From The Beginning...

So let me catch you up a bit...

On Friday, March 27, 2010, after searching for many and looking at two houses, my fiance Ryan and I sealed the deal on a real beauty! Let me tell you, she came fully loaded with wood paneling, puke green carpet, and a beautiful shade of teal in the kitchen-walls and ceiling. Here's a couple of photos so you can try to picture it yourself.



Note the paneling and ceiling tile.

And the beautiful paint in the kitchen.


So anyway, after closing on Friday, we tore into her on Sunday, ripping up floors and tearing off ceiling tile (which was located on the ceiling and the walls in the upstairs), pulling out billions of nails, and leaving nothing in there but the studs and the nasty carpet padding that was plastered to the floor of the living room. After a few weeks of dust masks and dirt, we were ready to start the roofing, and after a three hour trip to Menards (little did I know that it would be the first of many lengthy trips), the shingles were ordered and soon-to-be delivered to our work site. This is said nasty carpet padding.

The re-roofing was a bit depressing, as it took a bit longer than I expected, but after ripping off shingles, shake shingles, adding overhangs around the entire house, working around the charming but annoying-to-roof "A", and then beginning the re-roofing portion of the project, we found ourselves a bit discouraged and a bit further into the project than we expected. Did I mention we got engaged in January and have an August deadline (aka. the wedding)? But alas, we could work inside without the fear of rain...and so the project continued.
New roof! Notice the over hangs!

We moved on to putting up the frames for the new walls, which was completed at a much more encouraging speed than the roof. However, we did have to add more supports to the ceiling so that our future bedroom didn't fall through on us, and move a couple of walls. We also had to tear out the upstairs window to get the shower in so that we could build the walls around it (no worries though; we were going to replace that window anyway). Soon windows and doors were being framed in, and siding was being torn off (all million layers of siding mind you). In fact that became a couple Saturdays project for the women-folk (me, my future mother-in-law and one of my future sister-in-laws), and I truly wish we had been in the state of mind to take pictures of how disgusting we were after working in the hot sun all day being coated by bugs, dirt, more bugs, and more dirt. The amount of bugs underneath our siding (and I am sure your siding too-makes you feel really good, huh?) was incredible, and by that I mean disgusting! Those stupid little orange lady bugs that stink when you touch them- completely coating our house underneath our siding, and they weren't just underneath the vinyl, but also underneath the foam that came next, the shake siding that came after that, and the tar paper that came after that. Needless to say, millions of shakes and trillions of nails and bugs later, the siding was off, and the foil-faced foam insulation was ready to take its place on our house. Newly de-sided.


Just a few of our little friends.

What way does foil-faced foam go- foil side up or white side up- you might ask. As that is what we pondered as well, and a couple of phone calls to friends and family later, we were stuck at the same dilemma. So we called our dear friend Brett and Menards and ended up with foil out (hope you were right Brett- we placed our trust in him after he shaved off some dollars for us in the siding order, the next agonizingly long trip to our favorite store). So on went the insulation and the tyvek (although we did resort to the menards wrap which was a free gift, so to all of the tyvek snobs out there don't think I don't know the difference). A glimpse of Josiah's graphing skills put in place for our curved A roof.

TaDa!!

So while our house was being sealed up from the outside, Ryan's dad has been diligently working on heat, air, and electric, and after adding concrete block around our utility room whose wood formerly sat in direct contact with our forest of a yard, my dad was looking into the beginnings of plumbing.

Maybe tomorrow (or the next time I have time to write because I am not at the pool lifeguarding, working at the house, or staying up far later than I should be to blog) I will fill you in up to current and include some more fun anecdotes, but for now, I think this should be enough for your reading pleasure. Enjoy, look at the photo albums on Facebook, and take notes on what not to do, like buy a house in order to completely renovate it only five months before your wedding. After all, despite having confidence in the fact that we will have a wonderful home when this is all done, one of Ryan's new favorite quotes is "remind me never to do this again, ever."