Hello everyone! I hope you are having a good day today.

To start this blog, I’ve decided to give you a little update into where we were, and where we hope to head in the future with this house.

So far, we’ve been working on the house since we bought it in June. We started with outdoor work. We’ve trimmed the magnolia in the front yard cutting it significantly back, removed cedars that were along the rear edge of the garage, removed two yews along the side of the garage, and done basic maintenance including washing the siding, and cleaning gutters and fixing the broken ones along the front of the house.

When we moved in there was quite a bit of neglect to the house. The back screen-door handle was broken, leaving only the push button to open the door. We found out after we moved in that the refrigerator leaked and the freezer formed excessive amounts of ice, the dryer hose was busted so the lint was being thrown everywhere behind the dryer and the pipe it vented to had completely rusted away leaving just ducting tape. The doorknobs didn’t work because the mechanisms inside were plastic and ruined with the bathroom being particularly bad. The drain for the kitchen sink was almost completely blocked, and though they vacuumed, the house needed some serious cleaning.

Thanks to my husband, all of these problems got solved over the first few months. Josh changed the handle on the screen-door, got a new dryer hose and the piping to replace the ducting tape. He tightened the bolts of the refrigerator and freezer and used petrolatum jelly to create a better seal on the doors. He changed out the doorknobs in the house with the old front and backdoor knobs. And the kitchen drain, after trying Liquid Plumber many times, we ended up buying a pipe bladder that created enough pressure to force the gunk out of there! We then scrubber the walls, windows, doors frames, and tiling with diluted distilled white vinegar, which worked well on grease, dirt, and significantly reduced the lingering smell of dog.

We also bought new hardware for the kitchen cabinets and replaced the old. We took out the old medicine cabinet in the bathroom and replaced it with a new light fixture and re-purposed the mirror from the front of the cabinet to be our new mirror temporarily. We also installed a new double towel rod in place of the old single towel rod. We bought curtains for all of the rooms, 84″ blackout curtains that reach the floor, and sheer curtains for underneath. We’ve installed a projector screen, because we decided to buy a cheap projector rather then a TV. And, we removed some of the carpet in the guest bedroom/cat room/home office/storage-room.

Our upcoming projects
Right now, we are working on removing wallpaper that goes from the dining room through the living room and into the hallway. We plan to remove the wallpaper sections at a time, plaster the areas that have previous damage, sand it all flat, then paint it with satin white latex paint since we received a free gallon from a local hardware store.
Also above the cabinets in the kitchen, you will see there is a hole. We discovered that a couple months ago. It is a spot where someone just wallpapered over the old vent hole, so we plan to cut a piece of wood that will fit, attach it in there and seal the hole, then paint it.

There are still many things we hope to do, from painting cabinets and walls, to removing carpeting and adding new flooring. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you soon!

Listing Photos – Before Work

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Photos Now

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