Hi friends! I took a break from social media and blogging for a little while, but I have been eager to show you what we have been working on over here. Truth be told, a lot of it hasn’t been very glamorous, but that’s the beauty of buying a fixer upper, right?! It’s not always fun and games.
For the past few weeks, Grant has been pretty much living in our attic and crawl space. We have two attics, and somehow, before we bought this house, a squirrel got into one of the attics and clearly made it’s home inside. So, Grant removed the squirrel, all of its nesting materials, mounds of feces, and all of the insulation that was damaged from the squirrel.
Grant then made his way to our crawl space in the basement. When we bought the house, another squirrel was living in the crawl. We are STILL working on removed thousands….and thousands of walnuts that he had stored down there. Aside from that, We need to insulate the crawls, clean out our basement, and then paint it. So fixing our crawl space was our number one priority, before diving into the rest of the basement project. There was a damaged wall in our crawl space, so Grant spent countless hours digging through the soil to repair the wall. Sounds blissful, right?
Next, comes the laundry room. Laundry plans got put on hold because I was waiting to find the perfect sink. I bought one from Ikea and ended up returning it because I felt like I wanted to go with something that had a bit more character and something that was genuinely vintage. After MONTHS of searching Craigslist, Offer Up, Facebook Marketplace, Estate Sales, and the Antique Mall, we found one. Nearly 3 1/2 hours from our home, we finally found a sink on Facebook Marketplace and decided to make the drive, to pick it up, this past weekend. We landed a vintage, 1930’s Crane sink with its original stand, and I couldn’t be more in love. We paid $300, and in my opinion, it was worth every penny.
Last but not least, we still have been working on tackling the furniture set up in the living room. After getting out carpet installed, we decided to purchase our couch and a few chairs from Ikea because I read and researched hundreds (literally) of couches and I loved that the reviews for the pieces we bought were awesome. I also LOVED that you can rip the covers off, bleach them and/or wash them anytime. We originally went to Ikea to snag the Ektorp sofa for $499. However, when we got to Ikea, we saw that they had an Ektorp 3.5 seater (which is a little bit taller and wider) for $649. We loved it. This couch reminds me of the ones that Pottery Barn carries. People actually think that it is the Pottery Barn couch, when they come over to visit. Due to the space in here and the set up that we realized we wanted, we do need to purchase another couch to put in here, so on our next trip up to Ikea we will get another Ektorp 3.5 seater, and I will share the finished product with you then.
We are heading to pick out a faucet and some countertops for our laundry room today, so can’t wait to share progress of that room with you soon!
XO
Jenna