Better than I expected

We've moved into the new home and I'll just jump to the pictures.  There is still much work to be done but I'll give you a little tour. 

If you haven't read my previous posts, the home is 103 years old and located in the historical district of Lakewood, Ohio.  The home used to have a 3 season patio which we ripped out.  You can't tell but that 3 season patio was borderline trailer park material.  After ripping it out, we had a series of neighbors thank us and tell us how much better it looks.  Anyway, here is an old image followed by the new. 

Without the 3 season, the house has more depth.  Once we paint the place, it should look much better. 

Well, let's move inside.  First, here is an image of the dining room when we moved in.

As you can see, the floors didn't look the best and there were stains everywhere.  Unfortunately, the former tenant cut huge holes in the wood and let his animals pee all over the place.

Below is the built-in China Cabinet.  This was a horrible project.  For whatever reason, I thought I could simply sand the old wood and paint...I was wrong.  This project took me weeks and I had to deal with lead paint which require lots of special material.  At one point I was actually going to paint the whole thing white again but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. 

Here is the new dining room.

We still have to get a new dining room table since the old one is much smaller than the room.  We also laid new floors and painted the walls ourselves.  We are also still in the process of putting up wainscoting and a footer at the baseboard.  Laying down the wood floors was much easier than I thought and I think they came out great.

Here is the new China Cabinet.

I actually cut out the center of the bottom door and put in a metal grate.  The images above doesn't show just how nice this project turned out. I'll also be adding a bench that spans the bottom with drawers underneath. 

Here is an old image of the living room.

The carpet on the floor was about the nastiest thing I've ever seen.  I guess the former tenant had them since the early 80's.  Yeah, so like 30 years ago.  They smelt horrible.  You can't tell from this image but all the walls were messed up.  There were holes that we had to patch and even the ceiling was gross.  Here is the new living room.  In the first image, you can see the fireplace and our TV to the left.  We are still in the process of trying to figure out where to put the television. 

One thing I love about the living room are these huge windows that let you see the front.  In fact, the house is filled with a ton of big windows. 

We also have 5 original windows with stained glass. 

There is still much work to be done but we are moving in the right direction.  We also got a new 55 inch flat screen and PS3 which we've been waiting to do until we moved into a new place.  At this point, we need to replace some of our old furniture.  Instead of buying new stuff, I'll be upcycling most of the new furniture.  For those that don't know what upcycling is, it's basically taking old furniture and restoring it. 

Here are just a view miscellaneous pictures.  Here is the view from our front porch.

Here is a view of the backyard.  We haven't touched this part of the house yet but we have big plans including having a garden.

This last picture is from the 3 season patio that's just outside our room. 

This is a side view.  You can't tell from the photo but you can see the front porch 5 houses over.  As you can see, we still need to buy porch furniture. 

And here is just a cute picture of Viola from our trip to DC.  We are just hanging out on the Potomac River with Nick and Tonya. 

 
Anyway, as I've mentioned in a previous post, we can walk to the downtown area and lake.  Since we've been so busy, we haven't had much time to do so but we have caught a couple of shows at the Lakewood Library to hear live music.  At our old place, we were cut off from the rest of the community.  I had heard that Lakewood was community friendly but I didn't realize just how much until we moved here.  Practically all of our neighbors have come over to say hello.  People just sit on their front porches and everyone hangs out.  On labor day, we had about 10 people sitting on our front porch (watching the rain) and Mona made pulled pork sandwiches and cheesy potatoes for everyone.  The night before, I hung out on our neighbor's front porch just talking until about midnight.  I already feel like I'm friends with these people and have gotten to know some of them pretty well.  What's also nice is that most of the people are our age so we tend to have a lot in common.  

Our next door neighbor has a kid that's Zola's age and they play together all the time.  In fact, whenever I feel like hanging out with someone, I just go out front.  Some of these people have lived here their whole life.  The people next door grew up here and then when the son moved out, he moved across the street.  Same with the neighbor next to them.  Half of our neighbors have daughters that are either Zola's or Viola's age.  It's great because the adults just sit outside talking and the kids play with each other.  People here are always talking about how they watch out for each other and how they'll help you with anything.  We even had people say they would help us lay our floors and unpack the U-Haul truck.  I'm not use to neighbors being so open and friendly but this is exactly why we moved here.  Things have turned out better than I ever expected.