An update

So. Let me first say that renovating an old house is not for the faint of heart. Neither is spring in Vermont but more on that later. If you're considering buying an older home...at this point in time my advice would be...Don't. Or at least don't try to renovate it because you're always going to find something you don't want to.

I guess this is another keeping it real posts so if the last one made you sad (sorry Liz) then you might want to skip reading today. Don't worry - we'll be fine and when I think of all those affected by the tornadoes down south and all sorts of other issues I continue to count my blessings.

Anyway - I guess I'll start with this.

What the hell is that plastic doing hanging in the lovely pink/black bath you might ask? There's a story there.

Construction started today. I returned this afternoon from a quick trip to Canada to look at countertops (still weird I'm closer to Canada than VA) when our wonderful and amazingly kind builder called up to me...

Ted: Chelsea?
Me: Yes - hi! How'd it go today?
Ted: Not so good.
Me: Oh. OK.
Ted: Come down here to the kitchen. I'd like to show you something.
Me: OK. (Thinking - $*&!)

I walk through the new entrance to our kitchen.

Notice the progress they've made. Hooray!

Think - wait...where's the fridge?

He directs my attention to this wall.

Points to the dark spot and says, "This is water leaking out of the upstairs tub."

Again, I think %&*!, Matt will NOT be happy about this. To make a long and boring story short, we now have to replace the pink beauty upstairs. It's ok - it's only $$ right?

So now you're probably thinking - well you can't use your bathroom, why not move to the lake house?

That's right. It's still flooding around here. The good news? We FINALLY have sunshine this week so the water will hopefully go down at some point. The sun is wonderful, but the rains plus snow melt over the past month have caused devastating flooding in the Champlain Valley. This is the type of warning I continue to see on my Weather App on the iphone. The level has actually gone down to 102.9 now with the 2 days of sunshine we had this weekend. Hallelujah.

THE FLOOD WARNING CONTINUES FOR THE LAKE CHAMPLAIN AT ROUSES POINT. * AT 11:00 AM FRIDAY THE STAGE WAS 103.1 FEET. * FLOOD STAGE IS 100.0 FEET. * RECORD FLOODING IS OCCURRING AND RECORD FLOODING IS FORECAST. * FORECAST...LAKE CHAMPLAIN WILL CONTINUE RISING. ADDITIONAL RISES MAY BE POSSIBLE THEREAFTER. * IMPACT...AT 103.0 FEET...THERE WILL BE EXTENSIVE SEVERE SHORELINE FLOODING.

The following pictures belong to a neighbor and were taken last week out near my parent's camp. Their house is fine but so many aren't.









Matt would rather move to the lake even though we will have to take a boat across each time we want to go anywhere. I think my vote is for staying here in the construction. What would you do?

That's it for now. Fingers crossed the sun stays and the water subsides.

xoxo

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to my wonderful and amazing Mom and Mother in law!

I am so lucky to have your love and support and I am so wishing I could be with you today!





xoxoxoxo

LOVE YOU BOTH!!!!!

Progress

We have made some progress on the house. Mom and I worked in the yard and removed almost all of those damn acorns as well as the leaves. We spent the last 3 days painting the guest room (I'll post pics soon). Matt scraped the outside windowsill (painfully) and re-painted and it looks great.

The carpet is up and the wood is here!

Oh I love it. It's 4 1/4" red oak. I'll post on my decision making process at some point.

It's currently resting in the house and accommodating to the temperature/humidity. That's why it's so important to get the basement under control.

The kitchen is out!

Hooray! It took 3 guys about 5 hours to get it all out. They took EVERYTHING. Including the kitchen sink. Hehe. No kidding - they took cabinets, counters, oven, stove, and hood. Whew. Then they gave me $500. Oh happy day.

This is all that's left.

My poor Mom. We have no kitchen. She was hoping to stay here a few days and then get out to the lake. I already told you about why we can't get to the lake. We're stuck with this as our new kitchen breakfast area.

What else?

Our room is painted. I like it. We still need to hang pictures, window treatments, etc. but here is a sneak peak.

Spring is finally starting to arrive.

Whew. We're making progress. One step at a time.

House Update

Oh my. Where do I start? Sorry for the lack of update posts last week. It certainly hasn't been for lack of projects going on. My mom is here and we're working hard!

Maybe I'll start with the worst of it. I told you we've had lots of rain. Let me clarify. We had over 7 inches of rain in the month of April. That's about 5 inches over the average. We had above average snowfall this winter that melted all month. Lake Champlain has risen to 102.8 feet - flood stage is 100 feet.

Do you see the writing on the wall?

We had a huge thunderstorm and soaking rains on Tuesday night...Wednesday we woke up to this.

(This picture was actually taken after a bit of clean up.)

Yuck.

5 days later and it looks like this. Matt tossed all of the bookshelves and that carpet went to the dump right away.

The water is still pouring in.

Ew. Yes - that's mold. More on that later. Unfortunately, when we removed the built-in shelving we discovered that the basement wall bows out. Awesome. There's a possibility it's a big deal and a possibility that it isn't according to our builder (thank goodness we have him). The danger is that our foundation on that side might not be secure. He thinks he can brace it and prevent any further movement (for a price of course).

Back to the basement. We squeegee about every 2 or 3 hours and run the dehumidifier 24/7. That's about all we can do until things dry up around here. We aren't alone. Our neighbors tell us this is the first time EVER their basements have flooded. Great. Figures it'd fall a few weeks after we bought this house. I'm thankful we weren't storing much down there as we were working on the mold issue already.

We were hoping to escape to the lake house a bit this week as construction gets underway, but looks like that might not happen.

Here's the road out to the camp under about 2 feet of water.

The only way we're getting out there is by boat. I'm trying not to get discouraged. There are lots of houses in our little neighborhood that have water inside at this point and my heart goes out to those families as there's nothing they can do until the waters go down. I'm saying my prayers things aren't as bad as they seem.

I did it!

My first half marathon is finished! I ran the 13.1 miles in 1:55:19 (unofficially). I think I really ran about 1 minute faster than that :) Hooray!

It was such a fun day. Mom and Matt came down to cheer me on and a bunch of us ran....Here we are before the start.

What's that? You're wondering why I'm so pale? Remember that we live in Vermont and barely saw the sun for the month of April. More on the rain in a later post - ug.

And we're off!

The race was in Middlebury, which is such a beautiful place! About half of it was along dirt roads and the other half through the little town of Middlebury and Middlebury College.

Here we are right after the halfway point.

The end is in sight! I felt great for most of the race - I'm sure I'll be sore tomorrow....

So proud :)

We spotted some other neighbors/friends running as well....

An after picture.

We had a delicious pizza lunch with our cheering squads afterwards (I'm so sad I don't have a picture) and came home to enjoy the sunshine and 70 degree temps with the dogs.

Aren't they pretty?

What a happy day! I'll be back soon with a house update!

Kitchen Update

Hooray hooray! We ordered our kitchen cabinets last week!!! Here is a rough picture of what it's going to look like when standing in the dining room, with the exception of a few changes made last minute (the counter will cover the cabinetry on the peninsula too).

Ahhhh space. It's going to feel so good when that wall comes down.

Other than ordering the cabinets, we made our first kitchen purchases.

The hood - we had to have the dimensions so we could order the right sized cabinetry above it. I love it.

This clock - I bought it at IKEA (more on my trip to IKEA later).

The next step is to finalize the countertops.

I'm in love with soapstone. Who wouldn't love it? Just LOOK! (Found here.)

I'm also in love with butcher block countertops from IKEA. Check these out. I'd like to use those on the 2 separate countertops and soapstone around the sink, etc.

I also have to consider lighting. Who knew that so many decisions would need to be made?

I love the industrial look of these pendants from Barn Light Electric. I love almost anything from Barn Light Electric!

Or perhaps something like this? Too bad Matt thinks they look like restaurant heat lamps. Oh well.

Good thing we both love these pendants from Pottery Barn.....Check them out here.

I also love that chalkboard wall.

We have many decisions down, many more to go. I'm taking it one step at a time.