Rich's face says it all... :)
Hello World. Sorry it has been four months and six days since our last update. We sincerely apologize. We have been a bit, say, overwhelmed with the renovations on our home in Olympia, Washington. We have had several mini adventures, a couple holidays with family, lots of days of traditional family living, and a couple near death experiences. More about those in a different blog post. This post is to fill you in on what exactly we have been doing to this home the past three months.
Let me back up and start from the beginning....
We arrived in Olympia on September 1st. After a night in eastern Washington, we were all excited to get to our home, see friends and start our new....new adventure. The RV, named "The Falcon," because what else would you name a RV that has stickers of Han, Leia and Chewie on it, pulled into the driveway on Saturday night a couple hours after sun down.
The following morning Maro and the kids got to see "our home" for the first time. Every flower bed was knee high in weeds, the back yard looked like a jungle and the exterior needed a complete paint job. However, those are the highlights.
Walking in the front door the front door, the walls were a caramel brown....from fifteen years of cigarette smoke. Wait...we are in Washington state so it may have been weed smoke. Whatever was not brownish yellow, was a maroon red. The kitchen was gutted, the second bathroom still had no floor joists and the sunroom/living room/basement areas were stuffed with things that needed to be put in the dumpster. I knew this house was a project when we bought it, but to say I had an immediate sense of being overwhelmed was an understatement.
Living Room Walls...
Gutted Kitchen...
Akira's future room...
Future master bedroom...
Master closet in the process of becoming part of a master bath...
"Sunroom" as we like to call them in Florida...
Basement when it was still scary...
Sunroom with the stairs leading to the basement, (note the absence of a banister for the stair...yikes! And the big gaping hole in the wall (just below the stairs that lead to the loft area...double yikes!)…
Stairs leading to the loft (please note the "door" to the master bedroom :) )
The "guest bath"...and our working bathroom for the first couple months...
We got to work throwing things in the dumpster, weeding the yard, cleaning every inch of every room....several time, and trying to game plan what the first projects should be.
Taking a lemonade break between the dumpster and the RV... :)
Building party with our friends and neighbors...
I have flipped several homes over the past few years, but none that I was trying to move my family into and none that were in this bad of condition. I don't do complicated electric or plumbing, I am not very good at mudding drywall and in several aspects of construction I need a lead guy to run the show on the more difficult projects. In Jacksonville, we have a wonderful network of sub contractors and workers that make things happen fairly quickly. After about three days, I found out really quick that the speed in which subcontractors work is not dependent on their 'ability'....it is completely based on their 'availability.' You see the Pacific Northwest, specifically between Portland and Seattle is boooooming. It is the fastest growing area in the continental US. With that said, the electrician I hired in early August was still not available to work on my house for another week. Thankfully the plumber was available, and got started fairly quickly. Andrew, the General Contractor we hired, is our close friend and one of his guys has been our savior. His name is Tim, and he works with me for a couple hours on Thursday nights and all day Saturday. I also have another guy, Jucson, who has been taking care of the drywall.
During the months of August and September, we got started on floor trusses in the new bathroom, remodeling the guest bathroom, hanging a new drywall ceiling and trimming out the master bedroom, reframing several doors and new closets, plumbing the kitchen, both bathrooms and the laundry room, new electric, laying subfloor in the kitchen and both bathrooms, hanging new drywall in several areas and mudding just about everything. After that was completed, we tiled the kitchen, painted, hung cabinets, set butcher block counter tops, painted, tiled both bathrooms, painted, had new windows put in several areas and painted.
Painting, Painting, Painting....(And Tim and Rich in the Kitchen)
During this time I may have failed to mention that we are living in the RV in the front yard of our home, and Maro is doing dishes by water hose in the front yard. This is do to the fact that we didn't have a working sink. I believe I also failed to mention, I fell on a pile of cut concrete while carrying a couch, we had to clean the whole basement of spider webs and other messes, and, oh yeah, an oak tree fell on our RV.
Workin near our dish washin station! ;)
Our "homes"...yes, we are THOSE people! (It was Halloween, the spider webs are not quite that scary!)
More painting...and more painting...
A view through our "hole in the wall" in our "stair room"...
Master bath, on its way...
Guest bath, new floors, changed the toilet direction, put electric into the wall instead of hanging down through the roof!
In October my dad flew out and helped for 10 days. We finished tiling several areas, began trimming out most of the rooms and even worked in some great family time. Work continued on setting new vanities, installing a new banister for the basement stairs, new carpet in the sun room and loft, and you guessed it more painting. We had family coming for Thanksgiving and we really wanted the house to look good before they got here. By early to mid November, the house was really taking shape.
Getting there (Living, Kitchen and Master bedroom)
During this span of three and a half months, we were working six days a week. Maro and/or I had several nights of painting until one or two in the morning. I lost two belt sizes and literally had to punch new holes in my belt. And, we were doing normal stuff like soccer games, dinner with friends, church, and small bits of exploring. While working on our 'Home" we also learned "The Falcon" was a HOME of ours as well. Through the hardships of flipping this house, we persevered and continually were able to realize how blessed we are. We always had a bed to sleep in, a toilet, running water, heat, food, and kids who were happy. This trip has been a roller coaster for sure. However, through that we have a family that loves every minute of this crazy adventure, but more importantly a family that loves each other. I'll cherish every part of this trip, forever.
The kids like to help out!
Our house has become a home...mostly (still working on finishing the guest bath shower, the basement and the "stair room"(study). More updates as we continue!
