The Nellie Mae Project

Camping out would be the best way to describe what we are currently doing right now. Let’s just start with what we DON’T have right now…

kitchen sink (almost hooked up), a shower (waiting for the grout to dry and sealer to dry),  dishwasher (needs to be plumbed out), HVAC (getting delivered on Friday. Thank you Jesus for the cold front that came through!), the microwave broke, baseboards, and interior doors.

We do have….

really sweet hardwood floors, lights, fans, frig, stove, temporary blinds, toilets, and a bathroom sink. We have moved in our den furniture, dining room, toys, everyones beds and dressers. And a few rugs.

Tim has a 2 week “vacation” from school between quarters and so he is working long hours to get everything up and running. I have moved our necessities in and already realized we are going to sell about 1/2 of what we own. No seriously. At least one piece of furniture from every room will be sold, along with the dozens of boxes of stuff that I haven’t missed since April so I’m just selling it. I am not sentimental really so this is a good thing right now. We are going to live super minimalistic so that are space is actually space, not filled with crap… ya know?

I’m too embarrassed to take pics right now, but I will by the end of the week. I am hosting Davids birthday party at our house Friday night so that is my deadline to have everything looking like a home. Then, we are having a mega yard sale, and going to the beach next week =) Don’t worry, for all you followers… I am having an Open House in October. By then, this place should look like a magazine. I’m seriously blown away by Nellie Mae, she is beautiful and everything inside is looking picture perfect. I can rough it for a few more days until we get there….. so sorry if you drive by and see my husband showering with a hose. The kids and I drive to a neighbors to shower. Here’s to unpacking with toddlers and late nights unpacking, gotta love it.

 We spent our Labor Day with Nellie Mae doing none other than…. laboring!

As of  today, we are beginning to move in. The place is not finished, but we think we can get more accomplished by just moving in and working on it while the kids sleep, ect. It is just getting really difficult driving back and forth, dragging the kids back and forth, and so on. So, we are going against all advice of people saying, “Do as much as you can, and then move in.” We have a ton to do, but we are moving in anyway. We are just kind of over it.

But, the big things are done. What we have left: the exterior windows to paint, the front porch foundation, and the front door trim. The inside: HVAC, baseboards, door jams and doors, bolt down the kitchen countertops and install appliances. I also have to go back and cut in painting b/c I hate cutting in.

So, wish us luck! We are going to move in and hopefully I’ll have awesome pictures soon of our move in. I’m a little worried that our stuff is not going to all fit into the house. So, this weekend we may not only be moving more of our stuff in, but having a yard sale at the same time.

Here are our last pics before we move in and the completion..

If floors could make you cry, these would. We refinished our hardwood floors and they are absolutely beautiful. They are 60 year old pine floors that were covered up by 3 layers of linoleum their whole life. It took a lot of prep work to remove nails, replace boards, make them even, ect…. but, it was worth all the effort!! Tim’s parents helped us with the process since they did theirs before, but basically you:

1. Sand the daylights out of them.

2. Stain them.

3. Put lots of Polyurethane on them. These steps involve a lot of time between them. We had to wait DAYS for the stain and polyurethane to dry because of the high humidity in Georgia! You could not walk on them obviously either between coats..

Well, they are done! And beautiful. We took the kids over today and my 3 year old threw himself on the floors and said, “I LOVE this house mommy!!” I felt like doing the same thing. So, we aren’t moving in this weekend, but we are almost finished. This labor day we will celebrate finishing up the house, and football of course! Life is good at Nellie Mae. I have so many pics to come of this transformation, I can’t wait!

Remember this??

We stripped them down and stained them.

They are a walnut/chocolate color. And they will make you cry.

Well, I am happy to announce that we officially have our first completed room: the bathroom. (Well, it’s actually not 100% done, we have to tile the back of the shower). BUT, I am so excited about how it turned out I had to post it NOW!

The Bathroom is completed with-

 white/gray tile- $90 (if we had paid someone to do it, it would have  been $200)

 Kohler Wellworth toilet- $75 ($200 retail)

 vanity with granite- $115 ($350 retail)

 white medicine cabinet/mirror combo- $22 ($90 retail)

 bathtub- $25 ($100 retail)

faucet- $25 ($60 retail)

light fixture-  $30 ($60 retail)

 and paint- pennies b/c we mixed it ourself (had i bought it, $30)

total amount- $382.

total saved- Retail equals $1090.00 Saved = $708

Now, to fully appreciate it… here is the dreadful before photo:

Unbelievable, right?! I am so happy because everything is turning out  better than we thought. We finished the bathroom first so we could actually use the bathroom there while we are working 😉 That’s right! Our home is turning into a home, you can actually go to the bathroom and wash your hands in the sink… I’ve never been so excited!

Go, Nellie Mae! And Tim…. I’m so impressed. Seriously. It’s easy for me to be the designer and purchaser, but he is the hands and feet of all this =)

i have to do side by side photos:

I just love this part of it all….. seeing past the old, and making it new. Love it.

Just to make sure that all living insects on the property were taken care of…. I did some self-extermination. There is no way I am taking any chances with my family of four + dog having “visitors” enter the house 😉

So, Step 1.  we took care of any general pests/bugs/ ants with Spectricide Granules that covered the whole yard.

Step. 2 I sprayed the entire exterior and interior perimter of the home with Home Defense Extermination for all pests.

Step. 3. We put out “De-con” in the crawl-space to take care of any mice that might ever be brave enough to enter my personal boundaries.

Step 4. I will repeat all of these in 6 weeks.

Tim thinks it’s a bit overboard and that one of our kids might grow a third arm from all these chemicals, but did you read the first post i ever did on this blog?!!!! There was a HUGE dead rat inside the property when we found it.

Anyway, these products are completely safe and you can buy them at Home Depot. I also haven’t seen one bug on that property. That’s just the way I like it!

We have all the light fixtures, chandeliers, fans, ect installed in the house and the bathroom is almost complete!! We are shooting to move in next Sat, but it might be a stretch. We may pull a mid week move in that Wednesday…

We have the floors to sand down, baseboards to go in, still finish painting those darn windows, all interior doors to go in, cabinets to paint, appliances to go in, and finish tiling the kitchen. We just might be able to pull this thing off….

 We have a hefty amount of projects currently going on!!
 We are painting trim and installing it all around the windows. The windows have to be caulked and painted now, then they will be finished. Also, we are painting all the interior bedroom doors and closet doors. They have the first coat on them now and are drying as I type. We are also tiling the bathroom and kitchen. The bathroom is tiled and waiting for grout and the kitchen begins today! We also have the cabinets in the house and I’m going to wait on posting those because they are so GREAT! We have to paint them so it’ll be next week. We’ve had tons of family helping out and we REALLY appreciate it!! I’ll post more pics as soon as we make some progress!

Also, if you go into Pottery Barn, you will get all the paint colors they use on a paint fan deck. I am a huge fan of everything of theirs, so we picked all PB colors.

The Den and Bedrooms are “Hush”, the bathroom is “Wedgewood Grey”, the Kitchen, “Grasslands”, and the Dining Room, “Nantucket Breeze.” Don’t forget, we purchased all the interior paint off of craigslist for $40 and tinted them ourselves to make these custom colors! I’ll have to get my awesome mother in law to do a blogpost about how to do that. Check out Deals We Scored to see the countertops Tim got, I’m so proud of him.

We have been busy painting the interior and exterior, putting the finishing touches on the hardwood floors, installing gutters, shutters, and heading towards the home stretch! It has been very challenging to find extra hours in the day to work on this house. We literally work an hour here, an hour there…. I have even gone on a car ride with the kids during nap time, gotten them to sleep, and parked the car running with AC and music next to the house to get an extra 2 hours of work in! You do what you gotta do! But, we are less than 3 weeks out from move in day, so we have lots of momentum!

 We still have a good bit to do on the outside: the hideous windows have to be scraped, “Bondo-ed”, and painted, and then should look brand new. We also have to paint the rest of the foundation and porch, put the other rail up on the stairs, landscape, and put trim around the front door.

Inside, we are getting there. All trim needs to go in, we are almost done painting all ceilings and walls though! We have to sand down the original floors and restain them, not to mention putting all the light fixtures, cabinets, appliances, vanities, ect in the house. The biggest thing we have left is HVAC, which luckily my man in HVAC school, ironically, should be able to do the job  =)  Here is a picture of the re-salvaged hardwood floors ready to be sanded/stained, gutters, and the kitchen painted!

I am learning it is a common thing that construction sites can have a lot of vandalism.  I have learned this because we have had a few things go missing, and it pisses me off.  My anger comes not the value of what was stolen (because most things have been small), but the fact that someone feels like they can just come on your property and take whatever they want. In broad daylight. We had a window AC unit that was the most valuable, a cooler, bug spray, and push broom. Probably stuff that equaled about $350.

 Well, anyone that knows me, knows that this thing wasn’t over. We talked to some neighbors and a few had said they saw a certain vehicle description with a  a certain male description. Both stories were the same from 2 different people. I start having thoughts of doing a “sting” where we set up a whole thing and catch the person since we know who to look for. I tell my mom and she starts thinking because she is a replica of me except a lot smarter and crazier. And she is also always packing heat.  I also begin thinking how I will just start searching myself for this person and car and follow them, and then confront them, and tell the to back the h*%% off my property.

Anyway, Tim puts all my ideas down and I let it go. UNTIL, my mom saw the truck and person parked down the street 1 mile from Nellie Mae.  I get there in about 2.5 seconds and call 911. I ask the neighbors and they said he had driven by the house just a little while ago slowly probably stalking it out again. The cops come out and I tell them the whole deal. They ask if we want to press charges, I say yes only if they see the items that were taken. They said, “So you want us to just go down there and tell him to stay off your property?” I answered with this: imagine you are in night school a few nights a week, I am your wife, and these are your kids. You go tell him this: “Your description and your vehicles description has been sighted and reported on this property. The owners and neighbors are watching you and we are going to ask you to stay off the property and leave it alone. People know to call the police if they see you there again.” So, the cop called for back up and went and showed up at this house last night and confronted him, heck yeah!

So, we’ll see. Although I don’t have my items back, I don’t care. I am happy and feel a little bit of restitution from him knowing, that I KNOW. He didn’t get away with it. He got away with nothing. It makes me so mad when people steal. I hope all the stealers out there get caught. I will do everything I can to make sure that happens! My goal is for this dude to end up with handcuffs!

 I was hesitant to post these because there is no trim (white) paint on the house yet!!! We have to paint the front foundation still (the color of the house) after the cement cures. We also still have to paint the porch and all the trim on the house white. So….. it still has a little ways to go! BUT, WE LOVE THE PAINT!! We sprayed the whole house on Saturday! Thanks to my wonderful parents for their hard work and helping us! I didn’t get to help very long. As soon as the paint was opened, Mackenzie, my 1 year old, stuck her arm in the bucket of paint. Fun times with kids and renovation!!

Anyway, we are going to do trim, gutters, landscaping, shutters, and we are going back on the inside to wrap it up. We are a little weary, but excited about the progress. It’s been a long road so far, but in reality, we have only been working on the house for 8 weeks.  Here’s to Nellie Mae with some make up!!

We are a little technically challenged right now…. we’ve moved and are without internet! However, we have moved right down the street and are working on Nellie Mae 24/7 it seems like!! We are staying at a vacant family members house that just became available so we can wrap up our project!

We have been fixing the front porch, the foundation needed repair. It is “curing” right now and the house is almost ready to paint! Our neighbors let us borrow their pressure washer and Tim’s parents came all day yesterday and pressure washed it for us! It looks clean now, but is ready for paint! We are going to paint this weekend, throw out some landscaping, and we’ll be ready to get back into the interior of the home and get on the homestretch with it!

I will post the color of the house, but it is Sherwin Williams, Escape Grey. I am pumped about the color. We are going for a “cottage” clean, fresh, beachy look with the house and the structural look of it. I can’t wait.

I will post pics and more updates soon!