And so it begins.

We started with a closing.

By Laura Gramann Posted in Renovating, The Process on March 11, 2018 2 Comments

We couldn’t sleep. It felt like Christmas Eve, and when we awoke, we’d be receiving the largest gift ever – both in its expense and its size. Our alarms hadn’t even gone off yet, and we were gabbing on the phone for an hour, giggling like children and plotting out the big day. Our dream was about to be realized. After a filling breakfast at The Pancake House, we headed to the Shorewest Realty office to accept our fate. We were buying a house.

My hand got a workout from all the signatures I wrote, but it was just getting warmed up. We closed on the house, received the keys and a hug from the previous owner, and we raced over to OUR house – our cars full of tools and supplies. We pulled up the dilapidated driveway, walked into our house, and our hands went right to work. Scrubbing, demolishing walls, taking photos, cleaning every surface, hauling junk to our 30-yard dumpster. The house looks a bit tired…it hasn’t gotten much love in the past 20 years. It was begging for attention and care to bring it back to life…wanting everyone to see its full potential. We have so many plans for this house! And in the 11 days we’ve owned it, we’re making some real progress…

• The basement was completely gutted. All the interior walls have been removed, and now only the weight-bearing structural walls remain. It’s a clean slate.
• Erik set up his workshop in the basement and built his workbench from scratch.
• Erik re-worked much of the electrical in the basement and added more lighting. It feels much bigger and brighter down there now.
• I scrubbed every touchable surface in the house, from the kitchen cabinet hardware to the light switches to the faucet knobs.
• I painstakingly removed wallpaper in the foyer and have made headway in the kitchen and main bathroom.
• We installed an iron curtain and reverse osmosis system for our well water – it tastes wonderful now!
• We’ve both tackled much more than that (some with the help of our parents), but those are the highlights.

We have a long way to go, and it is easy to become overwhelmed with our ToDoist list of 88 tasks for the house. But we’ve mostly maintained our optimism. We are very happy with our purchase and cannot wait to start moving in once the dust settles.

And we’re hoping that transition can happen soon, thanks to the help of our contractor. He will spearhead the complicated project of opening up our primary kitchen wall and install a 27′ header in our attic, to support the roof. With his help for a week, that project will be completed quickly, professionally, and safely, while allowing Erik to learn from the contractor and also work on side projects in unrelated parts of the house. We still need to patch and paint all the walls, prime and paint all the trim, condition the hardwood floors in all the bedrooms, and, depending on project timing and budget, gut the two full bathrooms. Oh, not to mention all the yard work that we need to do! Grind out a stump in the front yard, widen and lay a new driveway, trim all the bushes and trees, power-wash the Lannon Stone, mudjack the concrete slabs and walkways, etc etc.

Granted, this all doesn’t need to be completed before we’re married on May 19th and fully move in soon after. However, I am moving into the house from my apartment on April 7th, so I’d prefer to live in some semblance of a functioning home. As long as I have a bed, a shower (ours has amazing water pressure – yay!), my French press, internet, and a microwave, I’ll survive.

Our excitement hasn’t waned in the past 11 days of hard labor, but our hands are more calloused and our backs ache almost constantly. We are committed to contributing sweat equity in our home and putting our stamp on it to make it truly our own.