I must say that I can’t imagine doing this without all the work Ms Swanky did to make it happen. Her being a realtor allowed her to know what she was doing in all the confusing-ness, and make it understandable. I can’t imagine doing it without an agent by your side.
I don’t know why I never bought a house before. I have had a lot more money in the bank and a lot better credit rating and more monthly income. I guess it’s just a further settling down. And having a fiance to make it all a lot easier. “Just sign here and give us a few grand.”
I suppose it’s pretty lame to some to reach my 40s always having rented. It’s stupid really. But, I just have not thought it out and planned it out before.
It is a major change though. I have lived in many houses and apartments that were varying degrees of nice and or interesting places. And, as a renter, I have never painted a wall. I just put my stuff in the space and hang some things on the walls. Why go to the expense? Now I will be willing and free to do all those great decorating things. Refinishing the floors. Painting. New counter tops. Anything I want. I’ve never lacked taste or style, but I have lacked the desire to translate my spaces to any great degree.
I will hold back to a few degrees. I don’t know if this is the house to own for decades. I won’t be doing installations that transform the very room into new spaces. I have grand ideas, but plan to do just a very nice renovation of a 70 year old house. But I am free to do as I will.
And, the biggest, baddest in-home tiki bar yet will be included. I want to have it ready for guests for the luau near the end of July, but there is a possibility that HGTV will be coming in to help and so, I may hold off a bit…
Just think, in 30 years it’ll all be mine!
Congratulations! The thing I quickly came to understand when I bought my first house is that everyone else involved in the transaction — the realtor, the mortgage broker, the bank — they all want the transaction to happen, too. They make it work, and they actually make it pretty darned easy.
Now comes the fun part — nest building! You’re going to love it — when the bathroom faucet bugs the hell out of you, and the realization hits you: hey, I can just replace it with a new one! It’s an awesome feeling.
Have fun!
Welcome to the ranks of the equity holders, Swanky! As the owner of a 58-year old home, let me just add a cryptic comment on my own experience renovating an older home…you’re going to discover many surprising things.
I’ll be looking for you on HGTV.
congrats from this side too (although still south of the mason-dixon, lol)… as the owner of a 67-year-old house (sorry for the one-upmanship bali hai) i have to agree with everything bali hai said. incidentally i was patching drywall in my bathroom last nite. buy alot of tools if you don’t already! yer gonna need ’em!!! ‘specially a good shop vac.
First surprise – rats!
We put out some poison for now. They better take it. In a few weeks when we have the floors refinished and the walls painted and we move in, the Dogcats will come and they will kill and kill and kill. And it won’t be pretty. They will toy with them, maybe for hours, before they let them die…
Less than six days into the equity building project and here is what we have accomplished:
Removed all carpet and padding from hall, dining, living and bedrooms.
Removed all wallpaper from the above and partially the kitchen.
Removed carpet tack strips from living room and dining room.
Removed paneling from the one wall in living room, mostly.
Sanded living room walls
Spackled and repaired walls in all rooms.
Primed two living room walls.
Removed carpet staples from living room and most of dining room.
Removed a zillion nails and screws in every wall in the house.
Removed huge 70’s brown mirrored sliding glass doors from bathroom tub.
Patched cracks in walls.
Sealed corners and ceiling edges with putty in living room.
On day one, the house looked so much better. We got all the old pink carpet out and lots of wallpaper. By this weekend it looked awful. Lots of dust and dirt and ugly stained walls. By next week, it should look pretty good as we get all the walls primered and ready to paint. Ms Swanky hopes to be able to start on the floors this coming weekend, but I think we won’t have paint on the walls by then. Primer, yes, mostly. We shall see.
rock on…
“Removed huge 70’s brown mirrored sliding glass doors from bathroom tub.”
Were the previous owners making “adult” films on the premises?
Oh, no, it was the one ala “One Day at a Time.” One of those very common 70’s one — the “futuristic” look with the diminishing horizontal lines going top-to-bottom.
Strangely, the same one was in my grandmother’s house when her bathroom was renovated in 1977. And I certainly don’t wanna think about *any* sort of “adult” filming going on there … eww…
Sadly, no. The house didn’t even have the bad sort of taste that is good. Just ugly and bland and you just wonder what they were thinking. We will be donating the chandelier in the dining room to our friends antique store though.
Update: This weekend we took the plaster off the wall over the fireplace where there was water damage and put up some drywall to repair. We also removed the door that went from the master bedroom to the kitchen. I suppose it is a nice short-cut, but I really see no need for such a doorway. I can manage the trek to the kitchen just find. Drywall and “mud” to smooth it out.
Lots of sanding and scraping and pulling staples… We think we’ll take the useless windows out of the kitchen this week too. The window over the sink looks into the laundry room… I caulked all the dining room and sanded all the walls and it should be ready for primer now.
Slow and painfull, slow and painful. Every day we go over there and it just looks… the same. You spend a day there and no change. If anything, it’s more messy. But we are inching towards the day when it will all get painted and then, it will transform quickly.
One small mouse was left as an offering in the kitchen floor. I think the other mice imagine that will satisfy us and we will stop with the poision and forget bringing the Dogcats over. Nope.
Congratulations! Sounds like a blast!
Actually… It sounds like work. Good work, though.
Sort of A Work Blast!
Oy. This is my way of letting you know why I am not posting much…
Ms Swanky managed to get $10 kitchen cabinet hardware for 50 cents each and a bathroom light that was $51 for $5. Yeah.
We have gotten the dining room mostly primed and the living room and bedroom. All staples and tack strips out of the dining room and maybe the living room. Removed paneling from basement to prepare for new carpet arriving on Thursday.
It is really looking good now as one room after another is primer white. But we still must paint the ceilings, finish priming lot sof stuff. Paint all the trim an doors white and then pick colors for the rooms and paint them. Next comes repairing the floors (vents boarded up, etc) and then sand and refinish and seal the hardwood floors. That will get us to a point to begin moving in. We may also do some big work in the kitchen. Remove two windows and drywall the holes and swap some cabintes and stuff around. Not sure right now. Seems like too much to tackle to get moved in by the end of February.
Need more money, time and back massages…
Latest updates:
Rats! Well, mice at least. Ms Swanky’s parents came by and one of the little buggers decided to die right next to his breiefcase, vomiting blood…
New carpet is coming for the basement on Thursday, so Ms Swanky thought it would be good to remove the drop ceiling tiles and clean them off while there was crappy carpet under them. She found LOTS of mice turds and we are tossing all the tiles for new ones.
It’s been three weeks now. No food in the house for at least those three weeks, maybe more depending on what they might have eaten while everything was in boxes for the movers for weeks before. So, maybe they have been without much sources of food for way over a month now and the house is not so great a place to hang out any more. It’ll be another month before we are fully in there and so the poison will continue to knock them off. And then, we will bring the Dogcats to kill and kill and kill.
All the carpet tack strips are out of the house and the quarter round from the floor boards. Most of the staples are gone. 3 of 4 rooms are primered.Ready to start painting trim in some rooms and ceilings, etc.
It’s been way cold here this week. It was in the 70s for a while and we were working with all the windows open and it was like spring. Not it’s in the 20s and winter again.
Mice puking up blood…that’s a nice mental image…:-P
Kudos to you both for tackling a project like this. Mrs. BH and I have alway hired contractors…very, very, very expensive contractors.
Okay… So we had thought we’d get lots of painting done this weekend and be ready to start on the hardwood floors… Then Ms Swanky’s Dad came over to help and his plan was to destroy the bathroom! Well. He removed the toilet and sink and we pulled up the flooring. That let us know we had black and white marble tile under there! Her folks bought us a new toilet and sink and her Dad and brother are installing them today. Tada! Bathroom remodel. Got a new light for in there at Lowe’s closeout sale for $5 (was $51). It’ll be swell…
Interesting stuff Swanky. Any Photos?
Good luck on the remodelling. Owning a house can be very rewarding. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.
We’ve taken photos along the way, but I have had no time to even download them to the computer. Once we are on the other side of this move, I’ll make a before and after set of images to post.
Well, we are not there yet with the bathroom. The toilet was installed, but there is need of a hammer drill to get the pedestal sink installed. I have one. We’ll get it in there soon.
The bathroom door had to be remounted to the outside of the door frame (luckily they put in a door frame where this is possible) because the new toilet was too long to be cleared with the door opening in. This was something we wanted to do anyway to make the small bathroom “bigger”. We also have long term plans to change the hall linen closet to a bathroom closet, and changing that door helps that too. So, the tile was cleaned under the new toilet and sink, beadboard installed and primed along with baseboard.
New toilet is 20 inches high where the old was 14. It just seemed crazy short.
Bedroom is near completely painted. The color we picked was described as Tiffany box blue and, bygod, it is!
Installed most of the new ceiling tiles in the basement, but all the ones requiring cutting are left to go.
Filled the holes where there used to be deadbolt locks on all the doors. Apparently the old, old owner rented out rooms to students and wanted everyone to be secure… Needs a second and maybe third application of filler.
Tomorrow will be 4 weeks we’ve been at this. Every day. All day long for Ms Swanky most days and all weekend long for me and most evenings.
I had thought we would live in this house for a few years and then move on to something we liked more… I also once thought “All this house needs is some cosmetic updating. No biggy.” I don’t think I will go through this again. I’ll go through it when I can hire someone else to do it all… But, we have more time than money right now and a lot fo friends and family that know how to do all these things and are willing to help.
I just wonder if we’ll tackle the kitchen before we move or if the bathroom is the last side track… The kitchen just needs some minor cosmetic changes…
Floor! We have refinished the floors. Three days on my knees sanding and giant brown nose goblins and, whew. The floors look great and with the house empty and the nice floors and primered walls, we can really see the end now. Another coat or two of polyeurothane and then finish painting color on the walls and we are done. Ready to move in. Yeah. Right…
Or not… Sure the floors looked great from a distance while they were wet, but once we got on them to do another coat, we discovered the floors were like sand paper. Vacuuming the wood was not enough. I needed to clean them very carefully it seems and every speck of dust left in every grain of wood turned into a spike of polyurethane. You could sand wood with our wood floors.
Last night we sanded the surface with 100 grit paper in one room and cleaned it completely with tack cloth and mineral spirits and then carefully put another coat of poly on. It is a little better, but still awful.
It looks like the long weekend of agony we spent sanding the floors may have to be redone… At least A) my back muscles are stronger now from doing it last weekend and B) maybe we only have to do a single grit sanding or maybe two rather than the 3 intense ones we did before… I don’t think our floors can be sanded like that again anyway…
It seemed like we were so close and it looked so good, from a distance…
Crisis averted. The redo looked okay and we sanded the house and put on a new coat tonight with the help of an experienced friend and we think the floors will look just fine.
Here is an image of the floor as we put down the first coat of polyurethane.
We really are in the home stretch. (pun?) The list of things that need doi’ so that we can start moving is pretty short and I think it can be accomplished in the next 7 days, Ms Swanky feels it can be done in the next 4 days.
Touch up the trim, clean, paint and install the quarter round on the baseboards.
So we plan to be moving next week one way or another. If we can start Monday, that means we get a lot of stuff moved by the weekend and then hit the big pieces. If we start moving next weekend, I am not 100% sure how that will work.
Buying a matching pair of vintage blonde dressers tonight.
And then we should be past this stress in March.
Oh. The floors turned out just fine. Sanded the second coat and put down 3-5 throughout and they are smooth and shiney.
Painted all the walls upstairs now. Bathroom pedestal sink is installed.
Here is the marble floor we discovered under the ugly linoleum.
That’s half inch by one inches pieces of tile with the thinnest of grout. Very nice. In great shape.
Notice the date of the first post. January 10th. TOday is February 26th. Every day and night we have been doing nothing but working on the house. It is taxing. We are at the end and plan to start moving in next weekend. There is a small amount of work left, and yet we do not have the motivation to do it…
I do not encourage trying what we have done. It has turned out really well. We got a lot of good breaks. We had good help.