Getting closer to completion

Part of the house is starting to look like a home. Pictured here is the living room. Andrew moved in a couple weeks ago, so we hung some curtains for privacy in a few rooms. The kids and I are making the best of traveling back and forth after school for dinner on weekdays and hanging out to help on weekends. Despite how much time he spends with the basketball team, Andrew's making good use of his time over here painting and finishing the final trim work. Basketball season will be over at the end of the month; and we didn't sign the kids up for any soccer or softball this semester, so we should be able to wrap this work up soon. Here's the general rundown of what's left to do:

• Cut and install aprons for each window sill
• Strip the final pieces of original trim and install on 6 doorways downstairs
• Install all the shoe mouldings
• Caulk all the nail holes and gaps in the trim
• Prime the remaining trim and all the shoe
• Two coats of the trim paint on everything including the stairs (so time consuming!)
• Clean all the doors, prime, paint, then install doorknobs
• Paint the girls room
• Cut in the wall color in a couple rooms
• Second coat the wall color in a couple rooms
• Touch up paint in most rooms
• Install and paint beadboard and trim on the bar side of kitchen peninsula
• Install toekicks in kitchen
• Tile the fireplace hearths
• Strip and/or paint the 3 antique mantles and install
• Build mantle from reclaimed newel posts, paint, and install in boy's room
• Call the Bathtub Man to refinish the tub in the hall bathroom when the dust settles
• Caulk the shower in the hall bathroom

I'm tired just thinking about it all! But we're pressing on...one day at a time. We just hired a realtor for the Browntown house, so there's plenty to be done to keep that house show ready too!  We'd appreciate your prayers at this time.  As always, if you run across someone looking for a home in Chattanooga, send them our way...we've got two they can pick from! :)

The New Plan

Time just keeps ticking away; and honestly, we just haven't been able to get over to Vance to work on the house much. Once school started back in August, our schedule got crazy. I went back to work for the first time since becoming a mom nearly 9 years ago...I coached a middle school volleyball team (conference champions, by the way - woohoo!!)...and the kids were involved this semester in ballet, soccer, and cross country. There's not much progress to report on; although, I do need to catch everyone up on the developments over the summer (floors, kitchen, trim - look for new posts soon).

The biggest update to report, though, is that we've switched gears and have a new plan! Since we've wasted so much time getting Vance finished, we ate up all of the time we planned to have it on the market to sell. Therefore, we're about to get ourselves into a sticky situation with two house payments. So we made the decision about a month ago to go ahead and sell our Browntown house (please click here to see listing) and move to Vance. So far the interest has been good!! We'll still keep Vance for sale and just move again one day to the next adventure!

I'm really excited about returning to the Highland Park neighborhood, living in an old house again, and being close to downtown. There's definitely been something about it that I've missed these last few years.

Looking for a new home?

1705 Vance Avenue in Chattanooga is officially FOR SALE.  The finishing details are currently in progress, but potential home buyers are welcome to come take a look now...