Prepping for paint

There are a ridiculous amount of dents and holes that need filling. Here's a sample of the walls in the living room. Stella is obscuring about a dozen filled holes behind her.

Let there be light!

I added a light kit to the ceiling fan in the downstairs bedroom. What a difference to be able to flick a switch and get light! As an added bonus, the kit has an energy star rating and is eligible for a $10 rebate.

Hidden roof leak

I found a crumbly spot in the drywall when I was washing the ceiling in the kitchen to get it ready for paint. My thumb went right through it. There is now a 2 x 3 foot opening in the ceiling. I will have to get up on the roof to fix the flashing where the water is seeping through.

The kitchen

One thing we want to do is to change the look of the kitchen. It's a little bit bland, blah, boring, pasty. It currently has white corian-type countertops and milky white stained cabinets, white walls, a faded grayish colored wood floor and dark brown wood trim around the windows and doorway.

We plan to paint the countertops red, the walls a creamy tan and the floors a darker brown wood stain. Here's a little digital paint job we did to see how it might look:

We picked out paint from Home Depot and now we just have to start with getting the spider webs and grime off the walls and ceiling and then painting from the top down.  The ceiling comes first then the creamy colored walls then the red cabinets.  Although, I'm so excited about having red cabinets that I just want to start there first.  

So, we bought a house.

This is our "new" house.  It's actually pretty old.  The paperwork says that it was originally built in 1790.  And to put that in perspective, George Washington was the president of the United States when this was built.

This is the side view of the house.  The architectural style is considered Second Empire because of the Mansard roof and bay windows on each side.  It looks a little like a lunch box to me.

Certainly lots of work has been done on this house since then.  I'm very curious about what parts of the house have been there for over 200 years.  It's a little tough to get information, since this house was a foreclosure.  The previous owners would probably rather not be contacted.  It could be a touchy situation.

We have a lot of work that needs to be done on the house.  Our plan is to get the house into shape and then put it up for rent.  I thought it would be fun to keep track of what we do on the house.