A summer break

I'm back!  You may have noticed, posts at The House of Goodwill have been a bit sporadic the last few weeks.  There's a reason; we're not there!

When we bought the house in March of 2020, we thought we'd have it rentable by this point.  But as you may recall, the interior work has moved slower than we expected, but more importantly, we still have no dock area down by the lake.  (This is my absolute must have before we rent it out.)

Why is the dock area so important to me?  Well, the house will be a lake house rental, and as it is, the shoreline area is currently not very useful.  The shoreline consists of old, crumbling railroad ties, and the ground is full of small holes that are invitations to a twisted ankle.

Aside from that, Tennessee heats up to a billion degrees most summer days.  Without a covered area by the water, it's just too unpleasant down by the water, even though it's by the water.  We are planning to put in a covered dock with a ceiling fan, which should make it wonderful!  We also want to add a little sandy beach area.  And since this house will be a BYOB (bring your own boat), somewhere to park the boat is important too.

When we are there we slide our kayaks in over the decaying railroad ties, and tie our jets skis to the neighbor's dock.  (Our neighbors are wonderful!)  But we look forward to the day we have our dock in place, for our own purposes too!

At this point we don't know when we will have the dock built.  We met with our builder a few months ago (who told us he could fit us in "soon"); we haven't heard a word from him since.  Because of shortages, inflation and post-Covid weirdness, I know construction projects are not proceeding as usual, so I'm too concerned yet.  Honestly, I don't want to have to build a dock and pay 30% more.  But we sure hope it can be built before next summer!

So anyway, with the house improvements on indefinite pause, we are taking a break for the summer.  (Since my interior work is not what's holding the project up, I don't feel guilty taking some time off.  It will be waiting for me in the fall.)

Where are we right now?  In New York state, where both my husband and I are from.  More on that in the next post.  Traveling from Tennessee to New York (and all the work that entails) is the reason this blog has been quiet, now that I'm here I look forward to posting more again.

So what was the status of the interior of the house when we left?

Remember these holes in the walls in the hallway and bathroom, that we discovered after removing wallpaper?

Well, after two months of trying to find someone who could do the wall repair (and finally finding someone who gave us an estimate and then never showed up), my husband determined to reface the walls himself.

He watched hours of Youtube videos, bought all the materials, and then spent a week patching holes, skim coating the walls, and sanding.

Here are the walls in process, after he put the first two coats of plaster.

And here is how we left it:

Holes??  What holes?!

This bathroom wall is smooth as a baby's skin.

All the entryway walls got skim coated and sanded.

Remember when my husband initially offered to try to fix the walls and I balked, because I wanted them done perfectly?  Well, he made me eat my words!  I'm pretty sure at this point that my husband can do anything.  I told him so.  "Oh no," was his response.  

So while this week long project was underway, and we were simultaneously having a fence installed outside, what was I up to?

Well, while my painting upstairs was held up (due to my waiting on the bathroom and entryway walls to be ready), I was going to paint the one downstairs wall that needed to be done, in the downstairs kitchen.

But when I gave it a really good inspection, I realized that the cabinets were looking really, really rough and I made a decision to paint them, which necessitated my LEAST favorite home improvement activity: sanding.  I spent the next week sanding kitchen cabinets (all 27 of them) indoors and out.  My son went between helping me and his dad, getting a good education at refacing walls in the process.

Here's a look at the downstairs kitchen, with it's dark wall and cabinets, when we bought the house:

This is how the kitchen currently looks.

So to recap: our last two weeks in The House of Goodwill in June were spent in a dusty, chaotic mess.  Between the daily sanding of the walls upstairs, and the sanding of the cabinets downstairs, it seemed there was dust everywhere - in every room, and dusty footprints leading all over the house.

Ironically, as the house is closer than ever to being finished on the inside, it's also in the most chaotic state it's ever been in.  And after a year of working on the house steadily - painting, sanding, doing yardwork - I was ready to take a break for a few months.  (And my last week there was spent covered in poison ivy, so there was that too.)

While I can honestly say I've really enjoyed working on the house and watching it progress, after a year of getting up almost every day and putting on painting clothes, and then painting alone all day, I'm enjoying this time off.

We met our goal of reaching a certain point before the break: the walls upstairs in the entryway and bathroom are completely done, and ready to be painted.  The kitchen cabinets are completely sanded and ready to be painted.  Now that the cabinets have been sanded, the kitchen walls can be painted too.

So all the dirty work is done.  All that is left of the major work when we return is painting a lot of walls, which after completing all the sanding and tedious molding painting, doesn't seem like a big deal at all.  I know after a few months off I'll return excited to get started again.

And once the walls are FINALLY all painted, I can finish the setting up and furnishing of the house to make it airbnb ready.  And oh boy, will it be hard to let this baby go when the time comes!  When we finally have the house in perfect shape so we can just arrive there and relax (and NOT work) - that's when we'll be moving out and others will be moving in.

We truly, truly love this house.  We keep saying that maybe we'll just rent it for a few years...we'll see.