Maple Hill Farm: Where Do We Begin? (Part 3)

Our first night sleeping at the house felt a lot like camping.

While we were in the kitchen making our dinner of macaroni and cheese we discovered that there was a leak below the sink.  Well, more than a leak, missing pipes.   Each time we poured something down the drain, we would see it seconds later pouring out into a blue bucket.  I guess we neglected to check the kitchen plumbing during our walk-through.

The leak didn’t stop us and pretty soon we were sitting on our bed (our only piece of furniture) eating our first home cooked meal, it was very satisfying.

After our meal we continued cleaning the house and eventually wore ourselves down.  With Chris still tinkering in the rest of the house, I got into bed and just as I was adjusting my pillows a black pellet rolled off of it.   I quickly sat up and called for Chris.  I was too scared to do any investigating on my own so Chris came over and slowly lifted up the top pillow to reveal a very neat pile of squirrel poop!   We had to look it up on google to confirm our fears.   Although disgusted, we had a good laugh, changed the sheets and eventually were able to fall asleep.

The next day we woke up and had a whole pile (no pun intended) of meetings set up with our new general contractor, Jeff McCluskey, to discuss the scope of work that lay ahead of us along with the budget we had worked out.

There were some things we wanted to do, but a whole lot of things that we didn’t know yet would have to be done.  Let’s start with the things we wanted to do.

Painting:

Nothing has a greater overall effect on a space than a nice fresh coat of paint.   We were excited about getting some colors in our house and started thinking about a red dining room and a dark brown den and… then I realized that’s the last thing we would be doing.  We had to settle our painting excitement and deal with the harder stuff first.

Flooring:

Throughout the house are just the nicest old wide pine and spruce floors.   Alice had dogs for many years, so a lot of areas on the floors (and doors actually) are really badly scratched up.   But after meeting our floor guy, we had faith that they would come back to their former glory.   We are still curious about what they’ll look like once they are sanded down and oiled, but its exciting to think about…and this is the second to last thing we will do, so again, back to business.

The Kitchen:

We loved Alice and Martin’s cute little kitchen, but when we studied the shape of the room, it became apparent that the kitchen was shoved into the small nook side of the room and the breakfast table was on the nice wide open side.  We learned from our wonderful neighbor and new friend, Maria, that Alice and Martin were not big cooks.   We, on the other hand, spend most of our time in the kitchen and love to cook.

Since we had already planned on getting new appliances and cabinets (and we already mentioned the plumbing), we made our first big decision; to flip the kitchen to other side of the room and make the old kitchen space our breakfast nook.   This is our contractor’s specialty;  he’s a cabinet builder first and foremost, so we got started right away on planning the layout.

Bathrooms:

I really can’t believe we have four bathrooms in a little old farmhouse, but two of them were added over time.   There’s a powder room on the ground floor and and full bath at the top of the stairs.   Those have been there for a while.

But one of the more interesting things in the house is that the bigger bedroom upstairs has its own sink and vanity in the room and a tiny little bathroom with a toilet and its own shower too.  It’s really the ideal guest room, and the hallway bath can be for the kids in the other rooms (the “future kids” that is, we are working on it).

We want to do new tiling in the hallway bath, pull out the plastic shower liner and tile in the little bedroom shower and add a glass door.   And we need to get a plumber to the house to assess the pipes and fixtures.

The Master Bath and bedroom is the newest addition to the house built around 15 years ago.  It’s an extension of the ground floor, off the den and it’s a little distance from the rest of the house.

The bedroom has much higher ceilings and the master bath has a skylight and a laundry room behind it, so there’s a lot of room to work with.   Again, we wanted to take out the plastic shower liner and put in a tub/shower and update the vanity top.  We were tempted to demo the whole bathroom and adjoining laundry area and turn it into a huge bathroom with separate bath and shower but we took another glance at our budget and decided against it.  The only other thing we planned to do with the bathroom was to remove one of two doors that accessed it.   There were a pair of swinging double doors that never stayed closed and opened to the hallway.  We decided to close that doorway up and fill that space with a mirror. Better we see ourselves on the pot than our guests.

As we continued through the house with Jeff discussing the things we wanted to do, he suggested having his associate, Bill Grayson, who specializes in restorations, come by the next day to find out what kind of shape the bones of the house were in. This meeting would really help to steer the overall project and would put our wants in sharp perspective to our needs, not to mention give our budget a rude awakening.

Click here to Read Part One

Click here to Read Part Two