And so we begin…

Thank you everyone for such encouraging and positive feedback! After going back and forth about doing this, I am glad I decided to go for it. Again, it is so weird to be putting ourselves “out there” in this way; however, being out of your comfort zone is supposed to be a good thing, right?! With that said, I’ve decided it’s “go big or go home” – so I’ve done some more crazy things. I created an Instagram account (“porterbradstreet”) and added a “subscribe” feature for the blog. To subscribe,  you simply type your email address in the box and then click on the link that is emailed to you. This will allow you to receive an email when I’ve put up a new post. If I miraculously end up doing this more frequently than I expect to, I will attempt to change the settings so that some sort of weekly email goes out instead. With January bringing birthday parties, playdates, a belated holiday-party (which we are hosting), a baby shower (which we are hosting), as well as working and mothering 2 toddlers and oh, restoring an antique house…I’ll try not to spend too much time sitting around blogging at you 🙂

Back to the house…I thought it might be a good idea to just give everyone a visual on the existing layout. We have plans of the existing interior that our architect drew up a few months ago and they are so detailed and wonderful. Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly – we are still living out of boxes and everything keeps migrating) I cannot find them at this very moment. Note, these are rough images which were obviously drawn up when it served as the school. There are a lot of spaces not included (such as some closets, or two chimneys in the back of the house) but at least it gives an idea of how the space is arranged. There is also a decent sized basement with the original fieldstone foundation exposed (a post for another day…).

 

 

 

The house is actually in remarkable shape. That is, aside from the back. The entire back of the house is essentially sinking…

 

Sadly, the beams are rotting to the point where the ceiling leaks generously. I’m hoping you can see the video below – Nick had just finished covering up the floors and the beam itself had been covered with additional wood too. I went back into the house to grab something…and froze when thought I heard a creature. Turns out it was just the leak, phew! Not a creature, just the back of the house totally falling apart, what a relief ha!

So, the first item on the agenda is to carefully take it all apart, save ALL salvageable wood/materials and then rebuild the entire back of the house. We have begun this process…

 

I tried to make these images bigger but I realize it is making them a bit blurry. Next time I will work on avoiding that somehow (aka I will do more googling of how to do blog things). My wonderful coworker Christine has also loaned me a fancy non-iphone camera. So when I have some downtime (hahahahahahaahhahaha) I will study how to use it. (Again Chris, thank you 🙂  )

And lastly, just for fun……