Where Do I Begin....

Last night I was whipped, so my wonderful husband took over my blog and did a great job recapping  Saturday's events.  The house has become our second job, we are there almost seven days a week and our wonderful families are always in and out lending a hand!  Today we finished ripping out the kitchen.

This is the kitchen pre-demo.  I will admit now that I am looking exposed walls, sub flooring, and no appliances  or sink, which equals a non functional kitchen the old one doesn't look so bad...haha!  No going back now ;)

We have removed all of the cabinetry which we are going to re purpose in the garage.  The sheet rock is down and the tile...what a pain....is UP~!



The kitchen midway through the demo.  I think Chloe had a lot of fun knocking holes in my walls!



Hopefully one day soon my kitchen will be pretty....



Enough about the kitchen let's get down to the nitty gritty!  Who are these boys, the ghost busters or the KKK....?  Nope, this would be my crew from left to right, Adam, Christopher, and Rich.



We have a slight water problem under the house....which has to be fixed before we can move forward on our hardwoods.  So the boys got to work cleaning out the crawl space, a nasty job!

With the help of Rebecca and Chloe the boys pulled out old plastic and fallen insulation.

After it was all said and done they were pretty hot and dirty.  Now that all the junk is out from under the house we have to work on getting the gutters to drain in the correct direction and hopefully we can but the water issue to rest!

On the way home I could not help but take this picture...riding in the pick up truck, with a load of nasty plastic and isulation covered in blue tarp, with no air conditioner...typical

  We have so much more work ahead of us but I have to say that it is coming along!  Thank you to my wonderful family for ALL your help this weekend.  I can not wait until we are moved in and we can entertain!

Progress...

Callie has brought in a pinch hitter for today's blog...This is her husband Rich!

We got alot of work done at the new house today....all layers of flooring that needed to come up for the hardwoods are up! We've still got some subfloor that needs replacing but that shouldn't take too long.

Here's some of the hired help:

 

The plywood under the linoleum in the kitchen had an INSANE number of nails in it...we calculated approx. 850 nails in a 12x15 ft. space

Taking a break and supporting America at the same time...

Here's my sister patching holes, or possibly making them, can't be sure.

Homeless man taking cover from the rain in our backyard

Ernie is doing nothing constructive here, he just REALLY likes sparks.



The guys are 95 percent done with my goal for the weekend, tile removal!  THANK YOU!!!

Christopher looking like a pro operating the tile machine...I don't know its official name but it did a pretty good job breaking up the 12 x 12 tiles.

While the tile machine was good, the muscle of these guys got the job done! 

While the guys pulled up tile and backer board the gals pulled up nails with the help of the Super Wonder Bar!  regardless of what type of home improvement project you are doing I guarantee the Super Wonder Bar will come in handy!

Today was such a success!  I love seeing this pile of tile ready for a trip to the dump!  Next weekend we will be tackling the french drains, and I hope to nail down a paint color for the walls and for the crown molding.

Fun Times

We had a great time in the Smokies with the fam!  We started the weekend off with a early morning bike ride through Cades Cove.

Cute Methodist church along the route.

Just taking a little rest

We all managed to make the 11 mile round trip without being attacked by a Grizzly, but dad did have to ride the last leg with a flat...but made it riding in!

Loaded down with gear to float down the Little River

Floating the river was so fun and refreshing!  The weekend was a much needed get away before we get down to business on the house...my list of TO DO's is growing by the minute!

Starting Early

We are off to the Smokies for a long weekend! 

Jalapeno

One thing we can grow is jalapenos!  We have tons in our gareden right now.  I want to make some jalapeno poppers and pico.

Working Hard

We worked all weekend!  Rich is not pictured because he was busy working on his truck, getting it ready to haul construction materials.  I am not pictured because I am usually supervising and telling people what to do.  Haha just kidding kind of....I really have worked hard--I hope I can last the next couple months!

Here is what things looked like when we left on Sunday....

I had a friend tell me that I made taking wallpaper down so easy...well take a look at this.

The powder room wallpaper did not come off well at all.  Chloe stripped the pattern off and thought we would be able to just peel the backing off like we did in the dining room, no such luck!  We are having to scrape it off with a putty knife...a very tedious process.



Christopher removing base boards.

Chloe running the tile remover on the nasty foam backing that stuck to the floor when we pulled up the "game carpet"



Here is the kitchen., as you can see we have a very stylish grey back splash.



This is the result of taking off one tile...not good!!!  A huge chunk of dry wall came off.  I really don't know how we are going to get around this problem, I think we are just going to have to replace the dry wall in here. 

This week we hope to start ripping up tile, pick paint colors, remove more staples from the floor, and continue taking down base boards.

It's Offical

Rich and I just bought our first home and are now officially homeowners! We purchased a ranch style fixer upper and we've got big plans for it!  Today was our first work day.  We got all the carpet out and almost all the wallpaper down.

 

We are planning on painting the brick and shutters, replacing the front doors, and sprucing up the landscaping but right now we are concentrating on the inside.

Anyone up for a game of hopscotch?  This is the current carpet in the man room...



Pink carpet throughout the rest of the house!



So happy to get all that nasty carpet out of the house!  I could not have done it without Chloe's help!



Fabulous wood accented wall...  There is a fireplace on the other side which I wanted to open up so it is in both the living room and kitchen but it is not in the center of the wall.  So right now I am thinking we will either do a built in on the right side or just sheet rock over the whole thing.

But before we sheet rock over the wall we better make sure we get all the bodies out!



There is a really weird secret compartment inside the wall!



Chloe and I had never taken down wall paper before but I think we did a pretty good job.



More wallpaper in the foyer! Mom and Chloe knocked this out and got it all down.  Taking the wallpaper down opened up the space and made it so much brighter!  It was so much fun working on the house today and hope you all don't get bored because all my blogs will probably revolve around the remodel for a while!