The updated house photos

Our house is pretty much complete.  Here are some pictures since the fire and renovations.  We still need to hang up some of our pictures and get some blinds.
Its amazing how much damage fire fighters can do!  I know they prevented our house from catching on fire, but all our damage is from them.  It was our neighbors house that had the fire, but to prevent it from spreading, the fire fighters knocked out our windows, cut holes in our roof and soaked the place until there were several inches of water in our basement!

sunroom

dining room

Living room

That's a Bulgarian carpet, similar to a Turkish Kilim, from Chirprovtsi.

through the living room to the dining room

kitchen

Here are Polly and Micha trying to figure out what I am looking at.  The kitchen- only room not damaged in the fire.  Too bad, it was on our list to renovate when we bought the house.  Very late 1980s: tile counter tops, golden oak cabinets, etc. 

upstairs hallway

One good thing about the fire was that all the electrical had to be brought up to date.  The contractor put extra outlets in every room.  Before the fire, we had only one outlet in the office.  If you wanted to print, you had to unplug something else!  And some of the overhead lights didn't have switches, just pull cords.  You had to walk upstairs in the dark and search to pull the cord to turn the hall light on!

spare bedroom

Office

Got my Mac back!

I couldn't figure out how to take a picture that showed the whole room.  There is a new skylight, but it doesn't show in pictures. 

master bedroom

The good thing about the new bed is you can fit much more stuff underneath it.  This is good when you leave in an old house and have only one closet (and a tiny one at that) in the master bedroom.

That's where we are so far.  The basement is still a wreck, but I have a new, more secure basement door and the washer, dryer and laundry sink are all hooked up again. 

We have a new tenant, I didn't take pictures of her room, which would be the children's room.  Its a little smaller than our room and is painted a gray blue.  

Pretty nice!  We bought a fixer-upper and had made a priority list, but the fire took care of most of that.  We only need to update the kitchen, basement and backyard.  Everything else was taken care of by the fire fighters and insurance.  It took 5 months, but things are back and better than they were in time for the holidays.

Journey Continues

It has been quite a journey!  We are finally back in our house and mostly settled.  I can't thank our contractor enough, he did an excellent job.  He had to deal with an idiot non responsive insurance adjustor, who took weeks to pay him and still got everything done in a reasonable amount of time. 
So here are the highlights: we lost our tenant- but found a new one; most of our stuff was saved but damaged by Service Master.  The company who packed out our house, Service Master, lost a lot of our stuff but recently "found" it.  They lost my husband's suits, our area rugs, damaged the furniture and walls moving things back in- really professional.  The company that took our electronics, Restronic, did an excellent job.  Our electronics have never been cleaner, but it did stink to have our new Mac in storage for 4 months.  We got our cats back at Thanksgiving, my parents had them for the past 4 months.
We have been very busy with the holidays coming up.  Last weekend was my sister's wedding, it was beautiful, but really cold in New England.  This coming weekend is my husband's company holiday party.  I missed mine because I caught strep on the flight to New England.  Then we are flying to visit my in-laws on the West Coast for Christmas and we'll check out my sister and her family's new place at New Years. 
My sister who took a new job on the West Coast; over here she lived in a 3 bedroom 2500 sq foot home, out there it'll just be a little 800 sq foot condo, so she had some extra furniture to help us replace what was lost.  Also, my friend who I traveled to Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece this summer is moving back home to Hawaii and it is simply too expensive to move her furniture there.  She looked it up and it would actually be cheaper to buy all her furniture brand new again than to ship it.  And she had some nice furniture- a Crate and Barrel sleeper sofa with ottoman and a dining set.
We haven't had to buy too much stuff, which is good because all the repairs and living away from home have really set us back.
I'll post some pictures of the renovations and *new* furniture.
I need to take some photos of the house now that we've unpacked and I got my new Cannon Rebel for early Christmas!

Downstairs

Dining Room

Sun room with *new* couch

Decorated for Christmas :-)