Finding Tranquility

The last time I posted I forgot to mention a few projects that were done after finding our water damage inside the house because we didn't do them. We knew we had to fix the problem of water seeping to the lower level of the house. In one picture you saw the drain we had installed in the area where the most mold was found. That way if the water would happen to come in again it would enter the drain and go straight to the sump pump (which was also replaced). But there was more...

We found termite damage due to the wet wood behind the drywall. Luckily it was just surface damage and nothing structural. But we had to get termite traps installed and they are monitored quarterly. So far so good...but its expensive! That is something we will have monitored probably forever.

We had the siding removed from the house and had the house wrapped in something similar to Tyvek in order to keep moisture out in the future. There had been nothing between the sheathing and siding. We also had some bad flashing replaced and some gutter work done.

We had masonry work done to repair mortar that was cracked or crumbling and in the process had our chimney rebuilt to today's standards. We also had the flashing on the chimney replaced. Its worth noting that many updates were done to the house before we moved in...however the previous owners hired people that clearly did not know what they were doing, unfortunately.

In addition to those things we also did a lot of our own work outside. We tore out one tree (thanks Uncle Dave and Uncle Kelly!), two bushes, lots of ivy, regraded the land around the entire house to improve drainage, tore out several deck boards to regrade, replaced deck boards and sanded and restained the whole thing, planted two new trees and many bulbs.

In all of this - finding all of the damage and spending thousands of unexpected dollars - we still feel like we're where we belong. Would we do it again had we known what we would run into? No. No way. But there are times when we look at our surroundings and we love it. I'll give you some examples:

Sunrise on our county road....

The barn behind our house...

Watching the hay on the back of our property being harvested by

the farmer who owns the barn...

Family Room

First you need to scroll down to read all about our adventures while renovating the family room. Then you can read this extensive list of what we accomplished to finish off that room.

Removed Paneling
Found mold!
Tore out drywall
Tore out insulation
Tore out built in bookshelf
Tore out beams
New drywall
New insulation
Sanded textured walls
Painted walls
Painted fireplace
Sanded mantel smooth
Painted mantel
Put in new baseboard trim
Put in new casings around windows and doors
Rebuilt built in bookshelf
Rebuilt built in cabinet
New carpet
New outlet installed for television

Family Room Before and After

The Family Room Trauma

Photos taken after closing but before moving. You see paneling, wood strips all over the walls, textured plaster over the drywall, wood beams. It looked like a hunting lodge. In fact, the previous owners did have a deer head mounted to the right of the fireplace. We are deer friendly folks and needed the hunting theme gone! :) Our plan was to remove paneling - crossing our fingers that there was drywall behind it, sand the walls, paint and then move on to the kitchen.

On New Years Day, 9 days after we moved in, we started to remove the paneling. I was thrilled to see the drywall behind it. In fact, I've been quoted several times saying, "This is the BEST day of my life!" :) Insert eerie music...because whenever someone says something like that, it is always immediately followed by bad news, right?

What is that, you say? Oh, its plastic, sealing off the downstairs walls. Why? Because we found mold. Lots of mold. It was all along the walls with the windows behind the paneling. That is the lower level of our house - halfway under ground - and anything that was underground was wet. The house never smelled musty until we moved in. It was not caught during inspection because
all of the mold was hidden. Mind you, we had lived here for 9 days at this point. We had been living in this room. We moved all of our furniture up into the formal living room (soon to be our dining room). It was cramped and crowded and uncomfortable, but there we stayed while we tore out all of the moldy drywall and wet (frozen!) insulation and had a lot of work done to fix anything that was allowing water into the house. We left the walls open for several weeks (no insulation in the dead of winter) to watch for moisture and once we were sure we had solved the problem we re-drywalled.

Here you see at the bottom where we had a drain added. The dark gray is wet cement. You can see the weep holes on the wall where moisture was still coming in, but the drain would catch it and send it straight to the sump pump.