A look into the past

I found these old pictures of our house on a foreclosure site. I hope to make it to the courthouse one of these days and dig some more.
circa 1938:

1946: It looks like the original windows were similar to what we put in. The plate glass picture windows must have been installed in the 50’s.

1958:

2012:

A look before

Things aren’t perfect or finished, but here is where we are at now.

Henry’s bedroom

I thought it would be fun to look back at how far we’ve come. Here are the pictures I took before we bought the house (or right as we were closing) and a picture of the same angle of where we are at now. Here is Henry’s bedroom.
When we bought it:

And now:

Then:

Now:

Back Door Blue

The back door off the mudroom has never closed, nor locked. We finally tightened security up around here!

We used the old door we removed out of the living room because it was the right size and was in better shape than the current one. Now we can see if someone is on the stairs when we open the door. Stephen also changed the side it opens from. (It needs a few more coats of paint.)Baldwin hardward makes any door look classy!

Painted Living Room

Every room and ceiling is finally painted. There is no trim, so it doesn’t look finished. Imagine a medium gray trim, please.

We pulled the heater insert out of the fireplace, and the tv lives there now. I don’t know what we are going to do in the long run. Possibly, we will rip out the whole chimney and install gas logs. Then what to do with the tv and electronic crap? I don’t know. I’ll keep pondering it.
Remember when there was a ratty old door on this wall? 🙂

Lights for the French Doors

The exterior patio lights were installed, as well as a few exterior outlets.

I didn’t expect Stephen to hang these so high. He says they have to be that high. 😦 It wasn’t quite what I had in mind. I still want to dip paint these lights with the yellow paint from the front door. (This is through the kitchen sink window.)

And here is the patio the steps lead down to as seen through the sink window. You see, we pulled that heater insert out? That thing weighed hundreds of pounds! It sat there for 10 days while Stephen worked up the energy to pull it into the barnyard.

Final Two

The last two windows were replaced this weekend.
One in the kitchen:
One in the entry:

Blooming colors!

Look what’s showed up in the yard.

Finished basement floor

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

The kids have been enjoying the slip and slide rink in our basement. They have a blast wiping out. The new floor is slick!

Sealing the Basement

The basement was leaky, to put it mildly. It sounded like a waterfall down there when it rained hard. It required two sump pumps in the rainy season. We hope to solve that issue with a new product called SaniTred. This is the floor when we started last weekend. It had multiple cracks, and a few coats of paint and sealer patching it.

After grinding the paint away, it looked like this:

Now to water seal it.
STEP ONE: Dry out the cracks. We used a butane torch to apply high heat. It didn’t need to be totally dry…good thing. Those cracks don’t ever dry out!

STEP TWO: Coat the entire floor sans cracks with smooth sealant.

He started by rolling it…

…but discovered a squeegee worked best.

This stuff goes right up to the edge of the cracks, but not inside.

STEP THREE: Fill in the cracks with rubber “toothpaste.” This stuff expands and hardens to stop the water movement.

I only have finished photos of this step because Stephen had to apply it from midnight to 3 am due to the timing of the dry-time of the other product. Its a very precise process.

STEP FOUR: Apply the first sealer again; this time over the entire surface.

Now, we wait and see if it worked!