Progress!

Many of you have asked about how our frugal house adventure is coming along so I thought I would post an update with our progress and some photos.  To read about our adventure and how it all started, you can read my original post here.  You can also see some great "before" photos there. 

On November 2nd it will be two full months that we have owned this house and I am quite proud of our accomplishments so far.  Most of our work has been concentrated on the outside for two reasons; first, to make the neighbors happy and spruce up the neighborhood because this place was a pretty big eyesore when we purchased it, and second, to get as much outdoor work done before the snow flies - unfortunately that will be here sooner than we all want it to! 

Here's a couple photos of the outside now:

As you can see, all the clutter in the driveway and yard has been removed.  The little shed in this second photo will be the next to go.  We are moving this to our house and it is going to be fixed up and re-purposed as a play house for our 6 year old son by his playground.

We also had two very large trees professionally taken down.  One was very close to the house and rubbing on the roof, the other was a huge, old, messy walnut tree.  The neighbors were very happy to see the walnut tree go since it was right on the property line and they were not happy about all the nuts hitting their house and cars.  We were able to strike a deal with the man who took the trees down since walnut is very valuable wood and this was one nice hunk of wood!  We were also left with a really nice, big pile of spruce mulch that we will use in the spring for landscaping.  In the meantime, the yard smells wonderful with the scent of spruce everytime you get out of your car or go out into the yard. 

Here's our progress on the inside:

Whew!  It makes me tired to look at these photos - I can really see just how much we have accomplished in just two months!  I do have to give most of the credit to my husband.  I have worked many hours there and at home on a lot of this, but he's really the one who has put in the most time and effort.  Without his long hours and elbow grease it would not look this good - Thanks, honey!  You are the best! 

We haven't had the water hooked up yet, and won't be doing so until spring.  We have decided that it would not be frugal of us to heat an empty house for the winter months.  If we had water hook up we would have to heat the house all winter so the pipes wouldn't freeze.  Once it gets too cold we probably will hold off on any further work until the spring. 

I haven't sat down and added up the expenses vs. income in a couple weeks, but as of the last time I ran the numbers we were ahead just by a little bit.  We sold the 1996 Dodge truck which was a nice chunk of cash to offset some of our recent expenses and we tallied up all the loose change, postage and aluminum that we cashed in to recycle too so it all adds up.  We don't have a FREE house yet, but we are keeping our heads above water and breaking even so far and that makes me happy.  We won't show any serious strides in my challenge until we have our estate sales in the spring/summer of 2011.

We have found many treasures that we are keeping and I have slowly started to clean, organize and put away all the great items we have found.  Stay tuned for a post about some of these treasures with photos.  I just need to figure out how I am going to track these items as part of my challenge - that's going to be the difficult part!