All settled in

The last of the boxes were emptied last week. I hope that will be the last box I have to unpack for some time. I don't think Peyton nor I have it in us to do another move. Have I told you this is the 7th house we've lived in during our 13 years of marriage? It's the 5th house we've bought. Our kiddos have lived in four different houses in their short little lives. This has to be it. I couldn't imagine another town we'd want to live in or another house better than ours. Yes, I do believe this will be our final move.

So, here are some videos with us all settled in to our house...

The front of the house. I can't believe we were able to get grass to grow in June...but we have a front yard, folks!

And one of my favorite things about the front of the house is our mailbox. It has a bird on it!

Our living room. Peyton put our mantel on the fireplace!

The master bedroom. We have an awesome piece of wood that we picked up from the Greensboro Architectural Salvage that we'll use for our headboard. But the piece still needs to be sanded. Maybe I'll post a picture or two once we get it hung. I also need to figure out the color for my dresser and wardrobe. I started to paint it turqouise...but changed my mind after painting the drawers.

The kitchen. I LOVE my stove. I still can't believe it works! And I'm totally digging my coffee mugs hanging over the sink. It's convenient and I like the way it looks. I'm a sucker for a good mug.

Downstairs bathroom. Nothing special here. It and the master bedroom are the only two rooms we didn't touch downstairs (except paint).

Dining room. This was the 2nd bedroom when we 1st bought the house. We tore down part of the wall and added a staircase to make it the dining room.

Stairs. Peyton's painting...that old man didn't want to go on the wall, but we finally got him hung. A frame would do him well (hint, hint Peyton).

Upstairs bathroom. We just found mirrors this past weekend. And I love them. Now we just have to hang the toilet paper holder and we're in business.

Ainsley and Asher's  room. I still need to hang pictures in their bedrooms. But I love their rooms...they've come together nicely.

Video of our house

We aren't even close to entirely moved in. But we got the boxes out of the way, so I took some video. I'll do some more when we get everything where it needs to be.

Our living room and master bedroom. We have a mantle going onto the fireplace soon, so disregard the unfinished part around the firebox.

Our kitchen and dining room. There's a bathroom through that door in the kitchen. 

Our stairwell...nothing too exciting. But I do love our clerestory and light fixture.

Upstairs bathroom. Those two hanging sinks and the tile around that tub gave me some gray hairs on the final days of the renovation. But they both look great! And Ainsley's bedroom.

Ainsley's room again...I stink at editing video. And Asher's room with his "tiger floors". I've never seen floors with such a crazy wood grain. Not my best thrift store purchase...but they were $.50/sqft.

Weeks away

We're weeks from moving in to our mill house. So much has been happening over the past few weeks...painting, floor staining, kitchen counter, tub tiling, landscaping. If all works out, we'll be done with the construction, signed the papers for our final mortgage and moved in to our new house in 3 weeks.

A few pictures of how the house is shaping up...(we LOVE it!)

 Our living room. Check out the floors!

 Our dining room. The toilet won't be staying.

 Our bedroom. The only room that has the original beadboard. We strongly considered exposing the beadboard in the rest of the downstairs, but opted for insulated walls instead.

 Ainsley's room. She chose purple for her wall color.

Asher's bedroom. His room is a great blue. And he describes his floors as having a tiger print. Admittedly, the floors have some serious wood grain patterns.

Our kitchen. The countertop is on and a space for the dishwasher has been added!

 The start of landscaping. We're hoping to get some grass in front of those shrubs soon.

 More landscaping. (And lots of trash on our porch...thank goodness for our awesome neighbors for putting up with us!)

A new color

For the past few weeks lots has been happening to the house, but not picture worthy. The interior trim on the entire house was installed last week and looks awesome and doors were added a few weeks ago. Very exciting...but not well translated in pictures.

But I have many pictures of what has happened at the end of this week. INTERIOR PAINT. I love walking into the house and seeing a new color. And I'm very excited that we'll pick the stain color for our floors on Tuesday this week. We're getting close, folks.

And speaking of getting close, we're starting our loan process for our conventional loan. I'm happy that we will again be using a friend for our loan. It's been awesome to know (and love) the people that have helped us through this process...from our realtor, Michele Wright, our contractor, Will Johnson Building and now our mortgage broker, Steve Kurtz.

So, pictures...

 Front of our house.

 Upstairs bathroom.

 Stairs

 Kitchen

 Fireplace (with an open firebox!)

Master bedroom

Getting there

We will likely be moving in to our mill house in 2 months. How unbelievable it is to me that we have bought and renovated a house in Hillsborough!

The house is coming along nicely. Peyton and I have both said that it's been a lot of fun so far! Denailing and scraping the floors for the upstairs became tedious after a while. And the yard is in need of some serious attention even after spending some Saturdays and Sundays with it and a chainsaw. But we've enjoyed watching the transformation of a neglected house becoming our home. We look forward to becoming part of the neighborhood (we've already met so many of the neighbors as they stop by to talk about our renovation) and watching the mill area develop in the coming years. We feel very fortunate!

So, here are some pictures of the house...

 Our backyard looking over to our neighbors. The bushes will eventually be moved to have a huge open yard for playing!

 The back of our house. The house has been primed but the trim isn't painted yet. The trim is getting painted white in the next week.

 Ainsley's room. My favorite thing about the upstairs is how bright and sunny it is. The double windows are awesome!

 The upstairs bathroom. It's large! Can't wait to see the tile around the tub get installed.

 Our stairwell. I LOVE the window and the light it provides.

 Our living room kitchen. The fireplace was opened this week and looks awesome! We should be getting an estimate for making it a wood burning (sorry Leigh!) fireplace later this week. Gas isn't totally out of the picture...we'll see.

And, the front. We've taken out a lot of the old landscaping since it was overgrown and beyond help. We're thinking about putting down grass and avoiding plants altogether up front.

In the next week, the exterior and interior painting will be completed. I'm excited to see the colors on the inside. We chose really light, almost white colors for the entire house to keep it bright and open feeling.

Wood Floors!

Just a quick post to show you our upstairs floors. They look awesome!

 Asher's room. These are the floors we found at Restore. They're yellow pine. We're planning to sand all of the upstairs (and downstairs) floors and restain them.

 Ainsley's bedroom. The heart pine floors that we found on craigslist(thanks, Nichole!). These are the floors Peyton worked super hard on denailing and scraping. There's a little "frame" around the part of the floor where the chimney will eventually be...you know when we build the chimney up past the 1st floor. 

(Which will happen. I'm determined.)

Bathroom

Roof and the house color

The roof was put on the house at the end of last week and looks great!

The upstairs dormers were also painted. At first we thought the color wasn't green enough. But after the roof went on, we really liked how the metal roof complimented the house color. I can't wait to see the color go on the rest of the house. It'll likely be next week since this week is so rainy.

So, this week the wood floors are going into the upstairs...hoping all looks good. Especially since one of the bedrooms will be a different type of wood than the rest. But since we're sanding and staining the floors at the end of the project they should all look alike.

And, lastly, our chimney/fireplace. We were hoping to have the fireboxes open and all of the debris cleaned out. We're not planning to build a fire in them...clearly since the chimney doesn't go above the flooring of the 2nd floor. But, the inspector isn't entirely excited about that happening and wants them to stay closed. Ugh. In the beginning of all of the renovations, I was most excited about getting the fireplaces in working order. Now, I just want them to be clean...but they may just exist "as is" for a while.

A little of this, a little of that

*We're getting close to the exterior to be painted and our metal roof to go on!*

- Over the past two weeks the plumbers and electricians have been working hard and should be finishing up this week.
- The windows and the siding are now in place and look awesome!
- I spent 1.5 hours at Lowes last week looking up at lighting. Got lights planned for the living room, upstairs bathroom and over the kitchen sink. Finding an attractive ceiling fan is difficult and we're hoping to have a fan in the kitchen. We also still need lighting for the dining room, bedrooms, and porches.
- Found another 250 sqft. of pine flooring at the Habitat for Humanity Restore for $125 this past weekend. It's dark stained. But since we're planning to sand and refinish the floors, it'll work. Shwew! That'll give us enough to finish the upstairs.
- Appliances have been bought and will be delivered once the house is finished. Sears was having a good sale, so we took advantage of it.

 House front with windows and siding

 House back with siding and windows

Bathroom Light

 Living Room Light

 Light for over the sink

Moving right along

I met with our contractor and electrician yesterday morning to walk through our electrical plan. There are so many details to a plan. Walking through it helps to work out what looks good on paper, but doesn't work in reality.

I also got an idea of the timeline for our renovation project to be completed. It could be done as early as the end of April and as late as the end of May. Either way, it's earlier than we thought we'd be able to move in. Peyton and I had set our mind on having everything done by mid-summer. So, we're thrilled to possibly move in sooner!

Other things happening with the house...

- Our trim was painted white this week. And the color we've chosen for the main color of our house is Templeton Gray. Colors on a computer can be hokey...but here it is. In "real life" the gray looks bluish, greenish gray.

- Will, our contractor, met with our engineer this week to talk about adding a steel beam to go over the chimney. They came up with an awesome design that will distribute the weight appropriately around the chimney and will still leave the flue open so we can eventually have a working fireplace. 

- Our heating and air conditioning unit for the upstairs is being installed. We've also decided to have the ducts for the downstairs replaced (cha-ching!). There was quite a bit of mold and dirt in the downstairs ducts. And with Peyton's allergies (and Ainsley's suspected ones) it'll be good to have a clean ac/heating system. 

- The vinyl floor was ripped up from the bathroom and the hardwood is showing. The floor is in awesome condition! Yeah! I'm super excited to sand and stain all of the floors at the end of this project.

- The heart pine flooring we bought a few weeks back ended up not being as much as we thought. We certainly have a novice eye when it comes to eyeing the square footage of flooring. In our defense there were nails in the boards which made it look like much more. Anywho...the square footage ended up being around 400 sqft. instead of 1200 sqft. (I know, big discrepancy) We emailed the kind woman who sold us the flooring and she has offered to mail back to us a portion of what we paid for it. We really appreciate her willingness to offer that to us. We'll be a little short on the amount of flooring to complete the upstairs, but we hope to find the 50 sqft that we need to complete the space.

Next week...

- Heating and air conditioning, electrical and plumbing.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the outside getting finished. To see the colors and roofing on the house will be satisfying. 

Week 3

We met with our contractor, Will, yesterday to talk about the next steps for our little millhouse. The upstairs is framed and is a defined space. It's been exciting for our whole family to see it take shape. Ainsley and Asher are thrilled about their new bedrooms. I think each room has fun things to offer them and will be their unique space.

So, the next steps...
- Currently some vertical beams are supporting a major steel beam that carries some 2nd story weight. This week the beams will come down and we'll see if the chimney (oh, our poor chimney) will be able to hold the weight. If not, we may need to consider completely giving up hope on having a working fireplace in our house and closing off the chimney to allow for more support. We may decide to do this anyway. As pretty as our brick statue is in the middle of our living space, its usability is slight.
- Downstairs walls. We originally thought we'd remove the drywall to expose the beadboard. And, down the road we might do that. But for now we're going to patch the drywall and use it. This is going to make it easier to get insulation in the walls (much desired) and cut out a lot of work for us. Painting the beadboard looked like a beast to tackle. Anyway, some great colors on the wall will be enough to make the space unique and we'll be nice and toasty in the winter with insulated walls.
- The kitchen. Our original idea when we bought the house is to leave the downstairs as is. And then we decided to knock down some walls and change one of the bedrooms into a dining room. Plus, our architect came up with an awesome layout for a new kitchen. However, we've reigned ourselves in and decided to do very little with the kitchen. We'll move our stove from one side of the kitchen window to the other and add a dishwasher. But we won't add anymore cabinets and will keep the sink where it is. Because we have an awesome retro pushbutton stove, I love the idea of leaning toward the freestanding kitchen. And with our new plan for the kitchen we'll definitely have that feel.
- And finally, we'll add our beautiful new to us heart pine floors to the upstairs. We bought the floors last weekend for 50 cents/sqft. with the nails still in them from their last home. And Peyton has been working on getting the nails out this week. He's about 1/3 done having put 2 solid evenings and a Saturday into it.

HVAC and electrical folks will be coming in this week (I think). And some folks will be coming in to take out the linoleum in the bathroom (heart pine floors underneath!) and take out the old tile ceilings. Another exciting week to come! But before that, pictures from this past week.

The view from our dining room into the living room/kitchen.

Our staircase.

The tub. Peyton and I helped the folks from Hillsborough Plumbing carry it from our shed to the 2nd floor bathroom. It's cast iron and HEAVY. We got to know our plumbers quite well over that bonding experience.

The view over our clerestory stairwell. So pretty!

The view from Ainsley's room. A wall of windows. Helps to make the small bedrooms feel bigger.

Peyton's stack of denailed heart pine floors. He's a champ at nail pulling.

Tore the roof off

This week...
- The new staircase (a temporary version...but in the right location) was built.
- The roof was torn off. How wild it was to see our house that way!
- The 2nd floor subfloor was put in.
- The framing for the upstairs began.

Our house has finally taken its new shape and we love it! It's only been two weeks of construction and so much has happened. And I'm thankful there have been very few surprises as the demolition and framing has begun. The only real disappointment for us thus far has been the fireplaces and chimney being unusable and will be very costly to get them in a working condition. For now we won't have working fireplaces but haven't given up hope that we'll eventually rebuild the chimney and get them in working condition.

So I leave you with pictures from this week:

Demo Week 1 complete

Here are a few pictures from the 1st week of demolition.

 A view from the kitchen into the living room. We're hoping to find out soon how usable our fireplaces will be. We're hoping for vented gas logs. If the chimney isn't usable, we might go for ventless logs.

 Looking into the house from the front door. There are temporary supports for the second floor all around right now. We're not planning to put up new walls downstairs...just knocking some down.

Peyton and I spent this morning chipping away at an excessive amount of mortar on the fireplace. Hoping to get it pretty enough to leave it unpainted.

It should be an action packed week if the rain doesn't slow things down.

The writing on the wall.

This was found written on the wall in a closet after the closet was torn down. Not sure if it was the previous owner or not. Some funny 1999/y2k predictions.

Some serious busting

Well, the workers started demolition today. I really thought they would start outside, but instead worked inside all day. Now, I drove by the house a few times today and didn't see much action and knew I'd have to stop by tonight to see what they were up to all day. And they were definitely up to something. (sorry for the horrible pictures but they were taken by an iphone in the dark).

 The view of the fireplace/chimney from the living room.

The chimney/fireplace from the kitchen.

So, they demolished the wall between the kitchen and living room exposing the chimney and fireplaces. No cleaning of the debris had taken place, so insulation and dust were everywhere. But, we saw that the wood floors go all the way to the chimney (yay, I had feared a great big hole) and that the chimney has a pretty cool shape to it. The bricks seem to be in great shape, but definitely need some cleaning. Yay for demo day 1!

Busting through the wall

Update: Our contractor just emailed to say demolition starts tomorrow!! Pray for dry weather.

So far there aren't any visible signs that construction has started at our house (beyond the permit sign). However, we know that holes are being dug and concrete is being poured to create footings under the house. Believe me, when the roof comes off I'll post pictures.

Until the exciting stuff begins, though, we are spending these awesome and sunny afternoons working around our "new" house. Peyton has been working to clean up the yard and remove part of the fence in the back to open up the yard a bit. Honestly, his project has taken many hours and lots of effort. And it's looking awesome. He's chopped down many little "junk" trees and removed lots of random objects (string, styrofoam pieces, sheathing) that's really opening up the yard to show lots of potential. My project has been out of curiosity and fun. I have put neither much effort or time into it. But look what I discovered...

It looks like the last heating source the fireplace was used for was a wood stove. Although I think we'll have a wood stove in the kitchen (which is completely bricked in), I think we'll try to bust through and have a fireplace in the living room. We're still debating between wood and gas logs for the fireplace. Peyton would like to use wood and I'd like to use gas...we'll see. Also, you'll notice the beadboard above the fireplace. Our idea is to remove the walls down to the brick of the fireplace and have only the masonry chimney dividing the living room and kitchen. Not knowing what condition the brick is in makes me a bit nervous, but I suppose we can always cover it back up if it's awful. And for the rest of the walls in the living room, we plan to expose the beadboard walls by removing the drywall that is currently covering them. But for the kitchen and the dining room we're going to keep the drywall on and not worry about the beadboard. It will likely be tedious work in the living room and taking the drywall off of one room will be enough for us.