The Story So Far...

My mother and I and our two salukis decided we needed a home of our own after 11 years of apartment living. With a limited budget, we knew we would be looking at a smaller, older house. I decided I wanted a bungalow and wanted to make it an Arts and Crafts Bunglow.

Enter the Mill Village Bungalow...

our bungalow before the front door was replaced by the seller

We found a house in our price range that was a bungalow. It is located in an old mill village in Upstate South Carolina. Officially, the house is listed as being built in 1955, but the wavy glass front windows lead us to believe the house is older than that (the appraisal estimated it had been built in the 1940s). We are now attempting to introduce some Arts and Crafts style to our bungalow and turn back the clock in some ways to what the house may have been.

We finally closed on the house this afternoon and this evening started in working on it. The original plan for this evening had been to remove a few mirrors and other odds and ends from the walls and spackle in the holes in preparation for painting.

That changed when we decided we should sand down the edges of the holes first. Instead, my mom got started trying to remove the wallpaper from the walls, which is actually pulling off fairly easily. Our first surprise, under the wallpaper is unprimed wallboard. So, add primer to the shopping list.

The big SHOCKER is that we currently have no hot water. We don't know if the hot water heater doesn't work, isn't hooked up or connected or what. Luckily, our across the street neighbor is sending one of his workmen over tomorrow AM to check it out for us.

Also today I started in on trying to strip the wavy glass windows. I bought some citristrip in a spray can, figuring it wouldn't work all that well. After only leaving it on about 30 minutes, it got off essentially all the sticky white paint that had been painted on the windows recently. I left it on longer on the inside of the windows and I can now see dark stained wood coming through.

More paint stripping to come tomorrow and hopefully some answers on the water heater. Also on tap, more photographing and measuring in the yard to get ready for planting my shrubs.