The Story of the Pink House in the Gazette

It's been a slow week in the restoration efforts of High Trees House.  It's been far too cold to do any demo work.  So Ian and I have focused more on indoor activities like planning, drawings, calculations,... basically day dreaming of what it will be like.

One day that we did go over to the house was to meet reporter Ed Munger from the Schenectady Gazette.  He was writing a story about us, the giant pink house, and this blog for the Sunday Edition.  We took some photos (and all froze at the same time) and finished the interview.

So today you can check out the Gazette for a fantastic story about the pink house, the history and some more of our plans.

It's only just begun...

So here we are- our next adventure.  It's safe to say that Ian and I don't do things by halves.

When Ian approached me about buying the giant pink house I knew that this was quite possibly our greatest and scariest decision yet as a couple.  We have little to no DIY experience ourselves.  But luckily, Ian is a skilled structural engineer, my brother is a great contractor and my father is a brilliant architect.  And I love interior design.  And we all have a passion for restoration and rehab.  It quite literally seemed like the perfect combination.

So for months Ian and I considered the giant pink house- until one day when faced with losing it to another buyer and we went for it.  And didn't look back.

We closed on the house on Friday, January 17th.  We went into the house on Saturday and started planning our first step in the rehab.  We will start the demo once the cold snap ends this week.  (There is no heat in the house so even just walking around on Saturday was VERY chilly.)

There are a lot of projects to happen in this house.  The house had about 3 feet of water in the first floor during the flood caused by Hurricane Irene.  The house was gutted up to the water line. There needs to be new electric, heating, roof, foundation repair... the list goes on and on and on...  However, one thing we can all agree on is the potential.  The giant pink house has amazing architectural details like stained glass, moldings, mantles, tiger maple banister, wide plank hard wood floors, pocket doors and so much more.

Even though the work hasn't started we have completed one project- coming up with a new name.  We finally decided on a name that had a "full circle" feeling to it.  The name of the street our very first house as a married couple was on was High Trees Close in England.  And the giant pink house has a lot of LARGE maple trees on the plot.  And so between the two a name was born.  Welcome to High Trees House.