Calling it Done

Aside from a few odds and ends: a vent cover or four, ceiling fans, closet doors, and my whole my back bedroom and office, we're finished with the renovation and are all moved in. Here are a few before and afters. Please forgive the quality of the shots, with my iPhone so handy I hardly bother to drag my real camera out anymore:

I just cannot believe how small the living room looks in the Before...











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Seems I didn't bother taking any Befores of the two bedrooms as both were vanilla boxes with drop ceilings, though Elle's floor had been covered with the overspray from a hasty cosmetic coat of white latex, but here are some Afters.

Here's a peek in Grice's room...



(I'm particularly proud of this closet, it was my first time using power tools unsupervised.)



...and the attached one-day-to-be-shared-with-my-bedroom/office dressing area and closet space...





...and here's the room I'm currently sharing with Elle...







Not a closet door or curtain in sight. Everything on display. And like Meg, this rush to get the majority of the house done was spurred on by the appearance of house guests.

Acta est fabula. -- Caesar Augustus

Work, work, work

How's the renovation going? Four purchases yesterday at Home Depot according to my online and now frightfully low checking account balance. Is God in the details or is it the devil? I'm never quite sure having heard it both ways, but I do know Ben Franklin and Andrew Jackson figure in there quite prominently.

I'll post some more photos soon. The kitchen is almost finished. According to Jorge, there is a new appliance package in our near future. First though, I have the gas guy coming to give us an estimate for converting. I'm no gourmet chef extolling the benefits of precise heat, I just want to be able to boil water the next time a frequent lightning storm or hurricane knocks out power. I was hoping we'd get our friend to custom fabricate stainless steel brackets for the open shelving, but at this late date these IKEA brackets and shelves are looking pretty good. I will need three. Say goodbye to another Franklin.

The back room, which will be my bedroom one day, had the ceiling and old insulation ripped out on a whim right before Jorge left for Nashville, and is now sealed off, unusable with its furnace-like temperatures. It will be slightly less sweltering when I can open all the windows after picking up the new screens. Ben Franklin, Ben Franklin, Ben Franklin. In the meantime I will be taking up air-conditioned residency in what is to eventually be Grice's room. I am also earning her animosity. For 15 years she has been waiting for her own room. Can you feel the angst? Good thing she's going away for a week.

The living room just needs artwork and I haven't quite decided what is going where. Generally I'm competent at hanging pictures on walls. I bang 'em up after eyeballing the space where Jorge requires building permits, tape measures, and levels, but I admit I will need help hanging some of our 36 x 48" monstrosities. My cousin is coming for a visit soon. Her husband is handy.

And what are these "curtains" people speak of? In all our 20+ years of habitation I have never familiarized myself with these items. Venetian blinds on a window or two once, maybe. Am I worried about people peeking in my windows? This is apparently a huge concern to many people as the subject comes up at least once a day. I figure if someone's made the effort to scale the walls and brave my ferocious hounds they've earned it. Even when we lived in town, right on the ground, our next door neighbors were breast-enhanced, liposucked, nipped and tucked nudists. Looking in our bedroom windows would have been a disappointment. Oh, wait, maybe these people have already seen in my windows and are suggesting curtains for their own sake. Huh.

All renovations have unforeseen situations and unexpected costs. We had a bee infestation.



See the man in the white suit? The man is removing a "medium to large" hive from a hole cut into the wall outside my soon-to-be laundry room.

Update

Time for a post methinks. I surprised myself by remembering the email address and password for this account after apparently cleaning out my cookies. On the first try too! So here I am, ready or not...

School for Elle (and here, finally, I'll plug my little online umbrella school, Schola Classical Academy*) has been extraordinarily lax. Yes, even more than my usual disorganized blasé approach. (How's that for an endorsement? Come to our lazy-ass school!) In fact for the past three days she's been on the east coast doing what I like to refer to as an 'apprenticeship' with her father: Processing permits, managing a crew, playing with Post-It Notes. Tomorrow we have a big day of learning planned: Swimming at a friend's. And then dance class. I have been seriously thinking that with her high social requirements she might be better off in school, but this business with my brother beckons and being flexible enough to travel wins. For now.

Sarabelle is still up in the air about college. Currently she is considering a degree in audio engineering and putting her fine arts as a secondary pursuit to her music. She is shopping around for an upright double bass and aims to play with the local symphony. If she is still undecided about her major come July, she will be enrolled at the local state college to work on her Associates. We've got another campus tour coming up on a Sunday in May -- the day after a big wedding that I am performing.

I've never used my notary stamp once in the 10 years or so that I've had it, ever since Jorge's aunt signed me up in order to legalize her papers and then promptly changed her mind, so at an Easter picnic, when the hostess, a dear friend, asked if anyone knew a notary, I admitted I was one thinking she needed a document processed. She then announced to the crowd that she had found her officiant; I would be marrying her nephew and his fiance. I, who when forced to do a Bible reading at my grandmother's funeral, took one big breath and never stopped reading until I nearly keeled over from asphixia, I will be the one standing up in front of a whole crowd of strangers on this momentous occasion performing the ceremony. On a pier. Under a burning hot sun. You might see me on YouTube.

Grice continues to breeze through her honors classes and is nearly finished with her freshman year of high school. Wow. That was fast. I have been drafted as secretary for next year's PTO (Reason #42,620 why you should homeschool.)

Still waiting for the finishing touches on the renovation. It looks like we might be in sometime before Christmas...



* Disclaimer: The entire premise is pompous and conceited and probably offensive to anyone with a hint of religion, but it's for those of us, the loosely-structured, classical, secular homeschool devotees, who want a serious-looking, non-parochial name on a transcript without authoritarian interference. The end.

Before and After

The wall color in the living room is more of a brownish tan rather than the peachy shade it appears. We've got plenty of artwork to cover it up anyway. If you look out the windows in this and the next set you can see some of the landscaping we uncovered. The yard initially looked lush and foresty but was really just terribly overgrown with vines.





You can really see the difference removing the drop ceiling made in the dining room (above.)







Besides the ceiling and electrical work, the kitchen got a fresh coat of paint on everything and new oak flooring. We lucked out with the floor, originally intending to cover up the old vinyl with some newer vinyl until Jorge's floor guy stumbled upon a close out at Home Depot. It's a pretty close match and cost less than vinyl.





These are taken from opposite ends of the kitchen, but you can see we ripped out the upper cabinets, took the gross tile off and removed the pieced together counter top. We're going to put open shelves and a microwave above the range and hang a dish rack on the wall to the right of the sink. The single bowl sink is being replaced with a double and the counter top will be replaced with stainless steel. Still have to get all the drawer pulls...





The bathroom is nothing fancy but the ceiling has been repaired and replaced and it's clean and neat.



This was the one alteration we made to the floor plan. On the office side (with the white tile floor) we took out a closet so small you could not hang anything in it and close the door, and then cut a doorway through to the back side of the master bath's closet so that we can access the bath from the office as well. The doorway still needs to be trimmed out, the door installed, and the remaining closet space rebuilt.

Decided!

Okay, got that out of my system.

Tapestry of Grace is off and we will now return you to our regularly, loosely-scheduled programming. I still think Tapestry is a solid curriculum and very handy, but I prefer to use the books I have selected and collected over the years for our primary and supplementary sources rather than many of their recommendations. What's the point of using my own choices when their questions, worksheets, quizzes, etc. are all geared to their specific book choices? Not cost efficient.

So, for the time being, Larie and I will continue to slack off. There is so much else going on. I am still not even unpacked. The ceilings in the first house are redone and painted, the walls all retextured, the kitchen cabinets painted and crummy tile stripped off, two of the three bedrooms and the hall painted -- it's nearly ready to move back into. Oh, and let me set the record straight, it's not like I am doing any of the actual physical work aside from comparing thousands of paint chips and running for additional supplies, but I am supervising and analyzing a new stack of shelter magazines for kitchen design ideas and have been given the task of listing and showing our old house whenever someone wants a look (which hasn't actually happened yet, but that's good because technically my license is still inactive.)

Sarabelle and her best friend are planning to move into this place, our present location, the smaller of the twin houses, when we make the swap to the renovated one possibly in about three weeks, and experience a little taste of independence under the watchful eye of mom. They are excited to pay rent (ah, youth) and have a list of rules to be followed, number one being that neither of their fourteen year-old sisters be allowed inside. Sarabelle is considering a start at the local college her friend attends with plans to transfer either to her art college or a larger university later. She is overwhelmed with all the choices she has to make, and I am allowing her a bit of breathing room to make her decisions. College Without High School: A Teenager's Guide to Skipping High School and Going to College has been added to her reading assigments. There is a terrific section on setting, mapping, and achieving goals, and all the ideas in the book can be applied to someone interested in self-education at a higher level, skipping college altogether to continue on their chosen path. It will be interesting to see where her interests lead her.

Yes, Sir, yes, Sir...

...actually, four bags full.

That was how many bags of yard trash I collected yesterday. And that was only because I wandered over to the other house late in the afternoon to look for something on the porch and got distracted by all the new vines I spotted along the way. If I'd set out earlier in the day with the intention of doing some clipping, it would have been much worse.

Chop, chop, chop. Hack, hack, hack.

My goal was merely to separate the plants that had overgrown each other. Now the landscaping between the houses looks a little barren, but that's what had to be done, the plants were killing each other, and until the spring it'll probably remain that way.

While I was removing greenery, all the neighbors on our street, even the people who are only renting to own the house we first came to see in this neighborhood, were busy draping their houses in it, putting their holiday decorations up: Boughs of holly, evergreen wreaths, lights, giant inflatable Mickey Santas... In fact the lease/option neighbors put us to shame by setting up not one, not two, but three decorated Christmas trees on their second story deck. So when I ended up at the grocery store later and saw all the poinsettias on sale, peer pressure got the better of me and I went home with the back of my Excursion full of the red and green plants.

Last Minute

It's not so hard to get back on the blogging wagon. Posting everyday is fairly easy provided you do not have children bickering over who gets to do what, when, and for how long.

Tonight, as I am running out of time after the kids spent all evening finishing their work, I will take the simple way out and post some more renovation pictures:

Here is the master bedroom. The wood floor under the carpet was a nice surprise; it's in good shape and the smelly carpet is gone. Jorge decided to rip out this newer drywall ceiling even though it appeared to be in good shape and we really didn't gain much additional height. After seeing the other "improvements" made to the house around this same time, he did not trust any of the work that was done. Sure enough, you can see the last of the 2x4 joists in the ceiling, all were incorrectly installed.



There was no happy surprise under the carpet in the front bedroom. This was where the painters sprayed the louvered doors for the closets. Yup, right on the bare floor. Fortunately the floor has a good coat of varnish on it and the white flat latex paint that now covers it should come up pretty easily. Good thing we decided to take out the dropped ceiling in this room: covered up underneath the panels were old light fixtures and bulbs, still connected to the switches and still operational.



So what do you do when you need to get out of your old house quickly (because you may have a renter who could become a buyer) but your new house is nowhere near ready? Did I hear someone say, "Buy the house next door"? No? Because that would be insane, right? But that's exactly what we plan to do. The seller, the same one we are dealing with on the current project house, wanted to make us a deal on the way toward eliminating their Florida properties. I didn't seriously think it would work out, but they are making it easy. And that one is ready for immediate occupancy. Since the potential renter/possible buyer of our Green House would want the place furnished, I only have to pack up our personal effects. We will be back to living like we did in Australia, camping out on swags with bare bones housewares.

In the midst of all that chaos, here is my one quiet corner. That's all I really need.

Progress?

Today seemed like a rather useless day. We got off to a late start. I was distracted by a discarded chair. Kids needed to be fed. And right when I finally got into hacking the heck out of the hedges, the sun started to set and Elle had to be picked up from her friend's. I only ended up getting in about one solid hour of work.

But I also looked at several hundred paint chips, checked IKEA online for kitchen cabinets, bundled a small mountain of yard waste for the garbagemen, removed and relocated a small oak tree, and had a nice visit with friends. That's my kind of productivity!

Imagine how much I will get done tomorrow with an early start, Grice at school, Elle at the circus with friends, and Jorge over on the other coast...

Veterans' Day

Found out just a little too late (like an hour ago when a friend posted pictures on her Facebook page) that there was a big opening ceremony today downtown at the harborside park for the traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall. There was a parade this past Saturday and I figured that was all the commemorating the city had planned. We were working on the house today, of course, (and that "we" is not the I-showed-Jorge-pictures-and-read-a-book-on-the-porch-while-he-slaved "we," I got filthy helping remove ceiling grids and hauling debris out, 1,000 lbs. according to the dump scale) and were treated to fly-bys from several WWII aircraft in conjunction with the Wall ceremony. You know what Larie and I will be doing tomorrow...

After visiting the display, I'm going back to work, attacking the landscaping with a machete and loppers. The stranglers and other vines are out of control and there are a couple long-neglected mango and citrus trees that need my attention. Then we'll pick Grice up from school and run up to Tampa for her follow-up appointment at Shriners'. It's going to be a long day.

Teamwork

Tomorrow we go back over to the house to try and figure out what to do with the dining room/kitchen opening. Right. Exciting. I have been poring over home design magazines and have a good idea how I'd like the kitchen to turn out, but first I must speak to my contractor, who will no doubt give me his standard answer, "Sure, we can do anything you want, the money's the issue." I will then scale my idea back and come up with some equally outlandish alternative and the whole cycle repeats. Other than that, we work pretty well as a team: I am the idea man and he is the workman; the theoretical to his practical; the dreamer to his doer.

Craptacular!

If you thought this was a perfectly fine bathroom...



...clean, neat, with its relatively new fixtures and recent paint job...



...then you don't know old houses.

The presence of a fresh coat of latex and a newer cheapo vanity were tip-offs that someone was trying to hide something. Stained ceiling tiles betrayed an old roof leak and removal of the panels revealed decades-old rotten wood and some pretty ridiculous attempts at patches. Before the roof was properly replaced after Hurricane Charley there had been water sitting up there for a very long time. Welcome to the home of The Black Mold.



As it was, there was only one teeny spot of mold, nothing a good blast of Clorox Clean-Up couldn't handle. You can see the new roof decking over Jorge's head. He got up there and had a good look at the rest of the roof's underside and what he saw made him very happy. The railroad company built this place right. It was the later occupants who boogered it up and left behind this mess that had to go...



Onto the living room! Ye olde mantlepiece and the dark shutters are scrapped.



And the mock heavy timbers between the dining room and kitchen...



...are stripped off. If we're lucky, there may still be a boxed-in arch underneath there, matching the arch between the living and dining room (visible in the background.)



Here's a view of the additional two ceilings hidden underneath the dropped ceiling. See the two layers of stuck-on accoustical junk?



As you can see by the following kitchen photo, the next priority is getting our electrician over here. Pronto.



Pretty amazing that all this work was completed between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon singlehandedly by my husband. It might be a few more days before he has another burst like that though.

Forever House?

I finally got a phone that takes decent pictures (and video) but do you think I have the presence of mind to actually whip it out if something noteworthy occurs? And when I eventually remember I have it, I'm always worried somebody is going to mentally or verbally accuse me of being some kind of stalker, thus no photos yesterday of Asha and Lulu frolicking with Oliver, Finn, and Marley.

Since I started this blog, we've lived in the following places:

Stirling Road House (Florida)
The Island (Florida)
The Stilt House (Florida)
The Green House (Florida)
Port Douglas (Australia)
Carr Road (Australia)
Mt. Perseverance (Australia)
Yalkula Station (Australia)
Mt. Perseverance - again
The Green House - again

There were even several other properties we got involved in as we searched for what Dy calls her Forever Home, but this time we might actually have found ours...

It's not really big enough, but who needs all that stuff anyway? And it's old and needs work, but it's got a little history and character and we're contractors. Best of all, it's one-story so I will still be able to shuffle around when I'm old and feeble, because after this I am NOT MOVING AGAIN.

The deal came together pretty easily with some creative financing from the owner. We were able to additionally secure the vacant double lot behind the house, with owner financing from a separate seller, which was the key to the deal since the house sits on a tiny lot. The house's seller also owns the twin house next door and is eager to make a deal with us on that one. It's a huge stretch, but maybe we'll end up with the nice little family compound I'd always hoped to have...

I did remember to take some pictures of the property and plan to document the renovation as it goes. For starters, here are some views of the exterior and the "Before" pictures of the main interior rooms:

The house was built by the railroad company for employees; the historical society says prior to 1910, but the style is more 30s Florida Mediterranean. The courthouse burned down in 1910 and most property records were destroyed so no one knows for sure. Many streets in the historic district are still the original brick...



The double rear lot. There used to be a house here but it was destroyed in Hurricane Charley. You can barely make out the house behind Jorge's truck. The red fence and house you can easily see on the right is the rear of the "twin" house...



West half of the front porch (11' ceilings and great light)...



Living room fireplace and bookshelves. Wood floor is in great shape and recently refinished The first big project is to remove the hideous dropped ceiling. The owner prior to our sellers also owned the local Irish pub. He apparently tried to give the house a little of that flavor when he added all the dark wood trim. This mantlepiece must go along with the trim around the doorway into the kitchen...





Window seat in the dining room...



The eat-in kitchen (which we won't be eating in -- we use our dining room table -- but will probably be adding an island of some sort.) The cabinets on the right side (in the second photo) continue up past the dropped ceiling and two other older and crummier ceilings all the way to the original plaster ceiling (another 2' or so)...





View of ye olde pub decor looking from the kitchen back toward the dining and living rooms. The vinyl floor has also got to go.



Now the fun begins. All door hardware has been changed out from super shiny fake brass to a more subdued satin nickel finish and last night Jorge began ripping out the ceilings :

First the living room...



...and then the dining room...



Stay tuned.