Renovations or where it all started

This is our new house that I fell in love with months before we even considered moving from our old place. I fell in love with it despite the fact it was twice the size we needed, twice as far from Steve's office as our previous home, needed new roof, windows, gutters, had termite damage, rot and the electrical line to the house had completely corroded.

Our previous house needed nothing doing to it. We had just remodeled the kitchen and it was completely fantastic. But this house is original and when I looked at the photos on the realtor's website, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I had a sick feeling in my stomach. That's how much I wanted it and how afraid I was that someone else would buy it and treat it badly.

This is a custom design by Andrew Geller, famous for his beach houses on Long Island and Connecticut. Although this house isn't really on the beach, it's not too far from one either. The house was period 1968 when we moved in and the challenge has to be to update it gently so we don't destroy the integrity of the design. This blog is going to be the easiest way to document all the repairs and renovations we are making to our new house.

When we bought the house we knew that there was a lot of work to be done but we figured we would have a month or so to get the big stuff out of the way before we moved in. How wrong were we? We moved in the afternoon of June 29, the previous owner finished her move that same morning. We had guests arriving in four days so we just cleaned, cleaned some more, threw away debris we found in cupboards in the kitchen and bathrooms and made the place look as welcoming as possible.
After the guests left we set about taking carpets up, stripping wallpaper, removing closets and paneling on closets and occasionally writing about the process...