For Sale!!!

Well we are officially up for sale, the news from the listing agent was good, but now we just need this beautiful house to find a new family. This was our 4th house and the intention was to be our final and forever home, so much for intentions..ha ha. There are many good things about this journey, we know that we still have enough physical energy to make it through the major renovation on this house. We can still work together with out killing one another, not that it wasn’t thought about from time to time, just kidding! or maybe not? We have made some friends here. Made the best of the situation enjoying the beautiful country that it is, just not for the rest of our lives… sorry Tennessee… your are majestic , worth visiting, and possibly one of the friendliest states we have ever lived in, much rather be a tourist than an resident. We certainly can’t all want to live in the same place right? I mean how crowded would that be? We have found a home in Henderson, Nevada which we both have fallen in love with, we have put an offer on the house, now we play the waiting game. Another bank owned property so it could be a waiting game for sure. The house is in good shape, of course there will be changes. The outside is what drew us in … it is amazing, and the views, well it is …. to us… our dream home!!! Yes, i will be heartbroken if we don’t get it but I can’t help but be super excited about it ….. on to the next and FINAL renovation!?

peace!

Say what? Say finished!!!!

Well finally the inside of the house is finished!!!! Wahoo!

The last and final room the 2nd bedroom upstairs we are officially finished with the inside of the house.

We still have some clean up left outside, but it is time to get this house listed for sale, we have an agent coming on Sunday. I am a little concerned …. but hopeful that someone will just have to have it! It has been a long and very hard journey I couldn’t be happier that it is finally coming to an end, ready to move on to the final chapter in our lives, to find a home where everyday is like being on vacation.

Funny when I look back to the day I saw this house on the internet and how excited I was to buy it, WOW! that was some crazy!!! It is somewhat bitter sweet, I really like how the house turned out and we have put so much energy into it, even though I seem ok with leaving it I think I will be a little sad that it just wasn’t in the right place for me.

Well my friends I hope the next and final blog will bring news of this house is “SOLD”

Thanks for taking the journey with us on this adventure

Peace, Enjoy!!!

Are we done YET!!!?

I can’t explain why, but as we get closer to the finish of this house it has become so daunting!!!! Which is ridiculous, I mean the projects that are left to do in comparison to the beginning are so easy, but somehow they are becoming overwhelming. Maybe it’s just burn out, exhaustion, or just plain tired of the dance, just want it to end and be DONE!!!

So anyway here are some updates, the siding is finished and it turned out great, what can I say that Wayne has some amazing talents, he can do…. well …anything , and do it well!

Then there is this….. what a mess, I think that is the most difficult part for me, the mess left to deal with every time we finish something up….UGH!!!!

Then the work shifted to the last room in the house on the 2nd floor. This room had no closet so it could not be considered a bedroom, that easy put in a closet, your a bedroom now! The floor was good enough to not have to replace it, but it needed too much work for it to be restored, so it is getting painted, still a work in progress, what can I say it becomes more difficult to push through it these days.

Prepped and ready for paint, floor paint, trim on windows and baseboards, yup the room is ready, now its just a matter of us getting ready…LOL!

I really wish I could say that once this room is finished that we would be done, but that is not the case, then its time to make the list of finishing touches through out the house. The stairs still need to be trimmed out, the railing needs to go up, wallpaper has to be finished in the hallway, some trim needs to be finished in the master, some siding still needs to be repaired, well anyway there is still much to be done, not to mention the cleaning up  of the messes!!!!!!

That’s  all for now, PEACE ….. Enjoy!

 

What’s New?

Things are moving along on the house. Did some sprucing up on the front porch. Applied a texture paint to the stairs, painted the the support beams and gave the house it’s numbers.

Time to move up, work starts on the 2nd floor, we were hoping that the second floor would be minimal work,no such luck in this room! The entire floor had to be ripped out… oh goody!

New floor joists had to be put in so the floor could be leveled.There is Wayne AGAIN with the finger….. geez!!!

new floors going in, then there were issues with the  windows, which had to be taken out completely and re-framed ( one of them wasn’t even attached, which by now really isn’t surprising with this house)

tear it out and do it right!

Now time to finish the room, the closet was already a pretty good size, so instead of using the open space left from removing the chimney, ya’ll remember that? We made a desk area/work space. Painted a chalk board , used a left over butcher block and done!

Carpet tiles are becoming my favorite thing, so easy to use and the cost is so reasonable.

#3 bedroom… DONE!

Moving back outside, Wayne has started to replace the vinyl siding, this was the area on the house where we had to remove the chimney used for the wood stove on the 1st floor, you know where it had caught on fire! This is also an area where the addition, part of the porch was incorporated into the house, now wait for it…..  which was NOT done right….. oh yeah I know you are shocked by that, LOL!

I have been working on the last room on the 2nd floor, looks like this will be a slam dunk compared to all the other rooms. I had moved all our boxes of unpacked stuff inside before winter, and it went to the this room on the 2nd floor so now I had to move it all out, since we will not being staying here I pretty much just stopped unpacking however a good amount of the boxes had been opened and things taken out, so I had to repack them all, I shifted all the Christmas decorations to the garage and moved the rest to the other bedroom closet. I think I have mentioned this before, who needs a gym when your doing a remodel? I have noticed that it seems to take us longer to finish up these last projects, which are not nearly as tasking as the beginning of this remodel.Kinda strange but we are Pushing through it.

Peace…. Enjoy!

Master Bathroom

It is hard to believe that we have been here for a year, April 5, 2015 we parked our motor home here and went to work. The entire 1st floor of the house is now completed, funny when I remember Wayne saying we would be done in 6 months. Who knew we would find the things we did and end up building a new house inside this old farm house. I guess that I have mentioned we will NOT being staying here in this house, we plan to list it for sale next spring. The house is okay , actually it is better than okay I am amazed at what we have accomplished and how well it all has turned out. The people  in the area are very nice, but this off the grid thing…. just not for me! I am city girl, I need all those conveniences that a city has to offer , that being said I guess I will just go on to show you the master bathroom. I have already taken my 1st bath and wow, I forgot how wonderfully relaxing a good soak in the tub can be, it was awesome!!!!

Having the double sinks is really great, the insets in the shower are perfect more than I needed, guess I can add stuff. We were only going to do  a pony at first to give some division from the sink area to the toilet/bath area but then decided on the full wall, I am really happy we did, it keeps the moisture somewhat isolated to bath area and the mirrors don’t steam up at all, that is really nice. I got the deepest tub I could find and it is AWESOME!!!!. To date I would say the master bath is now my favorite room. Where the cute little night light is that my sis-in-law Barb gave me was originally going to have a TV wall mounted, but it turned into this big ordeal so we will just leave that for the next owners . I just pop a movie into my DVD player and that works. In this case I am going to say that these pictures for sure don’t do this bathroom justice….. it is amazing! Everything we have accomplished in this old house is TRULY amazing. Only 2 rooms left in the house to finish, and some outside stuff to finish up. We have to work on a budget from month to month but we are getting it done. Peace ….Enjoy !

What’s this I see?

The master bath is well underway, my bathtub is soooo beautiful, I can hardly wait to take a nice long soak, with bubbles!!!! We discussed putting in a pony wall by the toilet, then  decided to build a whole wall, really this was something Wayne wanted to do and , well, I can’t keep shooting down all his ideas, can I? So the wall goes in! I guess we have been dragging our feet a little on this one, we have already passed 2 completion dates, LOL! but it is coming along we hope to have it done by this coming weekend, well except for the paint? it looks like we will need more the addition of the wall came after the paint purchase , just when you think you have everything need, you don’t bah!

The framing goes in, since this part of the house was the add-on from 2007 part of the walls are exterior and needed to be insulated, as you might recall they never connected the add-on to the main structure of the house and some of the bathroom wall were part of that, of course we did attach it just so know.

Then the drywall went up, we also added a vapor barrier on the floor, and there she is my beauty, my bathtub!!!!! in case you haven’t guessed, I love to soak in the tub. The wall we are putting in will also have my TV mounted so I can watch my favorite movie while I soak, oh my the simple things that bring such joy!!!!! Wayne is most excited about not having to wait on the bathroom anymore, can’t say I blame him there I may doddle a bit.

We also finished some outside work, gravel is all way around the house, and the damaged vinyl siding  on the back of the house has been replaced. After the master bath is finished we will get the siding on the carport entrance up, I am getting a little tired of looking at the tyvek . Well that is about all for now, hope you enjoy, and hope to have completed pictures by the weekend? maybe? Peace 🌼

Lazy days are OVER!

It’s time to get back to work we have used every excuse to not resume work. With the downstairs being almost complete we got pretty lazy using excuses  like “can’t really do anything when the weather is bad”, “We don’t really have the supplies we need to finish”, ” It’s the Holiday’s we are entitled to some time off” Well those days are over!!! We are expecting our 3rd , and hopefully last delivery from Home Depot tomorrow with all the supplies and materials we need to finish this old house. Today was our official back to work day, after voting of course. There really wasn’t much demo left to do in the masterbath area so I knocked it out pretty fast. Wayne has been working on the electrical, dropping in for the lights and the fan/light combo. Most of the plumbing is already in place ready to hook up. Wayne’s sister Barb was here for a visit and helped us to get the floor covering ( we don’t have a vehicle to haul it) so that was cool. Now to pull it all together, I am really anxious for the bathtub!!!!! Barb also brought me a light fixture and I started to work on it for the bathroom, then I decided that I wanted to keep it for our forever home…. cuz friends…. this ain’t it!

I think Wayne was giving me finger…. geez! Guess he is not happy about returning to work. The bathroom is 13ft. long and about 6ft. wide. It is going to be awesome. Oh yeah one more thing, when Wayne’s sister was here for a visit, she said the pictures do not do the house justice, that was pretty cool to hear, since I thought the pictures looked nice. So YAY, for us!!! Peace… Enjoy!

 

Research

After removing the fireplaces and finding shoes, bottles, magazines, and a few other goodies in the wall I wasn’t really too curious about the stuff, my friend Terrie did some online checking about the shoes in the wall and found out it was a common practice for some of the folks in the region to do so for different reason, from fertility to illness prevention not to mention to ward off evil spirits. I recently showed the tattered magazine to the clerk at Duncan Lumber ( local hardware store) and she said “aren’t you curious about the people who the stuff belonged to?” Well I wasn’t! but now i am, so we researched the deeds on the house,that was an interesting venture flipping through those big old books at the county deeds office, come to find out the house dates back to  February 1918 and at that time was owned by JH & Emily Pearson along with over 100 acres,

They sold it to Lewis Burk in 1919 who sold to Fay Greene in 1938 and sold by the Greene’s in 1993.

I found a connection with JH Pearson to Howards Quarter Church which is just up the road from us I hope to contact someone at the church who might have some info on the families and maybe some facts on the house, wouldn’t it be nice to have an old picture of the place. I hope to do some research at the historical society , have to wait for someone to contact me so I can get access .

What I also found interesting ,I found some info on the Pearson’s at the local library and Henry Pearson was married to a Lois Hoffman, which is my maiden name, how weird would that be if the trail led to a family connection?! Wow that would be something.

So one thing for sure the house is traced back to 1918 so far guess they were off by 10 years!

This is kinda fun! Looking forward to next discovery.

Peace ….. Enjoy

1 Year Ago Today

It has been one year ago today that we bought our house here in Tennessee wow how time passes so quickly. We didn’t make the move here until April, and we have been hard at work making this house into a home….and… well also something you could live in. So here is where we are today with renovations. First to be done was a bathroom, before… during… and after.

Next was the Master Bedroom, before during, and after, we added a walk in closet and expanded the area for the master bathroom. We have not started on the bathroom to date however we do have all the fixtures and are gearing up for it to be the next project.

Then came the kitchen and pantry…. thank goodness, we were pretty much eating microwave only at this point, no gas for the motor home, and the BBQ was not functioning properly….and there is no ordering out here! This is a little before in the 1st picture by the 2nd picture we had already torn out the wall of the laundry room, we poured concrete for the floor so that is a during, although it was much more complicated I will just jump past all that to the after, I am however still waiting for my baking center to be built, it will go where I have the table with coffee pot by the fridge. I was pretty happy to have a kitchen

Then came a lot of between stuff, ripping out floors replacing joists, insulating, removing fireplaces…. just a bunch of have to do’s before anything could be completed, the next room to be finished was the guest bedroom . This is where I sustained injuries falling through the floor. Before, during, and after

Oops… I jumped ahead, we actually finished the Laundry room before the guest bedroom, there really aren’t any before pictures we ripped out a closet in the hallway and framed in a new laundry room, it made more sense for it to be in a central location then on the other side of the kitchen, really no before just during, and after. Also managed to get a nice size linen closet too, sorry these pictures are kinda fuzzy but they are all I have

By this time the dinning area had a sub floor and paint, but the work shifted to living room and office ripping out the floors and replacing the joists and putting sub floors and walls for the office and living room once that was done it was time to put in the floors and finish up all 3 rooms, first up the office. I might add at this point that Wayne was next to sustain injuries, after the living room was torn out he slipped and fell off one of the joist, he split his eye open and banged up his leg pretty good it was actually his second injury, he slipped and fell down the front porch steps the first month we were here. The far right window in the 1st picture is now in the office, we saved about 1000 bricks from the fireplaces we removed and Wayne built me a brick wall in the office, where we actually have our bar set up, I am still working on these 2 areas as I have not unpacked everything yet and we are going to put the bar fridge in too, but its getting there…so before, somewhat during, and after so far!

Then we painted the living room and the floor goes in there next, before during and after, we have also put our game table in here, not sure if we will still put a game in the 2nd floor its up for discussion, which is I want it and Wayne does  not  want to do it …hmmm wonder what will happen? I have also ordered shelving for our DVD’s which still have not come in yet due to the weather, whatever… The “W” a gift from Wayne and Jessa and my giant Yahtzee dice made by Jessa. I was a little disappointed in the living room basically because my couch is so large it would only fit on one wall, but I’m getting used to it. It is really nice to have a place to sit and watch TV bedsides my bed .

Then it was time to finish the dinning room. Thanks to our friend and neighbor Ray we have a dinning room table too, Ray also gave me  the drop leaf table in the kitchen and both the chairs in the bedrooms, what a nice guy, I truly didn’t realize how much of my furniture did not make the trip here, what was I thinking? anyway free stuff works for me! The wall where the tile is got framed in for the coat room, and a little extra storage under the stairs got built in

The hallway got the floor put in as well as the trim around all the doors and finally the ugly light fixture in the stairwell got updated

So whats left? Well nothing has been done on the 2nd floor other than the electrical, master bathroom on the list, the stairs still need to be repaired and finished, and the outside of the house is still in need of siding , I’m sure there is more but I don’t want to think any farther ahead, one of our favorite sayings has become  “It is what it is” we were at a local auction and found this sign…. perfect!

When you are virtually building a new house inside a very old house… well you get the picture. Enjoy! Peace

Guest Bedroom

Now that the fireplaces are out work begins on the guest bedroom, this one came with some injuries. This room was a mess, it had 2 very small closets in it, neither one was effectively working for the room. One closet had the air return ducting in it and was not very functional for anything else the other so called closet had the breaker panel in it and that was scary.

In the 1st pic that was one of the closets you can see where the framing was and the air duct was just like that inside the closet, the other closet had the breaker panel in it just like that…. just a bit scary don’t  you think? Needless to say Wayne reworked the whole panel since it was full of wire nuts…. now that is nuts!! The pictures below are of the floor that was underneath the carpet, the 1st pic is the threshold of the bedroom door to the hallway, yes that is a gap open to the crawlspace under the house, the other pic is the exterior wall and yes that is also an open gap to the crawlspace. The threshold had 7/16 OSB and some metal flashing stapled to it which was not supporting anything. Both of these gaps were just covered with the carpet….. nice!

The next find was in the wall, apparently there used to be 2 front doors on this house… why? good question to which we have no answer. So one of the doors was at some time removed and replaced with a double window, but they forgot one thing, to put the exterior wall in where the door was removed….. gee I’ll bet this was a heating nightmare!!!

well there was insulation and I mean it did have vinyl siding….dumb asses!

The floor was a complete tear out and during the demolition I missed stepped onto a section that had been cut and fell through I could not feel my foot for over 2 hrs. so I got a few days off ,well  actually only one and half days, then it was back to work

and I still have a bruise just below my knee I think it is permanent ?

Vapor barrier installed, we also put in a wall to enclose the house crawlspace from the front porch which was wide open, it was like a wind tunnel. Insulation and floor installed

Once the floor was in, framing started, with the removal of the fireplace new walls were put up

Walls framed and new closet framed, with the air intake boxed in.

1st picture original condition when we bought the house….

in the 1st picture the hole you see cut in wall was the previous homeowners solution to heating the room, um I wonder why it was so cold!? duh! If you haven’t already figured it out this is the room completed, I am sure it will go through some more transformations in decor we wanted to have it ready for our guest Terrie at Thanksgiving, and I am pretty sure as get things unpacked there will be some changes. Thanks to Jessa Witzel for helping shop for curtains and decor… Enjoy 🙂 !!!