Glenn's Pandemic Project

Many times over the years in my previous blog, I posted about 

our across-the-street neighbor of 32 years, Joyce.

At age 94, in September, 2019, she moved to Virginia to be near her son, 

and asked Glenn to buy her house.  The purchase was completed in December, 2019.

Glenn retired two years ago and adjusting to retirement has not been easy.

Therefore he felt he "needed" a project.

As usually happens, when you acquire a 50-year-old house of an elderly widow

who has not upgraded anything, there was more work to do than 

anyone anticipated to upgrade the house. 

Glenn did the work with the help of a few friends including a builder, an electrician, 

a plumber, carpenter/tile/wood floor guy, and window and door replacement 

and all-round talented good guy who has worked for us many times. 

Thank goodness for friends! 

It was a slow process, during the pandemic, because the number

of  workers in the house at one time were restricted, but that was fine. 

We had no time requirement or plan. 

Due to the pandemic with underlying health concerns, I  

I remained isolated/quarantined during much of 2020. 

In order to learn about "modern day" renovations, 

I began watching HGTV and searching Pinterest. 

When the project began, Glenn had no thoughts of  tearing down walls,

or redesigning rooms and adding walls.  The more I watched HGTV, 

the more daring my ideas became. *LOL*

Glenn made 6:00 a.m. trips to Lowes, before most shoppers, 

and I "advised".  I have very few before photos because, honestly, 

we had no idea the project would be such a major renovation. 

This photo was in February. after dismantling the fake brick fireplace he heard water dripping 

during a rain, only to discover the chimney to two fireplaces, main floor and basement,

 was leaking. The chimney had to be torn down and roofed over.

He discovered the floor where he was sitting had extreme water damage. 

Here he is during the reconstruction process. 

Glenn was very wary of a few of my ideas, including

removing the wall between the living/dining room and the tiny family room.

This is the finished gas log fireplace in the  currently

open floor plan living/dining/family room and kitchen. 

The original kitchen was a very small galley kitchen.

Below: the current open floor concept.

 

Joyce especially loved Glenn and Austin, and they loved and took care of her. 

Photos of completely redesigned bathrooms and more will come in future posts. 

I need to take photos of every room in the house including the now

finished basement, and I need to record more of the many upgrades. 

Perhaps, that will be a future post.