renovations Begin

The renovations begin! It took a little while but the cleaning and
getting stuff cleared out phase is complete. We had a couple runs to
the dump, a garage sale, and some ‘charitable’ donation action.
Although I believe they were the charitable ones for taking the stuff,
not us for giving it. All the appliance are living in the garage now,
and will most likely be sold/given away in the new future. The house is
clear enough to start working.

The way I figure it, there are 3 areas for this year’s renovations
(places to concentrate to make the house livable by winter) 1- the
upstairs bedrooms – two get remodeled, one gets turned into a
bathroom.
2- The downstairs living area (living room, dining room, tea-room).
These are pretty easy fixes and mostly just need a litte plaster and
paint work (I hope). 3- Kitchen and bathroom. Big renovations for the
kitchen and downstairs bathroom, knocking out a wall, running plumbing
and electric, I haven’t had a chance to design it all.

I expect to have three bad surprises during this first process; things
I didn’t foresee and will take extra time and money to sort out. I
have
already discovered the first, failing brick in one of the chimneys.
What I thought was failing plaster turned out to be cracked and
shifting brick. The chimney has a metal sleeve inside so the bad brick
isn’t a fire hazard, but it looks bad and I wouldn’t want to
plaster it
(too rough). So after a bunch of calls a mason finally called back and
will replace the bad brickwork.