About
lisa September 17th, 2007
This houseblog describes our adventures renovating a five-bedroom house built in 1890. It was in sad shape when we bought it, but Mark is a former renovation contractor and I was up for a challenge!
The sidebar links will let you read our houseblog from nearly the beginning until the present day (click here for the very first post). The blog started on another domain, so some of the links don’t work anymore, but you’ll get the gist. You can find lots more pictures on flickr.
Here’s a picture of the house in 2001. You could barely tell that there was a house under all those vines. The front, back, and one side were covered from basement to attic in English ivy, trumpet vine, and poison ivy. The maple seedlings hid the two-story hydrangeas from view, and the entire lot was wooded.
This is the house in 2002, after we tore off the front porch and started working on repairing the foundation. I ripped out almost every bit of vegetation in the front, and pruned the hydrangeas to within an inch of their lives. Mark tore off some of the aluminum siding to see what kind of shape the clapboards were in underneath, and we discovered that the house used to be yellow.
Here’s the house in 2003, when we were in the middle of the worst of the renovations… we had piles of lumber under tarps in the front, back, and side yards and a dumpster in the driveway for much of the year.
And this is 2005, after most of the frenzy had died down. By that point, we still had a ramp in the front instead of stairs (it made it a lot easier to bring firewood, appliances, and furniture in, but it sure was ugly).
This picture of the house in 2006 shows that we’ve made some progress on the porch! Things are moving a little slower now…
Here’s the house in 2007. Most of the action these days is happening out in the workshop and garden, so not much has changed from this view.
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