Taylor’s Blog

So Sheila is in Indiana now, I have no job, and about 1/2 as much stuff in the
house.. I am getting tired of the unfinished house.. The lack of dishwasher, the walls that need repair, the unfinished floors, the draftiness of the
windows, etc.. So I have finally gotten back off my ass and started back working on the house.. The main project is to finish the Kitchen and Dining
Room.. I am going to do the house in thirds.. First the Kitchen/Dining Room, then the hallways, bedrooms and bathroom, then the massive front room.. I
have sorta ruled out an addition at this point.. Mainly cause its a huge financial thing where as restoring and updating all this other stuff can be done
in steps..

So I have finally admitted to myself that I will never ever finish my walls.. I started dry walling the doorway I moved about 8 months
ago. [[iframe]]d it out about 6 months before that..

So first it looked like this for the first 6 months:

Then for the last 8 months its looked like
this:

I found a drywall and plaster guy who is going to
cleanup the mess that I started and will not finish.. One thing as I get deeper into this process is there are some things I will do that are worth my
time and effort, and others that I will not.. Wall repair is now up there with refinishing floors that I will leave to professionals.. Electrical and
plumbing for the most part I still am glad to do, the exception being running a new water feed to the house cause I don’t have a trencher.. So I am going
to get the walls in the house all skim-coated and smooth again, and all the ceilings drywalled and nice and smooth.. No more cracks.. No more vomit
colored off-white old lady color walls.. The best part is it costs far less than I thought.. For some reason I think plaster and I think “oh that has to
be expensive”..

Along with the walls though I needed to get doors for the now moved doorways.. I went downtown to this awesome place called
Rhyne’s Corner Cupboard that has all sorta of antiques and lots and lots of architectural salvage stuff.. Both Sheila and I had totally forgotten about
it as a place to find hardware for the house, until the week she moved and went there to get a new bedframe.. When I got back from Indiana I went there
and I found some really awesome french doors that are from the same era as the house.. They are being sent off to have all the paint stripped and I’ll
get them back in 2-3 weeks.. I asked them about sending other things from my house to be stripped; the guy who does their stripping is glad to do other
stuff so I took them my back door, and sashes from 6 of my windows, and a whole bunch of trim..

The only bad thing is now my backdoor is a piece
of plywood and my windows are just little crappy storm windows..

This means the only paint that I need to strip
myself is just the inside of the window frames, which I can easily do. The window sashes I am going to have re-glazed and stained when i get them back..
I am going to caulk up all the huge gaps in the weight pockets of the windows and that should eliminate most of the draftiness from the windows.. I never
realized how big the gaps are but in all the windows i have fully taken apart there is a 1/4″ gap around all of them pretty much.. This will also mean
that getting the house painted should be far less since the windows will not be involved.. Basically I am going to end up restoring all my original
windows like the pros do for about $100 a window.. That’s so much cheaper than replacing them with horrible vinyl ones, reduces waste, and also is
historically accurate..

So i still am in the planing stages of everything.. I still need to get a few more cabinets for the kitchen.. I found the
manufacturer of my current ones online and am waiting on a quote to get a few more base cabinets made up that match so i can reuse the cabinets instead of
replacing all of them.. I still need to figure out the flooring situation for the kitchen (is the hidden hardwood ok to refinish or do i need to replace
it?).. I need to go appliance shopping for a fridge, oven, and dishwasher.. I have had very little luck finding the trim for my house.. I might end up
ordering it from a place in Charlotte I know does old house mouldings with a pretty short lead time.. I have some electrical and plumbing work to do
before hand as well.. I also need figure out what sorta countertops I want as well..

Needless to say there is a lot to figure out before I rip
apart the kitchen.. I’ll be blogging more about this as I get deeper into the project.. I am putting the 2 classes I have taken on project management to
organize this remodel, so hopefully I can keep it on schedule and organized.. Yes I really do have pert charts and graphs, and I know what my critical
path items are for staying on schedule.. Maybe this MBA was worth something..