The Heat Is ON

GREAT day today. Lots of good news- the boiler guys brought the parts they needed and got it working so the house is slowly getting warm and we could finally turn the water on which means we can use our own bathrooms! To top it off, I finished pulling up the floors, hooraaaaay!

There are only a few lights that work in the house so any pictures I take after dark are terrible. BUT you get the idea, no more raised wood floors on top of linoleum. Pulling floors was hard but honestly really fun! It beats making spreadsheets any day of the week.

The boiler guys said ours is WAY too big for the house and will cost us a ton of money to run.  SO, we'll probably just keep it for the rest of this year and look into something else for next winter.  We're getting a propane tank buried in order to have gas for cooking so we'll likely go with a propane boiler next year.  I've always thought baseboards looked gross but getting warm that way feels great compared to having warm air blown at you through vents. I just need to see about better looking covers for the baseboards.

Our contractors came out and measured all the rooms this afternoon, we're still debating where to relocate the stairs but anywhere is better than their current location so we're pretty easy to please. We're also planning on completely removing the guest bath and using that space to expand the master.  Then we'll take some room from an upstairs bedroom to make a full guest bath with an entry in the hall and in the bedroom for overnight guests.  The bedrooms in the house are huge so you won't even be able to tell.

I'm still waiting for the quotes to come back about new windows and doors as well as kitchen cabinets but I'm stopping by the Home Depot tomorrow to check out their options.  We're hoping that if I can keep the kitchen costs way down we can reallocate funds towards other pressing issues like repairing the downstairs full bath, expanding and remodeling the downstairs laundry room into a big mud room/laundry room/dog washing room.  Another big wish is to be able to window-in the screened in porch....and vault the ceilings....and add a big window at the top of that vault to let in the southern light.  It's far fetched but we're just pricing out options!

I love the screened in porch, even though, like the rest of the house, I want to change everything about it!

The ceiling is really low and for whatever reason it's made of gorgeous wood. What a waste. No matter how pretty it is, it's too low and gives off a serious nautical theme.  If we can't do what we want with the porch I'm going to roll with it- anchors, blue and white canvas, seashells and a few life preservers. 

The floor is made of a special cheap tile that ensures anti-friction so you slip every time you walk on it.  Perfect for older relatives worried about bone loss. I need to look into what I can replace it with.

There's an entry to the driveway and an entry into the kitchen/dining area from the porch.  I'd love to replace that door above with a set of french doors once the room is windowed in.  Either way, I'm excited to move a table out there and have dinners on the porch in the summer.  Sidenote: That huge house you can see in the background of the picture above belongs to the people who live behind us.  All the land behind our property belongs to two brothers who live next to each other and that house is one of them.  We hear they're nice but I haven't visited yet. Their dad used to own hundreds of acres and they've sold it off in smaller chunks keeping a big compound for themselves. 

The reason we know about who lives behind us is because we met our the neighbors who live next to us last week. We absolutely lucked out because they may be the nicest people on earth. They recently built their home and they referred us to the contractor we picked.  Here's a not so great pic of their house from one of the downstairs bedrooms- 

 The house is gorgeous, unique and lovely.  

As you can see, the snow that was about 3 feet deep is melting and showcasing all the landscaping we have ahead of us.  Here's a shot of the backyard from the back door looking towards the right of the property-

 

In the distance on the right you can see a huge concrete slab where the previous owners had a big warehouse/aluminum building where they ran a pool business. They took the building when they left so now it's a BIG slab with a water spigot sticking out of the middle and a powerbox at the end.  It's going to be a perfect location for greenhouses! 

Now a shot looking towards the left-

It's pretty gross out there right now. The ground is all torn up from when the septic guys used a big tractor to repair the system.  

Here's a better picture of the slab behind a beat up shed. There's a separate driveway entry at the end of the slab that will be great if we rent out the barn to a trainer and when we're set up to sell produce. 

It was sleeting today but I'll take more landscape shots next time. Still a lot to do but things are starting to come together! We're hoping to have a demo party this weekend where we'll pay people will beer and pizza in return for demolishing our house.  Sounds like a good deal to me!