[an update on the houses & construction!]
Well it has been a crazy month and tomorrow, this summers about to get crazier! Tomorrow, we buy our first house together and officially begin the balancing act of remodeling two houses at once. After a bit of a bumpy road we are finally closing! You may remember we were originally supposed to close at the end of June, but after a tap got left on in the bathroom and caused a small flood, the deal almost fell through, but we’ve since worked it out with the seller, it just pushed back the closing a bit.
Luckily we had a viewing a couple days after the tap got left on and found it, and the owner got everything dried out really quickly so the damage is mostly to the tile floor in the bathroom as the unfinished basement was not effected other than being a bit of a puddle! You can feel that the tile has separated from the subfloor when you walk on it, but we were planning on completely remodeling that room down the road so not the end of the world. It’s livable for now (and actually quite the upgrade from our current bathroom… just wait for the before & after pics on that one!). The tile is going to start popping up eventually, but it has a damn jacuzzi tub – and a shower with body jets!. It’s super ugly and straight outta the 80s, but you know who doesn’t care at all about the appearance of your tub as when it has hot water and jets? Your tired body when you are remodeling 2 houses and getting married all at once, and a person who hasn’t had a tub to soak in in YEARS! I am so ready to get out the scrubbing bubbles and then immediately fill that puppy right up and finally use all those bath bombs people keep giving me.
Tomorrow, we do our final walk through at 8. (Check out my insta-story @northshireliving for snaps & video from that!! Now that its gonna be official you can peep at more than just the outside!) Then I am off to a Candlelight Cabinet delivery in Weston, VT at a very cool new construction home we did cabinets for – they did concrete floors with radiant heat that are just TOO beautiful – where I will check to make sure everything arrived in once piece – and then zipping back to Manchester to squeeze out some design work before the actual Closing at 2! After work we are planning on heading over to the new place, starting to make a game plan, and having takeaway for dinner while toasting to our new home, looking at the view of Mt. Equinox! Chris is a superstar and already arranged for us to have electric, internet, and a construction dumpster delivered tomorrow so we will have all of the necessities here and can start really working on our first house to get it ready for tenants as well.
The things I am most excited about for the new house!
- We found super nice original picture framed fir wood floors hiding under the carpet, it seems like it goes throughout the first floor, we have our fingers crossed that they are in great condition and the patching is minimal but won’t know until the 5 different kinds of flooring on top of it comes out.
- THE WEDDING ROOM – So one bedroom in the new house is kinda small and sad. Someone started to paint a rainbow on the wall but only got as far as the pencil outline, the floors much worse than the other rooms… some patches are literally just plywood. This made it an easy sell as a temporary wedding triage room for the next few months! After the better part of a year stashing my wedding centerpieces in the attic and favors on top of the bookshelf and my desk scattered in invitations and literally there is so much crap a wedding generates to store! I am so ready to have everything all in one place. Now I just have to decide if I live with the sad rainbow or delay the gratification of getting organized a little longer and paint the room first. #DECISIONS.
- Going to town on the marble hearth & mantle with my magic eraser! I know marble care people are probably shaking their heads like “OMG NO WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!” but I swear, on old stained marble it can work miracles, it will totally take the polish off if it happens to be polished but I find it works really well on honed surfaces… or if you want a honed look! I’ve been using it on my polished Thassos Marble coffee tables about once a month (every time people come over, they’re a dirt magnet but I love them) for ~2 years and its definitely more of a satin now.
- Swimming in our pool! As a beautiful land mermaid who grew up with a pool swimming is super fun and something I used to do a lot of until I stupidly moved away from said pool – A pool is super important! (not really, but once you get used to having one you kinda miss it and it’s one of those things thats still like a luxury so you can’t complain about not having one cause that would be like insensitive but like pools are great and you still want one … y’know?)
- A garage that makes “projects” doable. One thing we definitely lack in our current house is any kind of space for projects, and when you can’t do anything without disrupting your living space it can make it hard to be motivated to do projects, like the headboard I’ve been saying I will build us for over a year. Projects will probably have to wait until after the wedding, but it’s nice to think about doing them and in the meantime, If I find a great piece of furniture I want to refinish for our house, there is somewhere to put it until we have time for projects! (I hope that time isn’t never but something inside me has a sneaking suspicion!)
- GUEST FREAKING BEDROOMS < Note the plural!!! OK so it’s not forever, when we start having babies we will have less guest rooms but we went from zero guest bedrooms (our other two bedrooms are our gym and a construction zone at our first house) to TWO GUEST ROOMS, potentially 3 if my wedding room doesn’t become a craft room! There comes a time in a woman’s life, where she becomes an adult and ceases to be able to just sleep “wherever” and I so hit that, so now because I am so not sleeping on your couch, and would rather not have guests than offer them a sleeping arrangement I would grumble about if offered so I’m looking forward to hosting guests at the house and having full on bedrooms to offer. They can even have a separate bathroom!
- A gym where I don’t have to fold up my Gazelle after working out, where it can just live, standing up, never to scratch my leg with it’s pedal or pinch my toes again. Seriously, for a moveable exercise machine that thing is dangerous.
- The view!
- The view!
- The view!
- Did I mention the view?
Things I am the least excited for:
- Figuring this all out and getting it all done in time! We will get it all done and make it happen I know we will, but it is going to be a lot of work! Luckily we have a beach in Mexico with our name on it to relax afterwards! And we know it will all pay off in the long run!
- Saying bye to my gas stove and hello to a electric glass top. Forget storage, or the Oak Cathedral Raised Panel Cabinets this stove I am not ready for. I’m gonna spill so much food with my pots sliding everywhere but at least it will be easy to wipe up! 😉 Lets just hope I don’t crack it with all my cast iron!
- Leaving our house. Though it has it’s flaws I have grown to love our humble hose and the holes in the walls. Our bathroom may be completely gutted save sink and tub but I still think it looks pretty in the morning sun. Our view might be of a different mountain range but it still is a stunner. It’s the place we fell in love and started to build our life together and even though technically it isn’t my house, it will always be our first house and we will always love it.
As if this week wasn’t crazy enough, I will be out of town this weekend for my Bachelorette Party we are going to be spending the weekend at Brimfield Antique Flea Market in Massachusetts. Luckily Chris is going to be on Demo, ripping out the floors and the wall & peninsula between the Kitchen & Dining room & a closet in the master bath that juts into the Master Bedroom on the prime bed wall. When I get back, Monday I will pitch in where I’m needed between Chris at the New House & My Dad at our First House (I gotta come up with better names for our houses) getting things rolling.
At the new house, for now, we are just doing new carpet & paint in the master, getting the first floor floors squared away & polished, and painting so that we can move in. Then we’ll slowly plug away at the upstairs bedrooms, redoing the kitchen within the next year or two, the master bath within the next five years. And the upstairs bath before we have kids who can use potty’s, we’ll see how things go, you have a plan and then it changes! At some point we would like to attach the garage to get a mudroom and add a powder room somewhere but for now, this will be a great place for us to grow into slowly & build our life together!
Check out insta tomorrow for live reporting on the house situation, I will also be documenting some cool house stuff I am hunting for at the antique market. Will be giving some photographic updates on the First House and progress we’ve made there – where we still need to go, as well as some of our “to-do’s” at the New House! Like better house letters– and a Mailbox! (there isn’t one!).
Til Next Time!
Cheers,
Niki
