The mud room

This is where we're currently at with the mud room. Thanks to the well-placed wood stove we had to re-frame (okay, Trevor did the framing, I'm moral support) the corner of the wall that went on a lovely diagonal.

We also had to replace all of the subfloor in this room because the dirty old owners kept three washers and two dryers in it -- and they leaked like mad. Oh, the was also a rat superhighway behind those machines as well between that floor and the basement.

Let's relive that moment when we first moved in and had this visual spectacle of laundry-o-rama:

Ew.

But look on the bright side, at least the brass boob light is gone (boob lights...they follow me everywhere):

For your viewing pleasure, the new (clean and smelling like wood, not anything else) subfloors:

And look! A CORNER! (Clouds open up, beam of light shines down.)

Goodbye chimney!

The badly placed chimney that ran it's way on a angle through the old laundry room and family room (and really was in a hallway, you know, somewhere where everyone can comfortably snuggle up around it), went straight down into the basement, and straight up through the master bedroom. It's gone for good, and all we have to remember it by is the hole.

Rainy days

It's been raining like crazy lately, and things around here are waterlogged and muddy (from taking that photo above until now, the wheelbarrow is overflowing). Puddles are everywhere, and places that dip down and turn flat are small lakes. The duck pond has risen a ton -- all of the plants I put in at the end of the summer are gone (hopefully they come back!). Wellies are a must around here! Even with all of that, there are still a few pretty areas that I've managed to find:

Mushrooms, of the flat mushroom-y kind. (I know nothing about mushrooms.)

More mushrooms.

A piece of the fence in the pond, with all the leaves that blew in (which, by the way, I haven't touched a rake this year thanks to the wind).

Making window decisions

I originally wanted black windows (and still do) but the reality of black windows means taking a $3000 hit to our budget, and you can do a lot elsewhere in the house with that chunk of money.

We went with Jeld-wen Premium Vinyl single-hung windows, as they provide an even sight line (Trevor was highly particular about that). An even sight line means that the windows are symmetrical -- one side doesn't have a thicker frame than the other.

I've also adjusted the door style in the little mock-up above (still green, of course!). I like the idea of the vee-groove style on the front as we're considering interior doors that use the same vee-groove detail. Not trying to be matchy-matchy, but I don't want to do the typical craftsman door that you see used in new builds all over the place lately.

Underground electrical

Another surprise was finding out that the pole the power line runs on to the house is illegal -- it's not the proper treated wood, and even has fake marks on it to mimic a proper pole. We wanted to run the power underground anyways as the way the line was running into the house was pulling off the fascia boards. We've also upped the power to the house to a 200 amp service (originally we had toyed with an electric on-demand water heater, which is a power hog, but we've scrapped that idea). This extra cost early on will hopefully pay off when we get around to adding on a garage and large master suite -- all ideas for the future.

But, getting back to the nitty gritty:

There was a lot of digging to be done (not by hand, thankfully!). Check out the horrible wiener dog sign on the pole, it still needs to come down.

Dig, dig, dig! (And you can see the bad pole to the left of the trench.)

The mega spool of wire.

We also ran wire and cables to the end of the driveway in preparation for a gate to be built one day. You have no idea how glad I'll be when we have one -- just this week someone curious showed up unannounced and opened the door to the trailer (no knocking or anything!) when I was here. I think I'll go invest in a big stick in the meantime.

The basement, and other horrible things.

When we first put an offer in on the house, we weren't allowed to see the basement. It was so full of hoarded items that you physically couldn't enter it. On inspection day, the sellers were nice enough to push enough items out of the basement (and dump it out in the back yard...until we moved in) so we could see it. At least we were pleasantly surprised to find it in great shape -- no cracks or leaks...but the SMELL, oh the smell. (Urine has a way of insulting your nose and making your eyes water; it's like a form of torture.)

With around 75% of the basement's contents rotting in the yard, we were still left with the leftovers, which had to be dealt with in order to tackle the basement and put a hex on the pee-pee smell.

Of course, I had to document some of the entertaining finds:

Wiener dog door knocker anyone?

Dog food found gathered in the ceiling. The work of squirrels or an industrious pooch?

An entire box of gummy bears. Surprisingly these hadn't been pillaged by the rats and mice.

The freezer. Scary, and one of the last things to go. We filled 5 bin liner bags full of bread (in the form of buns, pizza shells, tortillas, and loaves of every shape and size), the odd headless fish, bacon-wrapped scallops, chicken, homemade borscht and a metal tray of raspberries.

A small bunch of things worth salvaging: an antique door, metal calliper set and a box of brass knobs.

This, however, was NOT worth salvaging (and kind of scares the crap out of me).

All of the heavy cobwebs just added to the decor and overall creepy feeling of the basement.

Where things are at

Things have been a little jumbled lately and my lack of blog posts stems mostly from a busy October with days stretching into weekends with my regular studio work. Trevor had more than a few lonely weekends working on the house with me stuck in front of a computer meeting deadlines. I think I needed a break from the regular blog posts as it meant I would be sitting in front of computer (again!). Here's hoping I'm back to some regularly scheduled programming!

Welcome to some photos of the inside of the house:

This is the view from the front door heading upstairs (oh, and that lovely blue tarp is the entrance to our only working bathroom). Insulation is the enemy here, especially blown-in attic insulation that has been plagued by a rat/mouse city development. Nothing gives me the heebie-jeebies more than thinking we have uninvited guests skipping above us using our insulation as their personal toilet. And nothing was worse than having to take it down and clean it up. (There was a point where I wondered if we'd ever reclaim the house -- the rodent poop outnumbered us 100000 to 1.)

The view into the kitchen. There's still some insulation in the walls to be taken out.

This will eventually be where the kitchen island will sit, and beyond that a closed-in mudroom. The chimney is being taken down as well.

Looking into the family room.

And lastly, looking up to the master bedroom. You can see how ridiculous it was to design a chimney to come up through the house, chopping room away from the mudroom storage and the bedroom.