The 1878: What’s Going On at the Almost 3-Month Mark

Disclaimer:  photos in this post depict real life, no staged photos here-you’ve been warned! Haha!

Hi Guys!!!!

I know I’ve been slacking on my updates.  The struggle is real friends, and as a warning, this may be my longest post EVAAA!  

Over the past few weeks, we’ve placed our house
on the market, received a full price offer, passed all inspections, and
guys—-our house finally appraised!Hallelujah!If you’ve followed along for a while you know
that we’ve had issues with selling our house over the past year due to low
appraisals, so this means EVERYTHING to us!

With everything going relatively smoothly (Gosh, I hate to
even type that for fear of jinxing it!) we’ve been slowly transitioning into The 1878, with a closing date set for September 7th.At this point we are basically camping out as
we have a sort of non-functional kitchen (no counters, no plumbing, and no gas,
quite yet, because the gas company shut off the main gas line when the house
was abandoned 6 years ago.)

KITCHEN/SIDE PORCH/DINING ROOM  

But for good news:  we’ve nailed down our counter top choice, after being completely overwhelmed by
options, I finally chose one that I love:

It’s soft white quartz by MSI, with warm subtle veining, something I think I can enjoy for a while. 

I’m planning to do a tile backslash (Just can’t decide what kind, HELP!!!!  leave me some recommendations in the comment section please).

The cabinets are all assembled, with the exception of the ones
on the fridge wall.The pantry cabinets
are together but we’ll need to hang them on the rail system.  I’m waiting on help
from the hubs to get this accomplished.

My hubs and I decided on a kitchen island on a recent Ikea trip, when we saw the Karlby work top.

It’s a butcher block slab that is large and in charge, and I can’t wait to build it out with some base
cabinets.  I’m ddefinitely going for this sort
of look, with seating, but just on one end:

Via a must follow!

The side porch got some love with a new French door, and retractable screen door.  We also crammed our outdoor sectional out there, which makes it the coziest spot in the house at the moment.

Our dining room table is here now, and as much as I love my
$10 thrift store table, I think we’re going to need a slightly bigger one
pretty soon.The room size sort of
swallows this table right up.

BATHROOM

The downstairs bathroom finally has tile and a toilet!This part of the renovation opened up a large
can of worms for us, it went something like this:

·We wanted to put in a new toilet, but we needed
tile.We demo’d the floor to put in new
tile, and the sub-floor needed to be replaced.We hired a “Floor guy” and he installs a new sub-floor in the bathroom
through to the back hall.He installs petite
white hexagon tile in the bathroom, but didn’t build up the floor to the height of
the toilet flange (?).  A plumber
comes in and he says the toilet drain needs to be cut down, and while we were at
it we should just demo all of the old cast iron pipes because they are clogged and corroded—-ughhhhh!

Now, before the floor guy tiled the back
hall, the new sub-floor needed to be leveled.During that week we had a major heat and humidity wave, which made it almost impossible
for the floor leveler to dry.He placed
the black and white ornate tiles anyway, only to have to remove them and scrape
the adhesive off a couple times over.It
was a whole entire debacle.  

Can I vent for a minute?

My
feelings on things like this are:I personally prefer to attempt to DIY something first, because if I screw it up, I know I
tried and I didn’t pay someone to do it—I can live with myself.But if I’m paying a “professional” and they
screw it up, it angers me, it angers me a lot!

We now have loose tiles in the back hall
and one of them has cracked due to the fact that the tile did not adhere to the un-level floor!  The
bathroom tile is decent, however.

The shower and tub are functional, only if you don’t
mind taking cold showers, lol. So we’ve been trekking over to the old house at
night for showers and baths, but spending our nights at The 1878, since most of
what makes the conveniences of home, for us, are now here.

Pocket Door!

      Once the bathroom floors were “complete,” I was finally able to install my pocket door.  I will be sharing a post on installation very, very soon!  Installing a pocket door in this bathroom, really allowed for more room in this tiny space.

      Here you can see how much better this  new configuration is for functionality:

      By moving the sink where the linen closet once was, getting to the toilet is a lot less like an obstacle.

BEFORE

Once the toilet was installed, I got to work deciding on what I wanted to do with the old dated tile.  My original plan was to keep it intact and just paint it.  However, some areas got damaged during demo, so I had to think outside the box.  More on my solution in a coming post.

Back Hall

The back hall has just started getting taped, and just today, the stair risers were painted in private black.

SECOND FLOOR

The kids’ upstairs bedrooms are livable:

Kyle’s Room, got a special red light fixture and a cute little inexpensive rug from Ikea.  The rest of the stuff are just furnishings from the other house.  I’m thinking of doing some sort of fun wall treatment to really make this room pop.  He loves his mini room so much!

Before

He loves throwing his toys down the stairs-can we say fall hazard!

Cayden’s Room, got a fun Ikea light fixture as well.  I ordered a simple metal bed from Wayfair which should arrive this week.  My husband sanded the floors lightly and put a coat of clear poly on them, and I think they look pretty good for now!

Nia’s room is getting a little extra love because it’s been like three years since she’s had new decor.  My hubs worked hard to sand her floors out, and I’ll have a special post soon to share her space:

Jyren’s room

There hasn’t been much movement here.  The taping/mudding has just begun this week, but I did order flooring for this space which I will share with you soon.

We still have lots of work to do in the main area of the upstairs and the bathroom (that we have
basically boarded up and put on the far back burner for now).The kids start school on Monday so it’s been
extremely important for us to get them comfortable before the first day of
school.

The ceilings in the main area of the upstairs need to be demo’d still.  We were told that the roof was repaired in December, however, we are still experiencing some leaks.  So we have to remedy that situation before we move forward with drywall, etc . . . but again, our main priority is the kids’ rooms.

The Entry/Living Room 

Honestly, I’ve been a little reluctant to show the living room.  With our same furnishings, it basically looks exactly like our old house, lol. I even installed the same ceiling fan!  

Before

Before

One thing that is different  is that I installed a new glass globe pendant in the entry!

 

I think that’s about it, friends!  let me know if you have any questions or suggestions about our progress thus far, I’d love to hear about it in the comment section.