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Summer of (old house) Love

Farmhouse Exterior 2

This has been a productive summer for the DiLorenzo family. We normally spend most of our summer working on projects that we can’t do during the long, long winters. For the last two summers Pete and I stripped and painted (okay, Pete stripped, I painted) our 200 year old farmhouse. They were truly the longest two summers of our lives. Between the two of us, we must have spent 600-700 hours out on that scaffolding. This summer, we need to finish up some trim and work on the porch. I’m trying to talk Pete into screening it in but so far, he won’t commit. And neither of us can bear to get back out there to finish it up. We are both hoping the paint fairy will show up and finish it while we’re sleeping!

This summer has been just as busy but because we’re not working on an all-encompassing project, we’ve had a little more time to enjoy the fruits of our labor. We put in several new garden beds and renovated the existing beds. Locust Grove Organics was born out of our wish to share some of the excess out of the garden (and Ben’s wish to purchase his own Wii!).  We’ve had the stand up and running for a few weeks with the little bit of extra food from our gardens. Yesterday was the first day we’d made a sale to non-friend. It was very exciting to watch her out there, looking through everything, carefully choosing her produce. She later emailed me to tell me how much she enjoyed her purchase and how her son loved the fact that we grow our own food. She also blogged about it. It was very exciting to read that someone is happy over what we’ve created with our own hands.

We’ve also been renovating our bathroom. We started renovating three years ago when we put in a new tub, new fixtures and tiled shower surround after our tub sprouted a huge crack.  A year later, we put in a new toilet when got tired of plunging several times a week. But that’s as far as we managed to get. Fast forward three years, we finally picked out our granite top (Pietra Cardosa) and put down a deposit (that was January). In March, Pete laid the gorgeous tile floor after a few mis-starts. In May we contracted a company to make our wide bead board to go on the walls, horizontally. July – all of the bead board is up, all of the walls have drywall but Pete’s in the throes of mudding hell, and the switches are in but there’s no electricity. Our granite was installed but has a big rust stain on it and the backsplash was scratched so it will be replaced this week (hopefully)! We have been in renovation for about 8 years and I can live through a lot of mess and clutter. I can go months with things out of order – then – I reach my breaking point. I’m there. I’m breaking. I. Need. My. Bathroom. Back.

I know that people think my projects should all go smoothly and easily. The truth is, we are a busy family and we work around lots of things to continue renovating our house. We both work, our kids are small and demanding, we each have our own personal hobbies that we don’t want to totally give up (although they certainly take a backseat). And most importantly, we make and stay within our budget – which isn’t always easy when you have good taste! Projects never go as smoothly as they seem to on HGTV. A whole house renovation wrapped up in an hour show? Not likely that it went according to plan and without several glitches along the way. I’m trying to keep in mind that we love this house and this is what we signed up for when we took on an old, dilapidated house (no one to blame but ourselves). In the end, we always love what we do and it’s totally worth it when it’s over. It will be over soon, won’t it?

Do you have a project that you can’t seem to finish? Tell me about it and post your pictures on my Facebook page. Maybe together, we can get each other motivated to get it done.