Repairing and rebuilding- a new place called home.

When we bought "Carnton Cottage", we had already lived in it for a year, and knew of a few of the
(cosmetic we thought) issues we would need to deal with. It had been a rental for quite a while, and sadly needed some TLC to restore her to her former glory.

First, we built Josh's garage- we missed our large garage we had in WA, and were eager to expand to make it easier for Josh ( and now Rowan) to work on projects- the former working on a car that doesn't want to stay on the road, and the latter on his latest passion, making knives. We also decided it would be beneficial to turn the old garage into a guest suite for visitors.

 More on that later.

Lets start at the beginning--
Our garage addition was meant to take 7-8 weeks to complete. It ended up taking 7 MONTHS and was over budget by 1/4 of original bid. We still need to paint it. All of our work has been inside projects.

it sat like this for months.

permit nightmare.

In July of last year ( on my birthday, no less) after our friends had visited for the weekend, we noticed a wet spot in the ceiling in the kitchen.
We thought for sure it was the plumbing.

Josh ripped out the ceiling.

Happy Birthday!

We tested it, and found that it wasn't the plumbing ( thankful!) but the AC unit hadn't been properly insulated, and the condensation dripped down the duct work and into the ceiling.

Josh spent the hottest day of the year in the attic repairing this.

what a trooper!

Life got busy and we embraced the "industrial" look of the exposed beams until we had the time to put sheetrock back up.
Since it was open,  Josh took the opportunity to plumb for a gas stove, and vent for a range hood over the new stove. Our friends came up from Atlanta for the holiday weekend and helped put sheetrock up. Things were looking like they were moving forward.

Now we're cooking with gas!

Then we discovered a leak in the slab under the powder room. our water bill went from $80 a month to over $200..

Our house is built on a cement slab. Translation- to fix this leak we would need to tear up floor and jackhammer the slab to get to the pipe- which is daisy chained in the slab, and could potentially spring other leaks in the future.
Mr. Plumber came to give us a large estimate- it was better to replumb the entire house than deal with the leak in the slab.

Thankfully we never got around to finishing the ceiling- and it was held up with sheetrocking screws.

after a few youtube videos and surveillance, Josh decided to replumb the house himself.

pex is our friend.

As and added bonus, after him replumbing, we can now run a dishwasher, washing machine, and flush a toilet all at the same time someone is showering- and nobody gets scalded. WIN!

When it was time to put the ceiling back together, Josh found that the water that had leaked from the AC condensation warped the beams. Next step was to jack up the house and add gusseting to support the beams where they should be, and reinstalling the sheetrock.
For Mother's Day I got ceiling tiles- hope my boys can install them in the near future.

jacking up the beams.

I am so thankful that the Lord has blessed Josh with these skills-- we save/saved thousands of dollars by him doing all of these projects by himself, and in the process, wisdom, and patience was gained!

until the next project...