We are about five months away from moving up to Northern California and living in Cripe Cottage! That is so so exciting. I have been making a long list of everything that needs to be done before June and thought it would be fun to share the giant (truly impossible!) list here on the blog but before I do that that, I wanted to share what we have accomplished in the past six months since we got the keys. You'll notice how much of this is thanks to my parents and my in-laws who live up in the area. We are so lucky to have them.
First though, if you missed it, here is a video tour of the inside and yard.
Inside:
My dad epoxied the garage floor! Remember this amazing project? I love it so, so much. What I didn't talk about in that post is that the garage smelled...awful. A huge part of the epoxy process was also cleaning out previous pet odors from the cement. Now it looks amazing and smells like nothing (an actual dream).
My dad also painted the garage walls white and removed the shelving.
I painted the beadboard and wallpapered the powder room. Was it a good idea to do all that before we demoed the floors and turned the house into a construction zone? Absolutely not. But the powder room DIY project was an important one for me to do to "start" the house. I needed to put my stamp on it and dive in.
I met with a floor guy about having the upstairs and staircase treads refinished.
We had the tile floors throughout the downstairs demoed. (They will be replaced with 3.5 inch white oak planks to match the fireplace room, shown above.)
We ordered tile for the laundry room and powder room.
We had the kitchen, hallway cabinets and laundry cabinets demoed. (Our original plan was to wait on the kitchen but decided to move this project up because it made more sense to get as much demo done while the house was empty.)
We ordered kitchen appliances and hired Stoffer to do the cabinetry.
We had the primary bathroom demoed and have come up with a build back plan (hopefully starting in the next two weeks!)
I ordered wallpaper for the dining room and a chandelier for in there as well.
Exterior:
My dad cleared out all the gutters and fixed the water collection barrels (all the rainwater from every gutter on the house and outbuildings is collected and stored in giant 2500 gallon tanks at the back of the property to be used first during the dry months).
We had the garage door fixed.
Yard:
Paul and I transplanted a few fruit trees and planted a few new ones to hopefully start producing in the next three years.
We had an irrigation specialist come out and replace any broken fixtures throughout the yard.
Paul's family harvested the grapes and made the first batch of wine! (It's still in process.)
My dad fixed the tension wires holding up the rows of vines.
My parents have been cutting back the overgrown plants throughout the back and front yard (it's a process).
I started clearing up the herb garden and revealed those pretty rocks!
I started clearing an area for the garden and made a compost pile. (The veggie garden will be a big project over the years but this spring I would like to plant two in-ground beds in the area above.)
We started the process for adding a pool (it's currently going through the permitting process) and picked waterline and retaining wall tile (shown above).
And that's our "done!" list. I will be back to share the "to-do" list later this week.
