We're In!

Actually, it's hard to believe that we've been in for three months! We were kind of pushed into moving because the house we lived in previously was sold. So we packed up and moved across the square to our new digs. Wow, just a dream come true. The home is absolutely amazing. We still aren't finished with everything but on the inside there are just minor punch list items that need addressed and those are getting whittled away. It's the outside finishes that are taking so long.

First a few pictures of the inside. We're still working on hanging pictures and mirrors and waiting on draperies and some furniture but it's 95% done. The entryway staircase was quite a project. A lot of the staircases in these old homes were painted - often white. But we wanted them to be stained so a lot went into rebuilding, stripping, staining and in some cases, faux finishing, to get the final desired look. The faux work was done on the skirt board that runs up the left wall. It had been originally painted white and even though it was stripped to bare wood, you could still see flecks of white paint imbedded. The treatment made it look like newly stained wood.

All the walls are plaster except for the addition (kitchen, a bathroom and closet) the garden level where some of the brick walls were covered in sheet rock, and a few places where the plaster was basically destroyed. The crown molding on the first floor is all plaster too except for the kitchen.

The parlor and dining room walls have a venetian plaster finish on them. And the crown was faux painted to look like what was there before we started patching it. Looking forward to getting the draperies in this room to afford us a bit of privacy at night. Nothing like walking by a window at night and having 20 people in a ghost tour staring at you and taking pictures!

Here are a few before and after photographs.

Exterior Work Continues

The white stone coping that is being installed on the brick seating walls in the courtyard took three months to come in. The curved pieces are are being cut now to lay and then that will be grouted for the last step. The first picture below is from the third floor balcony. Pretty fancy, right? Sorry to say, it's taken the landscape people a crazy amount of time to get the ponds and fountains working properly. Grrrr. The back pond is still leaking so we're on round five of what to do to fix it.

Aerial views of courtyard: Left is visible from public sidewalks and right side is behind privacy walls.

Working on finishing the look including nigh-time lights.

For those of you into plants, we have a mixture of Podocarpus, Crape Myrtle 'Tonto, Fringetree, Gardenia 'Tree Form', Azalea 'Red Ruffle', Camellia ‘Rubra’, Camellia 'Lady Vansittart', Camellia 'Shi Shi, Gardenia 'Frost Proof', Hydrangea 'Mini Penny', Hydrangea 'Endless Summer', Rose 'Knockout', Rose 'David Austin', Holly 'Needlepoint', Holly 'Soft Touch', Pittosporum 'Mojo', African Iris ‘Bi-Color’, Agapanthus ‘Storm Cloud’, Evolvulus ‘Blue Daze’, Liriope 'Big Blue', Mondo Grass 'Dwarf' and a Meyer lemon tree given to us by our good friends Angela and Bill!

We also have 7 new Savannah Holly trees in our tree lawn. For those not familiar with tree lawns, this is the area between the sidewalk and the street. The city owns the property but it's up to the homeowner to maintain it. The city of Savannah loves trees and we have a beautiful canopy of Live Oaks across the street from us so these won't interfere with those. We had 23 feet of tree lawn in front of our previous house. This house is surrounded by streets and has about 160 feet of tree lawn to maintain. That's a lot of weeding and trimming! As you can see, there is still a chain-link fence across the front of the property. We will keep the fence up for safety purposes until our front stair railings are installed. They're being created now and should be available in the next couple weeks.

What's left to do?

Last room to work on is the art room on the garden level. We'll be getting some cabinets installed by the end of the week so we can finish unpacking our last boxes, although the resident artist (hubby dear) has started painting again. (He's actually working on a painting that may go in the parlor!) But we found a way to hang all his frames that is kind of cool and gets them off the floor. I think we need to get a few more frames - what say you?

Next time hopefully I can post pictures of a completed courtyard and front steps. Thanks for reading my updates!