It was recently pointed out to me by one of my friends that I dont blog enough. Sorry Shelb! This is why I dont blog for a living. I am terrible at it. I get too busy and have a million things going on. Plus, theres nothing that I fully 100% endorse besides Coconut Oil and Caseys Pizza so I wouldnt have any affliate links to make money off of (unless Caseys wants to send me coupons for their Taco pizza).

We have been very busy in the past couple months. We had a deadline for the appraisal of our house for February 1st. Sanding took WAY longer than what we anticipated, and while we were sanding and varnishing we couldnt really have anyone else in there doing things as our floors were down to bare wood and we didnt want any scuffs, scratches or water marks from snow, so we kicked everyone out and spent WAY too much time doing it.

Honestly, if Nick and I make it through this house remodel we can make it through anything. Of all the problems with the house the sanding and varnishing process caused the most arguments. Just gonna be real, because things arent always peaches and cream. Since we were in panic about our deadline we had to cancel NYE plans, leave Christmas celebrations early and say no more than what we already have been, which was a real bummer in itself. We eventually went to the bank and they extended our deadline till April 1st. (WERE STILL IN PANIC MODE THOUGH) BUT check out our fabulous floors Here

And of course, while working we classically ran into more problems. While my step-dad was working on the plumbing in the basement he noticed our water heater was about 15 years old. Classic. So on top of buying a softner we bought a new water heater and water filtration system as well. While he was installing that he noticed a giant hole in our exhaust pipe from our boiler system that was crappily taped up. Aka everytime it kicked on it was just puffing back carbon monoxide into the house. The best part? When we first got into the house Nick said the carbon monoxide detector in the house was going off and he unplugged it because he thought the batteries were dying. (Serious face palm)

I CANT MAKE THIS UP PEOPLE.

Anyway,

Since then we had to call Stantons and they came to tell us that the problem was that our chimney didnt have a cap on it so it was just raining, snowing etc in our chimney and our chimny liner needed to be replace. LOL. F***. Nick told me this on the phone and I was like for sure going to cost us thousands. He only quoted us at $500 so we said DEAL. I was quite surprised after convincing myself it was going to be $5000 and we were just going to have to sell our money pit.

Here are a few updated pics. And I promise to not let it be 3 months before I update my blog again. (Maybe).

The past month I have spent every weekend with sawdust in my hair, inside my bra,in my nose, ears, cracks and grooves. All because we finally started sanding our floors. We have hardwood floors in every room besides our kitchen, laundry room and upstairs bathroom. That is a lot of square footage. A lot of time on my knees. A lot of muscle work and lot of swear words.

Our half-bath has hardwood floors but it is in such bad condition that we are laying the same type of floor through our laundry room, kitchen and half bath. It just made sense and the floor we bought is gorgeous so I wasn't too mad about it.

We rented a floor oscillator/orbital sander (literally everyone calls it something different) from Ace along with the edge sander which is a thing from Jesus himself. That edger made sanding all the rooms around the edges go so fast and saved us a ton of time. You have to be very careful with it as it eats the floor. So very easily can you end up with a divot in the floors. This helped us doing hallways and the landings of our staircase as our stairs are original hardwood as well.

The oscillator was wonderful and we started out with 20 grit slowly working our way up to 100. It took SO MUCH TIME. The edger was nice because it takes the wood down to its original state which helped us see how much further we needed to go with the oscillator. The floors downstairs are oak which means they are a harder floor and the dents and such come off easier, but is harder to sand down. The floors upstairs are pine and are a softer wood. The pine is easier to sand down but the stains sink into the wood a lot further therefore we aren't able to get out all the stains and scratches.

We know our floors wont be perfect since the wood is 100 years old, and were fine with that. We were going to stain them but didn't feel too confident doing such large areas. I feared they would turn out worse then what they were. We chose to just varnish and let the wood age over time. My parents did this to their floors and has turned out to be a nice light color. While I prefer a darker color to offset all my white and neutral wall colors I decided I would rather put up with the light wood over an uneven stain job.

WE WILL BE FINISHED THIS WEEKEND! Hallelujah. We will be finished sanding and will start the varnishing process. We ordered carpet and furniture and set up the carpet install for the second week in January-if you remember we need carpet in the back part of that living room so our living room has to be varnished by then. Check back for the finished product otherwise check out what we've done so far here or take a look above.

Or just a bathroom that is usable. Our upstairs bathroom was awful. If you haven't seen the before pics take a look. We gutted it. Took it down to the bare bones of studs. It was a process. It had an old cast iron tub which we were stumped on how to get out. It was larger then the door. Preston decided to beat it with a sledge hammer. All while we stood under in the kitchen ready to warn him if he was about to fall through. I really didn't need my step-dad falling to his death because of a tub.

Once that was out we had to figure out how to tackle the floor. It still had the original one-inch hexagon tile on top of cement. Nick spent an evening hitting the tile with a pick ax and then the next night Preston cut out the cement with a saw, knocked out chunks with a hammer while I piled them in five gallon buckets and brought them to the dumpster. So I made multiple trips up and down a flight of stairs all the way outside with two 5 gallon buckets filled with concrete. I ended up with multiple bruises and I think my fitbit said I burned around 3000 calories. The only upside to the demo project of this house was that I ended up with muscles I hadn't had since high school sports (and then I got pregnant and ate a donut every day).

Guys pro tip here: If you get a dumpster double check that it says no masonry. We rented a big roll out dumpster from Town and Country and NO WHERE did it say that we couldn't use masonry. Well, the dumpster was empty, we filled it with concrete and then filled it with plaster and lath and then filled it with other demo stuff including insulation etc. It rained a bunch, we called them to have them pick it up when they called us and told us that we had to dig out all the concrete. That was under everything else. Or that we could get a bigger dumpster, pay another deposit and two emptying fees, I don't think so. Luckily, we had the bigger dumpster as Colton was doing our roof and he used his lift he had to get on the roof to lift up the concrete dumpster and dump it in the bigger one. Problem solved, we were so mad we had them pick up the empty dumpster, strongly discourage doing business with Town and Country. We looked over that contract multiple times, no where does it say no masonry.(If you love T&C, awesome! Just our bad experience)

Back to the bathroom. We exposed the chimney in the bathroom. Nick cleaned it with an oscillator with a wire brush, cleaned it with muriatic acid, gave it a fresh coat of mortar and a clear coat and it is GORGEOUS! We will be doing the same with the chimney in the kitchen. We took out all the old cast iron plumbing. Put in new wiring with outlets in new spots, new light switch that is in the bathroom instead of the hallway and completely changed the layout of the bathroom. Moved the radiator, tub, shower etc.

Nicks dad took all the window wood work, trim and door and stripped it and re-stained it. We acquired two old cabinets that we put together, sanded and stained to match.

Our tub comes from my Aunt Sue. She recently built a fabulous house and had ordered claw foot tubs for her house, one came slightly damaged with a scratch on the side and they sent her a new one free of charge which means we got a FREE brand new Slip Back claw foot tub. The tub of every womans dreams. I can sit in the bubble bath and have the water cover both my knees and my boobs at the same time. YAS! I seriously think about just sitting in there with one of those tub trays, a glass of red wine and just relaxing. But in all honesty I have a 7 month old who loves his mama so this probably won't happen.

With a tub that holds 300 gallons of water, we had to reinforce the floors. Preston installed new floor joists. Put down two layers of sub-floor before putting down the tile backer and tile.

Nick doesn't care too much about the design of our house, he really only cares about the bar room. But one thing he did care about was the floor in the bathroom. He really wanted the same kind that his grandparents had in their house. Which is the same tile we tore out of the bathroom. It is small one-inch white hexagon tile with a black tile in the middle. I really wasn't a fan of it, but I decided to make the best of it and work my design around it.

We are almost finished with the bathroom. We had a little setback as we got our windows around the same time we were ready to finish and that took a big chunk of our time. For full details on every pic check out the progress of what we've done here. Or for a quick skim through, click through below!

If that isnt the damn truth. Nick and I have now owned this house for a year and a half. While most people feel happy and ecstatic to have owned a house for that long, we do not. We often get discouraged because we are still not living in this house. We live in a very very small space which is not idea for two adults, a 6-month old, and 65-pound German Shepherd.For reference this is the space were living in, also to shamelessly show how cute my two babes are.

We try to make the best of it and remember that in the end we will have a beautiful house with PLENTY of space for Oliver and future children to romp around in. We get through it with a lot of wine and an optimistic (most of the time) outlook. Friends, family, we do love to spend time with you and when our house is done we would LOVE to spend all of our free time with you!

That being said, we have made SO much progress. We've torn out plaster and lath in the entry way, kitchen, bathroom, dining room and closet. After that monster of a project I was rocking some nice arm muscle. We re-insulated the attic, the ceilings in all of those rooms, new sheetrock in all of those rooms, tore out the subfloor in the kitchen because, SURPRISE, it was not laid right and you could walk across it and feel like you were going to fall through. We put new floor joists in the kitchen. Preston spent one evening balancing on the floor joists while the whole time I imagined every terrible scenario waiting for him to fall through to the basement. We took out cement in the bathroom, laid new floor joists again with Preston balancing and me imagining his death. New subfloor, tile board in the bathroom. All new windows in the house, except for the basement, those will be done at a later time. Keep in mind we have 40 window.

A couple shout-outs for a few of our major projects, the first one bieng a new roof. THANK YOU! THANK YOU! to Howard Construction, I am not just saying this because Colton is my brother-in-law, but because literally no other construction company wanted to do our roof because it was so bad and was such a large project. They did a phenomenal job and got it done before it snowed. Highly recommend them for anything you could need. Another big thank you to Steve Thole Construction who just recently finished laying cement for us on the side of the house, he also got it done before it snowed.

Take a look through Here for the progress of what we have been doing or just take a tour below. If you're interested in me going into detail about certain projects I most definitely can, drop me a note! I just dont want to bore too many people. You can check out the dining room project here and the bathroom project and Dont forget to check out our new windows and see the process of sanding hardwoods

Xx
K

Preston is my wonderful savior of a stepdad. This house is full of our blood, sweat and tears. Preston's sweat, Nick's blood and my tears. Preston is in almost every picture standing there staring at something deep in thought. Our house is 100 years old which means: EVERYTHING IS CROOKED! No joke guys. Everything is crooked, tapers off to one side, or bows in the middle. I say this to anyone I talk to, without Preston, Nick and I would be up a proverbial creek. I am pretty handy and can figure out most things, Nick on the other hand.. I love him but he should stick to writing. But he’s good at doing the grunt work and just about anything you ask of him. He’s a perfectionist which makes him perfect at doing things like staining, sanding, cleaning. All things that I do not want to do. Anyways, if you see Preston, or know Preston, make sure to tell him what a great job he’s doing. He has a talent and takes time doing everything and making sure its done right, most of you that know him that have had him work on your car know this already.

The Back Story

This house is 100 years, almost 101. The plot of land was originally bought by Pacific Railroad in 1848 and then they clearly chose to run their railway elsewhere and sold it to the township of Ocheyedan which they then used it for the sight of a coal house and school house. Eventually being sold to a rich family who built this extravagant house. We recently learned all this by reading through pages and pages of our abstract, which is extremely fascinating if you’re into that kind of stuff like me! Our house currently sits on 3 lots, which is a lot of yard space (HAPPY DANCE!) For those of you that know our house it has an empty lot next to it, which most people don’t realize is ours. Sometime in the 60s(? this is a little iffy) the house that sat on that lot was bought and then knocked down which gives us three lots. It is a 4 bedrooms, 1 ½ bath house, kitchen, dining, large living room, porch and carriage house. It is a beautiful house that really needed the right owners to come in and give it a face-lift. Which brings this to us.

How did we acquire this house?

This house has been in my family for quite some time. I moved to Ocheyedan in the 6th grade. My grandparents bought the house and rented it out to my parents. I lived in this house until my sophomore year in college. My parent’s split up in high school and my dad moved to an acreage all while renting the house out to numerous different renters. Little bit of an advice for future landlords. ALWAYS make your tenants pay a deposit and sign a lease, something my dad never did. (Where is the facepalm emoji?) With that there were renters that DESTROYED this house. Literally one lady had a petting zoo in the dining room, left in the middle of the night with hay and goats in the dining room, you literally cant make this up. Fast forward to 2016, Nick and I are living down by Des Moines and we get the opportunity to move back home and I had chatted with my grandparents who thought it would be a good home for us to have a family and fix up. Nick and I always laugh at ourselves when we think about this. Take a tour here and see what the house looked like when we acquired it in July of 2016

Thanks for checking out the blog. I decided to create a blog solely to talk about the process and progress of our house. I don’t like to post to Facebook too much and when posting about the house it either gets lengthy or the post doesn’t do it justice. We have so many people that ask us about it and while we try to show them and explain what weve all done, it gets hard and we are asked ALOT. I figured this would be the best way to show people who are interested in what we have been up to! DISCLAIMER* because apparently you have to put these in here. Guys, I am not contractor, not an electrician or a plumber. Im just a crazy lady who thought buying a run-down house and remodeling it with her boyfriend would be a good idea, all while starting new jobs, going to school, having a baby and living in a tiny house. (Everybody laugh with me and take a big ole slug from the wine bottle) The things you’ll see here are just things that we’ve done and how we accomplished them. I can give you advice, but when in doubt, always ask a professional! Besides, they probably have much easier/faster ways of doing things. That being said, if you are a professional reading this, please be nice! I’m sure there are different ways to do things but these are the way we chose to do them and its {seemingly} worked out for us. Enjoy checking out our progress, ask away any questions you might have, and keep checking back for the finished product!