One Year Down

One year has gone by in my house and I've got a lot of work done. In this article I'm going to post a few before and after pictures to show the progress I've made. And by me, I mean me and my family and my room mates. because they've helped me a lot this year. In fact, my room mates raked the leaves this weekend just for kicks, which leads me to an aside to the ladies:

Ladies: if you happen to be in a hardware store checking out the gentlemen, go for the dirty ones. Sure, they need to clean up nice when they take you out but if you want a guy that's handy around the house, he'll be dirty when he goes to the hardware store. You don't need to understand why handy guys like to be dirty; you just need to accept it....and buy lots of soap.

I'm grateful in particular for my father. He spends pretty much all of his free time helping me on the house.

So, let's start with some before pictures.

 The lovely red kitchen. I don't have any pictures of the blue in the living room. They all turned out so dark you couldn't see it, but it was also horrendous.

with a leaky faucet

My lawn was dead

there was a weird, unfinished wall between the dining area and the living room.

The hearth was covered in drywall

I'm sure there's something fascinating in this photo, but you can't tell because there was no electricity and thus no lights in the house.

There were broken gate pieces all over the places. and an bad erosion spot where there was almost a retaining wall. Also, the shop is huge, but didn't have any electrical. 

There was a lot of junk lying around like the random tables and chairs on the back porch. Also the porch awning was pretty weird.

A lot of the landscaping was overgrown. 

The roof was a disaster

I had more trees than I needed.

seriously, there was a lot of junk around the place

There was a gaping, jagged brick hole in between the ex-carport and the main house.

So, let me show you some of the work I've done over the year.

Simply painting the kitchen a light color makes it look much much more open. I also fixed the leaky faucet.

Removing that wall lets more light throughout the whole living area and makes the house feel more spacious. (by the way, I painted and reupholstered the chairs on the back porch)

 

 Removing the drywall from the brick adds an interesting mix of indoor/outdoor themes and mixed materials to the house. The brick alone is gray, so adding some color to it adds nice contrast. It's amazing how small the partial wall made this space feel and how much light it blocked. 

Fixing the erosion spot not only fixed the erosion spot but gave me space for a nice strawberry batch. To the left of the photo is a stone staircase I included in the wall to provide a way to walk to the shop. 

I removed 30-40 trees from my yard, moved a lot of dirt, and got a new roof. In the process we've taken 6-12 loads of junk to the dump and about as many loads of yard waste.

We closed in the gaping jagged hole and put a door in it. (that was a dusty one)

And, while we did a lot more little things, the last thing I want to mention in this post is adding electrical to the shop. 

Before, it was a cave, now it is nice and lit:

excuse the mess, I'm still in the process of putting drywall up to cover any exposed wiring for safety reasons. Once the drywall is up I can put my shelving back and organize my shop again. 

It's been a great year and I still owe you some posts about projects I've finished or that I'm working on, but this is my first blog with more than one post so I feel pretty good about that. 

Don't worry, there's still plenty of work to do on the house so you can keep enjoying my blog for years to come!