All posts by Sarah @ 702 Park Project

I’m in Love with a Stripper

June 14, 2013Categories: RenoSarah @ 702 Park Project

Sorry, I just had a flashback to my T-Pain-loving days in high school! I’m back now…

I feel like each day after work, I have an adventure. I commute back to town and I truly never know what I’m going to find at the house! It’s kind of like a little game I play. Yesterday, I pulled up to this:

Needless to say, I was a little shocked. In the back of my mind, I knew that there was no way the house was ready for paint yet, but I gave our paint colors to the contractor last week, so I started to freak out a little bit. Yes, I have picked out a green for the house, but this is MINT and not at all what I chose. But when I got closer to check it out, I saw that paint was on all the wood, including the trim…not just the siding. I chatted with my neighbor a bit and he assured me that it was the chemical paint stripper we had talked about. So I very quickly went from WTF to YAYYY!! So that’s why I’m in love with a stripper.

I feel kind of lucky that I got to see the house in this color, though. In choosing our colors, we considered a more minty green, but ended up going with a deeper sea foam green. After seeing this, I feel sure that we made the right choice!

I also walked in to find that they have put tape around all of the plaster cracks to help hold them in place. (Again, sorry for the bad iPhone pics. I promise to go over for a photo shoot this weekend!)

I hope y’all have a great weekend!

We Have Plaster!

June 12, 2013Categories: RenoSarah @ 702 Park Project

I went over to the house yesterday to find that the “plaster guy” (plasterer?) has been a very busy bee!! The biggest changes were to the dining room and one of the guest bedrooms upstairs. Check it out! (Please forgive the photo quality…some of these are iPhone pics.)

The dining room before:

The dining room now:

The guest room before:

The guest room now:

Of course, fixing things always brings about the unveiling of more things to fix. Here are a few of our latest blemishes.

Not to mention the mess that all of this is creating. For example:

Now that I have seen all that’s going on, I wonder how people live in a house through renovations. Sure, not all renovations are the size of this one, but any renovation causes a big mess! I don’t know whether to think these people are brave and patient or just gluttons for punishment! ;)

Also, there is no longer anything attached to the outside of the house. All of the shutters have been removed, and even our mailbox and “Taylor Gaylor” house sign are gone (although the sign did leave a nice shadow mark). It looks so bare, especially with all of the scraping!

Lastly, the paint scraping on the brick columns has begun, and repointing should start soon. Here is a picture of a column before:

And here’s how it looks now:

After talking with our contractor yesterday, I’ve learned that we are right on schedule and right on budget so far. (Miracle, right?) But I also learned that things will be slowing down a bit pretty soon. The carpenters are still finishing up another project (thanks to all this rain we’ve been having), so it may be a while before they get to us. That pushes back the painting, obviously. The plaster is moving along, but will have to sit for a few weeks before the walls can be primed and painted. We’ve come so far, but we’ve still got a long road ahead!!

Update and Pictures

June 11, 2013Categories: RenoSarah @ 702 Park Project

The house is really coming along, even in spite of all the rain we’ve had! The entire interior has been scraped and is now ready for new plaster, and eventually primer. I met with our contractor last week to lay out where we wanted outlets in the house so that he could tell the electrician. His best piece of advice? Think “CHRISTMAS!” We definitely don’t want a bunch of extension cords and power strips hanging out, so we will have plenty of outlets. (Although, the contractor laughed at me when I asked if we would even be in the house by Christmas!!) We figure the electrician has to get in there and pull wire anyway, so why not? We will have LOTS of exterior outlets too!

Even after being slowed down by all the rain, much of the exterior has been through the first round of scraping. Next up is applying the stripping chemicals to get the rest of that stubborn paint off. This would be so much easier if we had bought a brick house!! But we love ours just the same.

Speaking of rain, we learned last week after the heavy rains that our sump pump was not working in the basement. Our contractor went over one day to find about half a foot of standing water in the basement! Luckily he knew just what to do and the problem is fixed now…and there wasn’t any damage (knock on wood).

We are now at the 3-week mark in this construction process. For more pictures, check out Week 3 at http://702parkproject.shutterfly.com/!

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

June 7, 2013Categories: DecorSarah @ 702 Park Project

I think everyone should invest in at least one great custom art piece for their home. Lucky for us, we now have three!

During our engagement, Charles’ parents and several of their friends threw us a very elegant “garden party” gala at their house. My mother-in-law is quite the gardener, and the roses were in full bloom and just gorgeous!! A surprise for us–they arranged for a local artist, Brenda Behr, to come to the party and capture the evening. A couple of months later, Charles’ parents’ next door neighbors (and dear friends) gave us an original painting from that night. It is beautiful and I absolutely love it! For Christmas, Charles’ mom gave us another painting from the party.

So, for Charles’ birthday a couple of weeks ago, I decided to add to our custom collection. I took two of my favorite pictures from our wedding day and had Brenda morph them together to create this stunning painting:

All three are framed with the same black frames and white matting, and they look great together. I especially love that our very best friends will forever be in our home through this painting! I can’t wait to hang the paintings somewhere in our new house. I was thinking about maybe above the fireplace in the formal living room…or maybe in our master bedroom…or maybe in the foyer. So many options!!

If you are at all interested in custom artwork, I would strongly recommend checking out Brenda Behr: http://brendabehr.com/

I hope everyone has a safe and happy weekend! And if you’re on the east coast, try to stay dry!!

Progress

June 3, 2013Categories: RenoSarah @ 702 Park Project

As I’m saying this, I’m knocking on wood, but so far I’ve been very pleasantly surprised with the progress at the house! Check out some of the work that’s being done. (I apologize for the poor quality of the pictures…iPhone isn’t quite as good as the Canon!)

1. The two dead/diseased trees in the front yard have been removed. It really opens the front of the house up and gives one of the bedrooms a completely different view. We plan to go back with something smaller in place of the pine that used to be on the left side of the yard.

2. Pretty much the entire interior has been scraped to prep for the plaster repair. I was a little worried at first when I saw all of the cracks, but I learned that the workers try to exaggerate the cracks so they know what to fix.

3. The painters have begun to scrape the exterior of the house. The shutters are off, and there are piles and piles of paint chips all over. As you can see, this will take several “rounds”…some of that paint has been on there for several decades!

The house is looking pretty rough right now, but in a few weeks, it will be scraped, prepped, and painted and looking like new again. In the meantime, the plumber and electrician are working away and the house is buzzing with workers.

Stealing My Thunder

May 31, 2013Categories: RenoSarah @ 702 Park Project

Now that I have sufficiently “cooled off” on the subject, I’d like to tell you a little story about, as Nanny would say, hateful people.

Last Friday, I was happy to be off work early and heading to Greensboro to see my husband (who I hadn’t seen in a few days) and celebrate his graduation. It was a beautiful day, all of the traffic was going in the opposite direction, and I had chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes in tow. Needless to say, it was a good day. Unfortunately, the excitement ended quite abruptly when I got to our apartment and learned that our Park Avenue house had been robbed….again.

The first time, our basement was broken into (doors and windows broken) and our copper pipes were stolen. The basement flooded and our sump pump was destroyed. Luckily, the bank still owned the house at this point, so besides the hassle of having to arrange with the plumber, we were in the clear. And the first thing we did after closing on the house was install an alarm system.

This time, we owned the house. Our house, our problem. Charles got a call late Friday afternoon from our neighbor (a retired NC judge)…he had heard something going on over at the house and walked over to discover a man removing the copper piping that runs from the HVAC units into the house. When Judge questioned the man, he made up a very shady story about doing some work for his uncle, who was a subcontractor on the project. Not at all believing this, Judge went back to his house to call the police and the thief hit the road with his new-found copper. A police report was filed, exterior motion lights were installed, but the damage was done. Our contractor estimates it will be about $3,000 to replace the copper. The worst part is that our HVAC units were working prior to the event (not in great condition, but band-aid-able). Now we are almost guaranteed to have to replace both units. My dreams of one updated bathroom in the house are slowly slipping away…

A good friend and HVAC specialist came by the house to assess the damage yesterday and is preparing a report for us. We will have to look at the numbers to see if it’s even worth it to file an insurance claim. [If you are not in the mood for an insurance rant, stop reading here.]

So this is absurd to me….we bought a very expensive 3-month builders risk policy. Unfortunately we could not get a homeowner’s policy because we will not be living in the house for the next 3 months. So on top of paying a premium for insurance, we will have to pay the deductible to file the claim. Then, when we go to secure a homeowner’s policy in a few months, our rate will likely be increased because we filed a claim. Let me get this straight–we did the responsible thing and insured the house and even set up an alarm system. Through no fault of our own, we were robbed, and now because we have insurance, we have to pay more? Am I missing something? As a first-time homeowner, I’ve never dealt with home insurance before. How is this ok? How do people just accept that this is the way it is? I know my sad little story isn’t going to change anything, and I know the person who stole the copper could not care less, but this experience has certainly opened my eyes to the total racket that is home insurance.

Ok, enough complaining/venting/ranting. It’s FRIDAY! We are hitting the road for a weekend of wedding festivities for some of our best friends. We are so excited for them and can’t wait to celebrate!

Although this “incident” was a blow (probably to our spirits more than anything), we have so much to be excited about and thankful for. Lots of major progress going on at the house. You’d be amazed at how much has already been done! More updates and lots of pictures coming soon…