It's Moving Day!!!

Today is the day!  We rented a U-haul truck and brought all our stuff over to the house.  We had quite a few trips to makes considering our possessions were in multiple locations including a storage unit, the basement of one of our buildings and both of our parents' houses.  The past few months have been rough not knowing where anything is, so it's nice to (almost) have everything in one place again.

Finished Floors

The floors look awesome!  So excited to have them done.  Now we can start to move stuff in.

AFTER: 3rd floor stairs

AFTER: 3rd floor bedroom

AFTER: 3rd floor office

AFTER: Master Bedroom

AFTER: 2nd Bedroom

AFTER: 3rd Bedroom

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

The exterior home painting hasn't really progressed much since last week since it's been raining off and on the past few days.  Hopefully, the weather cooperates next week :/ In other news, the floor guys finished the floors today, however, we have to wait another day for them to dry before we can check them out.  Can't wait!

New Floors

We're getting the floors refinished! The floor guys with start with sanding the hardwoods on both the second and third floors today, and probably stain and coat tomorrow.  

Adrian and I had a tough time deciding between Dark Walnut or Jacobean, but in the end decided to go with Jacobean.  We've previously used Dark Walnut in our buildings and really liked the color, but wanted to try something different this time.  Cant wait to see them done!  Below are the stain choices as well as some before pics of the floors.

BEFORE: 3rd floor loft

BEFORE: 3rd floor stairs

 

BEFORE: Closeup of 3rd floor stairs

BEFORE: 3rd floor bedroom

BEFORE: 3rd floor office

BEFORE: 2nd floor landing/hallway

BEFORE: Master bedroom

BEFORE: 2nd bedroom

BEFORE: 3rd bedroom



Exterior Painting Progress

So I drove over to the house today because I wanted to check the progress of the exterior painting and also because I needed to select a color :)  The painters had nicely painted the three samples in different places on the house so I could see it in both shade and sunlight.

We thought the top option was a little too light and too purple, and the bottom option was too dark, so we went with the middle one.  Today the painters are working on all of the windows.  They are changing all of the dingy, cream trim to bright white.  It's going to be a great contrast to the blue.  We can't wait to see the house when its done!

Yard Work

Today we headed over to the house nice and early even after having a wedding last night. Painting was definitely the last thing I wanted to do, but I know the faster we get this stuff done, the quicker we'll move in.  I finished the walls in both bedrooms and I even finished the ceiling of the loft too, which was a HUGE pain because of the height and also because I'm vertically challenged :/

 

While I painted, Adrian worked on the front and back yard with his parents.  The yard was so overgrown it was embarrassing!  It took a total of 4 hours to mow the lawn, trim the bushes and fertilize the grass.  We plan to do some major landscaping in the front and back but these are the short term fixes.  Below are some before and after shots.

BEFORE: Backyard

 AFTER: Backyard

 BEFORE: Bushes

AFTER: Bushes

Scraping

I ran over to the house last night to see Day 1 of the exterior facelift progress.  The painters powerwashed the house and looks like they got a lot of the peeling paint off.

We're Getting a Facelift!

You may recall that part of the 203-k loan requirements included painting the exterior of the house, well today is the day!  It's going to take a few days because they will need to scrape, patch and prime some areas, but we're excited to see the finished product.  Adrian and I like the blue, however we'd prefer a different shade than what it is now.  I've included some close-up BEFORE shots of the peeling siding.  I'll post additional photos once I have them.

BEFORE- Siding

More Holes!

So just when we get all the plumbing fixed and finished patching all the holes in the walls, the city inspector (not the FHA inspector) came out to close out the plumbing permit, but decided to ask to see behind all of our walls.  We hadn't replaced anything in the walls.  We were only required to install the plumbing missing where the exposed horizontal pipes in the basement were, however, our contractor had the guys open up the walls.  Upon seeing all of the plumbing, the inspector said that ALL of our plumbing had to be switched out and our contractor quoted us another 12k for the work.  Pretty ridiculous considering we're going to be tearing down all these walls next year and completely MOVING  most of the plumbing.

We told the contractor he was crazy (not in those words exactly), and decided to bring in our own plumber who we've used for our other buildings. He said there was nothing wrong with any of our plumbing and that it was up to code and it was pretty new anyways.  So we decided to just leave the permits open until we complete the work next year and told the contractor to patch up the walls AGAIN.

It's Electric! Boogie Woogie, Woogie

The wiring in the house was newer, however, we decided to upgrade the service from 100 amp to 200 amp so we could run all our electronics. Tom from Sirant Electrical helped with this upgrade.

BEFORE: 100 amp

AFTER: 200 amp

Let's Get Our Paint On!

We started painting the 3rd floor today since getting this floor done is our top priority.  Once the 3rd floor is done, Adrian and I will move in and live up there while we work on the rest of the house.  Here are a few action shots.

Vandalized walls of 6th bedroom

Good-bye tree!

While I painted, Adrian ripped up the carpet from the third floor stairs, so we can have hardwood installed instead.

Finally, Some GOOD News!!!

The other day, we happened to walk to the back of the house to look at the garage so that we could take some photos before workers started working on it and we noticed this BIG, orange sign stapled to our garage.  

Basically, it says that our garage is unsafe and that the city has added us to the "Garage Demo Program".  At first this sounded like bad news, however, we realized this could actually be good news because it might mean that we didn't need to fix it anymore.  So, Adrian called the FHA loan inspector and told him about the notice and, just like we had hoped, he said we didn't have to fix the garage anymore.  Awesome! The garage doesn't need to be fixed!  The garage needs to be demolished!  Now we don't have to waste money on this thing :)