Our Old House

When last we left the brave homeowners in  Mold Mold Mold  they were knee deep in that pesky nasty moldy insulation, OSB, and drywall. It's been some months since that fateful March day. The calendar is starting to warn that fall is approaching fast, and the homeowners needed to make sure that Helena didn't get them wet anymore than necessary.

So the day came, in late August (after the Eugene Celebration Parade) that the roof was to come off. And it was NOT a pretty site.

Someone was having a party... and it wasn't us. The sawdust is from an insect problem we discovered, hopefully before they found the rest of the house.

Where there is mold below.. there of course has to be mold above.

This is a hole that is directly above the entrance from the garage into the laundry room. This is where the garage (the last addition as far as we can tell) meets the main house,  (or actually the previous addition to the main house.)

Dad kept muttering "Ohhh I didn't want to see that."

This is the area that is the roof for the addition to the kitchen and the laundry room.

Yes my friends.. that is Duct Tape.

Seriously???

Can you see the duct tape peaking out from behind the lame attempt at felting up the wall?

Sigh.

 So... after much debate, we found some help.

Thankfully we figured out that the dry rot was mostly surface damage. This is standing right at the entry to the laundry room looking up, where most of the worst damage was on the flat area.

Here is the kitchen arch without the OSB (and the duct tape) before....

And here it is after!! Looks much better doesn't it! (and NO duct tape!)

Looking sort of East to West (you can see the Airstream peaking up over the corner)

This is looking southwest.

So for all of our out of Oregon family/friends... this roof was done at 2pm-ish on Monday afternoon. We woke up to rain on Tuesday morning. Talk about cutting it close. We are just happy to have it done. (None more than our credit cards, well.. maybe Dad)


Stay tuned ya'll... we are no were near done fiddling with our old house. =)

(Publishing note: AnJie is in no way responsible for the random comments and opinions expressed in this post. That is all Leah's fault!)

So we decided that we needed help with our remodeling project. We brought in some help who told us we were working too hard... and they talked us into taking down the plaster.. .instead of just playing with paint chips. It made the project go much faster....

Plaster plaster plaster....

James being safe and meticulous.

Lathe lathe lathe... and low and behold.. there IS insulation in there!

Course there can be such thing as too much insulation....

And of course there can be too much dust too....

Sheetrock is awesome.....

Just about ready to paint....

Purple!!! It's really pretty! This is us painting after 10pm.

Abby thinks its pretty cool too. This is the first coat, approximately 12 hours later. We slept in the living room.

AnJie is showing off the beginning of our new library wall.

Pre-finished bead board on the library side of the wall. This will go behind the bookshelves.

and regular ole sheet rock for the bedroom side.. This will go behind the closet.

Pineapple upside-down cake anyone? (it's the name of the paint color.)

No more track lighting! AnJ picked these up at a local re-use store. The pair go very well in both the bedroom and library.

Abby inspects our new bookshelves (from Ikea) as we admire how well our library is coming together.

Looks really great huh?

More Ikea ... this time our closets.

Abby is exhausted from all of the remodeling.

Finally ... a finished closet. =)

Even with all of the big projects going on inside the house.. we have found a few minutes for some projects outside.
We have lots of plant life trying to take over our yard... we found a way to corral a few of them.

Our poor wisteria didn't even look like it was going to survive the winter, let alone have a place to climb. These trellises were on sale at Jerry's.

When we moved into the house, this rose bush was taking over the porch. I have tried to keep it under control, but it likes to run wild. Hopefully the trellis will help a bit.

One of the first things you see when you pull up to a house, is often the mailbox. Our mailbox was old and leaky. We had more wet mail than not this last winter. The post was rotting and was listing to the east. We propped it up with rocks, but it was determined to lean lean lean! 

So now, we have a new pretty (non-leaky) mailbox...

It stands up strait!

pretty!

So a little back story. As we have discussed in previous blogs, our family room is a total mess. We have it totally striped to the studs. After a lot of different ideas, we have decided to take it back to it's original intention and return it to a garage. it means storage, and it might even be dry storage when we get the roof fixed!

So anyway, this left us trying to figure out options for a 'study' area for AnJ and I when we go back to school. Janet and I have been convinced that The Master Bedroom was once two rooms. And everyone knows that a 3 bedroom house is worth more than a 2 bedroom house.. even with a garage. So.... guess we get to do more demo!

 The good news is... we were right.

Look ma... its a hole in the wall!

A threshold.

So now that it's open, let's put a door in it.

This is now an empty doorway to the soon to be "Library." We took the door and frame to put in the bedroom.

Woo HOO! Now there is a door!

So what was up there.......

ended up down here. So far we have three contractor sized black garbage bags full!

So old house, old paint, old plaster... when we started out, we were just going to smooth the texture. Then the paint started coming off.	.

It's hard, dirty work, but much easier with our favorite tool!

And of course when you start messing with old plaster... it tends to fall apart.