Hi friends,
First let me just say, Oh my goodness, THANK YOU for coming out to meet "My Girl" at the open house. Ya'll just made my month. And you were so kind to my friends at Waterhouse Market and Redeemed Home Goods that they are excited to join me again on our next project- so a big Thank You for that! I am already working on my farewell Before and After blog to "My Girl" but I wanted to spend this webspace introducing you to our next project- Donaghey aka "Gouffre Financier" (that's French for money pit... read on.)
Ah, Donaghey. Where to begin.... First, I should tell you Donaghey was my 16th Anniversary gift from Rory this year. He had a contract on her before he even told me he went to look at her. I was over the moon. I mean, if you have lived in Conway anytime over the last 90 years you remember how cute she was before the entrance rotted, the columns crumbled, and the blue veil went up to hide her shame.
Looking at the outside of this historic home I was expecting to find elaborate moldings, old solid wood doors, and other architectural treasurers on the inside but I gotta tell ya the first time Rory escorted me thru the broken window to give me the grand tour I was, well.... underwhelmed. Besides beautiful hardwood floors, the inside was void of any old character. It looked like a do-it-yourselfer got a hold of her and attempted to update but got in over their head (no judgment here, I get it, read on). Walls had been taken down without proper support, sheet rock was hung but never mudded and stock cabinets were randomly placed in the kitchen and dining room vicinity.
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| Living Room |
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| Living Room- note the hung and left drywall. I do appreciate the attempted arch. |
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| View into Kitchen from Living Room- if you look at the ceilings you can see that they took out the wall studs but left the ceiling joist. |
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| Kitchen and Hot Water Heater |
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| View into Living Room from Dining Room |
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| Bedroom 1 |
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| Bedroom 2- note tiny closet |
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| Single Bathroom |
I was bummed that the house did not gift us much we could use but at the same time was excited to be essentially working with a blank slate. My favorite part of any remodel is space planning. I LOVE reworking floorplans to try to meet the demands and desires of the modern family. In the month leading up to our closing date, I spent many sleepless nights happily rearranging walls on my graph paper trying to squeeze a second bathroom and bigger closets into this 1268 sq foot home. I had the floorplan sketched and was ready to roll by the time the papers were signed and the keys were handed over. And then this happened...
Yep, not even 12 hours after we signed the papers and adopted this home into our rehome family, a ginormous tree dropped a huge limb on our new addition. Sigh. Well let me tell you folks, removing trees are expensive and NOT how I had planned on spending any of my tight budget but whatcha gonna do- I adjusted- Hard hit #1.
Then hard hit #2 occurred, actually it could be more accurately described as a sucker punch. The foundation. We have dealt with faulty foundations in the past, it just comes with the territory when you buy them as old and as run down as we typically do, and our biggest struggle is always finding someone willing to crawl under the homes to work on them. Soooo this time we decided to hire an official "foundation company." Our quote came back double what we hand anticipated and budgeted but we decided the peace of mind knowing it would be done right by "foundation specialists" was worth the extra cost. Big Mistake. In the end they handed us a bill that was for more than our original quote and the job was not even done to a standard that would pass a termite inspection. Ya'll I'm not going to lie, it got pretty intense. I hate drama and I don't deal well with conflict so the ensuing "discussions" between our company and theirs over the completion of the job nearly did me in. To make a long story short(er), they ended up coming back 4 more times before we finally decided to cut our losses, move on, and chalk it up to yet another learning experience. At the end of this ordeal we were left with a sub par foundation that would require more work and money, huge craters in our beautiful hardwoods (see pics below), and a hopeless budget that would leave no room for the fun extras we like to bring to our rehomes. sigh.
So with Niki unwilling to compromise on the design of the house and Rory unwilling to let the couple commit financial suicide, what ever will our rehome renovators do?!?! Tune in next time to find out... (or drive by Donaghey to see for yourself).
Sorry to leave you on a cliffhanger like that, but I thought that was enough drama for the Internet today ..... well that, and I need to go make dinner.
