Making a list and checking it twice (acutally more)

We don't have a lot of progress to report right now.  This Saturday, we took four trailer loads of "innards" from the house to the dump.  What hard work!  Good thing we had a helper-

We are currently working on the addition on the second floor.  It was falling off the house, but we are now rebuilding it.  Our goal is to have it complete by next week, so we can get the roof on.

We made our list of things to do.  Here it is:

Yes, the list is on the wall.  We had to take a photo of it, because that wall is coming down next week, and we didn't want to forget!  As you can see, we have lots of work to do!

A different kind of Thanksgiving

We have had a very busy, productive couple of days at the house.  Dad came down and we have been gutting.  We have removed all of the walls and ceilings in the first floor.  We only ran into a couple of things worth mentioning.  Below is a brief recap of Thursday, Friday, and today.

Thursday-
We Only had a short day, because it was Thanksgiving, and we were lucky enough to be able to enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma's house.  We were able to get the living room walls completely gutted, all except for the bee hive that was in the wall.  We were very grateful that it was November and 40 degrees so the bees were not active!  The hive was massive, but mostly dead.  Dad and I only got a small finger full of honey to sample.  We left the hive open Thursday night, hoping that the cold would kill them by Friday morning. 

Friday-
The first thing we did was check the hive to see if the bees were dead.  They were very much alive.  Here is a video of Mitchell and Dad taking care of those "dangerous" bees:

After the bee problem was taken care of, we were able to get back to work taking out walls.  I must note here that this is not as simple as just tearing out drywall, there is a layer of plaster, a layer of cement (infused with horse hair), then hundreds of small one inch boards that make up each wall.  We have to remove the cement and plaster, then pry each of the boards from the studs.  It is very hard work!  You can see the process here:

Saturday-
We spent most of the day on the breakfast nook, powder room, and kitchen.  We were able to save the top cabinets, which I would like to try to reuse.  We happened to find some great treasures when we removed the cabinets.  I am really excited about our find!

I now have an empty slate to work with!  It is so exciting.  We even removed the stairs that were going into the kitchen.  The kitchen is going to be awesome when we are done. 

We definitely would not have gotten nearly as much done as we did without dad's help.  We are so blessed to have such great family that is willing to help such crazy people!

So much fun!

Yes, that is a skeleton key he is holding- it is the only key to the house we have.

We have not got to do much at the house yet because we have been finishing some projects in our Edmond house.  This weekend we have been working on updating the master bathroom.  We have painted the walls, trim and vanity.  I am so pleased with how it is turning out.  This week, we will tile the floor and around the shower, then finish painting. 

We went to the Guthrie house today, and had fun just looking around and making plans.  Here are a few of the pics-

 The Back entrance. 

Look what's under the carpet!  Beautiful floors!

Fun old heaters in every room, they will be finding a new house to heat up.

Most of the doors have the pretty old door handles.

The house is ours!

We closed today!!!  We now own a beautiful three story house in Guthrie Oklahoma.

While we were closing, I found out more about the house when I got to talk to the (previous) owner.  It was actually built in 1893, not 1920 as we originally thought.  I guess we won't get to have a 100th birthday party for her after all. 

Now that she is ours, we will have to get to know her a little better so that we can give her a name.  We will keep you posted on what we decide. 

We will post pics when we go visit next.  Now the hard part will begin! 

Still waiting for closing...

It looks like it will still be another week or two until we close.  At least that gives us more time to finish up some more projects around our present house.  Tonight we removed the carpet from the bathroom, yes the bathroom.  We can hopefully get it tiled this week. 

In the mean time, we thought we would share with you some of the reasons why we fell in love with Guthrie.  It is such a special town with so much history.  Guthrie has the feel of a small town, like the ones from western Oklahoma.  We encourage everyone to take an afternoon and just drive around Guthrie.  You will see the most beautiful historical homes while you drive on the bricked streets. 

For more information about Guthrie, visit this website.

Closing Delayed

I guess the wind blew away our abstract, because they have to create a new one.  This means that closing has been postponed at least another week.  I guess I will be able to take advantage of the extra free time and start packing and finishing our current house. 

We are excited to get in there and get measurements so we can start getting our floor plans for the bathrooms and the kitchen. 

We will keep everyone updated on closing and where we are.

T minus 6 days until closing

The inspection was this morning.  We were afraid they would find termites or structure damage, so we did not allow ourselves to get too excited. 

Fortunately, now we can get super excited, because the inspection came back fine.  Well, I guess "fine" in our words. To most people, fine would mean almost move in ready, but not Mitchell and I.  We like a challenge, obviously. 

We have a lot of work to do before we can move in.  We must rewire, re plumb, put in central heat and air, insulate, remove the bee hive from the front entry, and much more.  Yes, we are a little crazy to think that we can work full time, go to school full time as Masters students, and renovate a house, all at the same time.  It will be a great challenge, but I know we will overcome. 

We will post inside photos of this beautiful lady as soon as we close.  It has so much character and all we can see is the potential of it one day.