Week 4

Our contractor started (kinda)! We got our new furnace and hot water heater this week along with an upgraded gas piping system. (woohoo??). The hot water heater is a tankless one which is basically a computer with some heat coils.

We got most of the tiling finished this week so not we just have to finish a bit and then we can grout. Geoff finished the mudding and taping so we can soon paint the bathroom. I’m very eager to do this so that we can get the toilet installed! I love how the boarder turned out in with the shower tile, but boy does tiling take FOREVER! I’m impressed at Geoff’s skill and he even taught me how to use a tile saw!

I picked the paint color for the bathroom and I think I may have finally picked a color for the rest of the apartment, but with all those choices I may just change my mind again. We also ordered our granite countertop and the doors for the bedroom/bathroom. While we were there we picked up a garage door opener which Geoff installed on Saturday.

The sad part of this week is that we failed at getting a dumpster. We were supposed to have one delivered on Friday but there is still too much snow :(. We also meet with our FHA inspector and made our first draw for money. We’ll see how that goes…

Week 3

We picked up our new hot water heater this week just in time for our contractor to install it early next week. We also got our new garage door. At first they tried to deliver a small 1 car garage door so Geoff had to send that back. Thankfully they were able to find ours because Geoff had already taken down the old door. All this happened while I was at an all day meeting Saturday oblivious to what was going on.

We knocked the wall down between two of the 2^nd floor bedrooms. The second floor is being reduced from “4” bedrooms to 2. Knocking down this wall down takes care of two small bedrooms, making them into a usable bedroom. One of the other “bedrooms” is more like a small closet and is not legally big enough to be considered a bedroom, plus it doesn’t have a closet. So we are adding this onto the bathroom. This means the first two floors (unit 1) will only have two bedrooms. Though not very happy about this, this makes the floor plan much more usable.

I’m beginning to get more skills in construction and I put them to use this weekend. While I was waiting for Geoff to finish some work, I took down all of the interior doors on the second floor. I put my new drill to use!

Week 2 - Our First Permit

We applied for our first permit this week, which is an interesting process. Our biggest problem was the fact we don’t live at the house. But we can’t live there until we fix it up and fixing it up requires a permit. Hmmm… but we did finally talk them into giving us one once they found our homestead paper work. Whew!

We also continued to make some progress on reconstructing our bathroom. We got the plumbing in, the sub-floor and insulation installed, and began to drywall the room. We also got the water turned on. This means that once we get that toilet installed we won’t have to go to the neighboring gas station anymore! Woo hoo!

I also began the horrific process of removing the 2^nd floor carpet. It is disgusting. I mean repulsively, horrifically disgusting! If you don’t believe me check out the pictures in the demo and reconstruction part of the photo page. I can’t wait to get this part over.

Week 1

Week 1 seemed to be about spending money. This is probably one of my favorite parts of this project. It has been a ton of fun designing the apartment part of our house and finally getting to buy all of the materials to create it was awesome! Plus we can learn from our mistakes on the third floor (hey we don’t have to live there) and this will make designing the first 2 floors even more fun! We also ordered our garage doors purchase and installed the service door. We have even started to receive some of this material which is extra exciting – we have a fridge!

We also got to do a walk through with our contractor and finalize some of our plans. He won’t be starting until March 16^th, but he is getting some materials ordered including our new windows for the 2^nd and 3^rd floors. This is the first time I have gotten to meet him and he seems like a nice guy. Anyone out there looking for a general contractor – I’ll let you know if he is any good.

We began some of the demo this week and boy are we both sore!

Phases

Phase 1

Phase one is mostly focused on the third floor of our house. This floor is a separate apartment that someday will be rented out. Because we’d like to move in asap – and not pay rent in addition to our mortgage – we are planning to finish apartment first. Once we finish that we can move in and focus our efforts on the first and second floors (phase 2). During this time we are basically gutting the entire third floor and starting over – it IS that disgusting. This is very exciting because we can completely redesign the kitchen and bathroom and make small modifications to the overall floor plan.

Phase 2

This phase will encompass the first two floors and will likely be the longest phase. We plan to make significant changes to the first floor by adding a bathroom and opening up the kitchen and dining room. The second floor is also getting a makeover including a fabulous bathroom complete with whirlpool, a giant closet, a large master bedroom, and a den.

Phase 3

If you haven’t noticed the siding of this house is a pretty awful baby blue. If you have only seen the pictures, it is MUCH worse in person. It is complete with a rotting wood fence. Phase three corrects this. Much to my dismay, because the vinyl siding is in relatively good shape, this is the last thing to be replaced.