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Oh, sooo belated in writing this.  But when you understand the scope of the past 2-3 months, you'll forgive us, won't you? Thanks!

Ok, so where were we? After that brat Sandy came in and pooped in our applesauce, we (Gav and I) had about 10 minutes of feeling deflated and shoving our move-in date to "some time in Spring".  You see, not only did we need to now work just to get us back to our pre-storm state, but everyone in my family who'd been helping us was now busily digging themselves out.

But we could just not get comfortable with moving the time table for so many reasons: we had set our hearts on Christmas in the new house and Gavin's parents were flying out to spend the holiday with us to that end.  It had been nearly nine months since we bought the place and those nine months had meant spending nearly every day off apart as one of us watched the kids while the other shlepped to the house to work.  And frankly, I was just about at the end of my tether, straddling two lives and being in complete control of neither.  And the biggest reason of all was a practical one- MaryJane and Michael (the Super Inlaws) flying out here meant we'd have live-in baby sitting during the move, which would damn near be impossible without it.  My mom's house was gutted from Sandy, so without someone to watch the kids at our old place, we'd be S.O.L.

So we made a big decision.  We had the guys who were finishing our Sandy-repairs complete the walls.  It killed our (5th) budget, and meant the impeccable job we envisioned for the taping was not likely, but it put us on track to be actually LIVING in the place we'd bought so long ago.  Enough, as they say, was enough.

In about 2 weeks time we had guys tape and prime the walls, the floor guy come in to finish all the floors, and another guy come in to install our new (!!!) lower kitchen cabinets.  I used "all my skills, and all my powers" to convince a fraught-with-storm dig-out National Grid to get their butts to my house and get some gas turned on.  Seriously, you guys, I ended up calling them dozens of times a day, got the cell number of a manager, flirted, cried, cajoled, whatever it took until there was a crew of hunky men digging a big hole in our yard and laying new gas lines.  Heat! Hot water! BAZAAAHHH!!

And then it was time for me to get serious on this house.  Gav and I decided that just as the first half of the reno needed his "man strength", this second half needed...well...me.  For six weeks I was there literally every spare minute of the day that I was not sleeping, working, or with my children.  Every surface, and I literally mean EVERY surface needed to be cleaned, painted, and generally made ready for human habitation.  My brother painted the ceilings so that when I came it was just walls and moulding to be done. And a rotating cast of friends and family (thank you Joy, Zac, Leigh, Kelsey, Joey, Kelli, and of course Uncle A) came in to have painting parties, nail-hole-filling parties, sink-installing parties until it started to feel that maybe, maybe we'd make our Christmas date.  I attached duct work in the basement that had been left dangling, and thanked God for Google.  Slowly, slooowly, our vision started to come into soft focus.

To be sure, there were a few things that got done in a rather fly-by-night way.  We paid some guy like 600 bucks to case all the windows in the house so that I wouldn't have ragged holes around them with insulation hanging out like a fiberglass goatee, and his work was....well....good enough for now.  I slapped paint over things that were as ugly as Satan's heart and called it workable.  There were doors that should have been sanded all the way down to bare wood for a perfectly even surface but by the time I got to that point, I didn't care if I was painting over a corpse, just to be done enough to MOVE THE HELL IN FOR GOD'S SWEET SAKE.  But the progress in a short time was just startling nonetheless.

The best part was to see things actually start to go IN the house, rather than come out.  One day, there was a giant open shell of a kitchen, and the next, all my base cabinets were in.  And the day after that, the marble arrived for the island top.  I made the guys delivering said marble exceedingly nervous I'm sure by snapping pictures of them carrying the slab into the house, but I was so damn excited.  It was like a new baby coming home from the hospital.  Well, no, not like that, but lovely just the same. The day the floors were done I sat down on the steps and had a small cry.  It was just so freaking beautiful after so much ugliness. We were almost there.

The day before my inlaws flew in my friend Zac and I had a tying-up-the-worst-of-the-loose-ends fest. We hung light fixtures, a learning experience for us both, but VOILA! the lights came on when we were done.  And then on a whim I made a kamikaze run to Home Depot (where else? I feel like they're going to hang a picture of me up in that joint) to grab a late Christmas tree.  The only one left that wasn't 3 feet tall was a shaggy 9 footer hunched over in a corner by itself.  When I dragged it over to the guy who cuts the trunks he said "I was wonderin' who'd pick up that tree!" I felt like I'd saved a last-chance dog from the pound and happily crammed our shambling dinosaur tree into the back of our little SUV.  It smells like pine sap to this very day.

And then the move-in day actually came.  A cast of friends and family made it, dare I say, easy.  My mom's church donated a truck and 3 strapping gents to help with lifting, and between them, my friends, and my intrepid inlaws who managed to entertain two small kids in a house of total chaos, we were in before 2 pm.  Really, something I had absolutely dreaded for so long was the least painful part of the whole damn process.

And then Gavin drove back to pick the kiddos and their grandparents from Brooklyn while my friends and I ran around getting the house as "ready" as we could, so the first sight MJ and Michael had would be as perfect as I could muster.  Because, well, of all wonderful people involved in this project, those two have been our rock.  We simply could not, would not, have done any of it without them, and I will never forget the pride of getting to show them what their unwavering support had amounted to.

We flew around like manic elves, lighting the tree, cleaning the windows, even hanging garland and stockings on the stairs, and so when they pulled up that driveway, it felt as much like a home as we could muster.  And after a tear-filled tour, and a million hugs, and neighbors who showed up with wine and eggs from their backyard chickens (!), we dug into Chinese food and prepared to sleep in the house we'd gotten the key to nine full months before, on December 21st, with 4 full days to spare before Christmas.

On December 23rd, after much debate and trial and error (and a mental picture of what would happen if my poorly designed shelves were to collapse with all my china on them), we gave up on our "open shelving" concept for the kitchen and bought and installed the upper cabinets our damnselves.  As an aside, before installing cabinets from Ikea, get yourself a nice pint of something strong.  Drink half of it.  Save the rest for after.

On Christmas morning, we woke up in our own house.  I mean, we literally slept under the Christmas tree, having given Gav's folks the bed, and saw our small children toddle down their own stairs into their own living room to open gifts.  It was one of the best mornings of my life, and I can say now that this whole damn (ongoing) process has been utterly worth it.

This blog has been long and rambly and full of crap writing, because I'm trying to cram about a million things into one long overdue blogpost and because my kids are literally climbing my legs as I type.  So I'll cut it off here and let the pictures say the rest.  Below is some "befores" to get you in the mood, and then some "after a lot of progress" photos that show where we are now.  There are endless projects to do before these rooms are "done" (like, I dunno, decorate and finish painting and hang curtains) but I wanted to show how far we've brought them since March of 2012.  Oh, and I was gonna add some bedroom pictures too, but I hated how they came out (out of focus, bad angles), so stay tuned for those. Enjoy! :)

Foyer Before

And now

Stairs Before

And after four thousand hours of painting!

Another Foyer view Before

And now- holy crap, so much brighter!

View from living room through pocket doors Before

And now.  Don't worry, the doors are still in pockets (but not yellow)!

Dining room before...

And now, complete with Wes photobomb!  And sliiightly crooked family pictures..

Living room into dining room

View from dining room into kitchen.  This was once the wall with the buckling chimney, etc.

Kitchen Before (blech)

Kitchen now! I did the tile a couple of weeks ago but still need to grout it and install range hood...

New Sink!

It's important to have standards...

Emmy seeks out the sun...

Bathroom before- try not to puke.

And now! Bright, white, and clean! And with our shampoo on the windowsill ruining picture(derp)!

Sandy

I will preface the following with this: we are lucky.  Beyond lucky- blessed, privileged, and in no way entitled to pity or assistance or anything like that.  People all around us have been literally devastated by this storm, and by bitching about our experience I in no way mean to trivialize what those folks have been through and are digging out from.

So basically our storm experience was that many of the old trees around our property came down, domino style, with one big old tree belonging to our neighbors falling and starting a sort of chain reaction that led to 6 trees in our backyard, and a 75ish footer actually on our roof.  We didn't flood since we are, thank God, far above the flood table, and we never really lost power.  The roof ended up with about 6 puncture holes from the tree that hit it, and of course we have tons and tons of lumber to clean up.  The Nor'Easter that blew in the following week did manage to get some snow in the roof holes, but the water damage wasn't too bad.

If I seem stilted in the writing of this it's that I can't put much of a spin on it- this thing sucked, you guys.  My Mom's house had 6 feet of water in the main living space.  My brother's rental house is likely condemned.  Two of my cousins are gutting entire floors of their homes. Many businesses in our town were destroyed and many people are still without power and heat since they have to be re-wired due to the water in basements where their junction boxes and heating equipment were.

Our own small inconveniences (the subways were closed and Gavin walked into Manhattan over the bridge to get to work, we weren't able to get gas for our car until three weeks post storm, etc.)  pale in comparison to those who lost homes, lost livelihoods, lost family.  But all of it combined to create the surreal atmosphere of actually walking around a literal disaster area, and the feeling of vulnerability to your basic sense of security that comes with that.

The lighter notes- we got most of our damage dealt with already.  The roof has been patched and looks as good as new.  We had to go the cheap route for the clean-up, since insurance doesn't cover removing debris (!), but the trees have been chopped up and stacked in the backyard for later disposal (some for our fire pit, some to help heat my mom's house, some to ultimately be chipped for mulch when we tackle the yard).

We've begun regaining some of the pre-storm momentum, and lots of work has been done this week in the (probably naive, but tis the Season, yes?) hope that we can still be moved in by Christmas.

Our main issue now is that the gas company is so inundated with issues from the storm that getting them to deal with us has been a challenge.  I'm ready to send them pictures of our kids looking into the camera with sad eyes at this point (maybe with a c-note in envelope) to get our gas turned on.  Heat! Hot Water! MAKE IT SO!!

So we'll see.  Cautiously optimistic.  I'll post a far more shiny happy blog next week...Spoiler Alert: Our FLOORS ARE GETTING DONE!!

Anywho, here's a Sandy photo- montage:

That big tree on top of the house? Yeah, it's literally on TOP of the house.

View from the master bedroom

This is usually our driveway...

Fitz and Fitz Fine Lumber Inc.

The Push

In early September my awesome sauce mother-in-law came out from California to watch the
baybehs so that Gavin and I could make a big push forward on the house.  Specifically the time had come (FINALLY!) to put up the walls.  A giant boom truck came to the house and delivered over 200 boards of drywall -half of which was flown in through an upstairs window via a giant crane (!) so as to save the epic shlep of the boys carrying it all upstairs.  I was mercifully kiddo-wrangling the day it arrived but I am told a great deal of man-power was spent carrying the downstairs boards in- they are heavy and awkward and yeah, I'm glad I was a good 30 miles away...

But once they were there the time had come to get them hung.  And I had like, a bizillion little (big) projects that had been nagging at me since we closed on this monster that I wanted to dig into, and having a sitter for a whole week was like a gift from God.

We got So. Much. Done.  The biggest impact was by far having those walls going up again- all that lovely white light filling up the place made us realize how dismal the gutted, brown-and-taupe of the exposed beams and insulation truly was.  It's so much easier to be optimistic when things look clean and new! My uncles worked tirelessly as always and as always I don't have words for how grateful I am for them. (BTW, I recommend clicking on photos should you wish to biggify them...)

Gavin and his new favorite toy: The Impact Gun

After walls!

Everyone pitching in- my friend Zac even took the train in from
Brooklyn to help- What a guy!

Overcoming my fear of power-tools....

And I finally tackled (and tamed) the hopeless kitchen floor. If you remember, we'd peeled up about three layers of old linoleum only to find glue and paper stuck to the hardwood.  The first day I tried a citrus-stripper and paint scraper to get it off but it was an endless, pointless nightmare. Seriously, that glue was so tenacious I wonder why they didn't just make the whole house out of the stuff... I slept on it and did some googling and finally found a method that worked- using my clothes iron and a wet rag I steamed section by section and scraped off all that nasty paper and adhesive bit by bit.  There is some discoloration and warping just under the sink but we will repair that and then stain the whole thing nice and dark so you won't see the flaws.

Ironing the Floor= Good Times!

OH! And the week before the big push my Uncle A put a major hurting on the bathroom.  He tiled the floor in my beloved penny round chosen and purchased months ago. Then he installed the toilet (THANK GOD!), the vanity and sink combo, and the wainscoting.  The difference between the bathroom now and the dingy nightmare-hole that was there previously gives me heart palpitations and every so often I look at a picture of it to give me strength.  My name is Nicole and I am addicted to my new bathroom (Hello, Nicole!).

On the very last day of the week off (on) Gavin and I decided to stay late and begin tiling the shower.  We had bought the subway tile a couple of weeks prior, and although we were intimidated, my Uncle A gave me a quick tutorial and off we were to the races.  I won't say it wasn't hard (or that I didn't have to pull down the first two rows and re-do them after noticing they were leaning a bit hard to starboard so to speak...) but we got a good start on it and I really felt so damn proud.

Harder than it looks...

Getting really late at night.  Much swearing at the tile cutter...

Not bad for first timers! Still have a ways to go though...

We ended the week sore and tired but so, so much better off than before it began, and with a true sense that things are moving toward completion.  The past couple of weeks have been spent "taping", which is the process of filing in all the seams between the drywall pieces with tape and spackle and making the whole thing smooth and lovely.  Gav's been dropping in every day off but most of this has fallen to The Taper (who is called that for a reason) and he's been there damn near every day working his magic.

On the bad news side, doesn't look like it's possible to keep the old kitchen cabinets. We had to tear them out to repair the kitchen wall which was one of the last bastions of plaster (now gone!) and needed to be bumped out a bit to accommodate the plumbing waste pipe.  Turns out the cabinets were kind of chintzy to begin with and many of them didn't fare so well during the tear out.  So...Boo! More money we don't have! And...Yay! New cabinets!  I have some truly lovely plans for that kitchen, y'all.  But that's for another blog....Mwa ha ha ha!!!

Still crossing our fingers for a move-in date before Thanksgiving- what a thing to be thankful for!  Updates a' plenty coming- things are moving fast-and-furious now!! But:

Remember all that potential? Coming back into focus....ONWARD!

Wide Open Spaces

And....two months later.  How is that even possible? Well, I'll tell you how:  In addition to having our regular lives to lead (kids, jobs, building this house) it also happens that Father's Day, our wedding anniversary, my birthday, both kid's birthdays, and the Fourth of July happen in the same 1 month span.  So summer is kind of crazy.  Wonderful, but also crazy.

But all sorts of doings! So first, the chimney did indeed come down.  Video to prove it, starring Uncle A, my brother Joey, and Gavin shooting film between knocking down brick:

Gavin and I spent an insane 2 days cleaning from attic to basement (there is always, ALWAYS a mess, not matter how much you clean) and stacking all the old remaining brick so we could save it for use outside in landscaping later (much later- currently our backyard looks like the jungles of Vietnam).  This was done in early July, since Gav's mom was out for our baby boy's first birthday party! See how we cram work and fun into one insane package?  Every mosquito in Long Island turned out to help us stack bricks.  Thank you, mosquitos.

Building the Great Wall of Fitz

Uncle A, the Taper, Gavin and Little Ol' Yours Truly (I got to use the pneumatic hammer! SQUEE!) built some temporary walls to hold up the second floor while they installed the new header beam; we did this on my birthday, and I couldn't have asked for a better gift!  Once the beam was in and the temps down it was nothing but a big, light-filled space and so clear we made the right choice in opening everything up.

Notice that poor Gavin is sweating like a goat at the beach...

The Taper

The only way to tell how huge this room now seems is wee Gavin way at the other side...

Some guys came and for literally less than the materials alone would have cost at Home Depot installed insulation from the second floor ceiling on down (since the attic is not heated we'll save that for later) in one day!  I feel a tiny thrill when I see all that brown paper insulation, since it's literally a barrier that prevents dollars from flying out through our walls.

And wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, the Taper done sheet rocked the bathroom!! WE HAVE A ROOM WITH WALLS! And even better, he took such pride in his work that I have the most flawless bathroom walls in the universe.

Gwendy came with me to check out our new walls!!

I walked in and nearly cried- it was so good to see stuff finally get put back rather than torn down! Uncle A plans on working on the bathroom during his vacation (cause that's fun) and it should be up and running before the end of the month! Imagine, peeing in my own house? A dream is a wish your heart makes...

And this week I call and order sheetrock for the whole rest o' the house.  We hope to have it delivered next week and (pleaseGodplease) have walls going up the last week of August!! FINGERS SOOOO CROSSED!

We Meet Again

Ugh...cannot believe that it's been more than a month since I last updated this bad boy.  My intentions were so good going in, but blah blah blah kids/work/life madness.  Where do I begin?

We are done with the electrical roughing in.  What a blessing in disguise needing to do that has turned out to be- seriously folks!  Not only is everything now safe and to code, but I got to dictate where to put outlets, light fixtures, and security lights.  I have never lived in a house designed in this century before and am the queen of sketchy multi extension cord wiring jobs to make old electric work for modern living. No more! I have outlets coming out the whazoo, people- places to plug in blow dryers and coffee pots and nary a concern about blowing fuses when I dare turn on 2 or more things at once.

ALSO! We made a MAJOR (at least to us) design decision.  It turns out that we will be able to do the conversion to gas heat after all, and that means our aforementioned janky chimney is no longer strictly necessary for venting purposes.  If you remember, we were looking at 2500 minimum to rebuild said chimney, and to spend that on something largely useless (we won't be burning coal in that fireplace any time soon) felt all kinds of wrong what with our shoe-string thread budget.  So how about knocking the whole damn thing down and making the kitchen/dining room an open concept sort of thing? DUH DUH DAHHHH!!! "But wait!", you say "What about your beautiful fireplace and all the charm contained therein??" Well, I tells ya what.  We could save the firebox and mantle and move the whole kit and caboodle to another wall, effectively making a new fireplace and still getting open concept ju ju! A lovely vista of being able to cook a meal without wondering if the kids were murdering each other or the dogs dances before my eyes! HUZZAH!

Enter the menfolk and a day of dirty, crazy hard work (is there any other kind in the Elephant?) chipping the chimney down from the roof through the attic, 2nd floor, and 1st floor, and carting the old brick out to be used in our landscaping future.  I was home kiddo wrangling, and lordy, my heart ached not being there to help them.  But Gavin took video and I was totally impressed with what they accomplished in no time at all.  Seriously, you can't tell at all from the roof that there was ever a hole, and the room downstairs is already so airy and full of light.

Next we have to put up some support beams to make up for soon-to-be-gone wall framing,  and figure out what to do with the awkward place in the hardwood that will missing.  Of course the dang floor was laid perpendicular to the wall making patching it a royal be-otch.  I'm thinking of just owning the imperfection and using Morroccan tile or parquet inlay or something cool rather than trying to disguise it...we'll see.  Also, we will be trying to reclaim some giant funky piece of furniture or other to make an island to separate the rooms.

We also (did I not tell you this??) decided that the teeny tiny bedroom upstairs would be better suited to being a walk-in closet/office for the master bedroom since the OG closet in there wouldn't fit more than a pair of pants.  Seriously, it was the smallest closet I've ever seen.  Allow me to revel in pure feminine glee for a moment at all that closet space.....GAH!!! Plus gutting the place let's me put in super useful features like a hatch in the closet wall so dirty clothes can just drop right into the laundry room below. Now if only we can find a spot for a secret passageway...

In other news (and in other rooms) blessed Uncle A continues to fight the good fight in the upstairs bathroom.  It took a couple of tries to make the new plumbing synch up with the old drainage, but we now have complete rough-ins, a new waste pipe and GLORY BE! A BATHTUB! Things are starting to look like things again.  Tile should be going down shortly and then....a dream come true: a toilet the handle of which I shall not need to jiggle.  It will be the flush heard round the world.   Got a great quote on insulation for the whole dang house, so once the ducts are re-attached that will be the next step and then....WALLS! WAAAAALLLSSS!!!  I am well and truly sick of seeing every room all at once.

This whole process has crawled on since we are all working around our various making-ends-meet-living-life schedule rather than just throwing money at some pricey builder types (Har de har har! Like that's an option!), but there is so much love being put into this place by so many amazing, generous souls that the house just feels happy, dust, and all, every time I walk in there.  Every bit of progress is a gift in every sense of the word, and the delays only make those baby steps sweeter.


Not much in the way of pictures but I'll see if I can't get some chimney-killing video up here soon:

And lo! It t'were a bath tub!

What's up, waste pipe?

I got the POWER!

Progress! Thank GOD! Pause to picture Gav doing a jaunty victory strut, maybe dressed like Uncle Sam? I don't know why, just do it.  Ok, done? Good. Anyway.

We started the week out on a rotten note- we were on our 4th dumpster, still battling an endless miasma of dust, and to top it all off we got a notice from our home owner's insurance that they were dropping us because our house was under renovation and not yet being lived in.  Wait, what? So people don't renovate their houses? Whatever. Jerks.

Turns out it was a blessing in disguise though.  We used the motivator of needing to have another insurance walk-through with whatever new company we go with to get serious and call in some reinforcements.  We were all set to blow whatever we had to on a Yellowpages electrician when a small miracle happened.  The Taper got an electrician who happens to be a good family friend to agree to make room in his uber-busy schedule and get cracking on getting us wired and back in business.  And better yet, the day after we called him it was supposed to rain so his job that day had been cancelled.  In less than 24 hours we had a licensed master electrician rigging up all sorts of fabulous new sparky magics to our house.  And in a couple more visits (scheduled this weekend!) we should be ready to move forward with insulation, plumbing, and-dare I say it?- closing up the walls! BOO YAH!

In other news, we pried all the stick-on tile up from the kitchen, mudroom, and bedrooms.  Let's take a moment, shall we, to focus on the fact that at some point in recent history people thought it was a cute idea to glue mustard-colored tile over their hardwood floors.  When you wrap your mind around that concept, you kind of understand how there is war and strife in our world.  Anywho, turns out whatever money was not spent on maintaining and repairing this house (I'm talking plumbing fixed with duct tape, y'all) was apparently spent on floor adhesive procured from NASA for use on space shuttles.  Like, that tile was on FOR KEEPS.  Now that it's gone there's this horrid gluey scum on the floors that shows no sign of coming up easily. It's like a giant Scratch-n-sniff sticker of evil, the scent being "Musty Old House".  Bring on the gloves and caustic chemicals, yo.  I will get that glue off if it's the last thing I do, if only to show them they haven't broken me.  And by them I mean the those guys at This Old House, the smug bastards.

I spent a long day with the the Taper getting that fourth dumpster packed to the gills, and literally just as we were talking about when to go to the scrap yard with our pile o' metal and junk appliances, some guys came by with a panel van and offered to buy it off us.  So I made $120 off a pile of garbage, recycled like a good green girl, AND I didn't have to lug it anywhere.  <For the win.

So yeah, this weekend should be way productive.  And that's the best thing ever, because I don't mind hard work- I just hate sitting on my hands.  Once the wiring is done, everyone else can go about doing what they do best.  And when everyone involved with this project does their best...well....it's pretty badass.

ahem.

Fourth dumpster.  FOURTH F@#*%N DUMPSTER.