Eight years…..

 

 

Today is the anniversary of when we purchased our cottage eight years ago! This is how the house looked when we first bought it. The Ivy was gorgeous but was so invasive it was growing thru the walls and into the house….so the first thing we did was remove all of it. Eight years later we are still trying to get rid of it.

 

 

This is not a current picture….our yard looks a little sad at the moment since we have had extreme heat this summer and very little rain. Here the soffits have been wrapped in steel because we had wood boring bees. We were told the only way to get rid of the wood boring bees was to get rid of the wood. The porch has also been painted and a new roof was put on. The roof was so bad we were told the house was uninsurable unless we had a new roof put on.

The kitchen is small but cute….we thought we could work with the cabinets. However when I went to unpack my dishes and put them away the doors literally fell off the cabinets! We ended up installing cheap cabinets and then did a complete gut job two years ago……

This is how the kitchen looks today………

 

The dining room when we bought the house. Funny, I don’t remember that light……..

 

The indoor/outdoor carpet was removed only to expose the original floors that were in really bad shape that had to be recovered up. We had to pull the floor up completely between the living room and dining room to add supports. Reclaimed maple flooring salvaged from a gymnasium in Kansas was installed and refinished thru out the first floor.

 

For some reason I have no pictures of the living room except for this one. Probably because it was so hideous…….just kidding…..sort of!

 

We took the wall out and added this double doorway making the living room one big room. This small room served as a bedroom, an office, and a catch all room during the eight years we have lived here. Taking the wall out  four years ago and making it part of the living room was the best decision I ever made.

 

The guest bedroom…..we actually bought this bed with the house but eventually sold it because it was a three quarter size. It was so short that even my feet touched the end! The second floor had the same purty indoor/outdoor carpeting as the first floor. Luckily the original floors were in better shape than the first floor and we were able to refinish them and save them……

 

When we bought the house none of the bedrooms had closets. During the renovation we are currently working on closets were added to all of the bedrooms along with insulation,drywall, and new wiring.

I won’t bore you all with any more pictures since you have seen them all like a zillion times.

The eight years we have lived here have been very interesting to say the least…..I wish I could say the house is completely done but we are still working on the upstairs. We hope to have it done in the next few months though. We have done a little work on the yard but it really needs a complete overhaul. It’s always something isn’t it? Thanks for following us along on this journey……….