House Updates

We are hoping to sell our house here in the next month or so and while I have been busy packing up everything we own Tyler has been busy working on (and hiring people to work on) several updates on our old house. I feel like I am on a (very slow) episode of Love it or List it where we are doing all the projects that I've been wanting to do for the last 5 years only to sell our house and move into a new one in the end... God has given me an amazing sense of peace about this whole selling our house thing and has helped me focus less on material things and what the world says is important (last fall I couldn't imagine selling our sweet MCM home!). so it's not even really bittersweet at this point. I really just want to be done and move on!

Ben's shower has been leaking for a few years (though we rarely use it as a shower now) so we finally  were able to find the leak and fix it! I think Tyler really just put a ton of sealer on the tiles which eventually covered the problem...

It was my job to sit in the crawlspace and tell Tyler when it was leaking and how much water was coming down...

It took a lot longer than I would have liked- that was a pesky leak!!

Next Tyler decided to tackle adding siding to the front planter. When we bought the house the front downspout wasn't draining and once we removed the GIANT bushes we realized not only was water leaking into the crawlspace but it had damaged the bricks on the planter and the walkway (from having water erode away the yard for years) too. Since the damage was so extensive (and the landscaping didn't really hide it) we decided to cover it up with siding to match the rest of the house!

It took a while to cut and install the wood siding (I wasn't much help in that heat) but Tyler got to primed and ready for paint! Then we had a mason come over to make the chimney look good and he said he could take bricks from under the wood and replace some bad ones on top of the brick wall. So painting the siding was put on hold...

While the chimney was sealed and painted!

Meanwhile we hired someone to work on the basement and build a landing area for the garage (so you can get to the basement without actually going into the garage). Which has been high on my todo list. I pictured a nice bench and pegs for coats on the wall in there...

He had just finished this sweet closet to hide the water heater (that we had moved twice) and the MUCH smaller furnace that we had installed 2 years ago when we got 3.5 inches of water in an hour and a half and the garage and basement flooded... Luckily I think it dried out completely and there was only minor damage to the new doors... I am a bit concerned about finishing the landing wall in case it floods again... (the drains were clear it was just too much water and flash flooding everywhere- it's a good thing the house wasn't in Norwood!)

I can't wait to see how this basement looks when we are finished clearing it out and installing the bathroom. I think our contractor is painting down there today!

The masons got started on the walkway first- They brought a machine that dug the grout out and then broke and replaced any broken bricks. It should look much better when they are finished!

While the garage and basement dried the contractor got started on removing the wallpaper from the bathrooms. 

It was exiting to see the old asian boat wallpaper that was under the shells!

Bye bye shells!

I thought Ben's bathroom had original wallpaper (those shiny flowers had really grown on me) so I was a little sad when it was suggested we take it down... Wallpaper removal is quite messy!

Old wallpaper and older wallpaper

I was surprised to see some geometric floral designs under the shiny flowers! 

I'm not sure how colors hold up under wallpaper so it hopefully looked a lot different back in the day but it's not as cool and modern as I might have thought it would be...

The landing wall is in! Tyler has been working hard to move the shelves from the garage to the new house (instead of random garage stuff we'll have to use them for boxes of clothes and baby stuff and seasonal decorations) and the flooding made the garage quite messy anyways but we've got a lot to do down here! Tyler hasn't just been on moving patrol- I guess I haven't taken many pictures but he's been working for the last month or so on refinishing the driveway. It looks pretty sweet now!

The masons finally started working on replacing the broken bricks. I'm not sure how I expected them to do this but I about died when I saw this! Holy cow I hope this works!