Still at it. In the last video you saw that our water line from the road to the house ruptured. Well, that was a mess that ended up being almost twice the estimate! And took two weeks to complete. Two weeks of mooching water from my neighbor. Yikes… Did you know that you can hook up your hose to another house and feed your house with it? Pretty cool…except you get that nice rubber water flavor.
Well, there were lots of ups and downs, but in the end we have one room completely finished, and our bedroom is %90 done. I got a funny story about my kids to share.
Now these three little goofballs are the cause about half of the renovations. Just in the last week we have three broken windows, a flood, and the cat was thrown out the window. (good thing we have a porch roof for him to land on) Anyway, the day that the drywall was finished in the dining room, the kids intentionally overflowed the bathroom sink…which ran through the holes in the floor…and onto the back of the new drywall…then THROUGH the new drywall. Oh how I lllloo….lllloooo….okay…I love those kids. I really do, but man they are crazy. Who did they get that from? Sheesh.
Well, it’s been a couple of months and we are still at it. It seems with every bit of progress that is made there is an equal and opposite setback…sometimes multiple ones. Just the other day I was thinking, “Okay, now we are getting somewhere” Then the water line burst.
All I can say is “Daggone!” The little project has turned into a cancer that has now claimed 2/3 of my house, and is apparently headed outside. I had to remove the plaster from the ceiling of my dining room to allow for access to the plumbing for the bathroom. This time I wore 2 surgical masks and they were no match for 90 year old dust! I also had to destroy the facing on my porch to allow access to the area to be steam shoveled. Apparently, I’ll have to sod my lawn…again. Everyone says, “Just think how beautiful it will be when it’s done.” I used to believe them…now I’m not sure. For real though, there is some progress with the bathroom coming together nicely and the stripping of the trim is coming along. I must say that furniture stripper and acetone fumes give you one heck of a headache!
Here we go again…I’m starting to think that there is no such thing as a little job when you have an old house that was owned by a moron for 25 years. This week’s surprise surfaced when I removed the plaster from the stairway. Apparently, Dr. Dough-Head figured that his ideas are much better than what the building code stipulates. He built the stairway to the thrid floor and, as I showed you in the video, he has obviously never seen a proper stairway. The steps are supposed to rest on top of supporting structures known as risers. These risers are typically 2 x 10 lumber with the steps notched out, but under each cut out there is supposed to be a couple of inches of the board remaining for support. Dr. Dough-Head on the other hand Read More→
I had so much spare time and I was getting bored with my 20 hour schedule so it’s a good thing I decided to remodel my entire house! It happened by accident, but it’s continuing on purpose. One wall turned into one room, which evolved into one floor, and will soon be expanding into the next floor. On the bright side, this place will look really nice in a decade or so! (I hope that was an exaggeration) I don’t know if any of you have had the privilege of removing lathe and plaster walls, but it is not exactly a dust free endevour. You can fill a 30 gallon garbage can with every square foot of wall removed. And if you love to blow your nose and see Read More→
Well, I wanted to simply drywall one wall in my son’s room. That ‘little’ project turned into 2/3 of the house getting rewired, and the entire room and hallway getting gutted. There are also various holes throughout the entire house. My other son’s room is on the third floor and I had to take some of his floor out to get at the wires from the second floor. The amount of stupid things the previous home owner did to this place amazes me . There is a new electrical panel in the basement with nice new wires coming out of it, that is until the wires go into the walls and that’s where the fun starts. He intentionally did this to make it appear as if he had the house rewired, and to scam someone (me) into purchasing this palace. The real wiring inside of the walls is 100 years old and very brittle. The sad thing is that I actually did get an ‘inspection’ on the home before I bought it! I specifically remember the guy saying ‘they did use the old knob and tube switches, but they did rewire them with new wire.” This guy was either Read More→
