We did it! We are an official B&B

Where do I start?  We have done so much since my last post in May. It's been too busy to put it all down on paper.  I guess I will just list all of the projects we have finished.

• The Pillar rock Room is done, new mattress, box spring and sheets.  It is all decorated and ready for guests. 
• We finished the railings and the front deck, looks so fresh and clean
• Hung up more art and did more decorating in the stairwell
• Finished putting down the carpeting on the stairs and upper hallway
• Repainted the floor on the upper deck and touched up the railings, finished painting the trim out there too.
• Brian installed new toilets in two of the bathrooms, for better flushing! 
• Built a new retaining wall and drainage field and then moved the big trailer back into it's permanent home.
• Power washed and stained the Gazebo, wow, it looks brand new!
• Did lots of yard work
• Installed a new garage door on the small garage
• Brian built and stained two new trellis's for the garden
• Stained the arbor and added more stepping stones to the walkway
• Started the landscaping along the road in front of the house
• Cleaned out the small garage
• Brian built a fancy shed for the garbage cans. 
• Painted and put up a new headboard in our room.

           In mid June we had an Open House.  Had a fun time showing people around the house and visiting, it was a great day.  We sure appreciated everyone's support.  We had the health inspector down the next week and we passed the physical inspection.  The following week we took a water sample in and nervously waited to hear back......and when we did, the news was good!  We passed with flying colors. And we got our B&B accreditation! WOW!  We have been working for 10 years for this to happen, could not be happier!  Unfortunately I was having some health issues so we had to put off our official opening until next year, but the excitement of actually succeeding is amazing.
          We did have our first guests a few days ago.  The reservation was made earlier this year so we said...what the heck let's do it!  It was a wonderful experience and now we are really looking forward to next year. We are setting our opening for mid April of 2014

Back to work.....

Been busy ever since we got back from vacation! We had about a week of great weather so concentrated on outdoor projects.  Power washed the front deck and got it ready for painting.  We went with a fairly new product called Restore.  It was a lot of work to put on, but it looks great, and if it holds up it will be worth all the work. Had to tear apart quite a bit of the railing as it was rotten.  What a mess, but Brian has been busy making new posts and getting it put back together, even some of the deck had to be replaced. I cleaned off and got the conservatory deck and railings ready for stain.  Got it about 3/4 done before the weather changed.  Hope to get it finished when we get a dry day or two.  Brian has done a lot of work with the tractor too.  We are hoping to move the big trailer back into it's permanent home, but still have to put in the french drain and the retaining wall.
  Bought a little antique table for $10 and after putting a few hours of work into it, it now sits beside the bathtub with the towels and soaps on it! Doesn't look like a $10 table anymore! Also inside, we have been working on the stairs, getting the carpet runner down.  Made it half way before we ran out of the padding. To be continued soon.  Have also been doing some little projects, like putting on switch plate covers and decorating the walls with a lot of art that has just been sitting around.  Good to get it up! Also finished the trim in the Pillar Rock Room, and hung the blinds, just the mattress to buy and that room is done! 

A tiny hair ruined my day!

      We have been making great progress!  The Pillar Rock Room aka the black and white room is really coming along.  The floors are done, the furniture is in place, the bed is set up including the box spring and dust ruffle,(still need a mattress).  The curtains are hung, and most of the decorating is done.  
     Yesterday I started in on the bathroom that is attached.  It was "done" about 5 years ago and has had a lot of use, so needed to put up the trim pieces, and spruce it up a bit, re-paint the trim etc....  I sanded and put down a coat of spar varathane to protect the part of the floor that is wood, and wow it looks great! Better than it did originally.  Went in there this morning to put on the second coat and discovered a hair about 4 inches long embedded in the varathane....of course it was in a spot that would be noticeable so I had to scrape and sand that area down to bare wood, re-stain.......wait.......put a coat of varathane on that area.......wait some more........and finally a few minutes ago put down the final coat. Whew!  Who knew one little hair could cause so much work?

     We went to Portland this week to Hippo Hardware and Rejuvenation and finally found the trim pieces we needed for the bathroom door, but forgot about the plinth blocks.  Phooey!  Well Brian got busy and made some to match the others in the room!!!  They look so good!  He is really getting good at all this woodworking! Just a few more details and both rooms will be done!!!  Now to clean up all of the mess!  Gees we are sure good at that!

Last Room cont....

Wow, we are done with the last room except for a few pieces of trim which we need to go to Portland for.  I just hope we will be able to find some!  It has to match the old 1895 trim that is around the window and door, so got my fingers crossed that we can find a piece. The last coat of Varathane went on last night and it looks great!  Now comes the fun part...decorating!  This room has had it's challenges for sure but we are very happy with the result. The board and batten went up pretty easily, it was time consuming but worth it!  Of course the walls are not straight, so trying to make everything look level was.........shall we say interesting?
   Have also been working on a few other projects around the house.  Stained and got the rest of the trim up in the big bathroom, so that room is DONE!  Love saying that!  Bought and painted the trim pieces for the black and white bathroom, so those can go up this week.  
  I got my food handlers license!  So now we need to get the health inspector down to check things out and see where we are on that. We are thinking of having our open house in June, stay tuned for updates on the date. 
   There are a lot of little finishing touches to do, but will work through them room by room.  Must make lists! 

The Last Room

   We are slowly working our way through the last room to remodel!  So far we have cleaned it out which was a big chore as it was our "junque" room!  Son-in-law Adam helped me get it organized and cleaned out, whew it was a big job!  A lot of the items will go back in the room when it is done, so they are kind of randomly stored in the bathrooms and in the office.  Tony came down and did an awesome job on the sheet rock.  He is truly an artist and even did a special texture on the ceiling by using some sand off our beach.  It looks great.

   After Tony left we got busy and painted the walls and ceiling, and then I put up the wallpaper on the upper part of the walls.  We are doing a board and batten treatment on the lower part, so we also spent time painting lots of boards for that effect, and we painted lots of trim boards too.  That was all set aside for now as we worked on the bathroom and bedroom doors, sanding and staining them. Also refinished two night stands, one armoire, and a dresser.  Got all the trim around the door and window sanded and painted, still have to find some matching trim for the bathroom door,  have looked in a few places, but no luck so far. We got the old floor covering torn up and Brian fixed a hole in the floor, so now that is ready to sand and stain. I cleaned and re-painted the outside window sills, they were looking pretty rough.  Have really made good progress especially since we took two weeks off and went to Florida to soak up some sun and re-charge the batteries!!!  Came home tan and ready to finish the room.  We are hoping to have our open house in June and open soon after.

We have been busy doing a lot of little things, and will continue to do so until after the holidays.  We don't want to make a big mess right now.
Got the hallway door refinished and back up.  We had it dipped at the Big Dipper in Portland and then we finished scraping, sanding, staining and varnishing it.  What a difference.
Got everything put away for the winter.  Always a big project!  Glad it is done.
Had to move the big trailer AGAIN!  The hillside behind it started to come down with all the rain, so it is back up the driveway closer to the house.  When we get some dry days Brian will get out with the tractor and clean it up.  I think we will have to do some sort of retaining wall there too!  The other retaining wall is holding but boy is the area behind it filling up.  It is doing it's job, but will have to clean that out too so it doesn't get completely full.
Bought new rugs for the dining room and the front bedroom, they look so nice!   
I have been cleaning and organizing my office.  It looks so much better. Cleaned out my closet and put all of my scrapping stuff in there.  Still have about half a dozen boxes to clean out and then hope to put a hide a bed in there to sleep more family!!
Found an awesome brass headboard and foot board for the front bedroom, and after we bought it discovered it was a king size, so had to start over on that bedroom. Got a king size mattress and box springs and new bedding.  Had to move some of the furniture around as the bed takes up so much room. But it looks good, just have to figure out what I am going to do with the chair that no longer fits...hmmmm.  
Hope to start on the last bedroom in January. As for this month....we will work on the front door and get it up and just take time to enjoy the holidays. 

Summer is at an end....

I cannot believe my last post was April! Boy how this spring and summer have flown by.  We have been super busy, and I will just list all of the things we have gotten done.

Finished the front hallway, painted the walls, put down the flooring and decorated.  We are still working on the front door, sent it out to be rebuilt and now Brian and I are re-finishing it.  In the meantime we found a storm door and have that up, nice to have light in there again.  Just had a piece of plywood up in the doorway.

Sent two doors out to be stripped, the hallway door and the one to the upstairs porch.  So far we have the one upstairs, painted,  stained, the window glazed and back in place.  Still have work to do on the hallway door before it goes back up.

Completed the Hummingbird bedroom. Repainted the walls, refinished the floors, put up the trim, new curtains and decorated.  The room is beautiful!  We even had some guests stay  (family) but it was fun to have them enjoy the room.

Refinished the floors in the hallway, and painted, still have the decorating to do in there. We rented a sander and did all three rooms (bedroom, hallway and bathroom) in a day, wow, what a big task.  There was sawdust everywhere! Got some of the scratches out but the rest are just character!

Refinished the floors in the big bathroom, decorated and that room will be finished when we get the rest of the trim up.  Did the floors in there with heavy duty spar varathane, 3 coats...that was a chore but worth it.   So shiny, and protected from the water too! Put up paintings and other decor, it turned out better than I could of wished.

This summer once the rain stopped we have focused mainly on the outdoors.  We had the back hillside dug out and put up a retaining wall. Cleaned up the area and had it rocked.  Now we have a big back yard and lots of parking area.  Brian dug out the hillside across from the swing set to put the 29 foot trailer in.  The "bunkhouse" for family and friends now has it's own view and is not in view of the back of the house.  Love it!  Colleen and Adam helped to spread rock and create the "RV site". Really appreciated their help. We are just now getting a canopy over the top of it to protect it from the rain. 

We had to reinforce the garden fence this summer as one of the deer figured out how to get in there.  Not happy about that at all!  It is just crudely done at this point, but next spring we will do something permanent. Dahlias are beautiful this year, really enjoying them. Had a bumper crop of potatoes but so far all the tomatoes are still green. Onions and chives and peas did well too.  

The county did some work on the road in front of the house, widening it by cutting away  a little bit of our front lawn.  Glad to see it done.  Now we need to figure out what to plant to keep down the weeds and the blackberries, that will be a project for the fall.  

Other than that it has just been maintenance which always keeps us busy.  Next inside project will be the last room to do. Wow, amazing to even write that...never thought we would get this far...although it has been over 7 years.  We hope to finally open our B&B in the late spring.....again....AMAZING!

For the last few weeks we have been working on the front hallway.  We have scraped, sanded and painted the trim around the doors, and the floor.  Brian took the window out so I could re-glaze the stained glass and paint it.  That is a big project. Just very tedious!  Will be glad to get it done. We ordered the flooring and it just came in a few days ago, so hopefully we can start getting it down tomorrow.  Today we finish painting the walls and then will be all ready for the flooring. Brian had to do a lot of work on the old floor to get it ready, it had to be reinforced, repaired and leveled before we could even think about putting the floor down. 

And the kitchen floor is done and it looks great!  We installed the kick board and the transitions yesterday and today we will get the rest of the baseboard up, after it dries.  I stained it and now it has the last coat of varathane on it.  I think that might be the last item in the kitchen to do other than finish decorating...wow...that has been a long time coming.  We moved in 7 years ago this month, who would have thought it would have taken this long to have finished the kitchen. So what project should we start on tomorrow???

We did finish the stairs in January!  They look so nice!  We still have a few more of the spindles to do on the top landing, but we are so pleased with how the stairs turned out.


Monday we started putting the floor down in the kitchen.  We are using the same flooring that we used in the upstairs bathroom.  It goes down pretty easy and looks good.  The one we chose for the kitchen looks like an old wide plank pine floor.  I like it.  As we started on the next section this morning Brian cut the first two cuts wrong.....he is SO pissed at himself, so we are taking a break.....back to it soon!!!

And the stairway is still the project!  We have the lower part all done and the railing installed all the way up the stairs.  Going to take a break from it for the holidays...but hope to still get a little bit more done when we have time.  It creates so much dust!  We spent today trying to clean and get all the sawdust off just about every surface upstairs...what a mess!  Brian also hung the Celtic stained glass in the lower window in the hall.  My Mom gave it to me a few years ago and am so glad to finally get it in place.  Trevor will be here in a few days and hopefully he will not think the stairs look so spooky anymore! Brian also got the trim around the doors finished in the downstairs bathroom, so that room can be crossed off our list as completely done!!!  YEA!

Still working on the stairs!  It is never ending!  We have all of the lower steps, railing & newel post sanded, stained and 2 coats of varathane on. Brian installed the 3 spindles we had made last year.  It makes a big difference.  I have been painting all the little details on the spindles and it is looking great.  Hope to finish the lower section this week!  Besides that, Brian finished making the other bracket to go up by the pocket doors.  He did a great job of making them!

November?  Really?  It has been close to 4 months since I last updated the blog.  Well I guess not a lot has happened.  We had grand kids here most of the summer, so that was fun, but did not let us accomplish much.  Then we went on vacation for 5 weeks.  But we are back to being busy.  Brian has done a lot outside to winterize the house and yard, always a big job.  Inside we are working on the stairway.  Gees what a job.  We have been scraping and sanding for hours and there is still so much to do, but at least we are making a dent.  I painted most of the lower part of the walls a pretty green, and I really like it.  Also painted an accent wall in the entrance hall the same green.  We are determined to get the stairs and hallway done before Christmas.  My cousin Trevor told us that it is spooky in there and feels like a haunted house!!! He is coming to stay for a week over the holidays so we are dedicating all our time and effort into getting it done...

   The time has just flown by recently, I cannot believe it is July already.  We took a few weeks off for a road trip in June, but no more traveling until the fall.  Too much to do!

    The bathroom upstairs is complete except for the floor and some trim, and we will get to that soon.  We had some insulation done and had to take everything out of the attic and it is all stored in the bathroom for now.  We need to build a new floor in the attic so we can put everything back up. In the meantime I have been going thru all the boxes and totes and getting rid of a lot of Holiday stuff we do not need, so there will be much less going back up there.  We also had the outside wall of one of the bedrooms upstairs insulated and also the crawl space under the house.  I have a feeling it will be a lot warmer this winter!  Yea!

   Outside we have been working in the garden and also working to enlarge the firepit area.  We put more gravel there and started putting the bricks around the edge.

  The girls and their families were all down over the 4th of July weekend and helped us do some jobs in the yard.  Jahn got the rest of the bricks in around the firepit.  It sure looks nice.  Adam helped us clean out the woodpile area and later we will get some fill dirt and more gravel in there to finish it off. Hope to make it a new parking area.
   We were also given a hot tub by one of Brian's cousins and the kids helped us move it onto the patio.  Now we need to figure out how to get it plumbed and wired in so we can use it!  Will be nice to have a warm tub to soak in.

   Brian started working on restoring the front door.  We were looking at buying a new to us "old" one, but the cost is way too much so will just see if we can save this one.  So far he got the hardware off and we have cleaned it up, looks better already. We also finished a lot of the interior doors downstairs.  They all required a lot of scraping, sanding and refinishing, but the time spent was well worth it. You can see some of the pictures on the website.  http://www.dahliahouse.com/

     Six years ago this month we moved into Dahlia!  I remember thinking at that time that we would be done with all the projects in a years time.  How naive we were!  Little did we know just how much work this old house needed. So here we are 6 years later still plugging away, I am not sure I would have signed on for this if I knew at the time how long it would take, and maybe that is just as well as we have enjoyed the journey!
      In the recent weeks we have continued to work on the bathroom upstairs, getting trim up around the windows and walls and dealing with water issues.  Had a geyser of a leak in the bathtub plumbing.  Wow, what a mess that could have been!  Brian put little "shoes" around the feet of the tub so it cannot move, so that problem should be solved.
     We also hung the stained glass boat picture in the living room after I stained and sealed the frame.  We have been waiting for a long time to do this and are very pleased with the results. 
    We do a little bit each day on the staircase.  It is an overwhelming job and as long as I just focus on a small area I don't get so frustrated at how long it is taking to do.  Brian has fixed 3 of the spindles that were split, and I have painted them with primer, so as soon as we finish the sanding and staining we can put them back.....
    Still cleaning out boxes.....I think they are multiplying at night!

We are finished repairing the downstairs shower.  Re-sealed the whole floor, so hopefully no more problems with that.
The bathroom upstairs is almost done.  The toilet is in, as is the sink and vanity. We had the electrician come today to help with the wiring and Brian was able to get the fan and the lights working this afternoon.
We found someone in Seaview to make the missing spindles for the stairs.  He did a great job and that is another job checked off the list.  I have painted them with primer, and hope to get them installed soon.
We have cleaned out another 5 or 6 boxes and put stuff away, sure a good feeling to get it all out of storage. Well not ALL, but we have put a big dent in it.

The rain cleared up long enough to get the tree moved, now we will have more room in the garden and not so much shade on the plants.
Discovered a problem with the shower downstairs, some of the grout had come out from between a few tiles, so Brian cleaned out a bunch of the old grout, and replaced two tiles, and we will have to re-grout it before we can use it again...as I have said before it is always something.
The toilet is attached in the new bathroom, but no water lines to it yet, and we got more trim and some of the baseboard down and a curtain rod up. It all adds up to a bathroom that is almost finished.  I did take a bath, and how HEAVENLY was that!

Amazing!  We have a working bathtub in the house, haven't used it yet, but will very soon.  I put the wallpaper border up today with Emily's help.  It looks great. The vanity top is glued down and ready for the sink and the plumbing.
Had to take some time Friday to repair a leak in the water line about 1/3 down the driveway.  Always something!  Em and John were here this weekend to help us move a tree out of the garden, but it has been raining too hard.

All of the laminate is up in the bathroom and it really looks nice.  The bathtub is in place and Brian is working on the plumbing for the bathtub, and getting a top built for the vanity. I finished sanding and staining the back splash for the vanity and it is ready to go. All of the pieces are coming together and we hope to have a finished bathroom by this time next week.! It will be so nice to be able to cross another room off our list, but most of all I can take a bath!!!  I have really missed having a good soak!

Finished laying the floor in the upstairs bathroom and have one piece of laminate up on the wall. I have started sanding the rest of the floor so we can stain it later this week.
Brian finished the trim on the skylight in the downstairs bathroom, it looks so good!
Still unpacking boxes, but at a slower rate, all the cabinets in the living room and dining room are pretty much full, so being selective about what I take out, it must have a place to go.