The House: Little by Little

It's been awhile since I've updated you (possibly 5 readers?) on the progress happening up at the house. It felt a little slow going for awhile, despite having working every weekend, just because of the sheer amount of stuff we had to sift through in each room. But this weekend, we busted it out - literally - and I feel like I can finally see some real progress. (And by we, I mean my brother and my dad - turns out I'm not great in the heavy lifting/demolition/general renovation area. I hope to redeem myself when it comes time to paint every single room.) We decided to tackle the bathroom as our first 'major' project in the house, and as is true for all renovations it seems to have snowballed into a much bigger project than we had first anticipated. I thought we would get a new sink and paint the walls. But then the the toilet was cracked, and the tub surround was a little grungy......then the plumbing was funny, and then we found a gaping hole in the floor.....so plans changed a little bit, and suddenly my brother was hacking away at the walls with a hammer. And we got this:



So now the plan is to re-tile the entire shower area and chunk of missing floor, redo the plumbing in the shower, new vanity, new toilet, new light fixtures, new mirror, sand down the walls/wainscoting, and paint. Whew. I'm not sure how fast it will get done or how smoothly it will go, but it's really exciting to think that something big is actually happening up there. The before and after is already kind of crazy to see:

Around the rest of the house, my dad managed to get off all of the old wallpaper, we pulled up the old carpets, and we've just been cleaning things out and making all sorts of piles. We've been putting out a Freecycle table every weekend to clear everything out, and this weekend we were particularly successful. It was insane to see the traffic jam that our table of junk caused, and neighbors are loving it. One woman told me the hilarious yet slightly creepy story about her best friend picking through our trash every Wednesday night looking for goodies. Nearly everything we put out was taken, and now the house is finally starting to feel more open. It's not nearly close to what I'm hoping the end results will be, but it's a vast improvement, if you ask me - a few before and after shots:

That's it for now, hopefully more to come soon!