Morgan CottleJune 04, 2018

First Weekend of Work!

Morgan CottleJune 04, 2018

This weekend was our first weekend working on the house. We probably won't move in for a few weeks, but you can bet we'll be working on it every weekend (and, let's be honest, probably every weekday after work, too).

Friday

Settlement was on Friday afternoon. It went smoothly and quickly and we headed over to the house right after to move some items out of my parents' garage. We took over some small pieces of furniture and a few fans/AC units since the house is unairconditioned. Our first evening consisted of pizza, beer, and a few friends and family who came over to celebrate with us.

Saturday

Saturday is when the real work (and problems) started. Brandon's first order of business was to clean out the gutters - they were completely full of leaves and water (no doubt contributing to the water issues in the basement). He wasn't able to reach the uppermost gutters with the ladder we had, so we'll have to come back to those eventually; but for now, at least the lower ones are clean!

My first task was to find a new handle for the front door. We believe the one that was on there was original to the house (or, at the very least, was 50+ years old), and it was broken, so it was definitely time for an update. I found a handle that I thought would fit relatively well - I recognized that there was a very slim chance that any new product would match the old one perfectly, but I figured we could just patch up a hole or two and be done with it. Turns out I was wrong about that! The old door had a mortise lock, which we didn't realize until we took it out. So the new lock was basically incompatible with the old door, even once we drilled new holes.

With the front door basically out of commission for the time being, we thought maybe we would just use the side door as our main door for now - but we quickly realized we weren't given a key for that door. So we thought, no problem, we'll just change the lock. Well, that turned out to be a bigger issue than it was worth. Brandon ran to Home Depot and grabbed a new lock - fortunately this one wasn't quite as ancient as the front door situation so we were able to find one pretty easily. He ended up needing to cut one of the screws shorter because the first time he screwed it in, it went through to the other side of the door. Oops. Then once everything was the proper size, he screwed it all in and somehow it broke. So that was a short-lived solution to our issues!

Long story short, we ended up padlocking the front door and we're using that to enter and exit. We ended the day hot, tired, frustrated, and with a less than ideal solution, but it works for now.

Sunday

Sunday, fortunately, was much less stressful than Saturday. The weather was cooler so we were able to work more comfortably. We began the process of repairing the front door, so we will hopefully be able to install the new handle in a few days once everything has had time to set.

The door with all the holes in it - quite a long journey ahead for this poor door ...

Partway through the repair process. Looking a little less scary, but definitely not quite there yet!

Once we had the door under control, we started moving on to one of the best parts of any project - the paint! I had trouble choosing colors for the main floor since I don't have all the elements together quite yet, but I knew that I was going to put Sherwin Williams "Sea Salt" in the master bedroom. I used this color in my condo and decided that I will never again be able to live without it in my home in some capacity - it is just the most gorgeous blue/green/grey and it changes so beautifully with the light throughout the day. So we went and bought a few gallons of that, plus one of those huge five gallon tubs of trim paint in Sherwin Williams "Snowbound," since we'll be using that for all of the trim throughout the house. This tub is massive! And it looks like a huge vat of marshmallow fluff, so I craved s'mores the entire time I was painting. I have never before needed this much paint at one time - the woman working at the store double checked with me to make sure I actually needed that much, because it is apparently "a lot of paint." Brandon thinks we may actually need more before we're done with all the trim, so we'll see how that goes!

We were able to finish the first coat on the walls and most of the first coat of trim. We ended the day pretty early so we could go home and relax for a little bit. It was a heck of a weekend!