I’m going to start this post by expressing my extreme gratitude for Ryan.
I am absolutely marrying the right man, because I have been so completely over this house for like, five of the six weeks we’ve owned it, and Ryan continues to devote every single waking hour of his life to this project.
No joke. He wakes up at 5 a.m., eats a gas station burrito, drives to the house, spends 12 hours priming and skim coating and wiring and sanding, eats another gas station burrito, drives back to our apartment, spends another 4 hours packing and cleaning and patching and moving, goes to sleep, and does it all again the next day.
Without Ryan and his dad, Brad, my life would be in complete shambles.
Anyway. It’s been about two months now since we purchased our very first home here in Flagstaff.
When I last left off, we’d been busy in full destruction mode: scraping down popcorn ceilings, ripping out the kitchen and taking down shoddily-constructed walls.
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Our new home, almost three weeks in (aka: ripping things out and finding hidden dick drawings)
Please note that 98% of the time I say “we,” I mean “Ryan,” or “Ryan and Brad.”
Since then, we’ve been slowly rebuilding.
First of all- our garage is completely done! Ryan spent about five days cleaning it out and fixing it up. We had to haul out all of the previous owner’s garbage (including a dozen cans of paint that didn’t match literally anything), take down a bunch of broken cabinets, scrape down more popcorn ceilings, and patch/ repaint the walls, ceiling and garage door.
We put in all new lights and kept some of the storage cabinets to use. Right now the garage is stacked with boxes, but once we’re finished moving and unpacked, it’ll be nice for Ryan to have a space to work.
Other than the garage, our main focus remains the kitchen.
We ripped out all the cabinets (except the sink counter, which we’re using as a workspace) and junked all the old appliances.
Ryan removed the soffit and relocated all the wiring and duct work up to the second floor in the guest bedroom so we can install extra-tall cabinets to make up for the small size of the kitchen.
Ryan and Brad completely rewired the kitchen. They added more outlets, moved the plumbing for our refrigerator, installed recessed lighting and fixed some of the existing outlets that weren’t up to code.
Of course, because everything in this house has ended up being a headache, we discovered water damage in the wall between the kitchen and half-bath… so a bunch of framing had to be ripped out and redone since it was warping from the damage.
We boarded up the little breakfast bar peek through, and while I’m a little bummed that we have such a closed-off kitchen, having the extra space wall for cabinetry and storage will be unmatched.
We had a contractor come outfit our kitchen with a gas line for our new slide-in range, and worked with our incredible kitchen designer to get cabinets and countertops that fit our space selected and ordered — more on that whole process later.
We’ve also been picking out paints, stains, trims and finishes. This has, for me, been the hardest part. Why are there so many shades of white?!
At one point a few weeks ago, curiosity got the best of us when we were taking our popcorn ceilings down. We ended up ripping open some sheetrock and found a large beam running the length of the house.
We immediately exposed it with plans to sand and stain it to match some of the other wood finishings in our house, like railings and baseboards.
We also had a contractor to come in and skim coat ALL the walls in the house.
Yes, ALL of them.
The house was a complete mess of different textures, and with all the shit we’ve had to rip into and patch up, we decided to just go ahead and hire a contractor to give us a cohesive texture and a blank slate to work with before we start painting.
Ryan and I could have done this on our own, but it would have taken weeks. We decided it was worth the expense to have the professionals do it so we could be completely finished before we move in this weekend.
Skim coating an entire house while living in it sounds like an absolute nightmare.
And, speaking of nightmares!
…we found black mold!
As soon as Ryan started ripping up baseboards so the contractors could get to work on the skim coating, he found the backside of one entire baseboard plank covered in black mold.
So then, of course, he cut into the drywall.
And kept cutting.
And kept cutting.
And as it turns out, the ENTIRE LENGTH OF ONE SINGLE WALL was just full of black mold and water damage.
To make it worse? Your first thought might be that we ripped out moldy insulation and disposed of it before taking the above photo, right?
Wrong. So wrong.
There actually wasn’t any insulation behind the moldy drywall. Nope.
The previous owners apparently cut out the drywall, removed the moldy insulation, and then just replaced it with, like, a singular garbage bag full of loose-fill insulation and trash.
And then covered that wall one up like nothing happened.
No mold mitigation, no water damage repair, no weather sealing, no replacement insulation.
Nope! Just a fresh piece of sheet rock and a prayer, apparently.
So like… that’s cool!
We’re kind of not surprised because the previous owners of this house seem to be absolute idiots who made incredibly poor decisions (like burning wood in a gas fireplace and also never installing gutters) but also, like, what the fuck.
Anyway. That’s our current issue we’ll be trying to solve this week in the midst of packing up for the move.
But, to end on a positive note, Ryan did get me a sweet Lions flag for my birthday.
Ochi has, of course, been the most helpful with the whole process.
