Back in March, I wrote a post about the house Elijah bought. We spent practically every Saturday in February, March and April working on doing it up, and he spent his Saturdays, as well as a lot of weekday evenings, working on it through May and June, too. It is finally ready for renters, after he cleans the oven and removes a pile of gravel, and his renters plan to move in in a few days. I didn’t get many pictures inside the house; it looked so bad I didn’t think to do that. I got a few pictures during the process, though.
I took the children to work at the house a couple of times when we needed to be in town during the week. Both times, we worked at masking the walls, since Simon spray-painted the ceilings and trim. We had already painted the walls with rollers.
James hates painting, but he rebuilt the wall of the garage and did other repairs, with his trusty sidekick Mr. Sweetie.
When I was getting ready to paint the window trims in the living room, after the carpet had already been laid, I asked Elijah what to protect the floor with. He got the roll of leftover carpet and turned it upside down! I don’t think I dripped onto it, but I was glad to have it there anyway.
This day, Elijah and James were working on running wires for the new lights and fans that needed to be installed in the kitchen and bathroom. An electrician was going to hook them up, but he didn’t want to run the wires. They had to take up some of the roofing iron because there wasn’t any other way to get at the space.
The last day I worked there was a day in June when we went to town for a funeral. After the funeral, we all went to the house to try to knock out the last few jobs, including a final clean. When it was time to go to the cemetery for the burial, I stayed to wash the kitchen floor while everyone else went, because I knew I wouldn’t be getting back to do that job and wanted to see it done. Just as I finished the floor and was ready to do the outside of the kitchen door, it started bucketing down–I decided to wait a few minutes to do that washing, and walked around the house to take pictures of the finished project, instead.
The kitchen. Not much has changed here, other than scrubbing the walls and cabinets and floor. Elijah patched the floor in a couple of places, and I painted two walls that needed patches.
The laundry, with toilet and bathroom to the left. This area looks 100% better! The walls and ceiling were very patchy, and the floor was rough.
The living room. There is a picture of this room on the post linked above. It has new carpeting, the walls and ceiling have been painted, and the old rusted-out stove has been replaced. The new one is larger, so the boys enlarged the hearth by adding a border.
The bedroom off the living room. This one needed to be sanded back and plastered all over.
Bedroom 1. This room had old, rough gib (drywall) that needed a skim coat all over. It had carpet–the only room that did–but it stunk. There was no door in the main doorway to the room. That door you see was there; see the next picture to get an idea of this gem!
Bedroom 2. This room had gib (drywall) that someone had started finishing but never got done. It also had a cracked window.
It is very satisfying to see this house shining! It looks immensely better than it did before, and smells nice and clean, too.
