Construction

     After closing on the house on August 21, we gave the previous owners 2 weeks to get anything out of the house that they wanted. On September 14, we started working! The first thing to do was clean up all of the junk left in the house. This ended up filling up almost three 30-yard dumpsters...We're now on dumpster number 6.

That's a lot of stuff!!

Our next step was to cut down trees and limbs. Since the house is in a historical neighborhood, we had to be careful about what was not to be cut down. We left 2 huge Bradford Pears down by the road! Another cool thing that we kept was a very old Crepe Myrtle. I was told by the previous owners that back in the 70s, the wife started growing that tree out of a little mason jar. It's now a huge tree in the yard, and she asked me at closing if I would make sure they didn't cut it down. And believe me...I've made sure everyone knows not to touch it!! 

This shows the huge different before & after all of the trimming. We also had to tear down all of those vines on the house. 

AFTER:

See? There is actually a house underneath there!! 

This is the Crepe Myrtle tree we're saving:

The next step was cleaning out the garage. There was about 4-5 feet of stuff in there, and the whole top was full, too!! 

The first steps in the actual construction are repairing the structural issues with the house, and making sure the foundation will be perfectly solid for many years to come. When we pulled up the old carpet, the original part of the house (built in 1900) still had the original hardwood floors underneath!! See how much bigger & brighter everything already is? We also discovered that a drop ceiling had been installed during the 1970s, so instead of 7 ft ceilings downstairs, they're now 9 feet.

     Unfortunately, we found a crumbling foundation underneath part of the house. This meant we had to tear up part of the 100 year old floors. But don't worry...I'm working a secret project using the salvaged wood!! Also, not all the hardwood had to be taken up. 

  We have spent the past couple of weeks focusing on the main floor. This includes removing all of the rotten wood, adding in 4 giant 24-foot long support beams, 4 steel piers (which are jacks that help support the new beams) removing dry wall, and putting in new wood for the floor joists. 

It looks scary now, but we are moving right along!! The next steps include running the plumbing & electric, which were both started this week. I spent hours drawing the new interior floor plan for both levels, and Henry (our contractor) drew up the new plans for the exterior. 

 

 

This week: 

I went to City Hall and got the building permit Friday afternoon, and we went to a meeting at City Hall with the Historical Society on Tuesday to get approval for all of our exterior updates, so I'll let you know how all of that went in my next post! 

-Kila