The Remodel Part Deux

Our renovation has moved along and now into our fourth month, I am really feeling the itch to be done with it. Dirty floors. Drywall dust. Varnish smells. Drywaller guys showing up at various times of the day. Trucks getting stuck in our driveway. (And guess who helped pull them out?) Our contractor stopping by three, four sometimes five times a day to survey progress, chit-chat, let his wild dog run with our two wild dogs and ask for money. This does not bother me nor Yooper at all. So far two bottles of wine have shown up on my counter. Apparently the drywall guy and the contractor guy found out I like a good glass of Merlot. And apparently they figured it would help me get through parts of this renovation mess. Ahem. They were right.

It has been a fun process this renovation. And we are very happy how it is turning out. But we are anxious to have things finished and begin enjoying the newly renovated areas.

I left you with this picture the other day. What lies behind this wall? What did we do with the chimney? The heat run?

Before I show you, check out this art deco look. Behind drywall was paneling and behind the paneling was wallpaper and behind that wallpaper was more wallpaper. Absolute interior designer's worst nightmare. So horrendous to look at.

Here is a closer look. Pretty huh? I think quite a statement was made back in the day.

The best thing to do with this hodgepodge wall was to completely tear it out.

The heat run was rerouted up another wall which goes up to Mini Me's bedroom. Remains of an old chimney was knocked out. There was so much brick to haul out. Several tractor bucket loads in fact.

We opened up the hallway leading from our kitchen to this room. What a difference!

So much light from this room leads into the hallway towards the kitchen. Love this! I am so enjoying how open this is.

Since this room had very little electrical outlets and lighting, our electrician added more outlets and put in recessed lighting throughout the ceiling area. What a difference in lighting at night.

We also moved the ceiling fan to the middle of the room.

Since the old, original flooring was not only an unsightly mess, it was extremely not level. OSB was put down also known as Oriented Strand Board. Yes, I had to Google OSB because I forgot what it is abbreviated for.

The carpet has since gone bye-bye and I am not missing it. At. All.

Walls are now full of insulation and are drywalled and primed. Things are starting to take shape from these pictures.

After this room was to this point we began the next stage of fixing up this money pit. The stairs. Stairs leading to the upper level of our home. Truly a contractor's headache to figure out how to make the stairs we have become less steep, wider, bigger and to building code. And our house certainly caused many a headaches and going back and forth on how to reroute the stairs and make it all work. I am happy to say, I love our new stairway!

More pictures coming soon!

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Our Farm is Complete With Chickens

We have chickens. Balk! Balk! Have I ever mentioned this before? Seven egg laying chickens. Pullets they are called. Chickens that do nothing but lay eggs. Without the help of a rooster. Which suits me just fine. Roosters are obnoxious. Loud. A little arrogant. Cocky. I don't deal with a cocky attitude very well.

We have seven chickens currently. We started with eight last spring. However last summer a few escaped their chicken house and Hope the dope our dog decided to make a dog toy out of one of them. I remember that being a sad and frustrating day. But Hope is a bird dog. Just went after the wrong type of bird.

We purchased these as chicks at our local Tractor Supply Company. And each of them were named. Peeps. Raison. Honey. Big Mama. McNuggett. Alfredo. (And for the life of me cannot remember what the seventh one is called. And my kids are nowhere to be found. That's right they are in school!)

These feathery fowls are loved. Petted. Played with. Cared for ridiculously. My kids love animals. Thank goodness because their dad is a veterinarian. And we wouldn't have it any other way!

As you can see my daughter loves these balk balks. I think she is holding Peeps. But I could be wrong. Maybe this is Big Mama? She and my son know each one and each of their personalities. Some are friendly and loved or seem to love being held and cuddled. A few are a bit shy and wishy washy about humans. Don't ask me why. Just my observation.

Chickens are incredibly fun to watch. The sounds they make to one another. Their conversations amongst themselves. Reminds me of the movie Chicken Run minus Mel Gibson the rooster. Except I cannot understand their chicken language. I am amazed how social they really are. They seem fairly content and as long as they are laying eggs I am content as well.

My daughter the chicken whisperer. "Hey Peeps(or Big Mama) keep laying eggs. I love to eat them scrambled for breakfast each morning."

They are yummy fresh eggs. Each day we are blessed with a handful of shelled yolks. Last summer we were finding five or six eggs every day. Yes, one slacker chicken in that bunch however.

With five to six eggs sometimes seven a day really adds up in no time. You do the math in how many eggs we accumulate in one week!

This summer my daughter would like to sell eggs. Maybe our local Farmer's Market. Or perhaps simply keep giving them away to our friends! Either way we enjoy the flock we have and their creation of eggs.

A freezer full of beef. A refrigerator full of eggs. Life is good.

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The Remodel Part 1

Remodeling has to be just about the least favorite thing of mine to enter my life within the past three months.....nearly four months. But who is counting? Me and our contractor. He would love nothing more than to be done with this job so he can one; get paid, two; move on to another project that is perhaps less complicated as our house is, and three; not having to see me in my pajamas every morning. I know. Not a pretty sight to see. Course I do not like to be found in my pajamas in the morning, without make up and bed head and morning coffee breath.

The project we took on was a long time coming but we moved on to this project because clearly our lives are not complicated enough and we needed more stress added. Mainly this room and several others were in dire need of help plain and simple. Due to a bathroom leak one of the walls developed mushrooms growing from the carpet last summer. Oh yeah. What a fun sight. A tiny garden of moldy mushrooms. Not for eating. Not for cooking with. Just an ugly distraction and reminder of what lie behind the wall and under the carpet. Yuck!

This is how the room looked before. This is the front room to our house. Truly the only room that hasn't been remodeled. It is of the original part of our house. We added an addition to our home 10 years ago which is primarily where we hang out. Gather. Eat. Pray. Love. This room above is a sort of hodge podge of a room but is also where my computer resides. Where I sit on my hiney in front of my computer monitor for hours surfing the web, sending emails to those who will listen, Facebooking, blogging, Photoshopping. Yep a sort of office.

Notice the treadmill folded up and standing useless in the middle of it all. Sad sight. Thankfully our contractor wanted it for his wife. Because clearly she will get more use out of it than I will in this room. Because this room is for sitting on my hiney in front of my computer.

Can we say ugly paneling? Ugly yellow and burgundy paneling? I did that. Yep, guilty. I painted those walls those colors all from an idea on HGTV. Except the show I watched turned out so much nicer than my half arse job. Ever paint paneling? Paneling that has been painted once before? Don't try it. It peels. It is ugly. You are better off to tear out the paneling, insulate the walls and hang dry wall. Which is exactly what we did.

And this is how things looked behind the paneling. Little to no insulation. We live on a farm with wide open spaces outside and little shelter from the wind. This room has always been cold and drafty. Absolutely not Green at all. Inefficient to say the least. This part of our house is old. Like 1913 old. The workers found a piece of newspaper from the The Detroit Free Press with a date of 1913 on it stuck in the wall behind the paneling. Cool right? Yes, so cool I forgot to save it and at least take a picture of it to prove our house IS THAT OLD!

Another angle for you to see how extremely attractive this all is. I love how completely trashed the berber carpet has become. And how I was so excited when they ripped it all out. I do not like carpet. I do not like it here, nor there. I do not like it anywhere!

Lovely picture isn't it? Makes you wonder just what lies behind this wall. Notice the brick chimney to the left and the heatrun to the right? On the other side lies a closet and a hallway leading to the kitchen. My next post will show you what we did with this view.

And I have to laugh at the broom and dust pan. Have you ever swept carpet before? All the more reason I hate carpet.

Stay tuned for this work in progress also known as money pit.

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