From-Eva

[Heads up: This post is long. I thought I'd cram about two weeks into one post.] Dry wall went up in the bathroom against our closet wall. We then had to do something with the bathroom arrangement. Because of where the big window was on the exterior wall, it made it really difficult to fit any normal sized bathroom fixtures in the space. I really wanted the natural light, but in the end, it was gonna make everything else really awkward and we would have to spend more money moving the plumbing. So we took out the window. Looking back on it, I think we made a really good decision because we saved a ton of money. Cody, Casey's brother, came over to help with drywall and taught me how to use Mud to fill the spaces and cover up the screws. I did most of the bathroom wall. By far my favorite job on the house! To me it felt like clay, which is probably why I loved it so much. On a side note: you can see from these first few pictures, the beautiful original glass door knobs...

The next biggest overhaul that needed to happen to our little house was the foundation. The images don't really do it justice, but there was a giant hump running from the bedroom through the bathroom and guest room. We knew something was off but really had to get underneath the house to see the true damage.  What we discovered was that our house was built on Bodark wood stumps. Yes. Our house was sitting up on wood and from a couple of those pictures you can see how badly it was leaning at the front. Bodark trees are native to Arkansas, Oklahoma, and some places in East Texas and were used on many pier and beam foundations because the wood can last over 100 years before decaying. In an effort to save us tons of money, Casey and his father worked for about a week removing each bodark stump from the ground and filling the pier with new cement blocks. They replaced about 50 stumps buried about two feet into the ground. Not only that, but they were underneath the house with ver...

 This post spans a couple days of work but I thought I'd lump it all together in one post. The first thing I was dying to discover was more wood shiplap. I had this vision of having the fireplace wall be wood and the rest of the walls being painted. So we peeled off some of the drywall and sure enough, wood! Casey tells me that it's tongue and groove shiplap a.k.a. the real deal. I think its absolutely beautiful. We also ripped off these weird wooden inserts on the fire place mantle.  And look! the green paint again. It showed up in the bathroom walls too. After working on the house for a while we discovered, from some of the sweet neighbors we got to know, that the house itself was an old school house that was moved to its current location. The color sort of makes sense now, and you can tell from the exposed ceiling wood that original walls have been moved. So being a teacher myself, that makes the house that much cooler to me. One of the veteran teachers at my scho...