The 3 Month Mark

Today marks exactly three months since we began our renovation and I'm still not sure when we'll be able to move in. Stupid small stuff is holding us up (like no working bathroom sinks or showers) and it is more annoying than having to replace rotten joists under the house.

The house before we started

We began on September 15th, the day after we moved back to New Orleans. And when I think back to all the crazy things we had to do toward the beginning, I almost can't believe it. I guess it’s just like child labor, you just forget how bad it was (or at least that's what I hear).

I mean the house hadn’t been lived in for at least three years. We started with pulling out weeds and bushes ALL around/on the house, then tearing out a rotten, wooden deck, to ripping up floors only to find more rotten wood, to knocking down a chimney to moving a door frame. And did I mention the attic was full of junk we had to dispose of?

There have been so many (at least more than 10) dump runs that I have lost count. And don’t even get me started on the HUGE and insanely heavy hot tub that took six of us to try to roll it out of the backyard on it’s side – like Egyptians moving pyramid slabs… no lie.

The house to-date

Well the upside is I’ve lost a good bit of weight…just kidding. No the wonderful part is that it’s just amazing that I am getting to live a dream of mine at such a young age. I’ve always wanted to update a shotgun double of my own and I have been given that opportunity.

Now hopefully we’ll get to live in it soon!

Rubbadubdub we've got a tub!

While our master bath has the beautiful white marble, walk-in shower that has a very modern look to it, we still wanted to keep integrity of the old shotgun house and reuse the old fashioned claw foot tubs that came with it. So we decided to make our guest bathroom over with a more classic style – we had one of the claw-foot tubs refinished (which took about a month) and it just came back home last night.

Here’s the before:

Here's the during: Here’s the now: And here's a close-up of the tub (he did a great job - it looks brand new):

It’s a Miracle!

Our kitchen floors were pretty terrible with the two layers of linoleum flooring and plywood, but we could cover most of what we didn't rip up (for the sake of trying to keep the floor level) with new tile and new hardwood floors.

Our study and the hallway in front of the guest bath (the area directly before the kitchen/bar) was a totally different story. I wasn’t sure if it would be possible to salvage 100+ year-old floors that had been covered by carpet for the last who-knows-how-many years and had turned gray, had a huge hole in them and looked about a month away from rotten.

But remarkably, it was done! The hole was patched with antique, heart pine tongue-and-groove boards. Then the floors were sanded and refinished and they look amazing. I don’t really have a great before shot of the floors so try to make them out in these shots:

Check out the plywood filling in the huge hole:

And then these are floors newly refinished:
Just phenomenal!