HOORAY!!!!

I cannot even begin to express how excited I am!!! Well, a bit of the excitement has worn off because I wasn't able to write when I was really excited, but anyway. WE HAVE BEEN APPROVED FOR THE LOAN!!!! WOO HOO!!!! I swear my insides are so excited they are bursting!!! Basically, this means sometime by the end of this week we will have a closing date! Once we close we can start on all the major things (getting a sewer, electricity, plumbing, water service, insulation, walls, decks, lights, EVERYTHING...toilets included!!!!). Just wanted to share this with everyone!!! It's just SO AWESOME!!!!!

Talk is cheap...or is it.

Tonight was yet another night where we planned on framing and ended up talking. One would think a rehab is just about the work itself, but so much of our time goes into talking, thinking, and researching. We've been having problems with our 2nd floor bathroom and materials. The original plan was to have this curved, translucent wall, and a round soaking tub next to the shower. While I was never a fan of the circular tub because I can sometimes be visually challenged--a week ago we spent an entire night building our "sink" (two buckets and a piece of plywood on top), our tub (a stenographers chair with 2x6's stacked on the cusion), and our shower (2x4's attached to one of the already framed walls), so that I could visualize what our bathroom would look like. It still didn't do it for me. Anyway, we decided we would do the tub in tile and concrete, and were really excited about the whole thing. Then we called Jonah the family mathmetician and had him do the math. Our tub was going to take up 36" and weigh almost 1800 pounds. Not bad for a floor reinforced with steel beams. Too bad our floor is supported by 110 year old wood beams. We will not be using concrete. The next idea was to tile the tub and have concrete tops, but we have learned that an all tile bathtub (soaking tub if you will), is not all that water-proof. I still don't understand this since I look in books and see tiled soaking tubs, but oh well...I give up.

While at Home Depot to pick up framing lumber, we decided to look through a few magazines and books there. We found an article about a tub that was made from plaster then coated with a water-proof wax for a top coat. We quickly copied down the caption for the picture and we decided to ditch HD (Home Depot) alltogher and head to Borders. We spend the next few hours looking through books on bathrooms, materials, design, and the like, and we found exactly what we were looking for!! We not only found the name of the material used for that tub, but we found the architect's phone number and a description of how he built the tub!! Not only did we find that, but Nathan and I agreed on EVERYTHNG for the bathroom!!! (insert sound of gods chanting "allehluia") Not that we disargree a lot, but it is a rare occasion that we agree on using both industrial materials (more Nathan's forte) and simple lines for my particluar love for "zen" bathrooms. Things we agreed on: using translucent walls instead of a curved wall; a rectangluar tub instead of a circular one; using plaster instead of fiberglass (this one is a personal favorite since the thought of using fiberglass was giving me panic attacks with thoughts of bathing in an apple-red automoible bumper); the color of the plaster; moving the vanity to the other side (means we can put a mirror up!! YEAH!); using the plaster for not only the tub, but the shower, too! Do you know how successful of a day this was? Assuming things don't change (snicker, snicker), we have finalized the bathroom. And it only took six months!!!

VACATION!

Well...not really, but it might as well be!! I'm off today!! No stripping of paint, no hauling of plaster, no framing, no tear-out, no repairing, replacing, or anyother sort of RE-word! Well...actually, this is not all entirely true. I don't think a day goes by where we don't deal with the house in some way. If we're not over there working, we're over here in the "flop house" (more on that, later) thinking about the house, calling contractors, finding tile, looking at paint chips, or doing what I do best...rumaging through magazines and tearing out "ideas" for us to do/use in the house! I love that!

Nathan is over at the house today with Ian, working on building the stairs to our third floor. For those of you who don't know, our third floor had extremely steep stairs which we had to tear-out (part of the ever so slow "demo" process as mentioned before. I still think a wrecking ball would have been faster.). So, today Ian and Nathan are cutting out the floor (we are also moving the stairs...they were in the back, now they will be in the front) and reinforcing one of the headers to prepare for next weekend's task of building the stairs themselves!! I'm super excited about that!!

I did go over to start stripping paint today, but we quickly realized that even though I will be wearing a resporator (the paint is the old lead-based paint), Ian and Nathan will not be...so as Nathan put it, "I'm afraid it's probably not a great idea that you strip paint today." Not a great idea? I think the idea of NOT stripping paint is the BEST idea since the idea I had three days ago. Shall I share? Yes! My idea was that we pool together on Christmas gifts and we get all of the woodwork dipped (you drop your woodwork off, people other than you, "dip" your woodwork in large tanks full of nasty chemicals that take the paint right off!!! You then go and pick up your nice and beautifully stripped woodwork!! Sounds WONDERFUL!!! Too bad it's $1.00 per foot...and there's a lot of feet to dip! Anyway, I've already started a dipping fund, of which I've stashed away 20 dollars! Don't tell Nathan, he doesn't know yet! The only bad thing is that the dip fund is also our Crown Candy fund! While I believe in eating well and being healthy, that is too much to focus on while rehabbing a house, so lots of ice-cream it is! Mmmm...chocolate-chocolate-chip ice-cream with hot fudge!! And of course...make it a Newport (whipped cream and nuts!)!!!

Soo...today I'll not be physically over at the house (except to bring the guys sandwiches, snacks, and water), but I'll proabably be looking up alternative materials to use for our soaking tub (ooo...don't we sound fancy). If anyone has any ideas, please contact tubideas@jitneyboy.com.

"Patience is a virtue and a little couldn't hurt you"

And so it goes...we will not hear anything about the loan for another week. The investors only review loans on Wednesdays, and even though our loan application was handed to them prior to two Wednesdays ago, they are backed up enough that we will need to wait at least another week. I have learned to become very patient with things in general, which I attribute to the house (and the loan process itself), but all in all, the lesson here is that applying for a loan SUCKS!

Pre-beginning

Here it is, a synopsis of where we started to where we are today. It's the typical boy meets girl... Boy meets girl...boy snags girl (there was much hiking and rock-climbing)...boy and girl move in together...boy and girl buy a house (no, not to live in)...boy and girl get married...boy and girl spend the next two years getting the house and themselves "ready."

The house is a bit of a fixer-upper, so we couldn't move in right away (ask Nathan and he might tell you differently). For those of you who have not been by to see it, here's a picture:



The past two years have been dedicated to what the rehabber's call "demolition." While the name is quite appropriate, and is exactly what we did, it doesn't give justice to what was actually done. When I think of demolition, I think of a wrecking ball or explosives leveling a place in seconds. While nice in theory, our "demo" took a bit longer...two years to be exact. While during those two years we were also planning a wedding and working out some kinks in our employment (me switching jobs and Nathan starting to work for himself), a considerable bit of time and energy was spent doing said "demo." We have taken out many walls, ceilings, floors, and one very large brick structure that was added post-bathroom era.

When we bought the house, I was very excited (and I'd like to add naive)! "We bought a house, yeah!!" I had no idea what was to come, but that, in retrospect, was a good thing. I figured the rehab would take us a year, but that it would be a fun and exciting project....it would be a "piece of cake" (mmm....cake!). I had no idea what was really involved, and I'm sure, at this point I still don't, but it's been two years and the house has taught me more about myself than I could have ever imagined. I can honestly say I have come to love and appreciate things in our life that I would have otherwise overlooked. Despite the many tears and frustration, I couldn't imagine living anywhere else, or rehabbing any other house. So here it is, the story of our rehab...

The beginning...

Well, today is what I've been calling Dday. It's the day we find out if our loan was approved or not. Nathan has asked me several times if I will cry if we don't get it (and yes, I do cry often), but I'm so determined to get in the house that if this, Plan A, does not work, Plan B will then go into effect. Currently Plan B does not exist, but we will create and execute a superb plan that is sure to work!