After a weekend away to celebrate a lovely wedding and have a Notre Dame roomie reunion, the outside of our house is transformed! The paint had been scraped and the lower blue was started when I left early last Thursday morning, and today I was very happy to see how things are coming along. The shudders have yet to go up--they'll be white to match the trim--and we'll soon have "golden gate" accents. Overall, though, the external paint is well on its way.

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before/During

After

When I stopped by after work today to check out progress, another neighbor came up to introduce himself. So nice! When I stopped by on the way to work this morning to look at things (our new house is on the way to my office and our current house so I get lots of sneak peaks), I got an update from our painter, and he expects to be finished up on Wednesday.

This afternoon I also got an update on the floors, and they should be ready to go on Thursday--a day or two earlier than we expected. Loren and I decided to go with a high quality Swiss product and a four-coat system, which takes several days to go on, after the sanding is done. I've been very happy with the service we've received from Aaron Hubbard with Father & Sons...let me know if you're looking for someone very professional with a great amount of knowledge if you're hoping to refinish floors soon in the AA area. 

The excitement of today's Friday afternoon involved learning about our boiler--what more could someone want? Really? Well...the obvious answer is, of course, two boilers! Our lovely home has two boilers ('87 and '93) because when it was a duplex, the first and second floor each had a separate thermostat...and its very own boiler.





Loren and I are led to believe that a surprising number of buildings in Ann Arbor have steam heat systems--most likely campus represents a sizeable chunk, but at least a couple of our new neighbors have steam or hot water heat. After 2.5 hours with Lee, our plumber/boiler expert, I have a somewhat clearer concept of what responsible boiler maintenance means. It seems to be lifting a lever, every few weeks, to flush out the built up sludge, rust, and minerals that have flowed back down through our network of pipes. The big take-away for me was to not "shock" the system by manually allowing too much cold water to enter a hot system.

When Lee first looked at our second floor boiler, he saw the darker brown discoloration on the photo below and to the right. The dark color toward the left of the boiler is bad news--Lee said we may eventually have to replace that boiler. I have learned that boilers are naturally ugly and sludgy and generally look rather corroded (which is why they require regular cleaning/releasing of sludge). When cast iron looks that bad, though, it's not a good thing. 

We wanted to observe the boilers being cleaned (and ask a lot of questions) in order to learn as much as we could about how to treat our steam system with love and care. We're also reading a great book called We Got Steam Heat: A Homeowner's Guide to Peaceful Coexistence, a high recommendation from us if you're interested in learning about steam heat.
   

 Even if the inside of our boilers aren't so very pretty, the outside of our home is starting to feel verdant and lovely. It's been fun to see our yard come alive as we discover what flowers and plants we have waiting for us as we transition into late spring. Right now our street feels lush and dark green and beautiful. Stripping the external paint should start tomorrow so new paint can go on early next week. After the ladders and painting crew have gone away, we'll put more plants out in our front bed.

Our beautiful house in late spring.

And the Wall is Down

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJBUhbo_T2c&feature=youtu.be

After much anticipation, the weird-awkward wall is no longer with us. It was put in sometime in the first couple of decades after the house was built in '21, to divide the first floor front room from the stairs, which gave access to the families living on the second-floor and attic. As a non-load-bearing division, it no longer served a purpose and just created a weird sort of cramped space when you first came in the front door...now it's really opened our front room space up. 

We had knob and tube electrical in it, which we strongly suspected (part of the house has already been switched over, though, which is good), so we're having that impacted wiring upgraded, in addition to another outlet put in. It'll just take a few more days for the plaster to get patched up and the first contractor job will be done!

Before

After

Going Down the Stairs...Before

Going Down the Stairs...After

Entering the Front Door...Before

Entering the Front Door...After

Tonight when I stopped by the house after work to check out the demo work, one of our neighbors  introduced herself. I didn't think we could find a street where people are as happy to be living as on the street we're renting on--I think our new street is right up there, though!

She told me we're going to love the neighborhood (what everyone else tells us as well), shared a bit about her family and herself--she works at one of the local high schools in town, and told me about some of the other neighbors. She said our street is very 'multigenerational,' and she pointed out neighbors who are 80, another in his 90s, and then all the way to families with younger kids.

We haven't moved in yet, and we've had three different neighbors stop by to introduce themselves...it does seem to be a very friendly street, which I really appreciate. If seven years in res life teaches you anything, it's that you better get to know the people living next you...community is one of the most important things to have around.

Unfortunately, the floors won't get started tomorrow as we thought, but we're set to get started with them a week from today.

This weekend Loren and I spent most of 

our time upstairs. Loren filled cracks in the
plaster in the guest bedroom while I finished
paint work in our master bedroom and the
upstairs hallway.

The guest bedroom (right)...

The upstairs hallway (below)....

We also took a paint break this afternoon to run to the Pottery Barn outlet mall
at Birch Run...and were very pleasantly surprised to find each of the pieces for
the modular bar (that we'd been eyeing for awhile) for literally over 70% off the
list price.

We made an impromptu purchase for our dining room.

This should be a big week ahead because the initial couple of our contractor projects 

are starting. Tomorrow the first-floor wall demo should happen, and the contractor will take 

the remainder of the week to finish touching up plaster along the edges where the wall was. 

This Tuesday, another contractor will start refinishing the floors on the second floor. 

When Loren gets home from Houston this week, our house should look very different!

Then a week from tomorrow, when the wall and plaster are complete, the crew refinishing 

our floors start work on the first-floor floors. Next week, we also have someone 

else starting the external paint, and that job should take about a week.

Tomorrow we should hear back the third quote for putting in our high velocity 

air system, and we hope to be able to move forward that decision as well soon. Our goal is still to

move in the first (or possibly the second weekend of June), if everything goes according to plan.

Keep your fingers crossed for us!