The work really begins

 In the fall of 2017 we closed on our beautiful (well, not exactly beautiful yet) house, and began the cleaning and renovation process. We knew going into it that we would have A LOT of work to do, but we could see the potential. We saw the fantastic pocket doors, the 8 foot doorways, the original hardwood floors, and we knew it could be beautiful.  The house was almost 120 years old at that point, so it had been through many, many transitions. It was turned into an upper/lower duplex in the 20s, and split off to different rental areas in the years that followed. 

We began opening everything back up to restore it as a single family home again, and started the renovations.  Some of the hardwood floors had, unfortunately, been covered up with indoor-outdoor carpet glued down.  The kitchen hardwood was covered with 2 layers of peel-and-stick vinyl. There were drop ceilings in many of the areas, because the plaster wasn't taken care of.  And the squirrels had taken over much of the space, so several windows were missing because the squirrels had chewed enough of the frame, that the windows had fallen out.  When the house was a duplex, it only had a very small powder room on the main floor, so the previous people had placed a bathtub inside the Butler's pantry.  This caused the pantry floor to rot and almost completely disintegrate. We could peel up the hardwood with our hands, it just crumbled. You could look down into the basement from the pantry, and had to watch your step or you would fall through.

The house still had the original knob and tube electricity coming in through the 3rd floor window. The system was a 30amp/120 system to run the entire house. We joked that someone had to turn off the hair dryer so someone else could use the toaster! In the basement, the insulation from the wires was peeled back, and lamp cord was wrapped around the wires to add electricity to rooms. It's a wonder the house never caught fire! Obviously, we had to start all of the electric from scratch. So for the first few months, we had the electric from the street to the panel in the basement, and then one electric extension cord from there to the living room. That became our work room. So if Pete needed to use an electric tool, I had to wait my turn to use mine. We didn't want to waste that cord for lights, so we only worked when the sun was up, and closed it down when the sun went down. No heat, no lights, no running water.. we went to the gas station to use the bathroom. We worked like this for the first 6 months of this project. 

But all through this, we knew this house was special. We felt it every day when we arrived. She was happy we were here making her beautiful again.