Demolition Day

with the help of my brothers and a couple great friends...and a few beers we took all the plaster walls out of our kitchen!  there were a few surprises like finding an old miller high life can in the walls... a boobie mag from 1959.... a handful of marbles.... a puddy knife i dropped through the floor a couple years ago when working on our upstairs bathroom (it went right through a 3 inch hole i drilled....couldn't have made that shot again if i tried)... thankfully no skeletons.... what we think is the belt to an old apron... and an old arch way threshold from a previous remodel who knows how long ago.

here are some pictures of our progress.

this was my first wall i took down.  at this point i was very excited and couldn't wait to get started on this project....

LOOK! its a miller high life can hidden in the wall

this is the view from the lake side

this is the view looking out toward the lake

we are going to do open shelving on this wall.  the fridge is going just to the right of that orange bucket

taking down that soffit was a pain but made such a huge difference, thanks to my brother ryan and great buddy matt

here is danny (our fireman/EMT) on the job blasting through some old wallpaper.  

we each took turns sticking our heads through the old medicine cabinet...that was also covered by plaster.

taking down the ceiling!

TIMBER!

there were three layers of plaster on the ceiling.  we were all joking about how our house would win biggest loser for shedding the most pounds.

ryan and josh (another fireman buddy) attacking the remaining ceiling. 

boobie mag 

i can't believe they covered up this awesome arched doorway.  really cool but i don' t know if we can fit it into our new floor plan.  

Thanks for reading.  come back soon for more pictures and an update on our progress.  next up is tearing out the remaining cabinets, plumbing, electric and new studs!  oh and i bet i'll put a few line in there about how much money this is costing me but please remind me that we are doing the right thing and everything will be ok.  i might need the support. 

tomorrow we tear out the walls in the kitchen.  any bets on how many skeletons we find?  I'm pretty lucky I have two brothers who are going to be helping me and a couple other friends who agreed to get dirty for the small price of a couple beers and lunch.  say goodbye to the lime green!

house pets

so i found this little guy in our wall while doing some demo on the kitchen walls.  this is actually the third skeleton I have found but this was the first squirrel.  the other two were smaller mouse types (no big deal) so when i saw this monster i thought it was worthy of an internet memorial.  seeing as this is the first wall i have started to tear out.... seriously the second stud I started to pull down.... the rest of this project should have plenty more surprises so stay tuned.

So in trying to keep up with this blog i thought i'd drop in and share the latest on the happenings at our house.  vicki and i went to lowe's the other night to research cabinets for our kitchen and as she puts it "just hanging at lowe's looking helpless trying to get house crashed"  classic vicki!  i love her so much. spoiler...we didn't get house crashed. maybe next time.  anyone with suggestions for cool cabinets let us know.  its really hard.  I'll put up some pictures later today so you can see the space we are working with.

our story

here's the story.  vicki and i met through a friend, fell in love and haven't spent much time apart since then.  While we were dating we were helping paint my grandmothers house.  she was downsizing and needed it to sell.    we were painting one of the guest rooms and my dad goes "hey what do you guys think of renting this place?"  we were like "hey that sounds awesome!" Five years later we are now the proud owners! we have done a lot of work to the place such as painting and add our own touches.  but now we are getting to some of the BIG jobs and this blog is going to help me document them, share them, and hopefully give me some new ideas and way we could update our home.  so please let us know if you have a good idea we could use in our remodeling this family treasure.

Ready Set Go!

hello and welcome to our blog.  i'm hoping that i can use this blog to show everyone some of the cool stuff we are doing to our 1920's home on diamond lake and get feedback and ideas from our followers on what we should do next!  please check in on us often for updates on our current projects, pictures of what we're doing and our story.  can't wait to get to know you.

kevin and vicki