New Year, Already?

IT seems like just yesterday that I bought the house.. no, thats a lie, it doesn't, it feels like i bought the house months ago. Living at mom's house, all told, hasn't been bad, but its not exactly ideal either. 
Anyway, September 29th was the day I closed, and its now December 22nd, and I havn't updated this but once.

I do have a bunch of pictures of the progress, but here's a quicky list of what's been done thus far:

1.) Demo. and more demo. Two dumpsters worth at least.
1.5) Converse about whether or not to tear the whole thing down 
2.) Driveway! we had a guy come in and rip out a section of the retaining wall that we didn't know was there, and make a small driveway area at the back end. 
2.5) Converse about whether or not to tear the whole thing down 
3.) Halloween party!
4.) More demo, including the chimney, from above the roof all the way into the basement. 
4.5) Converse about whether or not to tear the whole thing down 
5.) Attach cables across the ceiling to pull the walls into the roof, so the house stops trying to run away from itself. my house is 4 inches smaller now.
6.) Buy counters and sinks.

Plus yammering on about designs and layouts.

The House

This is the house. It is brown, and ugly.  The story we know is that an old lady lived here for about 50 years, and so far as we can tell, did no upkeep.  The house was built in the 1850(?)s.  They appear to have painted it by taping over the glass and spray paining EVERYTHING, including wires, and a small window in the downstairs bathroom.  

Below is the backyard of the house, as seen from google maps, last year.  As you can imagine, in the past year, some of that foliage has grown. A bit.

Its three stories, and has a basement.  Its a two unit house, one  in the downstairs and one that includes the top two floors, which is where I will live.

Currently there is no parking, but its got a lovely big back yard that we will add parking to.  In the final stages we will also add porches to the back yard as well.  More on actual plans later.