Perfectly Kaotic: The Jones' Casa Renovation Saga

It's been so damn long since I've written a blog post that I got locked out of my account just now trying to log in. Shameful.

Since I last wrote a REAL update we've been.... busy.

In October of 2012 (it's now '14, holy shit), we closed on a beautiful home on the #2 tee box of a pretty sweet golf course in Jacksonville. When we first moved here we had negative amounts of dollars to our names and staying afloat was more the name of the game. I never dreamed that in less than four years we'd be able to buy a place like this. It is our dream home in every way (aside from the neighbors, which I will address later) and we feel lucky every day to get to live here.

We bought at just the right time because property values in our 'hood have done nothing but climb (up an average of about $50k from what we paid for our house... in less than two years...), so we are super lucky in that respect as well. Now that we are all happy and settled, it's tough to remember all of the crap that we dealt with actually getting to this point, but here are some of the highlights.

we had a champagne carpet party immediately after closing

The house was in great shape aside from cosmetic stuff, so we were fully prepared to do some "light" renovations on our own when we closed. We had six weeks to get it all done while we still had our lease on our other house. We closed October 26th and the goal was to have Thanksgiving at our house. IDIOTS.

This was our "to-do" list and our renovation budget was $20k.

1) rip out & replace carpet in all four bedrooms, living room, and dining room

2) rip out tile in water closets of both bathrooms (Previous owners installed new tile in the main areas of both baths, but because they were super lazy and didn't want to take up the toilets, the little water closet rooms still had the original 1993 6x6 forest green tile on the floors. NOT cute.)

3) paint master bedroom, master bath room, & office

4) rip out & replace kitchen countertops

5) rip out & replace kitchen backsplash
*note: both the kitchen countertops AND the backsplash were white 2x2 mosaic tile. Let me just tell you that 20 year old grout on a kitchen countertop does not inspire one to prepare a meal on top of it.

6) rip out green tile on both sides of fireplace, re-drywall, retile

I found the crowbar to be my favorite tool

7) remove & replace all kitchen appliances

loading the new appliances. if you were wondering, a washer, dryer, dishwasher, range, & microwave WILL fit into an F250 in one shot.

8) remove & replace both toilets

9) replace all interior light fixtures (15 total)

10) rewire fluorescent lights above cabinets, install incandescent

11) rip out & replace countertops & sinks in both baths

12) replace blinds in 8 windows

13) rip out & replace 4 bathroom sink faucets

14) rip out & replace 2 shower faucets

15) rip out PINK cultured marble master bath tub (omg)

16) install new Jacuzzi tub in master bath

17) fence in back yard (*also, because we're on the golf course, it has to be the most expensive black aluminum fence that they make, and cannot be more than 4' tall.)

Simple enough, right? WRONG. So, so, so, so, SO effing wrong. All of this work required a dumpster, so that was our first step. There was a minimal price difference between the small one and the one that you literally could have fit our entire house into, so we figured what the hell? Get the big one. Well, the problem with that was that it was so big it wouldn't fit in our driveway, so it had to go on the street.

In hindsight this was no big deal (or shouldn't have been at least) because the "street" in front of our house is actually still our property. It was supposed to be a private drive that went in front of all the houses that runs parallel to the actual street, but the city made a mistake and paved it, so it looks like a road. Anywho, the dumpster was parked on the "street", blocking our house, and also probably the sun. It was massive.

Lane and I took absolutely no time off of work since we had already used the majority of our vacation time for wedding and honeymoon stuff. So that meant that we would work 8-12 hour days at our jobs, and come to the house and do back-breaking work until easily midnight every night, but more often 1, 2, or 3 a.m., and then do it all over again the next day.

In comparison to what Lane did, the work that I actually did was a cake walk. He busted his ass, literally broke his foot when the guest bath countertop fell on it when we were trying to heave it into the dumpster, and deprived himself of sleep and sustenance (other than beer) and never ONCE complained. I still don't think that he's fully recovered.

Since we did the majority of the work ourselves and obviously had a limited time frame each day to do it, the dumpster stayed in front of our house for ohhhh maybe 5 days? Which to us was an insanely short period of time considering all the work that we were doing. (We ended up literally filling this gargantuan dumpster up to the brim, by the way!) But it was on about day three that we started hearing little grumblings from our new neighbors. Then, one day when Lane was at the house on his day off, dripping sweat and breaking his back chipping out the floor tiles at the foyer, the HOA president comes sauntering into the house to announce that we need to move the dumpster. Lane was less than amused and proceeded to tell him that we'd move the dumpster when we were done with it and not a minute sooner. Please note, the dumpster did not block any traffic, was not in front of anyone else's house, and was on our property. They just didn't like looking at it, so felt it completely reasonable to dictate when we needed to remove it. UHMMMM, NO. Despite our better judgment, we hustled up even more, and called to have the dumpster removed several days early to keep the peace with these jerk-off neighbors.

We keep plowing through the renovations, blood, sweat, tears, and at least 50,000 trips to Lowe's. And it was very exciting to see it all come together. It was really starting to look like the house that we'd imagined. One of the first big things that we did was have the fence installed so that we could bring Baron over with us when we were doing all the work inside. This was strike number two with our left side next door neighbors.

they knew us on a first name basis at Lowe's

and the fence goes UP

You know what... I bet I could save time if I just copied and pasted the letter that I wrote to our neighbors after we'd finally had enough. For reference, this file is saved on my computer as "fuck you neighbors letter" and it went to our neighbors two houses to the right, the ones immediately to our left, and our HOA president. Here it is:

11/10/12

Assholes #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5,

Lane and I feel it necessary to make our feelings about our “welcome” to the neighborhood known in no uncertain terms.

We can not express our utter disappointment and sadness in the fact that we even have to write this letter. Lane and I are good, kind people, who have saved and worked relentlessly to be able to purchase a home of our own. Since we closed a mere two weeks ago, we have been subjected to a ridiculous amount of scrutiny, intrusion, and ridicule. What should be one of the happiest and most exciting occasions in our lives has become nothing but a source of stress and anxiety for us.

Our desire to complete renovations in our new home (and consequently increase your own property values), caused an uproar because of the dumpster. As soon as we became aware that its presence was causing a problem, Lane and I did everything we could to have it removed as soon as possible, exhausting ourselves by working until midnight every night for a week to complete our tasks early. We had the dumpster removed three days short of our paid rental period as a courtesy and good will gesture to our new neighbors.

You can not imagine my surprise when during my patching and painting on a Sunday afternoon, I looked out of our window and saw our new yard being inspected with a metal detector and dug up with a garden shovel by our new neighbors to search for a property line. Only then did we realize that there was an issue with our new fence. Though we did everything by the book of the neighborhood's HOA requirements, the installation and placement of our fence became a topic of discussion and yet another issue on which we were questioned. It is a less than warm welcome to go outside and look to your right to see ladies whispering and pointing to your house, and look to your left to see two men inspecting your yard and avoiding eye contact.

When our yard was being inspected I was visibly upset and embarrassed to think that we had disturbed our new neighbors to the point that they felt it necessary to intrude upon our space to “satisfy a curiosity” as Asshole #4 put it, to confirm that our fence installation and official property survey was correct. In response to my tears, the statement directed at me by my new neighbor was “do me a favor, please don’t feel bad”. I am still unsure if this was intended to be an apology, but it certainly was not. My response to that should have been that I have no reason to feel bad, seeing as though we have done nothing wrong.

Today we arrived at our new home to check the progress of our tile installation and witnessed a man, whom we have never met, walking up our driveway and into our door and foyer. Though the claim is now that Asshole #2 just wanted to get some information for tile installation, we all know that in truth this, yet again, was nothing but a nosey neighbor satisfying another curiosity. Even if he had truly just wanted information from our installers, waltzing into someone else’s home while the owners are not present is not the acceptable way to obtain this information. You wait until we are home, you knock on our door, and you ask us directly.

And as it turns out, unbeknownst to us, Asshole #2 was not the only one to help himself to a tour of our new home that day, as our tile installer informed us that someone else had walked through – over our newly installed and still wet tile - to check out the entire house earlier in the day.

As if that is not inexcusable enough, when we called you Asshole #3, our HOA President, to make you aware of the situation, your statement was “well, there were people there working and the door was open”, as if the people who blatantly entered our home uninvited and without our knowledge was permissible. This is unacceptable. It is absolutely unacceptable and will not be tolerated. In addition to unacceptable, it is actually trespassing, which is a criminally punishable offense. How would any of you feel if your front door was open and Lane and I decided that it would be fine for us to walk through your home without your knowledge?

Let us be clear. We are doing renovations that will be complete soon. Our address is not an open construction zone. It is not a vacant home. It is OUR home. It does not matter if our furniture is in yet or not. NO ONE has the right to enter our home, or our yard for that matter, without our presence or invitation. There is no exception to this.

If any of you had taken the time to actually get to know us, you would know that we are good people and good neighbors. You would also know that I have a degree in Interior Design and would have been happy to give design advice to any of my new neighbors, since you all seem to be so highly interested in the interior finishes that we’ve selected for our own home.

We regret any disturbance that we have caused in each of your daily routines. We regret any inconvenience that our rapidly concluding renovations might have caused. But most of all we regret choosing to make a $300,000, 30-year mistake by purchasing a home in an unofficial, self-proclaimed retirement community where we do not feel welcome.

We will be good neighbors, will keep our house and yard spotless, and we will expect that you all respect our privacy and our property lines from this point forward.

Sincerely,

Lane & Katie Jones

In the interest of full disclosure, I did not actually call them assholes. I just took out their names in case anyone who reads this feels compelled to take action! From one of the neighbors we got a "sorry" notecard, from the HOA pres and the other neighbors, not a single contact since that day. Well, unless you want to count them calling the police to complain about the noise every now and then. Whatevs.

So other than that, the rest of the reno went off (mostly) without a hitch. It came down to the day before the moving truck was supposed to show up and we'd been so busy with the renovation that we had packed NOTHING. And I'm not in any way exaggerating when I say that. We'd packed nothing in our other house. I got home at 9 p.m. the night before the move and packed the entire. house. in one night. Don't be too impressed because it was absolutely NOT cute. I got about twenty boxes of contractor sized garbage bags and just started tossing shit in. I was so tired that my philosophy was literally "if it breaks we don't need it anyway".

moving day at the old casa

this somehow got stuck on one of our boxes when we first moved to Jax. I always forget until we move again and someone starts uncontrollably laughing

Lane had to work the day of the move, so I supervised the three morons all day. It was a mess, but we got it done. After that, Lane and I continued to work non-stop setting the house up so that we could actually have Thanksgiving here, and despite EVERY kitchen item we had being in boxes the very night before Turkey day, we got it all done and had an awesome time with my brother and Chloe.
***
After the holidays, things were getting back to "normal" and we were settling into a routine at our new home. Then in February we got another one of those outrageous power bills and knew from previous experience exactly what it meant. Busted pipes in the slab. Pretty common in Florida since most houses are on slabs and most in the 90's used copper pipes that get pinholes in them eventually, which basically meant that we'd dumped into the ground (and paid for) about 50,000 gallons of water to the tune of $600.

At that point there were two options. One was to rip up the tile that we'd JUST installed in the master bath and repair only the spot in the pipes that was actively leaking. There were two problems with that. The first was that the tile that we'd installed matched the rest of the master bathroom and we'd been lucky to find JUST enough to do the job left over in the garage. It had since been discontinued, so if we wanted it to "match" when we ripped it out and reinstalled, that meant ripping up the entire bathroom floor. No thanks. The second, and much larger problem, was that the leak detection guy told us that the dude who sold us the house had already had some of these same leaks repaired and that it would likely happen again. I guess the seller didn't find it necessary to tell us that minor detail of this house in the property disclosure part of the contract? Dick. So if we chose that route we'd just be ripping up floors and chasing leaks all over the house as they popped up. SO, that led us to option two, which was to repipe the entire house.

What all does repiping entail you ask? Well let me tell you. First, all of the pipes at EVERY point where water enters your home are disconnected. Think about your house and how many places that might be... k, THEN giant, giant, gargantuan dumpster sized holes are cut into your freshly painted walls to expose these pipes so that new ones can be connected and run up through your attic. Anyone who has ever had any experience with drywall dust knows that it is nothing to be taken lightly. It gets every.where.imaginable. It is a thin layer of white powder that sticks to walls, doors, floors, everything. So what that meant to us was that a mere six weeks after we'd set everything up, we had to take everything off the walls, pile all the furniture in the center of every room and cover it with sheets, and live through four days of plumbers working nonstop, crawling around every inch of the house and basically destroying everything we'd just done.

Bear on the coffee table

I was in NO way prepared for how bad it would actually be, and when I got home after the first day of them working - the hole cutting day - I lost it. Not only was it going to cost $6,000 (after a $20k+ renovation), but everything we'd just gotten so perfect was undone. The third day - hole closing day - we got word that my Dad had just suffered a heart attack, so of course Kyle and I rushed to Indiana to be with him. (He had a stint put in and is doing well - he was very, very lucky.)

Obviously that was a very stressful time, and heading home I was expecting to return to a complete disaster zone, but when I walked through the door I couldn't believe my eyes. It was as if nothing had ever happened. Lane had worked day and night to clean up, move the furniture back, rehang all the pictures, even repainted the walls. It was such a special treat and made that difficult time so much easier. I SO did not feel like messing with any of that, and he did it all. It was awesome.

I guess that's really the last major thing that we've done with the house. There are things here and there... Lane built a really cool banquette and kitchen table.

so super handy!

And we did rewire the whole house too. Well, I guess not "rewire" but we replaced all the switches, outlets, and switches/faceplates. They were a gross 1990's yellow cream-ish color that looked like someone had been smoking in here for fifty years. I thought I could get away with just replacing the switchplates, but I did one and quickly realized that would not be happening, so we spent an entire Sunday replacing every single outlet and every single switch. Looks so much better, but now the baseboards and doors don't match.... hmmmmm.....

carried on into the night, which made things interesting

before - they didn't really "blend" - & after

We also installed some in/outdoor carpet in the porch. It was so. freakin. hot. that day.

So that's it. That's our house reno journey. And now that things are all settled on that front, we are learning about life with a diabetic dachshund, who was also just diagnosed with an enlarged heart and collapsing trachea. That all sounds much worse than it actually is - or at least that's what I'm telling myself... Baron now gets two insulin shots a day and has to eat a "can be purchased by prescription and ONLY at the vet" super expensive food at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. to keep his blood sugar regulated.

the best part is having to go to Walmart to get his insulin

At first we thought "how the F will we ever do that?!", but honestly it hasn't been that bad. After you get over the initial fear of stabbing your dog with a needle it's really no biggie. We put the food down and let him start eating, and stick him real quick and he barely notices. He was diagnosed about a month ago and when I took him back in for a glucose curve last week I had them do x-rays because he's been coughing.

The coughing put up a huge red flag for me because he's had a grade 3 heart murmur for quite a while and although it hadn't progressed for years, I explicitly remember the one thing that the doctor said was that if he starts coughing it could mean he's going into heart failure. So last week they did x-rays and could see that his heart murmur has worsened a bit and his heart is a teeeeensy bit enlarged and he has something called collapsing trachea. The heart condition and trachea condition just aggravate each other, so the goal was to address the heart issue first and see if that helps the trachea issue. So now Bear is on insulin and blood pressure meds. HA. My little geriatric boy. As always, he is such a trooper and handles it all just fine and keeps be-bopping along with that infamous Bear-Bear swag.

I mean just look at this guy. I can't even.

And it really is amazing the difference that the meds make. The insulin helped immediately. He had been getting up 3-4 times every night to pee, drinking gallons of water, and was just generally discontent. This only went on for a few days before I took him to the vet because I have seen it so many times and from working at the animal hospital for all those years, I knew what was wrong with him before I even took him in. Within a few days he was back to sleeping through the night and feeling better. Now that he's on the blood pressure meds too he's like a different pup. The coughing is down I would say by at least 75% and it's getting better every day. That makes me really happy because the vet said that if the BP meds didn't help that he was going to put Bear on a cough suppressant too, which can be dangerous because if they really DO start to go into heart failure, the cough is the signal of that, and if it's being suppressed then you may catch it too late. So yeah, kinda wanted to avoid that, and I'm happy that it looks like we'll be able to.

Gosh when you say it all like that it sounds so terrible like I'm just keeping him barely hanging on by a thread... I'm not that person. I love that dog more than anything, but I would not let him suffer. He is still very active and happy and snuggly and tenacious as ever. I am quite realistic about his condition and I know that it will not always be manageable and will likely develop into congestive heart failure at some point. Hopefully years and years from now... But until then I will keep him happy and young at heart! Which brings me to the next big thing... We got a damn puppy.

When Bear started to act all lethargic and depressed we were convinced it was because he was lonely. We have talked on and off about getting another dog ever since we lost Duley, but the timing has never felt right. When the subject came up a few months ago, it felt like the right time. We looked at adopting a shelter pup, I looked at a few rescue groups, even e-mailed a few people and filled out adoption papers on a few dogs and it never worked out. I kinda put the idea on the back burner when I was scrolling through facebook and saw a post from our very first friends in Jacksonville that said that they'd taken in a freezing cold stray pup right before Christmas and that she was now in his garage having puppies and who wanted one. And the rest is history. Meet Maybelle Jones. Maybe for short. Or Maybs. Or NO MA'AM!!!

looks can be deceiving

She looks real cute, huh? No. This dog is an absolute terrorist. She is an unruly four pounds of needle teeth and razor-sharp talons. She bites everything. She sleeps on your face and/or throat and won't have it any other way. She is holding us hostage in our own home and demands attention 100% of the time. In other words, I love her to pieces and she was definitely meant to be mine. She fits right in.

As of today she has only been home a week and for the first few days Baron was waaaaay less than amused. Thankfully Maybelle is relentless and hasn't given up on trying to get him to play. Yesterday they snuggled up together on the sofa for a few hours, and on our walk last night when I started to run with Maybe, Baron started trotting right along too! I couldn't believe it. He even picked up a toy that he hasn't touched in years and did the "kill that tiger!" head shake and made a teensy attempt to play tug-o-war with her. I think it's only a matter of time before they're BFF.

So that's it for this update. If you made it to the end, congratulations! I have to go now anyway because my Taliban puppy has been nipping at my fingers the entire time I typed this and is now chewing through the computer cord. I'd put her in a puppy playpen but she'd just scream and break out of it anyway. Wonder if I still have the dumpster guy's number? That might be the only thing that could contain her...

Here are some before and after pictures of the house... only two years in the making!