It’s been quite some time since we last did an update — seems to be July 2022 was the last. We did take some time off from home renovations in August, with a couple weeks in Wisconsin doing our annual Door County and visit to Milwaukee/Mequon. Then, in October, another couple weeks in Florida. And we’ve spent the Christmas and New Year holidays back in Milwaukee/Mequon.
November 20th marked one year since moving to the Olive Street house. We are super happy with the progress made so far, with the main floor being 95% complete. We really enjoyed decorating the outside of the house for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and even did a little bit of decorating inside as well.
Since last posting an update, we’ve completed the front “sun room,” the hall bath and the living room fireplace as well as hung all the doors (still needing a final painting though as the first one was a bit rough.) The master bath is halfway done, with tiling of the shower and painting the trim remaining. You can see additional images in the Gallery (Interior Main Floor) for the hall bathroom, sun room and fireplace. We will look to update the reveal pictures soon as we hope to get the kitchen floor tile completed in January.
One additional step made was the demolition of a non-load bearing brick wall in the basement. Peder ran the jack hammer while Laura and Matthew took turns carrying the buckets up the stairs and dumping the bricks into the dump trailer. This was our test for additional interior basement wall demo. Since we now have a functioning one and a half baths on the main floor, the next step will be to demo the basement bath.
It’s been about a month since we moved into the house. As mentioned in previous post, not everything is finished, but it was finished enough to encourage us to move in. Completing the bedrooms and kitchen countertops and getting running water in the kitchen were the turning points. Easy enough to continue using the basement bathroom until we get the master bath and hall bath complete. The biggest winners in the whole thing are the dogs, who are thrilled to have enough indoor space to run around in…and they love watching the traffic go by!
A new thing for us was having to purchase window treatments. We’ve lived in rural homes for the past 26 years or so, and didn’t ever invest in window treatments since there weren’t any neighbors. Now, with being right “downtown,” they are a must for most of the street facing windows. I had some vision in mind and was determined not to be too stressed out and we were able to pick out curtains for the living room and both bedrooms in a single trip! A few images from the bedrooms below.
Peder ended up taking a trip to Wisconsin and while he was there we had a “eureka” moment to have him go to Ikea to see if he could find some shelving for the kitchen that would match our industrial/modern vibe. This was definitely a great call as he not only found the shelving, but also the perfect door/drawer pulls and a movable cart for storing the dogs’ things. I’m sure he wasn’t the first person to shop the store while having someone else on Facetime helping make decisions!
Peder has started work on tiling the front porch. A bit of a learning curve on this one with the large tiles and a new “system” to help with keeping the tiles level over a large span. The project started out with a 3-4 day process to spread out thin layers of a self-leveling compound to take out the 1.5 inch difference in the concrete floor end-to-end. We assume that this area must have at one time been an outdoor porch and the slope enabled water drainage. Pictures below show the initial progress. This same tile will be used for the kitchen, so this is basically helping Peder with working out the kinks.
There is excitement in the air as we close in on our “move in” date. We haven’t struggled at all living in the motorhome for the past 7 months, in fact it doesn’t even feel like its been that long, but it will be great to get into the house. As a side note, Laura has also just uploaded a significant number of pictures to the Interior Main Floor and Pool and Patio galleries.
We won’t be 100% finished, but will at least have the bedrooms and living room substantially complete. The kitchen is mostly installed, just waiting on countertops and flooring. We called for the “pod” to be delivered and that was dropped off and is sitting in the driveway waiting to be unloaded. Laura is on trim painting duty this weekend following closely behind Peder as he gets it installed. The master bedroom carpeting was installed this past week, and looks and feels fabulous! So…if we can keep on task, we should be able to start moving in within the week!
There hasn’t been a lot to really talk about over the past 2 months or so…has it been that long? Ugh. Not to say we haven’t made progress, but the cold, rain and a bit of same old, same old means that I’ve been lazy about posting any updates.
But, now we have news! This past week, the framing, electric and rough plumbing was finally complete and we were able to request the inspection to give the go-ahead to do the insulation. Of course, the very next day we had the foam insulation company come in and spray the walls and ceilings. Of course, their work wasn’t quite up to Peder’s standard, so they had to come back the next day to fix the places where the foam didn’t quite expand enough or they didn’t shave the overflow enough to get it in line with the framing. That done, the inspector was called back to give us the thumbs up to start the drywall….so exciting!!
Another milestone hit — and huge improvement to the overall look of the house — was getting the new windows installed. However, this is another area where the product and job hasn’t quite met the quality control standard….even with Archie (dog pictured below) supervising the effort! Peder noticed that there were some small cracks and crackling in some of the frames and we’ve had Pella out a couple times trying to fix them in place, but it’s looking like they will end up having to come and replace a few. Not sure when that will happen, but no doubt will mean additional rework on trim and paint. But, for the most part, we think the new black-trim windows look fantastic!
In between some of the busy work, we were able to do some additional improvements to the yard and landscaping. First was the building of a mailbox structure. These are pretty popular in Northwest Arkansas and we felt with all the work we were doing to beautify the house, our mailbox also needed a facelift. We were able to get a mason who we had worked with for our pool surround in Centerton to come and design something for this house…and he did not disappoint! A full day of labor by the mason and a couple days for paint to match the house and the results are perfect.
The other landscaping was getting some plants added to the wall in front of the house and some shrubs/bushes along the fence to the side of the driveway. Hopefully we can keep the frost out of the night air so that we don’t lose any of the plantings. We also purchased some trees from a landscape center and hope to get them in the ground in the next week or so.
A final touch to the yard was the removal of the old and replacement with a new garden shed in the back yard. As we talked to a neighbor about removing the old shed, she indicated that her father might be interested in taking it versus us having to destroy it and haul it to the dump. This was an awesome all around solve and we were able to make that work. One day for them to haul it away and another day to schedule delivery of the new shed. We did paint it, again to match the black and white house theme, but in reverse colors. Peder is now working on building out shelving etc. to create a “she shed” on one side for Laura and garden/lawn equipment on the other side for himself. Behind the shed you can see the new privacy fence that was also installed. We figure the neighbors are thrilled because they all benefit from this improvement as well!
I keep stressing out because it seems like we don’t seem to be making very much progress, but then I look around and we’ve touched so much. Guess it’s just that there is so much to do…something like trying to empty the ocean with a spoon?!?! We actually have quite a bit going on inside and outside over the past eleven weeks…
Peder has 95% of the main floor framed out, with only the kitchen ceiling and stairwell remaining. Working through bids on getting the HVAC installed so that should happen soon. Then we need to get the plumbing and electric done.
Halls and walls nearly complete!
All the exterior painting is complete and last weekend the garden walls in front of the house were power washed and painted as well. Huge improvement! The new windows are expected within the next 3-4 weeks and the new front door is sitting in the garage waiting to be installed. With a new front entry walkway put in, we spent a couple hours cleaning up the concrete overflow from the forms and filling in the edges with top soil for a finishing touch.
Peder “minding the gap” and filling in top soil along the new walkway…notice the new house numbers!
We’ve had Nate Patton from Top Knot Tree Services on site for the past two weeks doing a significant amount of tree trimming and removal. We had a couple dead trees and several more with dead branches overhanging buildings, power lines and the road. We probably have enough wood to have a fire pit going every night for a couple of years. However, our plan is to set aside some of it and then put a sign up offering it to anyone who wants to haul it away. We’ve moved a number of small trees in pots from Wisconsin to Centerton and now Rogers, and they are destined to get planted this Spring. One is a pine tree from our house in Fredonia and another a cedar from our lake house on Boom Bay!
Nate rappelling down after taking down overhanging limbs.
Super happy that we’ve had enough warm days to have Sand’s Decorative Concrete working on the pool, patio and front walkway. Pictures in the Pool and Patio Gallery provide a glimpse at all the work the crew has done — definitely required some heavy machinery. We are really happy with the work they’ve done so far.
One powerful jack hammer breaking up the pool patio
To make room for the big equipment to rip out the existing concrete patio around the pool, we had to take down the wooden privacy fence. Getting rid of the stained wood required a trip to the local landfill. Another adventure and some fun when we had to purchase ($10) individual hard hats and safety vests in order to safely unload the trailer. It was actually pretty cool watching the extremely large excavators and bull dozers outfitted with steel spoked wheels compacting and pushing the construction waste as folks unloaded it from their trucks and trailers.
Olive Pit 2 Perfect 