Yesterday marked the start of our 29th week working on the house.  29 weeks!?!  That seems like forever.  If our house was a bun in the oven, we would have just hit the final trimester and be in the home stretch.  I would be having symptoms like heartburn, fatigue, shortness of breath, trouble sleeping, and anxiety.  Wait, maybe this is a baby!  (Ha!! Just kidding!)  Let’s just hope our house doesn’t take 40 weeks!!!

The changes from the five-month round up are pretty astonishing.  Here’s where we were:

1. Scrape and prep interior walls, trim, and ceilings
2. Prime and paint interior walls, trim, and ceilings – every room is primed, and 3 4 rooms are painted!
3. Remove all interior carpet
4. Finish electrical, including adding several outlets and wiring each room for ceiling fans – almost finished!
5. Repair all porches
6. Patch and paint the metal roof
7. Rework hidden metal gutter system and repair/replace exterior woodwork – this is a long process, but it’s moving along!
8. Install new heating and air system
9. Repair mortar in the basement, and repoint front-of-house mortar
   
10. Finish upstairs back bathroom (tile floor, plumbing for a shower, new sink)
11. Update downstairs bathroom (paint cabinets, new mirror, new light fixture)
12. Repair garage (it is currently sturdy, but leaning)
13. More landscaping

Here are the big ones…

We now have a new, fully functioning heating and air system!  And in case you were wondering, yes, our gas pack unit is larger than a smart car.  NBD.

We decided to go with the large gas pack for the downstairs so that we could get the gas furnace out from under the house (and now I can sleep easier at night).  We also have a new heat pump to heat and cool the upstairs.  We had a couple of VERY cold nights here in eastern NC last week, so we got to test it out.  We were very pleasantly surprised that the house was quickly and efficiently heated! YAY!!

We also had our basement and crawl space cleaned out, and all new duct work installed.  Here’s a peek…more on that later.

Next, all of the carpet and all of the vinyl has been removed! Wood floors everywhere!

Obviously some of them still need a lot of work, but it’s getting there.

We have removed all of the knob and tube wiring that is accessible (i.e. all wiring that is not inside the walls) and have updated where we can.  Side note: we did get our insurance worked out, but you can read my rant here.

Now, before everyone goes commenting on how our house will explode because we have knob and tube wiring, let me explain.  When most people think of knob and tube, they are thinking of aluminum knob and tube.  And they’re right…this stuff is dangerous.  Because aluminum corrodes fairly easily over a period of time, you are basically left with hot electricity just running amuck.  However, we have copper knob and tube, and copper virtually never corrodes, especially when protected.  The copper knob and tube in our walls has not been exposed to any elements, and is therefore intact.  We have had it approved by both our electrician and city inspector.  We decided to go ahead and replace the accessible knob and tube (like the stuff under the house or in the attic) because much of it has been exposed to the elements, like water, dirt, dust, etc.  Make sense?

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Charles and I picked out all of our lighting for the house, and most of it has come in.  We took what was available over to the house so it’s ready to be installed.  I can’t wait to share with you what we chose!!!

The guest bathrooms have been roughed in and we are getting ready to install our floors, tile, and fixtures. You can get a better idea of what we have in mind here.  We also have started the work on the master closet.  We closed up two doors and knocked down a couple of walls, and it’s really coming together.  Here are our plans for the master bathroom and the closet.

So there you have it.  We’ve made some pretty major progress in the last few weeks.  Charles and I are both lucky enough to work for the state, so we have the entire week of Christmas off!  We are hoping to get in the house and work on the floors during that time so we can hopefully move in January.

Be sure to follow me on Instagram so you can see what’s happening along the way!