I'm excited to write this portion of the story. Some of the things we unearthed as we started the process were the inspiration for this entire blog series. One of my guilty pleasures is to watch shows like Property Brothers and Flip or Flop. It never fails that the contract "finds a major issue" that throws a big wrench into the budget and renovation plans. Also, the show contractors always scramble to meet the deadline to finish or they miss it. I thought for sure the home Jeff and I purchased would be a different story. HA! I've been proven dead wrong!

We got some friends over one weekend and got most of the old landscaping out. Cleaning that heavily neglected yard was no easy task. Can you believe there was soil and a driveway under the mass of leaves that accumulated around the house?

I am a touch behind in the blog, so progress on the house has gotten to the point where I can't really call the home Disaster Castle any longer. More on that in a future post. This post is dedicated to the removal of the accursed glass sliders to make way for a set of lovely French doors.

As you can see in the photos, during the tear out we found some very rotten boards that we thought were load bearing. We lucked out. Those rotten boards were just there to frame in the sliders so away with the sliders and rot. Initially, we had planned to replace the sliders in a year of so. That has become the motto for this house - "That project for down the road, let's do that now." (I think I failed to mention the original plan was to simply replace the floor, paint the walls, and move in. Within two weeks or so it became a full tear out and remodel.) The new framing for the French doors took care of the rotten boards and the French doors are the perfect touch for walking out into the back yard. I included a photo of the cute neighborhood bunny who hangs out. He is the fuzzy little guy who really makes this house special.

Stay tuned! In the next blog post you will get to see the D. C. starting to really look like a house!