I’ve been meeting with a lot of different people in the last couple of weeks—a revolving door of tradespeople— contractors, the landscape maintenance guy, the floor refinisher, the gutter guy, the chimney repair guy and so on…trying to get all of our ducks in a row, and trying to get a realistic picture of what this is all going to cost. What we now know is that will be a lot more than I imagined.
We’ve nailed down a general contractor. We’ve had the yard cleaned up. We’re waiting on the roof to be done—possibly next week! YES!! (fist pump) A new roof will make a world of difference to the appearance of the house. I wish I could re-paint the exterior but it’s way down on the priority list. But here’s my inspiration for the exterior color scheme. Actually, the configuration of the front of this house is a LOT like our house.
One of the people I met with, a Medford native, mentioned that he knew a girl who lived in the house in the early 70’s. He said he thought the house was blue in those days. I’ve seen a photo of the house from 1984 and it was blue. I’m a little afraid to disrupt the status quo and change the color, but then, maybe it’s about time…
As far as all of the work I need to do, it’s overwhelming. But I’ve started painting the master bedroom and yesterday Linda B. came to help me. She sanded all the trim in the bedroom in preparation of painting it. I still need to paint the closets and the weird little cupboard (see Before photos), which was used for a TV at some point (the clue: TV cable going to it) but it’s too small for today’s TVs. We found some small treasures in the closet behind the shelf—a 1952 penny and a 1964 nickel.
Dennis has been demo-ing the parquet tile in the kitchen. It looks like fir underneath, not ideal, not oak, but we’ll make it work. No money for new flooring. And I live by Nicole Curtis’ motto, “There’s no floor I can’t save!”