Playing the waiting game.

We are now waiting on quotes from 8 different contractors. We’ve had a few trickle in, but with the holidays everything has been on hold.

In the meantime, we’re chugging away with some of the demo work that we know we’ll be taking care of before the contractors get started. Also, it should be noted that it’s been a *long* 6 years since we’ve done any *real* demo work … and we’ve gotten forgetful in our older age. This shit is A LOT of work and our backs and arms hurt (but, it’s also why we didn’t pay full price for this house … which is what we keep telling ourselves … over and over and over again).

The guys came out to take care of the leaves. 4 guys, 2+ hours, a literal entire truckload of mulched leaves. They just blew the last little pile around out on the street because there was actually no room left in the truck to mulch any more leaves. When they had it all piled in the front of the house, we had a leaf pile that spanned the entire 170′ of our lot, about 3′ wide and 4′ high. It was SO many leaves!

I’ve gotten most of the wallpaper down in the kitchen, hallway, and half bathroom. The foil wallpaper in the bathroom was easy, but left a thick coating of fabric and glue on the walls, which is going to be fun to remove. The regular paper wallpaper in the kitchen came off mostly in really small, torn pieces … which is exactly the opposite of what you want when you’re peeling large quantities of wallpaper. The walls are mostly NOT pretty underneath. In fact, they are in pretty horrible condition. Luckily, I plan to re-wallpaper the half bathroom (after washing and washing and washing the walls). The kitchen and hallway will need some repair work. Luckily, Patrick is really good at skim-coating.

Meanwhile, Patrick got started ripping up some of that carpet on the stairs and in the upstairs hallway and master bedroom. We found oak treads on the stairs, so those will just need refinishing (yay!).

We also met one of our neighbors. Really nice guy. Family with high school/grown kids. He also went to BGSU (like Patrick) and makes reminiscent stops at Howards Club H when back in town (well, at least once that we know of, but at least he didn’t say that he loved stopping into Ziggy’s). Apparently the old people we bought the house from were not that friendly and didn’t talk much with the neighbors. I had just been picturing a cute little old couple that built and raised a family in this nice little community and chatted with the neighbors. That was not the case. I guess it won’t take much for us to make a good impression as friendly neighbors when stacked up against the previous owners!

So, here are pictures of the work we finished over the holidays. We’ll probably work more bit by bit … but for now we’re really waiting on quotes so we know where to start and what we’re working with, in both the time and money departments.