The Expected + Unexpected.

It has been two weeks since we moved into our home – some days it feels like we just pulled into the drive – others, it seems as if we’ve been here for months.  It is the constant circling that we have been doing.  Fixing the expected, and the unexpected.  Which in return has left us right back where we started.  With boxes still not packed (simply hiding in a room upstairs) and us functioning day-to-day on just our basic necessities.  It’s doable, for sure, just not our cup of tea.

What have we been doing you ask? Well – we had 2 massive issues that needed addressed immediately upon moving into the house.  Both money gulpers that we wanted to get over with right away.

1. Basement

The basement is a BIG story … one that I have been writing/editing for weeks now, just haven’t finished the photo’s to complete its journey.  We had to do waterproofing, and replacing drains, and support beams … the whole bit.  It was costly, and yet so satisfying to know one of the top reasons as to why people did not purchase this house was no longer an issue.  The first week we lived here we had contractors here all day every day for 4 days jack hammering and making what was a cleaner house a filthy house all over again.  It was SO hard to sit back and watch the dust accumulate in our kitchen as they walked through with buckets of rocks and cement.  Not for the faint of heart – certainly ones like I that love a clean house.

2. The Front Porch

  That darling, inviting front porch was a giant piece of junk that was caving in and causing our basement wall to lean.  The entire front porch needed to be ripped off – which was last weeks project.  Dan and his father will be rebuilding our new front porch this coming weekend/following weeks and I am both excited and anxious to have the exterior of my house not covered in caution tape!

The basement and front porch were the expected projects to be taken on.  We were surprised saturday night with a basement full of poop water that needed a gentleman to come out at 9:00pm to snake our drains.   The entire time I prayed he would pull up tampons or toilet paper from the previous owner, and all he got was root.  Tree root that is.  The last thing you want a snake to pull up! So that night we went to bed pondering over where to split those expenses of possibly taking down trees sooner than we had anticipated.

The icing on the cake on this fixer upper adventure is our beloved honey bees that live outside of our house next to our chimney.

 A neighbor, thankfully, warned us about the bees when we moved in, in fear of the kiddos getting stung.  We were a little agitated that the seller did not disclose this to us, but we marched on not thinking much of it.  One bee guy appointment later and we come to find that the bees have apparently been here for YEARS – and have created a gorgeous honeycomb home inside our walls, behind our fireplace.  Later this week this nice guy will block off our family room and safely vacuum out the honey bees (so they will be kept alive and saved) and clean out the honeycomb.  Sounds promising, but, he has to remove parts of the wall, possibly the mantel/fireplace and who knows what else he said to clear them out.  He literally drilled a hole above our fireplace to take a peek and all we heard was “get back in there girls” as he was plugging the hole to keep the bees from swarming out.  Wonderful, right?

Without a doubt these first two weeks have hit us in the head with nearly everything and anything that could pop up.  We knew what we were getting into buying an older home that needed work, but this time around we were less lucky and everything seems to be going wrong right off the bat.  Our sweet neighbors look at the bright side and told us how we’ll be grateful that the big $$ projects are done now – so we can breathe later.  I’m not feeling the same sigh of relief as I watch our budget for other things we need drift away.

In between this constant major renovation stage I have yet to really accomplish much of anything.  Both boys came down with a flu bug as a mentioned in our mothers day post – and when they were better I was soaking up the time with them outside, away from all of the contractors!  Painting here and there, and that is honestly about it.  I used an amazing all natural home-made grout cleaner today that I am super excited to share with you all – and that about tops my list of things I have gotten too.

Hoping to push the restart button this weekend.  Starting next monday fresh, full of ideas for this house and maybe a few bottles of honey from those bees 🙂