I’m really glad you guys are liking my home posts! Just in an effort to catch up to speed, I’m combining weeks 2-4 into 1 post.

Architect

The first step in doing our home renovation is working with an architect. He works in 3 stages:

Create drawings of the existing structure & elevations
Create new designs of what we would like the house to look like
Develop construction drawings of the final design that can be used for permits and building

The entire process takes 2-3 months and we were eager to get the ball rolling. He made it out during week 2 to take measurements of the existing house, and he finished the drawings and returned them to us during week 4. We were excited to be done with the first phase!

Here is what our timeline has looked like so far:

July 26: met with contractor for first time to make sure our renovation plans fit within our budget
Aug 3: met with architect for the first time, walked through house, gave him our “wish list”
Aug 16: closed on the house
Aug 17: signed architect’s proposal describing the process of working with him
Aug 29: architect took measurements of current house
Sept 11: received completed drawings of existed structures

For Sale

We focused a lot of our energy during weeks 2-4 on getting our current house ready to put on the market. We tried to do everything we could to sell it quickly since we had already purchased cat house.

Our realtor suggested getting the house professionally staged since statistics show that staged homes sell much faster. We were skeptical of this at first but ultimately decided to just go with it. The staging company used our existing furniture but rearranged everything and brought in more neutral decor. They also swapped out our dining room chairs and added furniture to our screened in porch. We thought the house looked great and it was amazing to see how different it looked even with our own belongings.

The staging option we chose was fairly inexpensive and definitely worth it.

Thankfully someone wrote an offer the day we started showings and we accepted it the next morning!

Hurricane Florence

We had an appointment to get the crawl space and basement cleaned out during week 4, but this was postponed because of hurricane Florence. I was secretly hoping a giant tree would fall in the center of the house during the storm so that we could tear it down with all of the fleas and cat pee and start over. We had no luck there. We did lose a shutter, though.

We also had water come into the downstairs bedroom and mud room – these rooms were part of the crappy addition that needs to be torn down, so we weren’t even surprised there.

Flea Update

We noticed a decrease in the number of fleas after the first treatment during Week 1, but overall we were unhappy with the pest control company. This kind of dragged on through the month.

We had to go over to the house and vacuum every single day to vacuum up flea eggs and stimulate eggs to hatch. It takes about 45 minutes to vacuum the entire house and that got very annoying after a couple of weeks. The extermination company asked us to wait 4 weeks after the treatment before we cleaned with any type of detergent. The reason they ask this is so that the treatment is there when new eggs hatch.

This would have been fine if the flea situation was getting better. Unfortunately, we still had a lot of fleas and the house was gross, and we couldn’t clean. It was so frustrating. Once we got an offer on our current house and realized we were going to have to move soon, shit started to get real with trying to get rid of the fleas. I set off another batch of flea bombs (9 cans) and set out flea lamps.

We ended up switching to a pest control company who comes out and treats the home every 7-10 days for fleas until they are gone. They also only require you to wait 7 days after treatment before you can clean.

The new company came out and sprayed the entire house and yard during week 4. I set up 4 flea lamps in the house around that same time. I was kind of grossed out to see a lot of fleas on them within 24 hours after everything we had done, but the new company assured me that we would start seeing a major difference in the next 7 days.

Rich and I coined a new term called Flea PTSD. It’s when you think you are getting bitten by fleas all the time even when you’re not.

Moving In?

We are moving out of our current house in October and the big question has been where we are moving… with fleas, the stench of cat pee, the basement cleaning being cancelled and no duct work cleaning yet, we felt stressed at the idea of moving into cat house. The idea of paying rent for an apartment for 4-5 months while the house just sits there vacant kind of makes my stomach turn as well :)

To be continued on that one!