We now refer to "the Broken House" as the "Beautiful House" on the strong recommendation of Timmy's teacher. So, from now on, it's beautiful! It's been 3 1/2 months since my last blog update, and I figured it was about time to show you all that we are still at work. January, February, and March were crazy busy months work-wise for Rita, and the house renovation stuff all fell on Tim. But, in that amount of time, we've had the outside of the house painted, the pool deck painted, gutters installed, screens repaired, and grass installed. We even planted some flowers 1) in honor of today being the first official day of spring, and 2) blue and orange in honor of Syracuse University... hopefully they make it to the Sweet 16 tonight! Here are some pictures to share of how we're doing.
Here's a closer look at the front door. We painted the house the same color as our other house here in Florida (which we rented by the way, to a really nice couple, and the woman works for Lockheed Martin also!). The color is called "Fenlandia Green" and we liked it very much at the other house, and thought why not for this house.
A closer look at my SU garden! I am hopeful that the blue flowers will bring in some butterflies, because I've read that butterflies are attracted to blue. Whatever the orange flowers are, I love them because they smell beautiful. Most of all, I am hopeful that they might bring some luck to the Orangemen in the NCAA tournament. They'll need it because they're in the toughest bracket. Yeah, you heard me right Duke fans.
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| Here's one of the "Gutter Guys," who knew we'd be so excited for a significant downpour to come? Oh how our lives have changed that we are eager to try out our new gutters! |
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| Another "Gutter Guy" |
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This poor gutter guy had the misfortune of working over the screened-in pool area. Those of you that live in Florida know that these screens have a limited shelf life due to the extreme temperatures and overbearing sun. The screens become very brittle and fragile and the slightest pressure will break them. Bummer for him, but happy for us... his caulk gun tore through our pool screen. Remember, the name of this blog is "Foreclosure Paradise," and these screens were pretty old and in bad shape anyway. Well, he had to replace the screen for us. And in the process of replacing the screen.... he broke another one. So we got two new screen sections.
So onto Florida's newest Citrus Baron. Tim is pretty excited that we have an exceptionally productive grapefruit tree! He has jokingly started calling us "The Boston Citrus Company," and Tim spends A LOT of time on his citrus trees. I don't even really like grapefruit, but I can honestly say that our grapefruit tree produces really sweet and juicy grapefruits. We are actually taking care of them now, fertilizing and watering - which is more than these trees have gotten in the past probably 3-5 years. We have high hopes that the winter of 2012 will bring on a bumper crop!
We have about an acre of land with our house, and in addition to the grapefruit tree, we also have an orange tree. Here's a shot of next year's fruit (blossoms for now), so we're also hoping that with some care, this will become a productive orange tree. This year we had about 4 pitiful looking fruits, but these blossoms seem pretty promising. We also want to buy about 3-4 other orange trees and maybe a nice lemon tree while we're at it. We have to get our sprinkler zones modified though, to support all the water that citrus demands.  |
| The Boston Citrus Company: Tim became a little obsessive about picking as many grapefruits as possible |
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| A closeup of The Boston Citrus Company production! Tim brought these grapefruits to the kids' schools and left them there for teachers/staff/parents that wanted them. They were gone in 1/2 a day! |
So as I mentioned in my introduction, we had the house painted. Before the painters could paint the house, it had to be power washed, and the cracks in the stucco had to be filled. As you can see from the picture, we may have had one or two cracks..... one or two hundred, that is. Cracks in stucco are VERY COMMON here in Florida, again due to the temperature extremes, and even new houses have them. They get filled with silicone and painted over, and that's just a fact of life here. You can't even really see the cracks till you get right up and look for them. But in fairness, this IS a lot of cracks. We think this is the first time the Beautiful House had ever been painted since it was built!  |
| More cracks, on our bedroom side |
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| Front yard raked and prepped, ready for sod! |
So after having the house painted, we had to work on the grass. Or the weeds. Whatever was in the front of our yard that was occasionally green. The house had been unoccupied for about 2 years before we purchased it, and very minimal lawn care had taken place during that time. In addition, I'm pretty sure that even before the previous owners moved out, lawn care was NOT their forte. We found a landscape company that gave us a really fair price on clearing out the dead weeds/grass and installation of nice, new St. Augustine sod. For those of you that have never walked on Florida grass, it's kind of a new experience for us Northerners. It's just weird. Springy, spongy, weird grass. But that's how we roll here in the Sunshine State.
The sod truck arrived with about 10 pallets of St. Augustine Sod. Super classy tidbit to share, Tim parked our lawn chairs on the front yard because he didn't want the truck or forklift to roll over our septic leach field and ruin it (costing about $5k to fix), so the yard chairs stopped 'em in their tracks.  |
| The pallets of sod looked like alien invaders on the front yard |
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| The kids were pretty excited about having grass again. |
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| The sod starting to go down, it looks like a carpet! |
The inside of the pool area is different than the rest of the house. I wanted to paint it a "fun" color, so that when you're out there, you feel like you're someplace else, maybe on vacation. So I painted it a terra cotta color. The pool deck is painted a beigy-color and picks up the beigy-color of the pool tiles. We need to get some nice pool deck furniture, but will probably wait till fall for that. I want to get some wicker/wood with maroon cushions out there, and put in some indoor-outdoor fabric curtains on the lanai.
Another view of our lanai. This is where I'd put the indoor/outdoor maroon curtains and the nice pool furniture. I want to wait till I find what I really want, and it'll probably be fall before I'll really have some time (or money) to shop for what I want. One thing I have learned in this whole renovation process, I am willing to wait for what I really want!
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| Pool View, with the Beigy-Deck painted. Tim just bought a pool thermometer today, and it's 71 degrees Fahrenheit. The kids have been swimming for over a month during this swimming season (2011)... it HAD to have been in the 60's when they started. I swear, my kids must have nerve damage because they swim in this ice-cold water like nobody's business! |
So we do have some other projects to complete, but we believe that the house is about 95-99% complete! This has been an amazing project, and we are so happy with how it turned out. Believe it or not, we think we are within about $1000 of our original budget estimate, made before we even had our home inspection (and really knew just how bad this house might be!). We really didn't have even a single argument with each other during this whole process about anything related to the house or renovation. The kids were AWESOME helpers to us. All in all, we would DEFINITELY do this again. Now we just have to find another Broken House in need of us! We're looking for one!
