Month six of 2014... what?! We are about to start the latter half of this year and I am having trouble comprehending this fact. While we are no where near where we thought we would be by this point, I think we are optimistic for the next six months. May was fairly productive, even though we experienced some hiccups along the way.

Remove all wood paneling (so close to having this done) - $0 - DONE
Remove carpet and vinyl flooring - $0 - DONE
Deliver wanted items to Brian's mom's house - $0 - Kind of done. Still one item to delivery that was too heavy for me and B alone.
Get all of the debris to the dump - $40 (gas) - DONE
Remove hazardous waste - $350 - DONE (Actual cost was $500)
Repair windows - $300 - Not quite yet
Have Jake (our contractor) do walk through for estimate - $0 - DONE
Start to fix foundation (!!!) - $500 - Not quite yet

We spent three of the five weekends in May at the Myrtle House. The other two were spent in Raleigh since we had family in town one weekend and the other weekend we attended a friend's wedding. Considering what a crazy month it was, I am happy with the progress, even though we didn't cross everything off of the list.

One of the most exciting/daunting tasks from this month was meeting with our contractor, Jake. We are so fortunate to have him close by. He is an AMAZING contractor and good friend of Brian's, so we trust him 200% to give us an honest opinion and accurate quote on some of the work needed. Luckily, his estimate of work to be done fell pretty much in-line with our guess, so there were not too many surprises there. That being said, we are getting close to the point of handing off a lot of the work to Jake and his crew to get it ready for us to take on the more cosmetic tasks. This whole process has taught me a lot (so much so that I really need a whole post dedicated to it) and I am relieved and excited to bring in an expert for a lot of the more important structural work that Brian and I just aren't able to tackle at this stage. June will be a slower month, as we are getting to the stage of planning and communicating with our contractor on how to get the ball rolling. Here is what is on the agenda:

Finalize financing options*
Create an electrical plan
Create a to-scale floor plan
Donate old clothes and household items
One more trip to the dump
Measure broken glass
Look into home owner's insurance
Drop off item at Brian's mom's house

*While we had hoped to be able to save all of the renovation costs ourselves, it is just not a feasible option at this point. It would take us three times longer than we had planned for us to save enough and unfortunately, that is just not an option right now. We do still plan on contributing about half of the renovation budget ourselves, but will need a loan to cover the other half and make sure we don't over-extend ourselves in case of an emergency.

The posts this month might be a little sparse and boring (apologies in advance) but the nitty-gritty legwork needs to be done. Hopefully soon we will have photos of the place looking different instead of just us cleaning it out. :) Here are some of my favorite Instagram photos from May!

Blue mason jars from Brian's grandmother