Falling back...

So, Peaches readers (if there are any left). I'm going to pretend it hasn't been three months since we've posted on this blog. We had a TON of work done on the house over the summer, but did little ourselves. Joe started his business in July, and--in August--I added a day to my workweek to start providing PT services for Lathrop School District (in part to cover the cash flow deficit from the extensive house restoration and business start-up costs). Frankly, we're short on time--both to work on the house and keep up with the blog--and we've run out of money. So there won't be any major restoration projects on the table until the piggy bank fills back up (hopefully this spring, although Joe is less optimistic). In the meantime, I hope to keep up with the blog, but I will warn you in advance that it may be less about working on the house and more about living our life here in a small town and surviving our first full winter in our old home.

Which brings me to the real purpose of this post. The changing seasons. This afternoon, I walked outside and realized I couldn't see our yard anymore (see above pic). Before this place, I've never had a yard, let alone a tree. Who knew they dropped this many leaves in the fall? I feel like there's no purpose to raking leaves--just let nature take its course and let them decompose in the yard. Joe says it is what good neighbors do to keep leaves from blowing around in other people's yards. I don't know if Joe's right or not, but I do know that we don't own a rake. And I haven't noticed him rushing off to the hardware store to buy one. Do I really need to rake these leaves? Maybe it's another one of those jobs best hired out to a neighborhood kid. He'll just have to bring his own rake.

A tiny do-it-yourselfer

 

 

Before and After

Last Thursday, we hosted a house party for Kay Barnes at our home (yes, Joe and I are raging Democrats, but you can be assured that this is a bipartisan blog and we won't hold anything against our Republican readers). The nice thing about it--other than raising over $1000 to get dirty-dog Sam Graves out of office--was the compliments we got on the house, many from people who were familiar with the house and the shape it was in before we bought it. As I was telling Mayor Barnes that we used to live in a new loft in downtown Kansas City (which is where, incidentally, we saw firsthand what an excellent leader she is--now I promise I'm done with the political rants), one of our friends laughed about how funny it was that we decided to move from a 1000 square foot loft that required basically no DIY skills (or home maintenance for that matter) to a 2500 square foot DIY challenge. It made me laugh, too, but also made me think about how far we've come since we somewhat naively purchased this place. I think it's easy to get so wrapped up in the to-do lists that we forget how much we've done and how much we've grown and learned here. And since July 31 was our six-month anniversary of living in the house--and because I haven't posted for so long (sorry!) that I am backed up with pictures to share--I thought it would be fitting to create a sort of before and after "gallery" of what we've done so far! And as tempting as it might be to pepper the photos with captions about what still needs to be done, I won't. Let's just enjoy...

Our Home: A Before and After Web Album

New Job, or, Why We Didn't Post for Two Months

I figure I owe the loyal Peaches readers out there an explanation as to why the site went dormant for the better part of two months. On June 30, I quit my job as a fancy-pants lawyer for a large Kansas City law firm, and on July 7 opened my own law practice in Lathrop. So from about May 1 until July 1, pretty much all of our free time was spent getting all the ducks in a row to have the practice ready for business when the doors opened.

I am definitely excited about this new chapter in our lives. Working in the community in which I live is an important thing to me, and I hope that my new business can contribute to the Lathrop community. If any of you in Metro KC or Northwest Missouri have legal needs, well...you know what to do.

Return of Peaches

And we're back! It's been a while since we've posted, so we'll try to break up the progress into digestible "chunks" so the blog posts don't get too overwhelming.

The last update concerned the back room, which had just been returned to its former glory as a porch from its previous existence as a laundry room. Here is the porch, now that it has been painted and furnished:


Note the fresh coat of white paint, the painted gray floor, and the gray trim. We also found quite a score with the furniture -- $200 for the set at World Market. Needless to say, we absolutely love the back porch, especially Kendra. She would hang out there 24/7 if we put a bed out there.

While the progress on the back porch has been pretty cool, by far the most work has been on the back yard. The plan was to have a new patio poured, and we were leaning towards a stenciled concrete to make it look like a cobblestone patio. But before the patio could be poured, there would have to be a significant amount of old concrete to be broken up. There was also a large concrete block capping something, likely either a well or a cistern, and that would have to be addressed, too.

Well, nothing is ever easy when it comes to home improvement, and it took us f-o-r-e-v-e-r to coordinate with the concrete guy. Towards the end, we were getting the distinct impression that he was jerking us around. We didn't really appreciate that, so we cut him loose. While this threatened to throw us off our arbitrary schedule, we were prepared with a plan B -- we had a quote for a paver patio from our handyman extraordinaire, Art.

The first step was to break up the old concrete, and use the debris to fill the well/cistern/whatever. There is not, unfortunately, a clear photo of the back yard "before," but this photo gives you a flavor of what we (and by "we" I mean "Art") were dealing with.

In the picture, you can see the edge of the concrete cap on the right. When our contractor cut into it, it turned out that it was an old well lying underneath that concrete. It was one of those old stone wells (still spring-fed) that looked like it belonged in Buffalo Bill's basement:

It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.

With the well filled, the patio was laid in no time. We used a basic 6"x9" concrete "stone" paver laid in a sand base. This shot from our back stairs shows off the patio fairly well.

And for the parting shot, a quick contrast of the "before" and "after" on the back elevation on our home. First, the "before:"
And then the "after:"

I Stand Corrected...

Joe did post pictures of our old porch in "Let's Take it Outside" on 4/29. Sorry for the redundancy, faithful Peaches readers.

Back Porch Transformation

We got a new camera and the back porch is done! Well, make that almost-done--we still need to paint, but our screened porch is fully enjoyable. In fact, I'm sitting on the porch listening to the birds sing and indulging in a cool beverage right now...

A couple of weeks ago, Joe posted about our porch demolition, but he really didn't show you where we started, so here it goes:

Pretty crap-tacular, huh?

The room pictured above was originally a back porch. We know that because of the original exterior wood siding and diamond-shaped exterior window (see top picture). Our neighbor tells us that the owners before the owners before us (in other words, two owners ago) decided to enclose the porch to make it a laundry room. They put in some old cabinets, put up some cheap paneling, and created the room pictured above. When we first looked at the house, the previous owners were using it as a laundry room/mud room. They actually kept it very clean and decent-looking. Then we moved in. We knew we wanted to ditch the laundry room idea and make it a porch again, so we created a laundry room upstairs. Then the back porch became DIY-central--a dumping ground for tools, drop cloths, half-used paint cans, old blinds, and any other junk we managed to accumulate. Because our front porch isn't really usable (stay tuned for updates on MAJOR front porch construction later this summer) and because the driveway is in the back of the house, this "room" was the main entrance for us and our guests. It was dirty, smelly, dingy, and ugly. To tell you the truth, it really killed the "first impression" factor when we showed the house to our family and friends. I became disgusted with this space and--with the improving weather--was hell-bent on creating an outdoor space for our family to relax (that's why I moved to the country, right?) So I nagged Joe until he cleaned off the porch and I called our ever-so-handy-man Art. The transformation was underway.

First, Art tore off the old, rickety stairs, removed the exterior window, and ripped off the exterior siding and interior paneling.

Good-bye crappy paneling and ugly window...

Then he built us a much-needed new set of set of stairs.

Momma was so happy!

Next, he got busy replacing all the rotten floor boards (which was nearly all of them), cutting and capping the old washer/dryer fixtures, boxing in the exposed pipes and wires, and patching/repairing holes and imperfections. During the process, he uncovered some old Kansas City and St. Louis newspapers, dated around 1905 (!) that had been used to insulate our home when it was built.

If you click on the pic above you can tell the brown spot is actually a 100-year-old piece of newspaper.

Once all the tear-down and repair was done, it was time to build. Art built a low wall and inserted recessed panels made out of the cedar siding he we found on the exterior of the house, under the vinyl. He made sure the wall was just low enough so Max could see outside.

Finally, he removed the old window and door that led from the house to the porch and installed French doors. The last step was to insert the screens, leaving our porch sunny and breezy, yet blissfully inaccessible to bugs, birds, and UV rays.

And here, my friends, is the finished* product...

Ooh! Aah!

...and some before and after shots.



The next step in our outdoor living makeover is to have a patio poured by the northwest corner of the house (to the left of the stairs in the exterior house pic above). We're going with decorative, stenciled concrete that is supposed to look like cobblestone. Check back for updates and please feel free to leave any comments you may have on the pros and cons of decorative concrete. We don't know anyone else who has a stenciled concrete patio, so we'd love to hear from someone who has something similar.

*We're playing it a little fast and loose with the word "finished." Art still needs to come back and install a ceiling fan and paint the whole thing. But we've pretty much spent the whole weekend enjoying the space (working, playing, enjoying a variety of beverages), so it's finished enough.

If I Had a Camera...

So Joe managed to get a few pics of our porch "before" and "shortly after" construction began. Over the weekend, I took a few more recent pics with big plans for posts. But now, I can't find the camera. It's just as well since our camera is on its last leg anyway and a new one is on order. So now, in the absence of the pics I took, I give you a list of pictures I would post on the blog if I had the camera...

1. A picture of me driving my father-in-law's Ford F-3 million. Okay, I don't think Ford actually makes a F-3 million model, but the point is that it is a big, BIG truck. I could barely see over the steering wheel. And there was something funny about seeing my Kate Spade bag laying on the dusty floor, right next to his gun (very city-meets-country). But it was city clean-up day in Lathrop, which means there was a free drop-off for all of our construction waste. So I (literally) jumped up in the cab and drove a load uptown.
2. A picture of the progress on Max's room. As you may remember, Max's room was our project for April. Somehow, April passed us by and we didn't get it finished. We did, however, get it cleaned up and painted. Now, all we have to do is move the furniture in and put on the finishing touches. But because Max is pretty comfortable in his room as it is, this just honestly isn't high on our priority list.
3. A picture of the entry. No, we haven't tackled the green trim problem, but we did finally get it painted.
   
4. A picture of some of the treasures left in the garage by the previous homeowners: the home-made muscle-man collage, the old cans of protein powder, the cow skull, and the collection of energy drink cans. Sadly, we parted with all these priceless artifacts on the aforementioned Lathrop clean-up day.
5. A picture of our newly installed French doors (they are beautiful) and our back porch (which is less than beautiful right now). We have new back steps, which are nice. The porch walls are pretty much completely ripped out and half of the floor is missing, which is not so nice. But we're told that this project will be done (or at least mostly done) by the end of the week. I'm skeptical. We'll see.
6. A gratuitous Max pic (GMP). As he grows, parenting is getting more and more challenging. But he is happy and spunky and smart and I'm proud to be his Momma. And he reminds us every day (by demanding to go "outside" and play with his "ball bat" or pointing across the street and asking for "Emma," his new friend and neighbor) why this is such a good place for our family.
   

Porch Demolition

In the last post here at Peaches, we discussed the upcoming work on the back porch. Well, work is underway, and things are coming along nicely. Here are some pics of the demo work that was done earlier this week. First, the exterior:

I don't know what you can see from the photo, but underneath the vinyl siding is a vertical wood paneling-type of siding. It's isn't terribly unattractive, but that doesn't really matter, because it's coming off anyway. Also note that the rickety old steps are completely destroyed.

Now, pictures of the inside:

Not a whole lot to look at here; everything is just about what we expected. After we removed flimsy wood paneling (or, rather, after our contractor removed the flimsy wood paneling) the remnants of the original porch were revealed. you can see one of the old porch posts, painted white, in the photo above. Unfortunately, there aren't enough of the old posts left, so we are going to have to replace all of them for the "new" porch.

Quite a bit of time has elapsed since we took these photos, so I must confess that this is NOT what the porch currently looks like (sorry, it takes too much effort to try to update this blog daily!). So, faithful readers, you will have to remain patient while we get the newer photos uploaded. Work continues this week, so hopefully we can do a better job of updating the blog as the porch progresses.

Let's Take It Outside

So far, all the work to the house has been on the interior. Now that winter finally seems to be over, we decided it was way past time to address the exterior of the house.

We've got a lot of problems. We've documented the problems with the front porch, and it is near the top of the exterior to-do list. We have been assured that it isn't a structural threat to the house, but it is unusable in its current condition. Next, there is no outdoor entertaining space. We've decided to put in a patio instead of a deck, as it fits in better with the home's historical context. And, between the dog and Max, we really need to fence in the back yard. Add in the need for a complete landscaping overhaul and our (eventual) desire to remove the vinyl siding and restore the original clapboard siding, and out exterior to-do list is a bit overwhelming.

First up, however, is to address the back porch. Right now, it is enclosed and has been turned into a laundry room. When we moved in, we moved the washing machine and dryer upstairs, so the back porch doesn't serve much of a purpose. We've decided we want to turn it back into a screened-in porch, so that it serves a bit of an outdoor/entertaining purpose. We are very excited to get this going, as we think it will change the entire complexion of the homes exterior from the back elevation.

Here are the "before" pictures. First up, this is the back of the house:


The lower portion of the house on the right is what used to be (and what will once again be) the back porch. The taller portion on the right is an addition to the kitchen. As you can see, the entire exterior is covered in vinyl siding. We have no idea what we will find underneath that siding, especially on the enclosed porch. And, obviously, those rickety old steps must be replaced.

Next up, here's a picture from the inside of the house:


This door leads to the enclosed back porch. Right now, it is not an exterior-grade door. As part of the porch work, we are going to remove the door and window, and put in a french door. Our contractor says he can re-use the old trim for the french door, so it should retain its "original" look.

And here are pictures of the inside of the back porch:



As you can tell, it's not very attractive in there. You can see the old wood siding (what we hope we will find under the vinyl siding) and the remnants of the washer and dryer hook-ups. The exterior wall is covered in flimsy wood-paneling, with some kind of backer board underneath it. Hopefully the old porch posts will still be underneath there, and in salvageable condition. There is also (in the top picture) exposed plumbing and wiring that goes up to the second floor. Obviously, that stuff will have to be enclosed.

And that's the back porch in a nutshell. I will post updates as construction progresses.