A Break in the Action

Home renovation poolside today. I'm still getting ideas and making plans though while we attend a conference in Florida. From the looks of this photo I need a pedicure and a tan!! I'll work on that......

Look what I found....

Found this signature under the four layers of wallpaper in this bedroom. "Raymond Lenhardt Nov. 25, 1936 Lincoln, IL" and "Repapered by Ray T 1968". Cool, huh? As best I can tell this room once had a door where the signatures are that was walled up most likely in 1936 when the bathroom was renovated on the other side. So.....that means that the four layers of wallpaper were added since 1968. Interesting.....

This Old House.....

A little background on this house...... it was built in 1900. Folks, that's a long time ago...... I love old things--a love passed to me from my mother and her mother, etc--and I love giving old things new life! This house needs that! Over the weekend we began the demo process. It was dirty.........and fun. The walls are the original plaster and lathe construction and once we removed the 3-4 layers of wallpaper we discovered that they're not in the greatest of shape--no surprise here....... However, the plaster around the chimney was disinigrated and came off with the wallpaper. I love exposed brick and would love to polish it up and keep it that way but it's cracked. Is that bad? The chimney does not vent anything anymore so I don't know? Anyway, decision put off on that for now. In the meantime I've got to practice my patching skills and try to repair the walls the best I can for painting. Jury still out on that too...... The wallpaper fascinates me though--I imagine someone choosing and putting up each new style. I find that I always like the first layer the best. Again, proves my point-- I like old stuff. One of the bedrooms has some little daisies that were stenciled on--so sweet.... We are also adding a bathroom/laundry onto a previous sunroom. Here's my man hard at work...... Things will slow down this week as we are back to work--we realize we are big-time weekend warriors on this project, but we got a lot done and feel good about our progress so far...... Keep watching for updates!

Our New Adventure

It's official--we closed on our first renovation house today. It's always been a dream of ours to do this, but the right house never came along. Our real estate agent (here's a big shout out to Seth Goodman) was awesome and helped us find this little gem. My goal is to blog about the process of demo and reno and have you follow along with us to the end result of finding the perfect family for this cutie! Call us crazy--here we go!