Timber

The pine tree in the front year was diseased and needed to come down. So, when opportunity knocked, also known as some guy with a tree service looking for some afternoon work that stopped by our house, I decided to make a bet with him. Heads and I get my price, tails and he gets his (I'd done my homework and knew what others were going to charge). Needless to say, I won the bet and he cut down the tree (probably wouldn't be posting this if I had lost).






With Tree




Without Tree



A Little Landscaping

We had some gnarly shrubs when we moved in that we decided to pull out when we had the mini excavator.  The plan is to overhaul the landscaping at some point, but we just cleaned things out for now.  Here are a couple of pictures:



Before




After



The pile of bushes

Cleaning out the rock - before



Cleaning out the rock - after (almost)



We Need More Power

One of the projects we knew that we wanted to take care of when we bought the house was to move the cable, telephone, and power lines that were coming into the house overhead to underground.  I also had a selfish goal of upgrading our electrical from 100 amps to 200 amps.



The power line overhead


The lines were coming in really low and sagged even lower out in the yard.  After talking to a couple of electricians and contractors to do the work, we decided to hire our friend Ryan to do the electrical work and rent a mini excavator and bury all the lines ourselves (with lots of help from our friends Mike and Steve...thanks guys).  I was pretty excited to rent an excavator and have a little fun playing in the dirt.

Excavator in the morning

Digging away

Jessica gave it a try, which was pretty entertaining to watch...don't think she has a future as a heavy machine operator.

Jessica giving the excavator a try

To meet code, we had to dig  40" deep and the trench had to run from the power pole to the house, which was a little tricky with the concrete lined drainage ditch that was in the way.

Digging under the drainage ditch

A little hand digging



After digging the trench from the power pole to the house, we put in conduit for the cables to be pulled through and then backfilled the trench, which made a mess of the yard.

Conduit

Backfilled Trench

While we were outside digging the trench, Ryan was inside installing a new breaker box and meter can in order to handle the 200 amps and new location (side of the house).

I love all the room in the new breaker box



New meter can and cable junction on the side of the house



Moved In

By August 7th, the house was cleaned up enough that we decided to move out of Jessica's parent’s house and into our work in progress. We started early, had a big truck, and lots of helping hands (thanks everyone) that made the move go fast...everything was in the house by 12:30. We still have some boxes sitting around and a pile of stuff in the basement, but they are slowly getting smaller.

The Truck (I can't believe they allow anyone to rent a vehicle this big)

Kitchen Floor

After painting the walls and ripping out most of the carpet, it still smelled like old people so we decided to rip out the carpet in the kitchen. We thought that there was linoleum under the carpet in the kitchen which we would be able to clean up and live with. Ends up that there was linoleum like we thought, but it was covered in adhesive and underlayment (felt) remnant. Since the kitchen will be one of the first areas that we will redo, we decided just to paint over it and call it good for now. Trust me, it's a classy look.

Saving the Basement

Alright, maybe "saving the basement" is extreme, but we did have to have some work done to the basement walls in order to shore and seal them up. It wasn't a surprise, we knew about all of this when we put our offer on the house and after our inspections. In all reality, the repairs were minor and are extremely common for the area of town that we live in and the age of the house. All we had to have done was to put in 8 vertical supports along the north wall to prevent the wall from moving in any further (the wall had pushed in 2-3 inches) and have some cracks that were leaking epoxy injected (not really sure we had to do the epoxy since we didn't have any more leaks after cleaning out the gutters, but rather safe than sorry).


The most interesting part of basement repairs was who ended up doing them. The name probably won't mean much for most, but one of the guys doing the repairs was Jamar Howard. Jamar played basketball for Wichita State from 2001-2005 and was easily one of the most hated players by Creighton fans (Jessica and my Alma Mater). On the court, Jamar was a good player, a hell of a defender (2003 MVC defensive player of the year), and loved to be the enemy of the crowd. He would yell at us (the crowd), flex his arms after a big play, and even spit his gum into the student section. Not to say that the crowd wasn't always innocent, but just a guy you loved to hate. So, needless to say, I was a little surprised when he walked into my house. My first reaction was to start yelling obscenities at him, but I resisted and instead eased into a conversation that lead to basketball. He ended up being a really nice guy and even admitted that he is a different person on the court.


Jamar Howard:

Basement wall:

Cleaning Up

Before we moved in, Jessica and I agreed that we needed to do a few things.  Namely, we wanted to remove all the carpet (the hardwoods underneath are in good condition) and wallpaper, paint, and give the entire house a good cleaning.  We were able to get this all done in about a month, with a lot of help from both our families.  My mom came over during the days and was nice enough to take down almost all the wallpaper, help paint, and remove carpet.  Jessica's sister helped us paint along with Jessica's mom who also was a cleaning fool.  The whole place is looking a lot better and we moved in on August, 7th.  Below are some pics of the place after cleaning it all up:

Dining/Living Room (yep, the fridge is living in the dining room right now):

Family Room:

Hallway:

Hall Bath:

Bedroom 1:

Bedroom 2:

Master Bath:

The Plan

The previous home owners are an older couple (in their 90's from what I hear). They did a great job of maintaining and caring for the house, but the esthetics and layout haven't changed in a while. Needless to say, most of what we will be doing is bringing the house out of its time warp. With the help of our architect, and very good friend Mike, we have started to put together our plan. The house is currently laid out something like this:

As it sits right now, the house has 3 bedrooms and 2 baths all on the main floor.  The plan for the main floor layout is looking something like this:

The highlights of the plan include:

• open floor plan
• large kitchen island
• moving the stairs
• creating a master suite from 2 of the main floor bedrooms
• adding 2 bedrooms and bath in the basement (we are working on the basement layout and promise to post that later)

We'll be doing all of this in 5ish phases and hope we can have this done in years as opposed to decades.  The plan for the phases is:

• Phase 1: remove wall paper & carpet, paint, clean, upgrade & bury electrical, brace & epoxy seal basement walls, and move in (yep, we are going to live in the house while we do the rest)
• Phase 2 (right side of main floor): move stairs, open walls, add french doors, new front door, build mudroom/pantry, raise ceiling (not quite sure on this one, but it's on the list), and remodel kitchen
• Phase 3 (left side of main floor): create master suite and remodel hall bath
• Phase 4: finish out basement
• Phase 5: landscaping and anything else outside that we decide on

In the beginning

Jessica and I closed on the new house on July 8th, 2010. We had been looking for houses in the area for awhile but we were having a hard time finding anything in our price range that wasn't someone else's bad redo. After a couple months of looking, we decided to purchase a house in the area we wanted that needed some updating, so that we could make our own. Here is what we settled on:

• Style: Ranch
• Year Built: 1965ish
• Bedrooms: 3
• Bathrooms: 2
• Garage: 2 car attached
• Finished Sq Ft: ~1700
• Basement: Unfinished/walkout
• Foundation: Poured concrete
• City: Prairie Village
• State: Kansas

The previous owners had taken great care of the house, putting in a new furnace, air conditioner, and hot water heater within the last 5 years, and redoing the roof and driveway within the last 10 years. On the other hand, the esthetic elements of the house hadn't been the benefactor of updates. Here are some pictures shortly after we bought the house:

Outside:

Kitchen:

Dining/Living Room:

Family Room:

Gotta love wood paneling

Nice shag!!

Entry:

Front doors

 

Hallway:

Hall Bath:

Bedroom 1:

Bedroom 2:

Master Bedroom:

Master Bath:

Pretty in pink

Basement: