The First Trips

After buying the house, we were able to come home from Texas twice to see it and do a little bit of work. First order of business was in October, tearing out the disgusting carpets.

Annie enjoying the color scheme and urine stains in our new home.

Before crawling around underneath the house, this was the worst part.

Technically, child labor is sustainable, right?

This hardwood floor will be beautiful again one day!

Oh the things a vacuum can't extract from below a carpet. 

The rest of the rooms just had plywood underneath. 

Off to the recycler. Good riddance! 

We decided to take up the vinyl floor in the kitchen to see what was underneath it. Turns out to be an old linoleum floor and then more of the original wood. After verifying that there was no asbestos involved, we started trying to chip it all up. 

This is about how far we got before throwing a carpet over it. We thought we'd have a floor refinisher look at it first and tell us if they can still salvage the wood. 

We moved all of our stuff home from Austin and lived in the house from the end of November until the first week of January, when we went back to Texas again for about five more months. This time around, we just made the house livable so our stay wasn't too uncomfortable. 

We primed all of the upstairs floors so we could move our stuff up there while we worked on the first floor.

The living room floor right after being mopped. I can't wait to see it refinished. 

I took the kitchen cabinets out and moved them to the downstairs bedroom. This is my temporary tool room. 

This was our stove and we ate a lot of quesadillas that month. 

Until we can get our ductwork and air handler installed, this is our HVAC system. This old furnace is in the corner of the house. I must have increased it's efficiency ten fold by installing the cutting edge air flow system above it. 

The upstairs shower had a slow drip while the house was vacant and the drain had a slight leak. This made for a moldy mess around the downstairs toilet. I invested in a good respirator from Sanderson Safety Supply and removed the wet and moldy drywall and insulation. Then I replaced the leaking drain up above. I'm starting to get more comfortable with plumbing, but I'd rather someone else did it. 

I decided that I hadn't been tortured enough and that I had better plot out the foundation. I barely managed to wriggle around underneath the house with a flashlight, tape measure, pen, and paper. I lost the first tape measure that I took down there and I'm convinced it was carried off by rats. 

After taking care of the floors and the bathroom, we decided to relax and spend time with our friends and family since we'd be leaving again before too long. 

 

Annie has always wanted a Weimaraner. I found Sadie, who needed a Foster home, and we took care of her for a few weeks. 

Really glad we got to see some snow at our new place. 

That was the last time we were home until June 7th, 2010, which pretty much brings us up to date. We haven't done a whole lot since we got home, but I'll post something soon.