Not Your Typical Wedding Planning Have you ever heard the joke about going to a fight and a hockey game breaking out?  That is what Jillian and Mike’s wedding reminds me of.  We were in the middle of saving the house and cutting back and burning limbs one minute, and the next, we are planning a wedding. Jillian and Mike came to help us with the house this weekend.  We spent the day using the chainsaws.  And then, Jillian and Mike shocked the socks off of us at dinner.  They announced that they wanted to get married…in two weeks.  And they wanted the wedding near our place.  And they thought…

Things I Hate for $1000 If you have read anything on this blog, you can probably guess that my number one most hated thing when we started was having to alter the house.  I wanted to keep it original.  Period.  The first thing we needed to do was shore up the foundation and get the house out of the dirt.  That made sense.  Of course, the first thing we had to do was (insert drum roll here) tear down the beautiful (to me) chimneys.  Dang it. Looking at the photo above, and also now that I am in a more rational state of mind, I can see clearly that the…

We decided that stained concrete was the way we wanted to go with flooring in the new addition.  Stained concrete is inexpensive and it is durable..  Unfortunately, ours has big problems and I am not sure how to fix it. It Started Off So Well… Jerry and I went to Dallas to a concrete staining store.  They had everything we would ever need to be successful.  We looked at all the products, colors, and tools.  We were ready to commit that day to purchasing what we needed.  I had a clear idea of what I wanted the floor to look like.  Neither of us wanted a solid color.  We liked…

When the framers started to work on the second story, it was obvious that we needed to install the stairs in order to make their lives easier.  It did look strange to be building stairs to seemingly nowhere, but the decision was made that it was time for them to be installed and install them we did. The Design What would the stairs look like?  I really wanted to get the old staircase out of my great grandparents’ house.  It was the first banister I ever slid down (with the permission of my great aunt Margaret Jo and in spite of the disapproving look from my grandmother).  That was an…

Wonkie Mystery House When we bought the house, there was so much trash inside of it.  You couldn’t really tell much about the structure of the house.  We didn’t know if it was leaning, sinking, collapsing and so on until we removed the trash and sheet rock and could actually see the house.  What we found was a wavy floor, with high spots and low spots.  We could see ceilings that drooped in the center and doors that would no longer close.  My motto was “only do what we must…keep it original!”.  Jerry and I first addressed the foundation issues so that we could level and raise the house. The…

  Old Construction Techniques The house was build in 1846 and certainly has outlasted any expectations for modern construction.  The house was soundly built, but time had illustrated that there were some significant issues with the structure.  For example, the front of the house was moving away from the main part of the structure.  You can read about that little fiasco on my blog post entitled Structural Issues in Our Dog Trot House.  In this post, I’ll tell you a bit about the floor joists and sill logs and how we kept the house as original as possible. The Floor Joists The original floor joists and sill logs fit neatly…

Clearing Around the Well Benny Melton was going to come and clear the land so the foundation guys could get busy.  The old well is still in the back yard, but the back yard was super overgrown.  It was bad when we bought it and by this time we have been in the house working for five months.  Yard work is hardly a thing for us to concern ourselves with. In the picture above, you can clearly see the well at the bottom.  You can also notice that the season is winter by Jerry’s long-sleeve shirt and by the lack of green growth.  By the time we were ready for…

  The Art of Addition Common thought among the experts in home renovation is that if you are putting an addition onto an old house, you need to make the addition appear that it had always been there.  Some old houses are boxy and asymmetrical by nature. An addition didn’t significantly alter the look of the house.  Houses with non-rectangular floor plan have room for an addition to be added without the house being changed into something it wasn’t.  Our plan for an addition need to add space while maintaining the original house. Ours was a very simple dog trot cabin.  Period.  They only really have one variety.  Pens divided…

Oh! The Irony! So the cups above are two of my favorite coffee cups and I drink out of one of them most mornings.  The irony of the messages on these cups isn’t lost on me.  In fact, the irony is the primary reason why I love them.  What on earth does a Thoreau quotation about confidence, my perception of perseverance have to do with home renovation?  Please continue, dear reader. I am a Teacher I taught was a teacher for several years. Most of my teaching career, I was a gifted and talented program’s teacher and I adored my job.  We did a unit entitled “Simplicity” and in it,…