Coming Together

I am very happy to report that after three months of hard work and money and time, we are finally wrapping up Project Northlake.  This week we have new carpet and flooring going in, some final coats of paint in the pantry and utility rooms and the chimney guy will be out to do some things outside, but other than that, the house is pretty much complete.  Here are a few things that have kept us busy in the last few weeks....

Had to replace an entire half of the roof due to leakage and just an all around shotty roofing job that was done 15 years ago.  The roofers had a beautiful two days of sunshine to work and get it done...



   But, they didn't get it done and ended up finishing the job in the pouring down rain....

Jay has spent every waking hour of his weekends over at the house working on anything he is able to do.  One weekend he insulated all the unfinished spaces throughout the house.  In addition to the attic, there are these "cubby holes" along both sides of the upstairs that he worked on.  Not only is it now better insulated, but it opens up a lot more storage space for the new tenants...

  

There is a small room off of my old bedroom that I used to use as my "music room".  Jay insulated that and will be putting up drywall to seal it off, which will then make it a useable space for the tenants....

Jay also started pulling up the old carpet and that was NOT a pleasant experience.  My dad had several pets throughout the years and the flooring underneath shows how un-house broken they were.  It is really a shame we couldn't preserve these beautiful wood floors, but I'm just glad we are able to get that nasty old carpet out of there to replace with new....

This downstairs bedroom seems to be hit the hardest, but we haven't pulled up the living room carpet yet.  Oy...



Jeff has of course been working hard downstairs and here are a few pics of the living room with the new half wall at the stairs, sans new carpet.  A "before" shot...

And an un-finished after....



Jeff has also been working on the kitchen.  It is an amazing transformation and we are very happy with it.  Here again is the "before" shots...

And the un-finished after...

It is amazing what just changing the color of paint can do to a room.  We chose an off-white color for the entire house, a little more white than I wanted, but clean and still better than the rainbow of colors that were on the walls originally.  It has really opened up the rooms and invited light in. 

So as you can see, there's still some work to be done, but at this point, it is going pretty fast and it will be ready by March 1.  We already have a prospective renter and the stress level has gone waaaaayyyy down.  It really is going to be hard to turn this place over to strangers, but we think the new tenants will really make this house a home, which is all that we can hope for.  Stay tuned for the grand finale....