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We’re getting so close. This past weekend Sean and I hung the cabinets This Old House style and thanks to our neighbor Al, the counters are also installed in the kitchen. Everything is farm house straight:
We also spent a day attending to the yard and putting away materials in preparation for some more excavating work. We are extending our driveway along the house and adding gravel as well as preparing the site for our garage to be built next year. As it turns out, we are also having our septic repaired. (Sigh.)
The project list is shrinking, and we’re feeling the pressure to get the rest of it done… yesterday.
We need some help.
I didn’t have the walls ready to paint this past weekend because I’ve damaged my wrist (at least temporarily) from mudding and sanding. I’m going to keep it wrapped and pop lots of ibuprofen this week and do my best to finish the last coats of mudding in the living room, stairway, and one more bedroom so that all remaining rooms are ready for sanding and paint by Saturday.
If I can hang on and push one more week out of my arm, maybe our sweet little C. will not have to finish the rest of it up for me:
I’m feeling the burn to get this done. Can you help us!? For an hour? Or four?
Needed this Saturday September 26th
- Sanders (first thing Saturday morning!) and Dust Wipers
- Wall Painters (I know you’re all out there! About ninety-eight thousand people have approached me about helping with this in the past six months. The time has finally come.)
- Pressure-Washer Operator (for porch and window trim)
- Cleaning Helpers (to bravely take on The Dust. Vacuuming floors, walls, window sills; wiping cupboards, ceiling fans and light fixtures; washing windows and screens, steam cleaning the couch… everything is filthy. It just has to end.)
- Child Care! Okay A. and L. are too old to need this, but they are usually game for tagging along if you want to take the whole crew. Especially if it means getting out of doing yard work or other manual labor on the house. Or babysitting.
- Meal Preparation and Cleanup. Cook and serve food to our hardworking friends so that we don’t have to stop working except to stuff our faces!
- Roofer to finish installing ridge caps, top the chimney pipe and trim the valley shingle edges
Sean and I need to be able to finish installing floor transitions in two doorways and the wood treads and landings on the steps. The idea is to be ready for floor finishing during the week of Sept. 28 – Oct. 2, and to forge ahead full steam…
Next Saturday, October 3
- Exterior painters for porch and window trim
- Interior trim installers
- Gardeners/Grass planters
- Closet organizer installer
- Window insulator/sill-board installer/caulker
- Child care helpers
- Meal preparation and cleanup
- BONFIRE ATTENDEES! Yes, it’s time for a party. We plan to burn a huge pile of brush and junk wood. (And make merry drinking beer and pop and eating snacks. ) Fire starting around 7-8 PM. Bring your own chair and a song in your heart. Be sure to call us to let us know that you’re coming so that we can talk you into helping us at some point throughout the day too.
If arrangements work out, carpet will be installed upstairs between Oct 5 and 9… and we’ll be ready for the last wave of help by…
October 10
- LARGE ITEM MOVERS! The massively heavy couch (two recliners) is already moved, our giant living room armoire is sold and we are hiring out to move the piano… (“You’re welcome,” to everyone who has ever helped us move!) The bulk of what’s left will be managed in small bites as we go but we’ll need help with a few large items: stove, washer, freezer, desk, dressers…
If you can help with any or all of it, I can’t even begin to tell you how deeply appreciated it would be! We are SO aware that we can’t do it all alone.
Sean has been having knee trouble and our calendar has been filled with a plethera of family and church and school events. Combined, this means that work has stalled out a bit at the new house.
The good news is that the deadline to be out of our current house has been extended to December. We would still love to be living in the new house before school starts in the fall, but we do have some breathing room in case that becomes an impossibility.
The only things we’ve accomplished in the past couple of weeks are puttering sorts of projects. The drains have been assembled and I discovered that I should have installed the bathroom door before I put in the cement board on the floor… ergh. Modification and rework. The bane of my existence. And a reality of working on an old house when you don’t really know what you’re doing.
A fresh dumpster is in place for some more destruction, but we really need to get that darned bathroom working before we make an all-out call for help.
Phase one is the bathroom. Believe me, that’s enough. Once we finish that, we can move on to phase two projects: roof, windows, and stairs. Phase three involves the rest of the interior finishing. Electrical updating and sheetrocking bedrooms. Paint, carpet, trim. Sanding and finishing the floors.
I feel so far away from painting anything. I can’t even begin to think about color schemes and decorating.
Because of Sean’s knee and the amount of work involved in a full tear off of asphalt and wood shakes on a 12/12 pitch with all new underlayment required, we are getting bids on the roof. And we talked to our friendly local excavator about roughing in the new driveway, even though we won’t have a garage built for awhile.
Right now the driveway is shared with our neighbors. They seem like lovely people but since we’re planning to build a garage on the opposite side of the property anyway, it only makes sense to put in our own driveway.
We are tapping a resource on some windows for a deep discount… and another resource for helping us to rebuild the stairs…
Too many irons in the fire!
Meanwhile, the kids have been busy exploring the new yard. We put up some swings in an ancient ash tree in the front yard for them to fight over. Spring blooming has revealed two large clusters of lilacs and a mature apple tree. That makes me smile (makes Sean cringe).
New and old maples, pines, and birches spatter the perimeter. There’s a huge old nut tree of some kind in the front too. I wish I had more tree knowledge!
Well, enough of this rambling post. Lots of stuff in the works, nothing getting finished… this is the state of things.
There is plywood on the floor! O Happy Day! The new chimney is complete, too, which means we have heat again.
A new wall in the making. Studs included! (As opposed to the hack job of sticks inside the wall previously.) Note the new electrical wire being run and that fancy three-stud corner I figured out how to do from the internet.
A new header for the doorway between the living room and kitchen.
Seems I’ve stumbled onto a way to get that camera snapping in my hands on a regular basis.
I like it.
The battery was recharging when I missed a few shots of dust billowing out of the trash can as we swept up plaster and insulation dust and dirt and bricks from the basement. Would have been a cool picture to make.
The excuse of documenting the remodel forces me to keep the camera handy! My brain has responded by framing shots constantly.
The last big chunk of chimney.
Looking down where the chimney used to be, from the top level to the basement. A new favorite shot.
Disoriented? Me too.
Another new favorite.
Sean was compelled to walk across the opening in the floor over and over again, giving me a slight heart attack each time he did. He almost tripped once, too.
This feels like progress. Chimney removed, new chimney pipe started, rotted floorboards replaced. After monkeying with the joists, the floor is as level as we can hope for in a 120-year-old farm house.
The bathroom is hereby officially gutted like a fish.
Now the girls can pee outside with the guys.
The view from the shower.
Here's the official Cady Home Project Logo Image
"Wow, your house has so much.... potential...?!"
Here it is! The new Cady place... as soon as we can make it habitable.
The front door and windows, from inside the porch. The main part of the living room is inside to the right.
Here's the living room. Stairs leading up are off the frame to the right. The bathroom is behind the partially-destroyed wall. Kitchen is straight back. We had a pizza picnic on the floor--our first meal in the new place. Yay!
Super powered Cady kids can walk through walls...
The soon-to-be-expanded bathroom. Will include laundry!
I'm not sure this photo truly depicts how disgusting and cracked and rotted this space is. It's slated to be torn out completely.
Here's the view from the kitchen into the living room (bathroom on the right).
The side door that leads into the kitchen... on the west side of the house. Patio doors to the backyard on the left. Twelve-year-old daughter numb to the crazy mom sporting a camera.
The kitchen viewed from the northwest corner. Random crazy husband jumping into the shot.
View of the backyard from the patio doors in the south facing kitchen. Solar dryer included! We are on an acre, surrounded by farm fields and one neighbor to the west.
Six-year-old strikes a pose at the top of the world's steepest set of stairs.
South facing bedroom above the kitchen.
Same south facing bedroom. The only bedroom with a door at present. Four-year-old with panda in the closet saying, "This could be an extra room for sleeping!"
The bedroom with a boarded up window that faces west. An amazing trick panda!
Gotta love all the paneling. This is the third bedroom, with a window facing east.
View from the landing at the top of the stairs into the east bedroom. Panda boy returns.
Panda boy in the kitchen.
