Closer!

The date for remodel is getting closer!  It looks like there may be a start date of ... about April 15th.

We spoke to Kurt yesterday and that is when the road bans are due to come off.  Road bans are put on to prevent heavy vehicles from traveling on county and township roads that do not have the same good road base as the highways.
As the frost comes out of the ground, the road bases can be soft and heavy loads will damage the roads.

We've pretty much finished deciding on what the siding colors will be as well as the roof.  We only need to go in and finalize that.

Now I begin in earnest to clean out the back entry way so that when the construction does begin I won't be in a rush to toss everything into boxes 'willy nilly' and hope to be able to find things after the remodel.

Here is a photo of the house that I'd done for artistic value.  I wanted it to look beautiful.  Photographed last summer in Infrared.

This is the south facing part of the house.  When finished, it will have a porch extending 9 feet from the house as it is pictured here.

This is a photo of the roof of the south facing part of the house. Pretty sad right?  We intended to get things taken care of long before the shingles got in this shape.  The hole in the roof that is covered, is where the chimney used to be.  We never had a wood burning stove in the house and the chimney was never in use.  It had to come off before the remodel.

South west facing corner of the house. I dug out all of the flowers and plantings around the house last fall so that the guys working on the house wouldn't be stepping on them.  I relocated what I could and hopefully some of the plantings will survive to be moved back.

This is the north side of the house.  As you can see, this is a Tiny House.  We call it a cottage.

There will be a basement and an addition put on this side.  It will extend the house 10 ft out from where it is now.

The new space will give us a slighty larger bathroom, a mudroom, a real kitchen and a downstairs bedroom.

And here is the view from the the bottom of the driveway.  The driveway extends quite a ways up towards the ridge top.

The look and feel of the place will change for the better we think!

Picking out colors

My remodeled house may be a spectacle or it may be cute. Hubby and I went to pick out our siding and roofing colors.  Of course we didn't agree on the color of the siding.

So we will compromise.  The majority of the house will have a wheatish-tannish kind of color.
The gables will have barn red shakes or 'fish scales'.

Our roof will be Forest Green.

Windows and trim will be white.

The porch entrance door will match the green roof.
The north side entrance door will match the barn red gables colors.

From what I am reading about proper colors and designs, I need to go for more boring stuff.  Like muted matching greenish stuff or more retirement tan colors.  
Hold on a moment while I go gag.

How about a nice grey tone with white windows and trim?
Nah.

I wonder if people will come down my driveway and see my house and pause.  I don't mind making a statement.  I've decided that the colors fit the personalities of those living inside.

We used the other day to look at countertop colors for the kitchen.  I found some colors that I think will work with black appliances and Hickory cabinets.

This is nabbed from the internet and looks interesting.

The kitchen won't be set up this way, but this is the colors of Hickory matched with the colors of the counter-top I'd like to have.

However the flooring is pretty close to what we thought we'd like and...and... the cabinet on the side of the fridge was something we also talked about.  I love the idea of having a place to put my broom and cleaning stuff!

I've been thinking about the bathroom.  Fixtures [toilet and tub] will be white. But I want some bluish tealish sort of muted colors in it somewhere.  I think I can design a shower curtain to those colors.  

My house would be a rainbow of colors if I could manage it.  I've lived with icky dark brown for too long.

The only brown left will be in wood, natural wood and not this horrid dark paneling we've lived with for so long.  I want light and bright.

Eating Area and Wallpaper...ugh!

Today we started on the 'eating' area of our little house. I took a break from removing wall paper as I'd gotten to Rich's corner and stared at his stuff.

What on earth would we do with all of that stuff?

It is piled in broken down boxes and no matter how I tried over the years, I could never get him to totally clean up and put away the Stuff.

Of course we live in a Tiny House and when stuff accumulates, it needs to be weeded out and put somewhere.  However, this tiny house has no extra storage.  
For the remodeling, I started last year packing away any extra Stuff that I could.  
I stored it in a shed in plastic tubs.

Yesterday I handed Rich a large plastic tub and let him go at it.
He cleared just enough Stuff so that I could move the table and get at the wall.

You are looking at an area where the flooring will be replaced, ... we are pulling up the old tiling as we go along.  The brown wood will we replaced with a very light colored almost blonde wood.
The windows of course will be replaced and ... AND! No wallpaper!
I'm considering colors for the walls now.

The Stuff will reside somewhere else and I am thinking of getting a corner cabinet of some sort for Rich to put all of the paperwork Stuff that he keeps [and rarely looks at] into and out of sight.

We are doing a wood laminate floor and there will be so much more storage once the remodel is done.

So there it is.  Ugly as all get out right now, but perhaps cute as a button once it is finished.

The cabinets will be hickory and I would like a very very light light green for the walls.

When I was a kid we rented a house that had a putrid green paint on the kitchen walls and white cabinets.  I recall washing those walls and wishing the paint would fall off.  It never did.

So why would I even consider it again?  I think I can find a nice light green/grey color.  I don't think I want white in the kitchen section.

Maybe off white in the eating section?  That sure would brighten things up!

Well off to peel more wall paper and sort through more stuff.

Oh Yuck Wall paper ~

Wall paper on drywall that was not primed is a royal pain in the ... -ss to remove.
I however did find a secret weapon that helped.

I watched YouTube Videos on 'How to Remove Wall Paper' and it all looked easy.
Just wipe with hot water, spray with hot water, use Dawn, and it will just peel right off and then you wash with hot water and vinegar --- or Dawn Dishsoap and get the glue off.

Easy Peasy.

Wrong.  All the walls shown had been primed.

Suggestions for taking wall paper off from un-primed walls?

Take down the drywall and start over.

Wow, that was not helpful and not what I wanted to hear. Another person wrote, get a steamer and it goes really well. The trick is hot water.

I started thinking about the Dawn Dishsoap and how it breaks down the water surface tension and allows the water to soak into the material.

This paper was nasty grungy.  After taking down the wall of photos I was grossed out completely.

Yuck.

Above the small closet door that is under the stairs:

Super yuck.  Why hadn't I seen it?  
In truth, I wanted to get rid of the wall paper years ago, but Rich didn't want to start a project like that.
So I began to ignore the ugly stuff.  I thought...one day I will get the chance to remove it!

And ... now I do.

Morris is on the stairs supervising the stripping.

And it doesn't come off very easily.

So I decided to take some Oxyclean and dab it onto a cloth, then wipe the surface of the wall paper and spray it with warm water.

Well not only did it help the water absorb into the wall paper, but it took some of the grunge out too.  Of course I sprayed up towards the ceiling and then wiped with the Oxyclean cloth and found that my ceiling was going to need a very good cleaning also.  

Insert a large groan ... however I am prepared for that and I figured it would be coming next.

Meanwhile, back to the paper.  Sometimes it would come off in larger strips and sometimes it wouldn't.

Between chores and errands, this section took all day. I'd be really discouraged if I had larger rooms to do.  But this is such a small house that I only have two partial walls left.

I was extremely surprised at how much cleaner and brighter the wall was after the paper removal.

Considering that it wasn't a primed wall, I didn't do too badly. Some of the dry wall finish came off but hopefully we will be able to repair that fairly easily.

Meanwhile Rich has been working on the bricks that had been put in the living room when Glen owned the house and had a wood burning stove on it.

Before the work started

All of the brick will be removed

After one day of removal.

This is a dusty and very noisy project so hubby has been doing it a bit at a time.

He will also be removing the very very dark paneling and replacing it with light colored 'car siding'.  He wants to retain the 'cabin' look with wood and I wanted bright and light walls.

This will be our compromise.

So onward.

Morris?

He is getting accustom to the work now.  He still dislikes the shop vac but it doesn't freak him out anymore.

I might take a day or two off from the wall paper peeling.  I'd like to do some hiking now that the outdoor temps have risen above the zero mark.

Wallpaper Removal

With the cold wicked outside weather and temps in the minus 0's, I thought I'd make an attempt at seeing just how hard removing the wallpaper would be.

I decided to try it on a wall that will be removed during the remodel.
First, I did some research on the how to aspect of removing wallpaper yourself.
The videos looked embarrassingly easy. Just hot water/Dawn mix or Vinegar/hot water...or use chemicals from Home Depot, Lowes, or some other store.

I decided not to use the chemicals.  I wouldn't be able to air out the house during the frigid weather.

So I picked a day to begin.  I quickly found that the walls were not primed underneath.  The wallpaper would not come off in beautiful long strips.
It was going to be a painful long ordeal.

First a shot of the wall.  Remember it will be removed during modeling so this was a good place to start.

And so I began.  The length of time that I worked on this actually was about and hour and a half.

But the process was slow until I began to figure out the best way for the removal. Below is a shot of the wall, and yes most of the floor tile has been removed also.

Short video:

Day two I started on the living room wall and around the doorway to the bathroom.

The small electric heater next to the bathroom was also removed.

The door frame to the bathroom had to be removed also.  In some places the wallpaper was under trim and in others it isn't.

Anyone looking at this interior and the wallpaper would agree, this little house really needs a face lift inside and outside.

This is where I stopped last night.  It looks like a mess and it looks like it was impossible work.

This section is coming off a little bit easier perhaps because I am learning to do it better as I go along.  I'm not in a mad rush and so the mess is minimal.

Crooked Creek Construction, LLC, will be doing the addition and the exterior work.  This portion of the remodel is going to be our job.

I'm actually looking forward to NOT looking at that awful wallpaper anymore!  

Taking down the Chimney

I was not sure about this at all.  But Rich assured me that it wouldn't be so very hard.

And so we began on the 2nd of November.  Of course we started this and the Bank Appraiser showed up as we were working.

I can say that this probably wasn't the best and most beautiful way to present our little house.  But we needed the chimney down and the weather was nice.

Here is a reminder of how things looked on October 3rd when I began to remove the old garden I'd let go to weeds this year.

And so began the chimney adventure.

First Rich started at the top.  Talk about making me nervous!

I was rather surprised at how quickly it went.

And I was surprised by what how it looked underneath the blocks.
Rich noticed that indeed the previous owner had a chimney fire at some point. 

The blocks were brittle and really no longer useful anyway and this was a project we'd anticipated doing eventually.

Morris of course, supervised.

It definitely looked like a real mess to clean up.

But now there was a long hole in the siding of the house that we had to cover before the weather turned bad.

Rich also had to do some patch work on the roof where the chimney had been.

By late afternoon we finished.

He got the skid steer and we cleaned up the majority of concrete and chimney liner pieces.

And now the house is sealed off and we await the next step.

The appraiser had said that a downstairs bedroom and a basement would significantly increase the value of the house.
Otherwise he was rather mum as he poked around and took photos.

He did say that he thought we had the perfect location.

And I can agree with him on that.

Moving along slowly...

When the house is remodeled and resided I will be making a new garden around the house.
I felt that moving these hostas and the annoying day-lilies would get them out of the way once work started.

Little did I know that it would take at least 4 to 5 wheelbarrows worth of plants.
I moved them to another spot where they would survive until I decided if they would fit with our remodel.

I am sure thinking of some nice perennials and mixed with four o'clocks, cosmos, and other wonderful annuals...they would look great along here.

We have some of the iron wagon wheels which I'd like to set up for climbing plants such as morning glories.  Not sure where those will go at this time.

I used to load my yard with flowers.
This photo is from my film days...1998!

I can say that at one time I was a domestic flower person.  Until I met the wild ones in the woods.

However, as I try to go to sleep at night, I try to imagine how I can landscape around the new addition and around the new porch to make this wonderful little place stand out more.

Here is a photo I took of the house last week.

It is an infrared shot, more in the line of artistic photography than of just documentation.

You can see the house needs a lot of tender loving care.  With Kurt's help, we'll return this house to beauty.

It will no longer be a home in severe need of TLC, but a beauty.

The paperwork has been done, it awaits at the bank and now we await the appraisal.

I cannot wait for work to begin.

Currently I am doing some graphic art to design curtains and even the shower curtain.