Boogie woogie woogie!

Here is the classic video for your 80's viewing pleasure. Trust me. It's worth watching. I think all those outfits are going to come back around soon :) Mom and Dad you should have saved those rad clothes of yours! You would have been totally ahead of the game!!

So, you may have guessed that this post is about my parents' bad clothes our house's electric. Or really lack there of. As I mentioned in this post, the upstairs of our house had basically no lighting and was void of electric outlets. Downstairs, there are plenty of outlets but they are all two pronged (with the exception of the ones located in the kitchen), the living room and guest bedroom have no overhead lighting, and the entryway had a pull-string light, minus the pull-string. Suffice it to say, we needed to do some work.

Starting at the beginning of it all, there was LITerally (name that show ;) ) only a 30 amp electric service to the house. Now, this probably doesn't really mean that much to me, or any other person who doesn't know much about electric, but 30 amps is absolutely ridiculous. When the electrician came to asses our house for a new service, he said that we were probably one of THE LAST houses in our town to have a 30 amp service.

Just to give you an idea, the average home will most likely have 100 amp or 200 amp electric service in their house. They need that much power nowadays to run say-a dryer, washer, and air conditioner all at the same time. If we even turned on two of those things a fuse would have blown. Goodness knows I hate when a fuse blows. So we decided our electric service was a priority and needed to be replaced immediately.

Oh and here is a horrible diagram I drew up to show you our original electric panel (since I forgot to take a picture of it.)

As you can see, there were three basic fuses and a random electric box off to the right with wires sticking out all over. Yes, the wires are those curly cues :) All of those wires were exposed and just waiting patiently to electrocute some innocent bystander. They were leaching out ready to grab their next victim!

To complicate things even further we had knob and tube wiring.

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Knob and tube wiring is relatively safe, but definitely not the best. Most old homes will have this early type of electric but it is much better if you can replace it as you update the home. Ours is in decent shape, but is beginning to become brittle and definitely runs the risk of being an attractive snack to rodents. Because you know, our house is riddled with the mini, four-legged creatures haha. Either way, Liz would feel a lot better knowing that all of this was out of the house and updated! (See that nice point-of-view change there??)

So, the electricians came and installed our brand new electric service. After this picture was taken, National Grid came and installed our new meter!

The outside box leads to this brand-spankin'-new panel on the inside wall of our basement. Isn't he ravishingly handsome? Plus, he has sparkling new accessories that the electrician was kind enough to add: the light switch and outlet to the right leading to the pretty new light on the left.

We think the new 100 amp service will suit us nicely. It leaves us plenty of ampage to expand and add electric anywhere we need to! Now, we just need to work on the first floor situation and tie-in our new electric on the second story! 

Our Ghetto-tastic Stairs

When contemplating what I should post about today, I realized that we haven't updated you on the progress outside our humble abode. We haven't done too much, but there were a few things that Jonathan had to throw together ASAP.

See, there is this thing called house insurance. Let me tell you, they can be a major pain-in-the-kiester. I understand the need to make sure a person's property is safe, but come on! The "problems" on the outside of our house have been there for years--why do we have to change them now? Oh that's right, because we purchased the home and had to have homeowners insurance because of our loan. And when you get a new insurance policy, they show up and inspect the house that you purchased that probably hasn't been inspected since the 1950s when those stairs were put on and might have actually been level at that point...so they show up and tell you all the things that have to be corrected asap that you don't really care about. Whew, sorry for the rant (and horrible grammar), I just had to get that our there! :)

But really, couldn't we just throw some yellow caution tape up and call it a day? --Well maybe that wouldn't be a good alternative...our house would have looked like a crime scene! Ha! I doubt she (yes I have decided our house is a female) would have looked this sexy wrapped in caution tape:

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Anyways, we were definitely lucky and honestly I really don't have any beef with our insurance company...they are really just doing their job. They told us that all we needed to do was fix our front stairs and put up a railing on both sets of outside stairs.

The problem was, we didn't want to invest a lot of money into this. The outside of our house is very low on our priority list. Basically we didn't want to spend too much money bringing her up to insurance standards as most of our money is going to renovations on our bedroom and bathroom. See the set of stairs to the left in the above picture? Here is a close up:

Well we plan on getting rid of them entirely and blocking off that door. We would like to turn the door into a window that matches the rest on the sun porch. Realistically there is no reason for that door when you have a front and back door. Plus,the sidewalk leading to it just breaks-up the front yard. We would be better served by a nice sidewalk to the front door instead.  

We didn't want to spend a lot of money on the front railing and stairs either. Eventually we would like to rip off the front entryway and redo it. When Jonathan was fixing the stairs (they weren't level at all) he realized that they were built and then just set into place. Perhaps they were a quick fix at one point? As he lifted them off, he found that there was a huge root that has protruded from the ground causing the stairs to lift and become off kilter.

That whole dark green set of stairs was just sitting there at a horrible angle. Dangerous to say the least. So Jonathan resolved that issue by building a concrete base under the bottom of the front stair and then attaching them with a 2x4 to the porch.  He also added the bricks to make the first step-up not so big. Finally, he brought it up to the insurance company's standard by installing a railing made with more 2x4s. The end result? Our ghetto-tastic stairs.

Definitely safer. Definitely completely cheesy and horrible looking. Our house now makes a fantastic first impression. She is proud of the silver bling she be sportin'. It's like the silver tooth in the front of her mouth or the classic rolled up right pant leg. Maybe its the do-rag to her bald head or the gold chain around her neck sporting a giant dollar sign. Either way, she is making a downright dreadful first impression.

Oh and to top it off, here our the side stairs with their new bling as well.

Let's just say that all of this is a temporary, inexpensive fix. We cannot wait to make her look pretty and sophisticated again.

What have you had to do as a temporary fix to your home? Was it as ghetto-tastic as ours? 

The Ins and Outs

Are you ready for a picture extravaganza?! 


I'm truly excited to show you the inside of our house. Not because its beautiful by any means, but because it has potential. It's oozing pussing spewing (how about a word that doesn't conjure up a mental picture of a festering wound) screaming (ahh that's better)  "POTENTIAL!!" It truly may take you some time to see what we see, but we're OK with that. You might not want to be as crazy-in-the-head as we are...cause let me tell you...we may just be a tad bit messed up to take on this kind of work. 


Moving on...above all the craziness, there is the highest level of excitement!! I can feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins as I type this. I am conjuring up all sorts of designs and plans for this quaint little house of ours. Think: Rustic-Cozy Cottage. Yea, that's it. For those of you who don't know, this has been my dream. I have always wanted to fix up a house and truly wet my design whistle flex my design mus-cles. 


So are you ready? Please put on your "potential" goggles and we'll be off!!! As you enter the back of the house, please refer to this post for a floor plan, you walk into the kitchen: 

then if you go through the door to the right of the picture above you go into the dining room:

Off the dining room there is the bathroom:

the downstairs bedroom: 

and the sun room: 

 If you continue through the dining room and head toward the front of the house, you will walk into the living room:

(sorry about the blurry and dark pictures. I am still trying to figure out our new camera and the lighting in the house is absolutely atrocious) 

That is it for the downstairs. Now, take the stairs to the 

right hand side of the picture above 

and be careful of the cracked step :)

and you will reach the landing. 

 If you go straight, you will be in the master bedroom (the only one with closets): 

 and if you go to the right when you reach the top of the stairs, you go into the other "bedroom." It's so tiny and has no closets, so we have decided to re-work it...but more on that to come! 

So that is the inside of our cute little place. What do you think? Can you see the festering wound err I mean potential?? We sure can! 

Now on to the outside! We have a cute little one 

car garage with a little gardening shed off the side: 

And our backyard is HUGE! We cannot wait to have a garden and still have plenty of space to move around! 

And there you have it! Our humble abode. 

P.S. If anyone has any questions, feel free to post some in the comments!