1 Let the Renovations Begin!

Well, we have had the keys to our new home for two weeks, and the to-do list seems to be growing longer rather than shorter!  The previous homeowner left a lot of junk so the first week was spent ordering a dumpster, sorting, and getting rid of so much stuff.  Some cool items were left as well, like a square grand piano, a pottery barn bunk bed, and other odds and ends that will hopefully offset the dumpster rental.

Celebrating our new purchase at Burger King.

Because we fancy.

We have embarked on a few projects so far, with mixed results.  We are using doing a silver metallic epoxy in the garage, but it bubbled something awful so we have to sand it down and do a second layer.  Except we already bought out all our local stores of the stuff so we need to wait a few weeks for more to get in.  We scrubbed and pressure-washed the porch and the back deck.  The porch stain I  ordered was supposed to be a light chestnut brown but went on way dark.  It was very scary on day one, but now that it is dry looks pretty good.  I am still picking stain for the back deck, which was in much worse shape and probably needs a solid coat.  Also the deck balusters are copper so I ordered some cleaning agents and sealer to bring them back to full glory.

The windows were a concern to be immediately addressed.  What we we thought would be a $2000 glass replacement has turned into $5100 of replacement windows.  Those will take 4-6 weeks to get in, which puts off exterior painting until at least then.

In the meantime, I am picking a color!  Ben has said no to green or gray which leaves me with a lot of lovely blue options.  I have put up a lot of samples today and will hopefully have a selection by the end of the day tomorrow so we are ready to go once the windows are installed.

So basically, 2 weeks in we have done a major clean out, garage floors layer one, the porch and halfway deck, and a LOT of shopping.  Stay tuned for further progress!  This week I have my buddy Cherstin helping and Ben is taking a few days off as well.  I hope to get the electric done in the basement so we can put the drywall up, pick and order bamboo flooring, install the new toilets, paint and finish phase one of the downstairs bathroom, re-epoxy half the garage with the kits we do have.... oh my so much to do!