Getting Down to Business

With another trip to Vermont only a few days away, we are hoping to get all caught up on this blog before it is time to post even more photos and discuss our newest adventures, and adventures they shall be! We will be insulating the first of many rooms this weekend. This involves a few choice dress-up items, including a hazmat suit, gasmask and goggles. The end result promises to be priceless, and I can't wait to suit up and reach my fashion pinnacle.

In the meantime, let's look at weeks three and four of renovations. My parents, Susan and Artie, came up to the house for the first time and got right down to business! We took our first steps into actual room renovation in the upstairs bedroom at the top of the stairs. Tony's mother was hoping to re-do this room first, as it somehow seems to be the warmest room in the house. We achieved some victories in that department, including the fixing of two windows. Up until that day, we had not been able to open any windows in the house, but we discovered by removing the trim, we could easily remove the windows, sand them down and ... Voila! The windows would slide up and down. It was a mini-victory for all. We also replaced a broken pane of glass, and scraped paint off of the doors and trim, but unfortunately that is about all we made in terms of progress up there. Between Mrs. Dallaryan and my father, we did manage to remove all of the wallpaper, only to discover that the plaster below was too cracked and, even worse, no longer connected to the lathe behind it. As we expected, all of the walls, not just the exterior walls, will need to come down and be replaced. Hello, extra work, good to make your acquaintance.

When you push, the wall pushes back!

We did make significant progress in other parts of the house. Tony was able to totally demo the upstairs "bathroom," and Mairim and my mother got down to the business of hanging construction lights. The electric company had come and installed the meters the week before, so after wiring the construction lights in, we had light in the evenings!!! This was a huge morale booster, and now allowed us to run space heaters and gave us the ability to work into the night. We no longer operated on the sun's winter schedule.

Click here to see light return to the Cheney Farmhouse for the first time in 30 years!

These two weekends were a good reminder that a lot of effort can sometimes result in only minimal visible progress. I believe this is true of every serious renovation. Our first weekends of pure cleaning made the house look significantly better, but to really get this house into fantastic shape, we'll have to make things look a lot worse first!

Bring on the demo.

- Melissa