After the stressful and confusing experience of buying a house for the first time in another state, Daniel and I were so excited to see our little house in person and really feel like it was ours! From the first time we viewed the house with our realtor to official closing, we had seen the house twice for a total of less than an hour. We were ready to get in there!
Daniel took the earliest flight from JFK to Orlando the morning of May 2nd and I took the afternoon flight (the joys of flying standby). Luckily, Daniel made it to the house in time to see that the electricians were finishing up their work. Being that it is an old house, the original breaker box was still in place and needed to be upgraded for insurance purposes and modern electrical use. It was nice to know that that was the first item checked off the list of upgrades, though some outlets still needed to be replaced to ensure grounding wires were intact.
Daniel picked me up at the airport and we promptly went to Lowe's to stock up on supplies. We bought out Lowe's. Dan and I were making guesses on how much the total was going to come to and we were both way wrong... by about half. Aren't renovations fun? We revisited Lowe's about twice a day for the rest of the week, trying to time our trips so that we didn't see the same shift of employees multiple times a day. Luckily, Lowe's is close to the house.
We got to the house, unpacked the load, stepped inside.... now what? We had no clue where to begin. Daniel ran around the house doing little things here and there, changed all the locks, and prepped for the days to come. His parents were coming from Pensacola to help us with the big items in a few days, so I chose to start with the first thing I knew had to go that I could tackle myself. Wallpaper. Props to the previous owners because everything about this house is solid, including the glued on contact paper that they used on the kitchen walls. Thank goodness that's the only wallpaper in the house. I scoured the paper, soaked it with a softening solution, and scrapped it to oblivion with a blade scraper. I ended up taking a few layers of paint off with it, but it was coming off, slowly but surely. It was fun to see that the original wall color was orange! Gotta love the mid-century color pallet! The wallpaper could have waited for a later date, but we were just so happy to see some movement in the house. On to bigger and better improvements the next day!
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| Replacing the bank locks. |
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| The lovely wallpaper, pre-demolition. |
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| Probably the largest piece of wallpaper to come off at once. Sense the excitement. |
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| The original orange paint under many layers of paint and wallpaper. |
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| The fruits of my labor. |
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| Fuel and reward. |
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