Oh where to start

Wednesday, February 24, 2010


After finishing the first room of wallpaper stripping shortly after moving in, I realized I just couldn't live with the 80's sink that they put in the bathroom. Well, as a homeowner, you learn things fast: like plumbing, drywall, electrical connections, etc....
I wanted to just gut the bathroom, but all good things come in time. For now, it was just the sink that had to go in this nasty room.




Posted by Posted by The Chez at 6:40 PM
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Peel Sessions

Tuesday, February 23, 2010




Has anyone ever peeled wallpaper? I don't care what method you use. It sucks.




Posted by Posted by The Chez at 7:57 PM
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Before getting a loan.

Monday, February 22, 2010


In 2009, the market crashed, the housing boom ended and a recession started. All in all a great time to invest. Invest I did that year. I felt like a plastic soldier sized Warren Buffett. Buy low, buy low! All was good until I was relegated to FHA because of a certain cable monopoly who refuses....I'm not gonna waste the space. Anyhoo, I was forced to an FHA loan and the underwriter came back with an initial list and then a secondary list a week before closing. Thanks, all you homeowners who lied about your funding for the last 10 years. I got to bear the brunt for that. That said, I had to go in with my realtor and take care of the second list if I wanted a loan. Great. Here's the results:
Living room with the world's most disgustingly dirty carpet removed. Hello oak floors!
Insert removed from the fireplace. It couldn't be proved that it was up to code.
New floor tiles(stickers, basically) over the scary asbestos floor.

This is the room where the leaking happened by the window and the wallpaper was peeling.

Posted by Posted by The Chez at 10:08 PM
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The inside.

Sunday, February 21, 2010




Well, this was the house when I first saw it. It's all about vision, right?
Right. I even remember my realtor's daughter saying "Why would somebody
want to live here?"

The livingroom. That carpet was SO nasty! I know I lost a couple years of breathing due to that stuff.


The bigger bedroom where they built this huge closet. The doors were 3/4" solid plywood that were 8' tall.
The original bathroom. I couldn't wait to overhaul this sucker. The bath rules though, it's very deep!

The finished portion of the upstairs that I call "The Huntin' Lodge". Pretty interesting up there. Makes a great guest room/office. Note the carpet squares. They strategically placed 12"x 12" carpet squares everywhere over these gorgeous 6" Fir wood slat flooring. The unfinished portion of the attic. There's a lot I could do with this area. Unfortunately, that hobbit door to the right of the picture is the hindrance. The only way that could be changed is to raise the roof. There's about a 2' difference in the floors upstairs between the finished and unfinished portions because of a utility room. There's nothing I can do about that but go up. That would be MUCH later down the road unless anyone wants to give me $50,000.


The utility room with the original glass fuse system. If this stuff isn't grounded, it's got to go.
The utility room that's 2' below the rest of the main floor and below the Huntin Lodge. That big Abrams tank to the left is the oil furnace. All it needs is a front mounted cannon and I could take over Europe.


The garage. There was pegboard, lockers, shelves, storage, bread boxes, old wood, etc. It's small, I could maybe fit a Valiant in here, but it's good space. Lots of rafter space above.

Please note the wicked sliding door system the old man put in back in the day. Hiding behind that is a crazy map of Oregon from probably the 50's or 60's. I need to get that photographed and reprinted. It's super cool.

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The outside

Saturday, February 20, 2010


This was the outside of the house before they ripped the oil tank out of the ground and killed all of the backyard.




Posted by Posted by The Chez at 10:05 AM
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Aaaand....they're off!




I decided to build a blog as to have others who don't have FB to be able to follow my boring ramblings about my house. That item that has enveloped my life for the last six months. I will work from the beginning of the house, before the projects and work out from there. So much has been done on this thing that it's hard to comprehend. The sickening part? It doesn't look all that different. A lot of it has just been updating a house that really didn't have much done to it since 1951. One set of owners. About the only things I think they did to the house was finish half of the upstairs and get a new water heater. Otherwise, I don't even know that they ever had the carpet cleaned. Yes, it was that bad. I had to do a lot of work prior to getting the loan approved. My realtor had to help me tear up carpet, paint, remove things just to get the underwriter to approve the place. Welcome to 2009.

My goal for this house is to keep it as true to the 50's as I can(no, no pink bathroom) yet update it to modern standards. Does that make any sense? I want to retain the charm but update things like wiring, insulation, efficiency, etc.. There's lots of neat little parts to this house and it packs a lot of space for how little space the abode takes up on the corner lot. Built ins, nooks, hidden storage, etc.. All in all, it is all going to make for a fun project.

Posted by Posted by The Chez at 9:40 AM
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