The Reasons for my Lack of Posts...

So, I am horrible at finding time to update this thing lately. With finals week, working extra hours at work, Christmas, and spending time with the new addition to our household I've barely even been to the house.

New Addition you ask??

This is Bella, our eight week old Razor Edge American Pitbull Terrier. :) Jordan surprised me with her a week ago and she is an absolute joy! She was one of 11 puppies in a litter. Her mom is 50 pounds and her dad is 95, so we have no idea what to expect when she gets older. Either way, we are both hooked on her. And no, I did not name her after Bella from Twilight, Jordan actually named her. I probably would have suggested that if he didn't though!

As far as the house goes, Todd, Jordan, and Jordan's friend Mike have been working there every night. All of the plumbing has been replaced with brand new materials (including a new water heater and a water softener), all of the electrical has been rewired with brand new material, and the tile on the bathroom floor is a work in progress.


Jordan and Mike at work.

Here's what our basement crawl-space looked like before the new plumbing:

And this is all the fun stuff we have down there now:

Thank God Jordan's a plumber...My blonde hair hates hard water.

In order to redo all the plumbing, Jordan and Mike had to dig out the crawl space to make it bigger. It was this shallow:

And now it's this deep:

Made it a lot easier for them to plumb under the house, but Jordan had dirt from head to toe for days.

Last but not least for tonight, a picture of our new toilet and bathroom floor:

Isn't it pretty?

The Newspaper Story.

I am obviously on a roll tonight with the blog posts, so I might as well tell everyone a really awesome story.

As Jordan and his dad, Todd, were ripping out the upstairs wall they came across a page of newspaper all folded up, ripped, and discolored. They brought it downstairs to me and naturally, being the curious person I am, and also being completely fascinated with anything news related, I gently unfolded it.

Turns out the newspaper is from 1913! Even better, it's a holiday shopping ad from Doerflingers,the department store that used to be in downtown La Crosse. On it are children's toys, like dolls for 15 cents and a pool table for $1.69. AMAZING STUFF.

Then I looked at it further...the exact date on it is November 30th, 1913. November 30th is the day that Jordan closed on the house and was named the official owner. HOW WEIRD IS THAT!? Out of all 365 days of the year, it just happened to be dated exactly 97 years ago from the day that the house was officially Jordan's.

Don't believe me? Here's the pictures to prove it...




Coincidence? You be the judge.

I framed them and hung them in our future living room. :)

A little color to our lives

So, you all know by now that we completely despised the wood paneling. But, instead of tearing it out and spending TONS of money, I decided to just paint over it. (A "before" picture of the rooms is on a previous post)

I picked out one of the Dutch Boy "Colors that Flow" palates from Menards. Jordan insisted that I don't do anything too bold, so this is what I came up with:



A burnt orange wall (the color really doesn't look right in the pictures).

On the other walls in the same room (the living room) is a light tan color:

Please ignore my huge shadow in this picture.

And a darker tan in the other room (the room that we don't know what to call yet)...


Jordan's sister Jamie, his aunt Colleen, and his mom Sharon helped me out a ton. Thanks ladies!

And no, I have not figured out exactly what I'm going to do with the kitchen cabinets yet...all I know for sure is that they need some work. So for the time being, I got a little bold in there. The originally all white kitchen went from this:


To this:

It's funny how a little color can go a loooooonnngggg way!

INSULATION!

Yes, I think the title says it all for this post...we officially have an insulated upstairs...and upgraded electrical (because the wiring was original, from right about the turn of the 20th century), thanks to Jordan's brilliant father, Todd.


Priceless.

Some more insulation pictures...



Oh, yeah...Jordan also ripped the bathroom apart...

It went from looking like this, on the first day:


To this...right now.




A little scary, I know...but all of the plumbing is being redone and we're getting a new toilet, and hopefully a new sink too (at least I think that's the plan). :)

And me, well, I've been painting, A LOT. Just waiting for the kitchen paint to dry and I'll be posting those pictures!

More Destruction than Renovation...

Jordan signed his name on a million pieces of paper on Monday and the house is now his (or OURS). :)

The first thing he did was rip out the wood paneling in the upstairs bedroom so they can sheet rock tomorrow. So our bedroom went from looking like this:


To this (with a little help from his friends):


(Note that there was pretty much NO INSULATION in the walls...

Jordan got a great deal on Sheet Rock the day after Thanksgiving. They're going to start hanging it tomorrow.

As for myself, I've been priming. We decided that the wood paneling was a little "70's". Our future dining room looked like this on Wednesday morning:

And this is what it looks like now:

I also primed the living room, but pictures of that would just be more painted paneling and that's totally boring.

Oh, yeah, and I bought us our first Christmas Tree! :)


We're working all day tomorrow, so I'll have another update soon!

Next orders of business: Sheet Rock, priming the "office", and figuring out what to do with the kitchen cabinets...hmmmmm.

Here's the Scoop...

It was just confirmed today that Jordan will officially be a homeowner on Monday. :) After much wrestling with the loan lady at what seems to be the hardest bank to get a loan from in the world, she was finally able to confirm that the loan will go through as planned...even though the original closing date was a week ago. But, thats a different story for a different day.

This is the house:

Sooooooo full of potential...and soooooooo cheap (just take my word for it).

The plan is to almost completely flip this house both inside and out...little by little (or whenever we have a little extra money). All the walls and flooring will be replaced, along with pretty much everything else inside the house. We LOVE the stucco on the outside however, so that's staying...but it is being cleaned and painted this summer. :)

We've already become what I like to call a "charity case." We've got a bunch of stuff that our families and friends are giving us for free--a refrigerator, washer and dryer, porch furniture, and bathroom decorations among many other odds and ends. So, If anyone wants to get rid of anything... :)

We plan on doing everything we can ourselves, and I'm sure that some awesome stories will come out of all of our togetherness. I'll keep the blog updated as often as I can with everything we do and plenty of before and after pictures!

Our first tasks: Dry-walling the upstairs bedrooms and adding a shower.