Day one

 We bought our very first house. After 9 years of marriage, 4 moves, 3 kids, 2 dogs and a partridge in a pear tree, we are home owners. It means so many things to us, but for me, the biggest dream come true is setting down roots. 

We bought a fixer upper. This home has great bones and hasn't really been touched since 1978 when it was built. But that means it has wall heaters and a previous swamp cooler. An HVAC is the very first major buy that we are doing. It isn't glamourous, but in the Sacramento 110 degree heat, it is 100% necessary. Luckily, buying in January means we have a little time to put it in.

Day one: erect the trampoline for the kids so they can stay out of the house while we work on it. That's the idea anyway.

The first real thing before we start putting ceilings in the bedrooms for the HVAC ducts is moving the door to the garage from the kitchen around the corner and into the living room. This will give us much more useable space in the kitchen and a better place for the refrigerator. The current spot for the fridge is like 1/2 in smaller than our current fridge. Buying a new fridge right now to fit that space in not in the budget.

However, do to that we have to move the water heater to the other end of the garage where Pat is standing in the picture below. This is where having a plumber for a husband really comes in handy. The last owner had illegally transformed the garage into a 4th bedroom and bathroom and also drywalled around the water heater to hide it. There was a real nasty slatted wood closet door in the living room that accessed it. Bye bye nasty door! The garage door will go where the water heater is now. That means we can use the current opening in the wall where the access is instead of tearing a new hole in the wall! Yay!

It also means we can insert a header in the doorway because they didn't put one in when they put the door in for the water heater. 

Pat was able to rip out the framing and drywall that was around the water heater and drain it last night. I'm wondering if it's ever been flushed since it was put in ten years ago. Flush your water heater people!

We also took down the tiny cabinet above the oven to clear space for a microwave/hood in the future. While Pat was slaving away in the garage I scrubbed the wall behind the stove. Whoever lived here before fried a lot of food. Since there is no backsplash I will probably have to sand it all off. Hardened cooking oil is a bugger to get off.

Because we are doing most of the work in the evenings after Pat gets home from work/ the kids school schedule it's going to be a slow process. I'm hoping to get major jumps done on the weekends so we can move in sooner rather than later. My goal is to move in a month, but you never know with construction. Cross your fingers we don't run into any problems along the way. And then knock on all the wood.