I must say I am lucky to have ended up where I have landed. I bought in a neighborhood that is relatively non-descript by Portland standards. I have to say though that it's a little gem of a neighborhood. I don't say this because the houses are pristine and everyone has a green lawn and perfect rock paths. I say this because I know my neighbors and they know me. We all know names and kids and projects we're all working on. I get neighborhood history from the elders around me and know that we are making our own history while we're doing our projects. We help each other and offer assistance when we can.
How about you? Are you more of a community or are you insular within your neighborhood?
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The Chez
at
8:28 PM
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Montavilla,
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Sanding, as I've learned, was the bane of my existence during what I refer to as "the drywall experience". Mudding, hanging, all that....nothing. Sanding....well, I'm still finding sand particles in the house. I fear they will never leave. Someday, I'll go to clean my ears, 10 years from now, and a chunk of particles will come tumbling out of my ear canal. I just know it. Either way, sanding is the art part of drywalling and I detest inside corners. Well, outside corners as well. I just dislike them. The seams were easy.
Party time.
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The Chez
at
6:49 PM
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drywall,
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Hammers in walls! I don't drop hammers, I set em!
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The Chez
at
8:06 AM
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drywall,
homeowner,
renovation
So, this house(I'm convinced) never had a washing machine. There's a clothesline in the backyard, but there is no evidence of a washing machine or a dryer. That led me to believe that Opal(the better half of the duo before me) washed all the clothes by hand. Seriously? Who does that still? It's not like my house is from the 1800's, it was built in 1951!
So, that said, I had to figure out how to get this washer and dryer set up because I sure as hell wasn't washing clothes by hand and I'm not doing the laundromat thing. I'm a responsible adult now, right? So, I called concrete cutting companies to get estimates and they both came in at the same amount to cut an L in the floor from the utility room to the garage and remove the concrete - $1500!!!!! WHAT? NO! So, I decided to go the makeshift route and do some ghetto plumbing and make something work. PVC, a box and some PEX and voila! Ghetto washer! The dryer made it into the garage. New Mexico taught me plenty.
(This is how I wanted it to look)
This is how it turned out.
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The Chez
at
10:09 PM
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dryer,
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plumbing,
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As neat as the tile looks on the walls and all, it sure is a challenge to line things up geometrically. I certainly didn't do well at geometry in high school and this project really tested my patience and fortitude several times. I had to walk away a couple times and just clear the mind. Luckily, Ben calmed me down and got me focused again. I love the results that came of it though.
I ordered a medicine cabinet, four weeks later it came, with a cracked mirror. Ridiculous. Fixed that, put in a hotel shower rod, painted and added an exhaust fan. Now I have the bathroom of which I am decidedly proud. I really love taking a bath or shower and just looking around in amazement that a ton of hard effort and very little planning achieved. I maintained the era of house with decidedly modern materials and am very happy with the results.
Posted by Posted by
The Chez
at
7:09 PM
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Man, when you decide to use subway tile, you end up with a lot more tiles to lay down.
Still, in the end, subway tiles are some of my favorite. Classy, classic, timeless.
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The Chez
at
7:27 AM
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bathroom,
Ben Mastico,
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The tearing out of things always seems to be the easiest. Destroying is easy. Building up is much harder. So, with the deconstruction out of the way, we set to setting tile. Mind you, I didn't do too well with geometry in high school. I was extremely lucky that Ben was there to play with angles. I had a hard time keeping a straight line with the subway tiles, but it eventually worked out. The act of setting tile itself isn't hard. I think the worst part of it all is figuring out where the partial tiles are going to end up and where you want to start/stop designs. For this whole tiling and bathroom effort, I'm eternally grateful to Ben for pushing me into this job.
Posted by Posted by
The Chez
at
7:41 AM
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bathroom,
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Okay, after looking at the last post, I have to start down the path of jumping around with time. I saw the pictures of the bathroom and how horrid it looked before and just couldn't make you people keep looking at it.So, as much work as the house is and everything, I have some overall picture in my head and it follows the lines of this:
But that's not how life automatically works unless you come from a family with money. I, do not. Therefore, I have to do all my work bit by bit and I won't be wandering through my kitchen with my skis while in my rockin board shorts. No, I'll be doing a grand majority of this work via myself and friends. It will probably cost me just as much in beer but it will be up to m
y lofty standards.
So, with the bathroom, I wanted to just gut the thing and start over with the exception of the bathtub. What we ended up doing was leaving most of the drywall other than the wall where we were replacing the fully rotted window. The window literally fell apart when Ben tried to knock it out of the house framing!
Here's the start of what we did:
Posted by Posted by
The Chez
at
10:54 PM
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50's,
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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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bathroom,
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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.
Posted by Posted by
The Chez
at
7:57 AM
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50's,
homeowner,
house,
interior,
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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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homeowner,
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Portland
