, 2019 my Dad suddenly passed away. He was 68. Honestly looking back these last few months it kinda a blur of emotions and duty…. It is just my sister( Jess) and I. My parents divorced when I was 19. So Jess and I had to do everything… from getting the funeral arraignments done, bank accounts open/closed, Dad’s house clean out, estate sales and his house sold. If it wasn’t for support of family and friends (who are like family)… I am not sure where we would be after his passing.… Actually, I know where I would be….I would be a big exhausted crying mess on the floor of his kitchen trying to decide what the next step in the process is…a process that took 2-3 months of out of town weekends, but I wanted and needed to be THERE. My family is everything and as much as we wanted to keep everything of Dads with us forever to remember him, we couldn’t….. My husband and I actually purchased this larger home with the expectation to maybe have our parents move in as they got older. So we could care for them, as long as we were able too. I often joked with my Dad that him and my father in law were going to get industrial sized bunk beds and share a room!LOL! But again God had other plans for my Dad and my life…Miss you so much Dad.
So Like I said LIFE has hit us hard in 2019…. I get overwhelmed with all that still needs done at home actually…So what I am trying to do RIGHT NOW is concentrate on small important steps in our home that WE have done…
Which are….
-Finished re-screening our screen porch, new trim and painting the dark ceiling white.
-Got our 3 original chimneys historically RESTORED( no more leaks!). This is a big ticket item for us after the 3 roofs. We could have torn them down with the ACLUD’s approval as it would have saved the house and our pocket book from more damage. But we want to restore what we can, when we can and I really like the look of them:)
-Built a cellar door by hand and we had NO idea on how to do it! Small victory:)
-Put a door bell in- I know it sounds stupidly simple, right?!? But in an old house nothing is simple. My husband likes the tech side of things, so we put a NEST in with a camera.
All of these are small but important to ether the structure of our house and the quality of life to the family living in there…..So it begs to question”So Elisha what do we say when we see you and Evan next?” …. First We love to talk about our home! I mean we even have a BLOG about it! lol But when you see us next please commit on how secure and historical our chimneys look or how the cellar door looks pretty damn solid! LOL
I promise we are still working on Our Amana Home on our free time and WILL post when we get a project done. So keep your eyes peeled!!
Sincerely,
Two full time working parents doing the BEST they can.
