Phase 1a (part one)

Now that we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel of boxes we have been living in for a few months, I thought it was a good time for an update on the house. 

                                           

We are still in what we call "phase 1a," which essentially just means we are getting the house to a liveable point so that we can go about our daily lives in a clean home while preparing for the remodel (which we hope to begin within the next year). At last count "getting it liveable" equated to seventeen gallons of paint (SEVENTEEN!) and countless hours of sleep deprived, freezing cold, hard work. I don't have a whole house to show you right now, but I wanted to update you on some of the bigger changes-

The office/temporary "master" bedroom-

Until we remodel and open up the downstairs portion of our home, Nolan and I have set up camp in what will one day be my office. It is small. For the time being, it is a bed with walls. However, check out the before and after, the difference is definitely something to be proud of. Huge props to Nolan, his dad, and my dad for all their hard work ripping down wood paneling (walls and ceiling), running brand new electrical, insulating the room, hanging new rock, and texturing the walls to mimic the old school plaster we have throughout the rest of the house. 

BEFORE

My my, what beautiful wood paneling... 

Seems a shame to rip it all out, doesn't it? ;)

Nolan prying the first piece off. Poor little room, what did it ever do to deserve such treatment?

Putting the boys to work. They're never to young to learn!

Who wants to see inside?

Too bad. That's as far as the door opens. No really, we're luckily we're relatively thin people.

But once you get inside...

We bought these fixtures for all of the bedrooms, and I couldn't love them more! If you have never checked out jossandmain.com I highly recommend it. It's like the zulily of home decor, and it's AMAZING!

A little Johnny Cash to live by.

And now to the kitchen, possible the biggest transformation in the place so far. Let me remind you of what we were dealing with here-

BEFORE

Complete with rotted floors, rat droppings, and ancient appliances that more than likely had never been cleaned, EVER.

Yup, she was a beauty to behold.

AFTER

                                     

Pay no attention to the missing cabinet door. We seem to have misplaced ONE hinge. Nolan is at the store now looking for another one. 

Honestly, the wonders of paint never cease to amaze me.

I had to narrow my pyrex display significantly for the time being, but I like that they are safely displayed out of reach of little hands.

I chose to paint the upper cabinets white, and the lowers pewter grey. Having lived in a lot of apartments where the paint peels of the cabinets constantly, I wanted to make sure we painted ours with something that would withstand our family. I ended up with General Finishes Milk paint. It claimed to be streak free, one coat, and have a factory finish look that once coated with their poly would not chip. I have to say, the grey absolutely held up to all of their claims. However, after about three coats of the white I ended up getting fed up with the lack of coverage and overall streakiness, and opted to use Rustoleum "Painters Touch" as my final coat. I did still use the General Finishes Poly as my top coat, and they seem to be holding up wonderfully. 

"Lick 'em and Stick 'em" tiles.... can't beat them for $.68 each! Certainly better than the old rotted out flooring that was there before.

Given that the whole kitchen will be torn down in the near future, we wanted to spend as little money as possible on it. However, appliances were something we were going to need for the new kitchen, so we opted to take advantage of the amazing Black Friday deals at Home Depot, and I am SO glad we did. 

Can I just say how much I LOVE this oven?

Those dials... that touch screen... 

A little piece of San Francisco to remind us of home. This print was hanging in our first home together, and then thrown into storage when we moved to the bay area. It was a fun surprise to find when we returned to Redding. 

I mentioned we wanted to spend as little money as possible on this kitchen didn't I...

Who wants to take a guess at what this is?

Looks like marble, right?

Let me introduce you to a little product called "Instant Granite." When I was graduating design school the company sent me a sample of their product and I have always wanted to try it out. Now was my chance! 

Imagine a really heavy duty contact paper.

Cut it to size, peel and stick. It really is just that easy!

I mean really, isn't that SO much better? We bought three rolls (which was WAY too much) for $29.99 per roll. And with that, the hideous, chipped, rusted teal and gold flaked Formica is gone. A friend of mine came over, walked into the kitchen and said "oh where did you guys end up getting your slab?" put one hand on the counter, and said "Wait... what is this?" It really looks that good. Once you touch it and it isn't cold, it's obvious it's not a slab. Let's face it, we're not trying to trick anyone here, but it certainly LOOKS like a slab.

We are officially moved in, and life just keeps rolling along. I'll update you all with more pictures in a few days!

Saturday morning

Took the boys for a walk with missile.

Lola wanted to play the piano in her heals.

Chaos

Let me start by saying this- I can and have handled a lot of things. I am good with stress and great with deadlines. This move however, is getting to me. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the house we are moving out of looks like this:

And the one we are moving into looks a bit like this:

That's our bedroom by the way...

Move day is now three days away. THREE. When we left the bay area to move here I was heading up a remodel of a middle school office building. The final day of the remodel was also the same day we left for Redding. I literally spent three days simultaneously packing my own house, tending to a new born, and running a remodel. I had to put a fair amount of trust in Nolan and our family and friends to get everything loaded in the truck, because I literally hugged my co-workers goodbye at the end of the night, loaded up the kids, and followed Nolan in the moving truck for the four hour drive to Redding. Looking back- that was nothing. You know what is seemingly impossible (not a word I throw around lightly)? Getting a dumpy dirty hippy house livable while raising three little people under the age of 7, and packing our current home. Our days look something like this:
7:30am- wake up, shove coffee down throat. Nolan leaves for work, I begin packing while caring for little people. Did I mention one had what we were pretty sure was pink eye? Insert trip to pediatrician here.

10:00am- Run around and fetch building supplies and or packing supplies. Also drive through coffee joint.

12:00pm- Remember to feed children

1:00pm- Put Lola down for a nap, find some sort of occupation for the other two, brew more coffee, continue to pack. This continues until Nolan get's home from work and I realize I haven't thought of anything for dinner. It then occurs to me that although I have thought to feed the children, I have been on a diet of strictly coffee. I am suddenly very hungry and annoyed that I haven't thought out dinner better.

6:00- Head to the new house to paint/repair/replace any of the endless things that need painting/repairing/replacing.

12:00am (midnight)- Head back home, have a quick snack, and fall into bed. Dream of painting and prying out stripped screws from the built in closet door hardware (not even kidding, that's what I dream about now).

7:30am- Wake up to Jax insisting I open a LEGO package and asking why I "sleep so much." I beg to differ son, I don't sleep nearly enough. Mommy just turned 31, don't you know she's old now and needs more rest?

I am tired, and cranky. I should be packing more right now, but quite honestly I can't stand to look at another box at this moment. Happy new year everyone!

Our Christmas Gift to... well, us.

Nolan and I have been looking for a house to buy since late August. We looked at quite a few, but pretty quickly came to the realization that we are weirdly picky about houses. Let me explain-
Redding is FULL of houses that all look like this:

Not that there is anything wrong with a brand new cookie cutter home, in a neighborhood full of the same five houses duplicated repeatedly. This is absolutely the right choice for a lot of people, just not us. Our style is more along the lines of this:

or this:

We love vintage homes. The character and beauty of these homes just cannot be duplicated. The real problem in our home search was that the first (mid century Eichler home) simply doesn't exist in Shasta County. The latter generally exists only in old town, which is less than safe and mainly populated by drug addicts. There is quite literally ONE neighborhood in all of Redding that we had any desire to buy into. ONE that wouldn't feel like settling. Homes in our target neighborhood rarely come available and when they do sell for quite a bit more than we were ready to spend. So we waited... and spent a lot of time trying to talk ourselves into homes we didn't really love. We submitted an offer on a piece of property with the intent to build, only to have the sellers pull it off the market because they were missing proper documentation to sell it. We were feeling deflated and somewhat bitter.

Then this beauty came along:

Okay... "beauty" might be a bit of a stretch. I'm not delusional, I see that it's actually pretty hideous from the outside. Believe it or not though, there is a lot of potential here! She's definitely a fixer (and not like HGTV make your house pretty in an afternoon fixer, I mean a REAL fixer. Like "contractors special" kind of fixer). Luckily we aren't easily frightened (although maybe we should be...)! This baby popped on the market as "coming soon," which meant that for a solid month it taunted us, and we stalked it, waiting for it to become an active listing. Our minds were running wild, it was a vintage fixer, in our target neighborhood... what would they price it at? How bad off was it? Was there enough room for our family of five? Finally the day came when we were able to see the inside, and we instantly fell in love.

Front Door/Deck

These windows sold it for me.

Possibly the weirdest kitchen I have ever seen. Have no fear, it will all go away soon!

Wow. Just.... wow.

Pop quiz everyone, how much is that mid century fire place worth? Google it... :)

By the way, this is (or used to be) the garage... it will be returning to a garage in the very near future!

Backyard

Windows looking out into the backyard.

Bigger than she looks, isn't she?

Who's seen Fight Club? The lower level of this house reminds me so much of that house...

Just ew. I will spare you from the REALLY bad photos. 

Again, I know she doesn't look like much, but we were in love none the less. Believe it or not, most of what you see is cosmetic. The bones of the house are good, and that's what's important when all is said and done.  

Here's how the house breaks down:

4 bedrooms + office, 2 bathrooms, somewhere around 1700 sq ft., built in 1949. The bottom level of the house which I call the Fight Club floor, is completely separate from the upper level. The house was split into two units, the bottom illegally sublet to a horder, and the top rented to a hippy. You actually have to enter the bottom level from the backyard, as there is no staircase connecting the two floors. The seller originally had the house priced at $179k. WAY too much for this house...

So we waited, and continued to stalk it. We watched it drop to $169k, and then $159k, and decided to make our move. Unfortunately because of the condition of the home, a bank would not loan on it, and we were left with only one option- a cash offer. Thanks to our amazing lender we were able to locate a private investor who was willing to loan what we needed to make an offer. We went in with our very strongest offer, still more than what we wanted to pay for the home in its condition- $140k. I wrote a letter to the seller explaining our offer and telling her a little bit about ourselves, hoping to appeal to her softer side. Thankfully she accepted our offer and 45 days later we officially purchased our home (which we have since nicknamed the "Golden Turd.")

This remodel will happen in several phases. the first of which (phase 1a) is to get the top floor livable so that we can move in and avoid paying rent and mortgage at the same time. Then we will refinance into a bank loan (rather than the loan through our investor) and start our remodel. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but when all is said and done, we will own a home that is designed to OUR standards, in a neighborhood we adore. Most people think we're completely insane, and we can accept that... it's going to be amazing when it's done.