Yep! We're officially crazy...

Exactly one year ago, we were enjoying (and blogging) about our wonderful trip in California.  Here we are a year later, and I decided to get back to the blog.  Only this time, I've decided to document our progress on our, at this point, potential new house. 

In 2009, Graham appraised this house on Burnett Drive.  He told me all about the house and we even drove by so that I could look at it.  It was, and clearly still is, in horrible shape, but has loads of potential.  We talked about how great it would be if we could buy the house and fix it up.  But, in 2009 we were in no position to buy a house and didn't really even want to.  Eventually, Stanley (Graham's boss), bought the house and planned to renovate and live there.  I was so jealous!  I remember telling Graham that "we wanted to do that! It can't have been a bad idea if Stanley is doing it!" 

We didn't think about the house again until recently when our house went under contract for the 2nd time and the house that we thought we wanted was sold.  Stanley decided to put Burnett on the market about 6 months ago and since we now needed a place to live, Graham and I decided to look at it.  I think Graham initially showed it to me hoping that I would get it off my mind.  Unfortanately, I only saw potential....and here we are.  Oops!  We are set to close on the Rutledge house and Burnett house on July 29th.  I am very cautiously excited and praying that all goes smoothly.  Here are some pictures of the outside of the house...

Front view of the house. 

I think we'll keep the yellow front door!  Haha

Side view of the house and front yard.  Lots of landscaping to be done!

Carport, patio, and part of back of house.

Another rear view of the house with the basement.

Part of Back Yard

Yes, there is tons of work to do.  And those are only exterior pictures!  I will have to get to all of that later.  In the mean time, we are trying to fix up the basement at Burnett so that we will have somewhere to live when we leave Rutledge on the 29th.  Our current plan is to fix the basement over the next 2 weeks and live there while we renovate the main level.  The basement is about 800 square feet and is plumbed for a full bath.

Day 1: We forgot to take a picture before we got started removing the tiles.  That's me in the background wearing a mask. Those masks are no joke and I am not a fan.  Tile removal is zero fun.  We thought they would just scoop right up, but that's not exactly how it went...

The tiles that are up came up very easily.  The others...not so much.

Steps leading from main floor to basement.  We will def be removing the carpet.

Bar area in basement. 

Basement Bathroom...Like I said, it is plumbed for a full bath.

 Day 1: We had very lofty goals for our first day of work.  Originally, we thought we would be able to remove all of the tile and get it in trashbags.  We were sorely mistaken.  We got about 1/2 finished and instead of the tiles just scooping right up like we thought they would, more than we would have liked were still very glued down.  Luckily, Pam, Gil, and Page ended up bringing us some extra tools that we needed which helped us do as much as we did.  Page even did some tile removal!  Russell, Mom, and Nick also stopped by to check the progress.  All of the Broomes tried their hands at tile removal but decided to leave us to it.

Day 2: I'm so glad that we started working like crazy people on the hottest day of the year so far.  Today, we met with a sheet rock guy to see about a quote for finishing the bathroom.  When Graham got off work, we headed back over to Burnett to finish the tiles.  Before we got back to work, I went to Lowes and got us a floor scraper.  Thank God for that thing!  It was super hard work, but having the right tool really made the difference.  Graham did most of the scraping and I swept the broken up tiles into neat little piles.  We didn't get all of the trash picked up, but all of the tiles are out! 

Beginning of Day 2

Graham was so thrilled with the new floor scraping tool, he did some work while we met with the sheet rock man on his lunch break.

I did not love that scraper thing.  Graham was much more effective! 

I was a much better sweeper than scraper!  This is the end of day 2 and all of the tiles are up!

Starting to remove the carpet...another project that's not as easy as we thought.

Hot and tired at the end of day 2.

Now that the floor is out, we are planning to have the concrete slab sealed and finished.  We originally thought about carpet, but want it to be more of a rugged hang out area.  Sheet rock needs to be put up in the bathroom and a vanity, toliet and fixtures have to be installed.  We are going to paint the sheet rocked walls in the basement but possibly leave the brick exposed, depending on what it looks like after we add the water proofing stuff.  Hopefully it will be ready for ust to move in in two weeks!