Tommy and I bought our house in the Highlands this summer. It is a total fixer upper, but we know it will look beautiful when it is complete. We are working as a team to get this house up and going with the help of a few willing and wonderful people.
We are trying to get this house back to its original state. It is going to take a lot of time, patience, dedication, and of course....money....to get it to where it needs to be, but we are in it for the long haul. We heard this house calling us.....or at least Tommy did. I thought it was too much work and too expensive, but it all worked out in the end. With the way the housing market took a spiraling plunge into darkness, Tommy and I were some of the fortunate ones that came out on top of it. The Highlands house turned into a foreclosure, and we were able to not only afford the house, but we were able to start renovations immediately with the money we saved. Our prayers really came through!
So....we'd like to use this blog to record our time spent working on and living in this house.
Here are some things we've done so far:
Taken out the drop ceilings
Taken off the 5 layers of tile and plywood off the beautiful hardwood, original floors
Scraped the plaster off of the brick vent in the kitchen
Replaced many of the drop ceiling lights (the buzzing and light was awful!) with ceiling fans or lights. SAFETY TIP!!! Never sit under or by someone when they are taking a long florescent bulb out of a light. When Tommy took the bulb out of the light, the bulb came loose and broke all over me!! Luckily I was not hurt or cut.
Took the carpet off the stairs, hallway, and 2 bedrooms in the hallway on the second floor.
Put up a ceiling fan in the attic.
Put a portable heating/air conditioning unit in the finished attic. (It works great!!! We would recommend them to anyone needing air or heat in a space when they don't want a huge unit hanging out of the window.)
Put in a new central air/heating system for the 1st and 2nd floor and new ducts for the 1st floor.
Replaced the bad replacement windows. We kept the wavy glass windows that still were in place, but had to replace the replacement windows that were in the house when we moved in. The new windows are really energy efficient. We got them from Window World, and despite a kind of silly name, they did a great, great job and no one else could beat their prices.
Put up a bead board ceiling in the downstairs bathroom. This had to happen immediately because the plaster ceiling fell down and made a huge mess in the freshly cleaned bathroom!
Took down some cabinets in the 2nd floor bath.
Replaced all the toilets.
Put up new wooden slat blinds on some of the windows.
Had the dryer and washer hook ups moved into the 2nd floor kitchen. When the first floor kitchen is complete, the second floor kitchen will become the laundry room.
Cut out a space for a new doorway going from the 1st floor kitchen to the dining room.
Opened up the foyer by ripping away drywall that covered the original studs to the living room. We knew that living room doorway had to be bigger, and it originally was!!!
Replaced the bathroom lights.
Cleaned out the backyard and began some minor landscaping.
Put up a reed fence to give us privacy from the alley. The reed fence also was a cheap option to cover the chain link fence. It looks really nice too. That idea came from a friend of ours that did it to his chain link fence.
I'm sure there is more, but that's all I can remember for now. We will start more heavy duty renovations after the holidays. We don't want a ton of dust flying around right now as we are trying to pretty up the home for Christmas!
Till next time...
T and C
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