Before and....a little bit after before.

Today, I've decided to post some before and after pictures. I wish they were AFTER after pictures, but they're "after ripping apart" pictures. I have to admit, we're getting kind of tired of the ripping down part of this renovation. It's really dirty, dusty work. And we're left with just SO much material and wood that we have to carry out of the house and get rid of somehow. It costs to throw stuff so anything that's burnable, we've been burning. But first it has to get ripped down, dragged/carried/thrown out of the house, stored in the garage and then burned on a giant bonfire. Thankfully, we're just about done with that part. We need to insulate between the basement ceiling and first floor so we don't have freezing floors and lose a lot of heat. Sindre has got half the ceiling ripped down so we're almost there. But what a dusty, dirty job it is!!! They used sawdust to "insulate" between the floors, so with every ceiling board Sindre removes, comes a shower of sawdust and dirt on his head. I've been sweeping up the sawdust and we've already got at least 5-6 large garbage bags full. Well, at least they make for good firestarters for our bonfires. The floor boards in the attic need to be removed as well so that we can insulate. That's also a difficult, dirty job. And there are gigantic hornet nests up there. So, ya....we'll be glad when we're done ripping  down and can start building up again.

So let's see what our house looks like now. Warning: it's not pretty......yet.

This was the kitchen:

It now looks like this:

We removed that wall and it's now open all the way to the window.

This was part of our living room:

Here it is now:

This was the wall between our two livingrooms:

Here it is now as one livingroom:

Emilie's room:

Madelen's room:

Our room:

Like I said, it's not pretty and it's a messy, messy job. But we're proud of the work we've gotten done so far. And here's something really exciting! The contractor ordered all our windows last week! He said it'll be about 4-5 weeks before they come. But as soon as they get here, they're ready to roll!! So by the beginning of November, they'll be going full speed ahead. Just one more ripping apart job before they come. Removing all the siding and every window in the house ourselves. *faint*

Electrically Charged

We've had fall break from school this week. So I've had a busy week with all my little girlies at home. But Wednesday was an extra fun day. Because we made our first big purchase for the house!! We went to the city about noon that day and we only had the two youngest with us. Our first stop was where we made our big purchase. It may not sound like the most exciting thing but we're now the proud owners of pretty much everything we need to install the electrics in our house. From cables, to light switches, to, well, a bunch of other stuff that I really don't have a clue what is. We're very lucky that Sindre is able to do the electrical work himself so we'll save on not having to hire an electrician. And there was a big campaign sale where we bought everything. So we were very happy with our savings.

I had been dreaming about gorgeous, historically styled, porcelain light switches. Like this beauty:

*Sigh* Pretty, isn't it. Alas, that was not in the budget so we've got regular old light switches. Ok, so I'm slightly disappointed but saving money here will allow us to spend a little more elsewhere. For example, these  Norwegian historical tiles for our entry:

I love these!!! But they're e.x.p.e.n.s.i.v.e. We'll see. I've got my fingers and toes crossed.

We spent the rest of the day looking around for ideas and prices for other things that we want/wish for our new (old) house. I'm pretty sure I'm going to get one of these:

And, of course, a trip to the city is not complete without a trip to Ikea. We're keeping all our furniture from our house now but we've decided to get new couches for the living room. Our corner sofa will be going down into the basement for our TV corner (whenever that gets finished). And our other couches are black leather. I just can not move two black leather couches into an old fashioned country farmhouse. They will just not fit in. So it was either cover them or get new. I'm kinda falling for these:

All in all, it was a great day! We had so much fun window shopping and the girls were so good! Their prize was going to the children's play area at Ikea where they had facepainting. You get free childcare for an hour. They had a blast playing and we got to "roam free" for an hour. Win-win situation.

Oh, and one more thing. We got our estimate from the contractor. Our first real number about what all this is going to cost us. We had a number in mind. I was hoping and praying for that particular number. And you know what???? That's the number we got. God is good!!

The Cellar

What a crazy week! The days are seriously flyyyyying by! Things are still moving ahead at the house, slowly but surely. We're pretty much done all the ripping down that we're going to do. We discovered some rot on one side of the big dormer in the second floor. We knew the front wall had rot but we were expecting it to be mostly in the first floor. We weren't expecting so much in the second floor. But we WERE expecting the unexpected. Cause that's how it is with old houses. So even though we weren't totally expecting it, we weren't surprised either.

 So even though our pine floors look really good, we thought it would be a good idea to remove the first 4 or 5 floorboards along that rotten wall to see if it has gone into the floor beams. After the unexpected rot in the front wall upstairs, I was totally expecting to see rot in the floor beams. But nope! It looks great! Which was unexpected. Which goes to prove that if you've got an 85 year old farmhouse, expect the unexpected, whether that be positive or negative.

But on to our stone cellar. We're not entirely sure but we're pretty positive that the basement  is from the house that stood there before. The walls are made of big chunks of stone. Which make very thick walls and really deep window sills.

We love it! It's absolutely rustic and charming. The walls will be whitewashed so they'll be bright white. And of course new windows. We'll also be jackhammering up the very uneven basement floor, digging down another 10 cm to give us a little extra ceiling height, and then putting in floor heating and a proper floor. But this will be sometime after we've moved in. Our main priority is getting the main part of the house finished so we CAN move in. The basement will be our first project after that (along with a looong list of other things we want to do). This farm is definitely going to be a lifetime project. Which is exactly what we want. We've got so many possibilities with this property that we can dream our way into the next 2 decades at least!

In the basement is an old kitchen from the house that stood there previously. So it's probably from the early 18th century. Back in the day, the family moved down into the basement in the summer as it was much cooler. So a little kitchen was handy. We love it and we're going to use it to store craft supplies, puzzles, games etc...

There are a few 18th century doors from the previous house as well. Can't wait to get that paint off and expose the iron hinges.

There's also something called a "takke". It's what they used to make large, round flat bread called "lefse". This is coming out though and we'll be putting in a little wood stove instead.

And that's our basement! We'll be having a large guest room down there and a tv/craft/games room. It's a full size basement plus we're putting in a basement under the build-on on the back. That will be our "technical" space for the hot water heater, central vac, freezer, etc..

At this point we can't really do any more major work until the contractor comes and jacks up our rotten wall and does all the exterior work. I'm soooooo excited for that to happen. I feel like a kid on Christmas morning. I can hardly wait!! But there's still lots to do in the meantime. Today I started sanding doors to be repainted and rehung. Thank the Lord for power sanders!!

Upstairs Tour and Wallpaper Dilemma

Life is truly hectic at the moment. We want to be working at the house almost every evening. But I work 2 evenings a week. So Sindre has the kids but he still tries to get over there for a bit. Plus Sindre is one of the coaches for Emilie's soccer team and he plays soccer himself. He didn't know he'd be renovating a house when he said yes to those things. But there's just a few matches and practices left before the season is over. The evenings we do have free to work on the house, it's a race to get the kids homework done, get supper made, eaten and cleaned up, send the girls to their various activities and/or get them ready to go over to the house with us. Thankfully, they love playing outside. Rebecca spent all day last Saturday there with Sindre and I and she was SOOOO good! She played with her doll, helped me rip off wallpaper, played "store" and watched a movie on her portable DVD player. What a cutie!

So...you got the main floor tour last time. Let's move upstairs. Speaking of stairs....I adore this staircase!!!

I will be sanding it down and painting it white. And that will be the second time this year that I've painted a staircase. I'm looking forward to it though! One, because I have 3 power sanders to play with this time (they are so much fun!!) and two, it's going to look soooo pretty! Can I just mention here that there used to be a very ugly blue and green carpet runner along the steps? Sindre ripped it off and I removed the nails. I removed s.e.v.e.n.t.e.e.n nails from just one single step. The previous owners were really nail happy. I've never seen so many nails in my life. On the bright side, I've become very handy with a hammer.

Ok, the opening you see at the top of steps is the door into the first bedroom which will be Emilie's bedroom. In the photo here, I'm standing in the door taking a picture into the room. The wall and door you see here will be removed. They closed in the back part of the room to use as a closet/storage but we're going to open it all up to make the room bigger. We'll be using the original paneling on the wall .

This is the "scary" room. You can't see it that well in the picture but this room has suffered the most from the rotten sill on the foundation of the house on the front wall. Actually it's the sill between the 1st and 2nd floors that's really the culprit. The floor is completely sagging except for middle where there is a big hump where a wall from the first floor is holding it up. It's not dangerous but really crooked. When the contractor jacks up the front wall and replaces the rotten materials, we should be ok. We'll see what the floor looks like after that before we make any decisions on what to do there. Madelen has the middle room so the original paneling will be removed so we can put in new electrics for the bedrooms and to insulate between the walls of the bedrooms. So we don't have to hear each other fart in bed. 'Nuff said.

And the bed is staying. I love it!

This is from the top of the stairs looking to the right down the hall to our bedroom and the little storage room with the funny door. Where you see the closed door on the right wall will be gone. Here is where the build-on will be. So there will be a door into Rebecca's room and closer to the stairs will be another door to the main bath.

This is our bedroom which is more or less the same as Emilie's and we'll be removing the wall here too.

This is from my bedroom door looking back down the hall to the stairs.

So that's the upstairs tour. :)

A little update. I've decided to paint the floors. Probably a light to medium grey. So choosing the right shade will be a challenge. We're trying to keep the interior of the house "old fashioned". We want it to feel like you've stepped back to 1929 but with all of today's modern day conveniences. Obviously, I can't just go and get rid of all my furniture that I have now, but I'm hoping that I can make it fit into the style we're going for and we'll be able to blend the new with the old.

So I've been looking at wallpapers. There is going to be a lot of painted wood paneling in the house and we want to add some colour and texture with wallpaper in some spaces. So I've been looking at some historically inspired papers. I absolutely fell in love with this one for the kitchen.

I found it online so I thought I'd better go check out what it looks like in real life at a store. And it's not the same at all. The muted blue is actually silver. Sparkling silver. There's no real colour to it all.It's pretty but it just doesn't have the right feel and I have my heart set on some blue. We're going to have a lot of neutrals so I need some colour somewhere.

I originally overlooked this wallpaper but it's really starting to grow on me. It still has that historical feel and it's got some colour. It's a little more busy than the other one though. What do you think??

And this one for Rebecca's room because I've honestly never seen anything cuter in my life. It will be on a feature wall and still works with my theme of "red gingham" for her bedroom. Isn't it just the cutest EVER???

Ripping Apart.

Things are happening!! So much so that I've really not had a chance to update my blog. Hoping for at least weekly updates in the future though.

First thing's first. We sold our house. Yes, the house we currently live in that we built ourselves just 7 years ago and absolutely love. SOLD. I'm doing surprisingly ok about it. But that's probably because we don't have to be out until March 1st. So ask me again when that date is approaching. But, really, it's a big weight off our shoulders to know that it's sold, we got a decent price and we don't have to worry about it.

Secondly, the blueprints are done and are currently being sent off for approval. We had to go back to the drawing board at one point because it was proving to be very difficult to find a spot to put in the downstairs staircase. Currently, you have to go OUT of the house to get in the basement. Obviously we couldn't have that. So we had originally planned on putting the downstairs staircase under the upstairs staircase. But that didn't work as the stonewalls in the basement are so thick that you'd end up hitting the wall before you got to the floor. After A LOT of thought, discussion, and mad head scratching, we came up with the solution to have the stairs in the add on we're putting on the back.

Here are the pretty drawings of the outside. (I'll save the floor plans for another day.):

The top left corner is the front of the house. We're not changing anything. There will be new windows and siding and insulation (!!!) but they will have the exact same appearance as they have now. Here's the same view in real life. You can barely see the stained glass porch on the right side of the house. That will be the guest entrance.

And if you're wondering, NO, we will not be having blue trim around the windows. Everything will be white. Back to the drawings. Bottom left is the back of the house with the proposed build-on. Top right is looking at the house from the left side (the side without the stained glass porch) and bottom right is the right side of the house with the porch. So a decent sized, two story build-on. It will give us a small bathroom, laundry room, mud room and downstairs staircase on the main floor, and an extra bedroom and main bath on the 2nd floor.

Ok. So now that we now what it looks like on the outside and how we want it to look like when we're done.....how about some pictures of the inside.

 

This is in the kitchen looking towards what used to be a "kammers". Like a little bedroom. We've removed the wall you see here to open up it up completely to the window. We counted 5 different paint colours in the kitchen but that little patch of blue you see on the left is the original colour. 

 These are the 2 living rooms. Back in the day, you had your everyday room and your "nice" living room for company. We're tearing out the wall you see in the bottom picture to make one livingroom.

This is the original flooring in the entire house. Pine wood floors. Beautiful! It took removing layer after layer of vinyl flooring, oilcloth, plywood, and COUNTLESS rugs to find it. The next question is, do we just sand it and put lacquer on it OR do we paint them?? Right now I'm leaning towards painting. A beautiful, semi-glossy, very light grey. What do you think?

So far we've removed the entire contents of the house (it was full of furniture) and are now ripping out walls in the main floor, as well as the ceilings and outer layer of all the walls in the main floor. This way we'll be able to see with our own eyes if there's any rot behind the walls. We knew there would be on the front wall, and yes, there is. But everything else is looking pretty ok. And now that we've got it stripped to the bones, we can install all new electrics, put in spot lights in the ceilings, put in a central vacuum system and last, but certainly not least, we can insulate.  Here's a pic of how it looks ripped down to the bones.

  

And our rotten front wall. 

And since I realize that this is turning into an epic long blog post, I'm going to wrap it up here. Next time we'll take a tour of the upstairs. And we'll get to the stone basement too soon cause I'm really excited about that!! SO much to look forward too!!

 

Moving Forward

Ok. Here it is. My first blog post about my new house. Eeeeeee! I'm kinda excited! I wish I could bottle this current excitement and open it, like, 6 months from now, when we're probably overworked and tired and desperate to be finished. But, right now, excitement abounds!

Ok, we don't actually OWN the house yet. The big day is next Friday, 31st of August. But, even though we don't officially own it yet, it hasn't stopped us from moving forward and making our plans. This week has been toooootally crazy. I can't even begin to tell you all the details, phone calls, and big changes that have yet to be revealed. Hehe!

Our first little road block was getting insurance on the house. Apparently, they think it's old and risky. They don't wanna do it. Wimps! This is where it's really, really awesome to have a great bank guy. I'll probably say this over and over, but I love our bank guy!! He's great. Anyway, he talked to someone he knew and we were able to get some decent insurance on the house for a decent price. Good.

And we talked to our bank guy about money and it turns out we're going to do ok paying for two houses for a little while. We were afraid we'd be scrounging in the forest for food, but it looks like we can go to the grocery store... like normal people. YAY!

And we've been spending hours and hours making up drawings of the house and the new add-on we're putting on the back. We've explored every possible angle, crook and cranny, measured walls and spaces, to come up with the best possible layout. What really helped was taking a little walk over to another house here in Spangereid. It's the exact replica of ours only it's been fixed up and built on to the back. They were very kind to let us in when we showed up at their door and gave us a tour of the entire house. It was so inspiring to see how nice it could be! And we got tons of good ideas. So Sindre spent several nights drawing it all up on graph paper, so that we could give it to our architect guy to make blueprints for us.

So now comes the patience. Waiting for the blueprints. And then we have to send them to the county to be approved. Always a little nerve wracking because of it's status of "historical value". We're not changing the facade of the house, which I think is what they're most concerned about. So keeping fingers crossed.

In the meantime, I get to window shop. Well, through the window of my laptop. I've been poring over old fashioned wood stoves, paint colours, kitchen cabinets and even door knobs.

Like these:

And I absolutely LOVE this:

And pretty white kitchens:

  

Ahhhh! *happy sigh*

Back in the Game.

Well, folks. I guess it's time to get back in the game. We got home from our absolutely fantastic holiday in Canada last Friday. And got right down to business. We bought a new hardwood floor for our current house before we left for Canada. And it had been sitting in our living room all summer waiting for us to come home and be installed. So late Monday evening, after a birthday party, we (when I say "we", I mean Sindre, my outstanding, wonderful husband) started moving all the furniture over on to one side of the living room so we could pull up all the old floor. It was a messy job because under the floor is concrete. And concrete is dusty. We had a white layer of dust over everything. And I couldn't get in my kitchen for a few days because of all the furniture stuffed in there. But, my wonderful honey (I can't even begin to tell you how great he is!) worked from the second he got home from work and all evening, everyday, until everything was done Friday night.

Moving all the furniture to one side:

Removing the old birch laminate to reveal the concrete:

 

Laying a plastic barrier and a sound absorbing layer:

 

Putting down the first boards! Wide plank oak with a matte white wash:

The finished result!

And I LOVE it!! Very happy. So we've got to enjoy it while we can. Cause as of August 31st, we are the new owners of an old house that needs a complete overhaul. We'll live in our current house while we work on the new one for as long as we can. Things are gonna be tight, for sure, for a while. But we're so excited about the end result. Although I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have a nervous breakdown along the way. Probably two. Or more. Time will tell.

So....I'm afraid you'll have to go through the ups and downs with me, while I blog our journey to our "Desired Haven". It's gonna be quite the ride!