Lay of the land, part III
Greetings from Ithaca! Apologies for the delay--the last few weeks have been even more hectic than expected. We finally collected Gabriella from camp and are spending a few days in our personal heaven. Of course, in true Ithaca fashion, it's been raining. But that's OK because we are all back together.
Before we left Denver for this trip, we learned a few more things.
1) Denver drivers really, truly are horrible. The rumors are true.
1a) You should get OnStar or your car manufacturer's version thereof. Totally money well spent when you are rear ended at relatively high speed on a highway in a new city.
1b) We are grateful for safe cars.
2) The Denver Design Center is essentially a big shopping mall for designers. Matt will now be spending every weekend browsing tile showrooms. It is his new happy place. (Tyler, not so much.)
3) Our new house appears to have plum trees behind it.
4) Duck poutine is super-delicious.
On to the house. We are honestly, truly, we promise just a phone reference or two away from finalizing our contractor. The final two in the running can both start work within a few weeks of contract signing, so demo day is imminent! We also spent nearly two hours at the DDC with our designer and have rough tile selections for every floor and bathroom. Our hope is by ordering tile and cabinets early, we'll avoid unnecessary pauses in work later on.
Construction status: slow but actual progress
Murphy scale: Multiple bottles of Riesling and cab franc for the grown ups because, Ithaca! 🍷🍷Lots of Shirley Temples for Ty since he had to hang out at the DDC and he does not find tile fun. 🍹🍹 And also lots of Shirley Temples for Gabriella because we are glad to have her back! 🍹🍹
This final orientation to the house requires the most imagination. First, because it's the part of the house that will be most substantially altered (hence why it is phase two and we are not 100% sure when we will actually start the work). And also because this is where--heaven help us--we plan to live for a few months. It will be squishy and a bit awkward, but lots of people do just fine with less.
This wing of the house is the other side of the "vee"--it connects to the main living room (that big room with cathedral ceilings) and is on the opposite side of the house from the kids' bedrooms. First up is a series of three rooms. Initially, these will be our bedrooms. There is also a full bath.
Ultimately, we will take down the walls to create one large game room. We have learned that in Denver, basements are a thing. People deck them out and turn them into game rooms/guest suites/workout rooms/basically furnished spaces the size of a good-sized NYC apartment. We don't have a basement (the house is slab-on-grade) but for resale value, a basement-like space will be useful. So this space will serve as the playspace. We assume we'll have things like a Foosball table in here.
Look! More gross bathroom grout!
On the floor plans from the broker, this room is referred to as the "craft room." 😂 It will be a temporary bedroom.
Two more temporary bedrooms. Note we have shifted from a horse motif to sailing.
#notTylersdrumset
We now come to the portion of the house affectionately referred to as "Rat Boy's Room." It is actually a small apartment that was originally used by the horse trainer (no joke). However, most recently, it was used by previous owner's twenty-something son whose cleanliness approximated Matt's college roommates'. He also had very large pet rats. We will show you pictures of the room before and after the very lovely, hopefully highly-vaccinated cleaning people cleared it out. The reality is that it is a perfectly useful space and will serve as our kitchen/dining room/study/second bathroom during phase 1 of the renovation.
The one downside is that we have to access to this space only from outside as it is entirely self-contained. So for phase 2, we will open up part of the brick wall to create access from the rest of the house. We will then turn this into a guest suite with 2 additional guest rooms. To do this, we will also recapture some space from a pool cabana on the opposite side of Rat Boy's Room.
YUCK. I am pretty sure that bathtub was on Gun Hill Road in 1994.
These are actual rats. Lots of them. In lots of cages.
Cleans up pretty nicely, no?
The truck with all our stuff comes Monday. So in our next entry, we'll hopefully be able report on contractor selection as well as share how it feels to actually be living at The Farm. Until then, we're back to soaking up the beauty of Cayuga's Waters.
Before we left Denver for this trip, we learned a few more things.
1) Denver drivers really, truly are horrible. The rumors are true.
1a) You should get OnStar or your car manufacturer's version thereof. Totally money well spent when you are rear ended at relatively high speed on a highway in a new city.
1b) We are grateful for safe cars.
2) The Denver Design Center is essentially a big shopping mall for designers. Matt will now be spending every weekend browsing tile showrooms. It is his new happy place. (Tyler, not so much.)
3) Our new house appears to have plum trees behind it.
4) Duck poutine is super-delicious.
On to the house. We are honestly, truly, we promise just a phone reference or two away from finalizing our contractor. The final two in the running can both start work within a few weeks of contract signing, so demo day is imminent! We also spent nearly two hours at the DDC with our designer and have rough tile selections for every floor and bathroom. Our hope is by ordering tile and cabinets early, we'll avoid unnecessary pauses in work later on.
Construction status: slow but actual progress
Murphy scale: Multiple bottles of Riesling and cab franc for the grown ups because, Ithaca! 🍷🍷Lots of Shirley Temples for Ty since he had to hang out at the DDC and he does not find tile fun. 🍹🍹 And also lots of Shirley Temples for Gabriella because we are glad to have her back! 🍹🍹
This final orientation to the house requires the most imagination. First, because it's the part of the house that will be most substantially altered (hence why it is phase two and we are not 100% sure when we will actually start the work). And also because this is where--heaven help us--we plan to live for a few months. It will be squishy and a bit awkward, but lots of people do just fine with less.
This wing of the house is the other side of the "vee"--it connects to the main living room (that big room with cathedral ceilings) and is on the opposite side of the house from the kids' bedrooms. First up is a series of three rooms. Initially, these will be our bedrooms. There is also a full bath.
Ultimately, we will take down the walls to create one large game room. We have learned that in Denver, basements are a thing. People deck them out and turn them into game rooms/guest suites/workout rooms/basically furnished spaces the size of a good-sized NYC apartment. We don't have a basement (the house is slab-on-grade) but for resale value, a basement-like space will be useful. So this space will serve as the playspace. We assume we'll have things like a Foosball table in here.
Two more temporary bedrooms. Note we have shifted from a horse motif to sailing.
We now come to the portion of the house affectionately referred to as "Rat Boy's Room." It is actually a small apartment that was originally used by the horse trainer (no joke). However, most recently, it was used by previous owner's twenty-something son whose cleanliness approximated Matt's college roommates'. He also had very large pet rats. We will show you pictures of the room before and after the very lovely, hopefully highly-vaccinated cleaning people cleared it out. The reality is that it is a perfectly useful space and will serve as our kitchen/dining room/study/second bathroom during phase 1 of the renovation.
The one downside is that we have to access to this space only from outside as it is entirely self-contained. So for phase 2, we will open up part of the brick wall to create access from the rest of the house. We will then turn this into a guest suite with 2 additional guest rooms. To do this, we will also recapture some space from a pool cabana on the opposite side of Rat Boy's Room.
YUCK. I am pretty sure that bathtub was on Gun Hill Road in 1994.
These are actual rats. Lots of them. In lots of cages. 
Cleans up pretty nicely, no?
The truck with all our stuff comes Monday. So in our next entry, we'll hopefully be able report on contractor selection as well as share how it feels to actually be living at The Farm. Until then, we're back to soaking up the beauty of Cayuga's Waters.
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