Its been… what?

August 31st. People have bought houses, gotten pregnant and all sorts of crazy stuff.

To be honest I have been lurking off and on, but I was too busy to really write. Now that things have calmed down for the moment, I will show and tell. The purpose really is so I can look back and go, "wow" with some of how me or we felt about everything.

I was out of work for about a month and a half, so I had the project of working on the yard:

That’s a little bit of what’s been cleared out of the back yard. I started growing in a beard for the winter season in September. I figured I was out of work, and that the weather would change by the time it grew in. Well, it was warm longer than I thought.

This was the back yard when the house was listed in March 2012.

This was it when we finally closed on the house August 8th or so.

Let the sweat equity begin! This is the yard as we just started to neaten things up at the end of August.

This was after a couple of days of work. There was a patch in the kitchen we had to redo, but after that I was out in the yard thinking I would be getting a job anytime (or signalling that i was psychologically ready to move onto the next contract). There are no more pictures of the yard for now, but I have cleared all the way to the otherside. I found a couple of lawnmowers in the bush, a bunch of sports equipment, kerosene, garbage, and a rat motel. We have a bunch of wood that we can use for fires this winter to heat up the house which is nice.

As part of our loan, we had the bathroom remodelled professionally. This is the before photo

After.

Now for the Kitchen… in which we discovered rat droppings behind the stove when we moved that, so then we looked to see if there was more and there was some in the drawers. We never settled into the kitchen opting to keep things in boxes because we used some of the 203K money to get appliances knowing we’d redo the kitchen right away.

It was about 6 weeks ago we started tearing everything down…

Drywall going down… that’s standing in the kitchen looking west toward a room that was a bedroom but will now be a dining room. The window will eventually be replaced with a slider that goes out to our backyard.

Everything removed from the wall. Next was ripping up the floor which had a click-in laminate on top (faux grey stone) 2 layers of linoleum, and then we took up a plywood layer of subfloor. No picture for that.

We decided to take out all the drywall and insulation. There were so many layers of paint on the existing drywall… and texture, Twin called it "uber-textured’, and we wanted to add a couple of outlets for the countertop and one for the dishwasher we’re adding. The house was built in 1943 so chances are that insulation needed some updating.

Starting the process of drywalling after putting up some new insulation and the new outlets…

This is the drywall being done, with a couple coats of mud done by Twin and sanding done by me. We considered this paint ready, and that was the Monday after Thanksgiving.

I have learned that I’m not a very good electrician, or lets say naturally inclined. That small square within the larger sheet of drywall is a section I had to cut out and put back in because I didn’t reconnect things right. In particular, the circuit for the neutral wasn’t complete so the outlets tested as having power, but nothing would switch on. That’s a good lesson that paid off when I changed some other outlets with a similar situation.

This was our walls as of last week, Thursday. We painted on Thursday night and I spent Friday painting trim and what not.

This is after some work being done Saturday night to get the cabinetry on this side of the kitchen placed with the flooring being completed during the day Saturday (for the most part).

Last picture, taken Tuesday night. This part of the kitchen is level and ready for countertop.

Twin and I have worked as a team. The demolition was both of us, except I did more in taking out the flooring and removing drywall (since I’ve been working part-time, per my contract). I did most of the cutting of the drywall while Twin did the taping and mudding. The painting was split 50/50, her doing the large areas with the roller and me doing trim. I did paint the ceiling which isn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Twin laid all of the flooring. Twin’s dad helped with some demolition, but has been pivotal in getting our cabinets and sink installed as well as running the electrical and the new window.

We should hopefully be done this weekend. I will move back to the yard and getting that ready to be leveled out a bit and plot where we will try to grow some fruits and vegetables.

All this work is why we wanted to become homeowners. The work we do now should last a long time and we intend to stay for a very long time (until we’re dead we’ve said; housing stability has provided us a foundation to grow more functional as adults and will provide a solid base for raising a family). These projects empower me psychologically by being productive. There is always something to do now and I have the freedom to do anything that needs to be done around the house… which is a pretty strong sense of purpose.