How was your summer? I know, HOT! We have been staying close to home all summer except for a weekend trip to visit our daughter and son in-law in Little Rock where she is doing her Pediatric residency. It was a nice road trip through small towns that I didn't even know existed. But we have a long weekend trip coming up soon. I just wish it was to a cool weather destination. Although, it will be nice to relax and disconnect for a few days with some friends.
I just wanted to do one more update before we have a finished house. Yay! Things have been going along at a somewhat steady pace. We have slow downs and then lots of activity. In fact, as I am writing this blog on a Saturday morning, we have two different contractors here working and two that will be working on Sunday.
The interior is really coming out great. There is still a little trim work left to do and we still have some painting to do inside. Dan has been doing all of the interior painting and staining himself. I helped a little bit but he has definitely done 99% himself. I don't know where he gets the energy to do everything here while still working a full time job. He finally decided to hire someone to finish painting the exterior. The crew started that a couple of days ago and will finish Monday. The bathrooms are mostly finished with new tile on the floors, a new tiled shower, and tub surround. The laundry room also has a new tile floor. We also had the old bathtub refinished by Southern Refinishers (https://www.southernrefinishing.com). It looks so good y'all!
Today, we have "new" reclaimed 100 yr old pine floors going down in the master bedroom only. The rest of the existing floors will be restored. Dan and I have also been working on stripping and repainting the huge interior doors and I love them. There are a lot of little things that have been done and I will just let the photos speak for themselves.
The exterior of the house has been getting some love also in the last couple of weeks. We had a new deck, steps, and a ramp added to the back of the house. It was important to us to have the ramp so all of the family would have access to the house when we have family gatherings. This is also our forever house and we plan to age in place and make everything accessible.
Also, the front porch is finally getting a paint job as well as a second coat of paint on the entire exterior of the house. And remember those green french doors with shutter type screen doors that are original to house? We didn't feel like we could tackle restoring those ourselves. We really want them done right and to be fully operational with the original hardware or historically accurate hardware. I belong to a facebook group for owners of old houses from all over the country and even some overseas that are fixing/restoring homes, My Old House "Fix". So, I posted in the group asking for recommendations for restoration services and luckily found a local guy, John Rodgers, who owns Phoenix Preservation and Consulting. John is taking on restoring my six exterior french doors and shutter screen doors. He is here today to return a couple of them and to work on the door casings. Can I tell you that I can't wait to see a newly restored set of doors on the house. He is great at what he does. He currently splits his time between Louisiana and Missouri. (Check this out https://www.newspressnow.com/news/local_news/st-joseph-preservation-draws-in-visitors/article_392b1e29-f3b0-50e7-8eb0-12983c894711.html )
So, the next week ahead will bring more exciting updates. But, I want to save the rest for the blog on the finished house. We are excited and I am a bit nervous about how it all will come together in the end. Did we make the right choices? Will everything fit in it's proper place? Will everything look the way I envisioned it in my head? Will any of the things we have in storage even fit or go with the house? Did all of our furniture and stuff survive the storage units? I guess I can't worry about that yet. There might be a big ole garage sale on Brignac Street in a month or two. And then a big Open House Party!
Check out the Gallery for more photos of the progress of our restoration.