Randmblings: renovation

Showing posts with label renovation. Show all posts

The worst is over, right?

Friday, August 13, 2010

So, I thought the worst was over. I mean, it's all torn down and things just need to be reconstructed. No worries, right? Right? RIGHT??!?!?!?!? Right. Little did I know what I

was in for. Just getting it to my house was stressful enough. Putting it up and figuring out

the angles and usage of the boards? Lucky I had Paul. He knew how to do that. I certainly

never fared well at geometry. Only when playing air hockey.

Posted by Posted by The Chez at 9:31 PM
Categories: Labels: drywall, house, living room, Paul, renovation
0 comments

Rebuild it.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

So, part of the process of tearing down the livingroom and putting it back up meant

INSULATING! I'm still surprised how much that's changed the comfort level in the room.

I always thought it was just marketing at it's finest to sell insulation. It really does maintain

comfort levels quite well. Plus, it's super easy to install.

It was now time to start the harder part: hanging the drywall.

Posted by Posted by The Chez at 8:33 AM
Categories: Labels: house, insulation, interior, living room, renovation
0 comments

Coming soon!

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Hammers in walls! I don't drop hammers, I set em!

Posted by Posted by The Chez at 8:06 AM
Categories: Labels: drywall, homeowner, renovation
0 comments

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
Categories: Labels: bathroom, Ben Mastico, floor, homeowner, house, renovation, tile, tiling
0 comments

Oh, let's do the time warp.

Monday, March 1, 2010

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
Categories: Labels: 50's, bathroom, Ben, drywall, framing, homeowner, house, renovation, tile
0 comments

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
Categories: Labels: bathroom, homeowner, house, Portland, renovation, sink
0 comments

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
Categories: Labels: house, Portland, renovation, stripping, wallpaper
0 comments

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
Categories: Labels: house, Portland, renovation
0 comments

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.

Posted by Posted by The Chez at 7:57 AM
Categories: Labels: 50's, homeowner, house, interior, renovation
0 comments

Randmblings