Mouse On A Stick

Busy day today. As you can see, I've only got a few more boards left to pull up in the kitchen.  I moved the fridge which was NO fun because the doors kept opening and it's beyond disgusting in there.  I saw dark colors and smelled decomp every time they peeked open. So gross.

I've got a good floorboard removal system going so the work is much faster now and pretty damn gratifying.  I'm confident that I can get the rest done in one day.  Then it's just lifting up the sub floor and moving on to demoing either the bathrooms or the kitchen cabinets! To pay someone else to remove those boards would be $4/square foot which means I'm saving us at least $1200 by doing it myself.  Not bad!

When I got to the boards that had been under the fridge and stove I saw one with a clump of dustbunny on it.  I shook the board before starting to throw it in a pile and just before I did I realized that the dustbunny had a tail and an ear...poor lil' mouse! Who knows how long he's been stuck on that board in under-stove purgatory!

That experience highlighted two things for me- 1. we're definitely getting a farm cat and 2. I really need to work with the windows open in there, I'm sure I'm breathing in all kinds of grossness even with my mask on.

By the way, the floors are oak just as I suspected.  That means they cost $7-8 foot which makes me even angrier that someone would pay good money for nice oak floors and not take the time to make the floor even. Ugh! Such a waste! Now we have to pay that all over again to reinstall them annnd my back hurts. Thanks anonymous lazy person with indifference to detail. Thanks.

Back to the topic of contractors- picking one is hard.  It's like I'm on a dating game but the stakes are much higher because there's 10's of thousands of dollars involved.  The fear of not choosing wisely has me stressing just a bit. My biggest beef with the process so far is that most places won't give you a quote   until you sign up for their "design process" that allows an interior designer to fully measure the house and THEN talk to you about what every idea and material would cost...this design process is $2-5k and no you don't get that back if you decide that after seeing their numbers the markup is too high for the company you chose.

We're certainly not in the position to burn $2-5k just to fully vet a company and find out if they have reasonable prices or not. I'm hoping the people I met with this morning can give me ideas on pricing per job before we go forward.  The multitude of potential projects for this place is overwhelming so we really need that budget guidance before we get into a contract with anyone.

In all honesty, we could probably install our own kitchen cabinets and appliances. I'm tempted to do it ourselves and leave just the technical stuff for the contractor in both the kitchen and bathroom areas. If we can't do it we can always hand them over and write the check, no harm trying though right?

Whenever I say "remodel the kitchen" every contractor looks at it with raised eyebrows, looks at me (eyebrows still raised) and says, "you can burn $45k just doing a basic kitchen remodel"....umm yeah maybe you can but we don't need elephant tusk knobs on brazilian cherry, ripped from the rainforest cabinets. I know most people want high end but I don't need it, not for this fugly house anyway. I may have to eat my words but I just can't see spending that much on a basic kitchen.  We're not even reconfiguring the layout, just clicking in new cabinets. End of story. What's the problem?

Sidenote, the wall is baby pink where the oven was which means the kitchen used to be baby pink just like the guest bath. Gross. Did they only have a handful of paint colors in the 60's? Is that it? I'm really not looking forward to taking that glass wall down.  It's going to be a mess. A dangerous one at that.

It just occurred to me staring at the above photo that I might be able to sell or donate a lot of things we're gutting- I'm going to put anything salvageable on craigslist and see if I get any takers.  That hyper little lady on HGTV does it so why can't I? I'll shotgun a Redbull and try to hock the staircase banister (buyer must remove), the glass wall (buyer must remove), the cabinets (buyer must remove) and whatever else I can find...if this works it'll be Huck Finn painting a fence level of brilliance!

I mean, c'mon, wouldn't you pay top dollar for unique lighting fixtures like this one?? *crickets*

Demo/Delusions of Grandeur

We've been watching a LOT of home improvement shows lately. You name it, we're watching it and getting delusions of grandeur about our abilities to do a good amount of work ourselves.

"10 Grand In Your Hand" is the show that gets me the most riled up to grab the sledgehammer and just start knocking things out! It starts off with the host, a charismatic contractor, saying, "Contractors get paid big bucks doing jobs you can't or don't want to do. Don't write the check! I'll show you how to do work yourself and put 10 grand back in your hand!" From that point on, my pupils dilate as I watch average people like myself rip apart their kitchens, frame their own walls, install their own windows and stain their own floors saving thousands of dollars! It all looks so easy!

Then there's Mike Holmes' "Holmes on Homes".  A beefy Canadian perpetually dressed in sleeveless shirts and overalls, he's the white knight contractor obsessed with attention to detail who comes in to save families who hired bad contractors that did shoddy work.  He points out how to properly insulate a basement, how to drywall, how to install a sink all while I feverishly take notes!

So- how's our own demo going after all that inspiration...slowly.  Here's our list of to-do's:
1. Remove all hardwoods from raised section in kitchen and entryway.
2. Bash out our kitchen (including tile backsplash, cabinets and above-cabinet dead space area).
3. Take both bathrooms down to the studs removing fixtures and tiles.


All the contractors I'm vetting keep telling me I should just let them do it.  They say, "it'll be so much faster, we have our own dumpster, we have all the tools already, we know what we're doing, it's not that expensive"...it feels like I've got Louis Gosset Jr. whispering in my ear that he wants my D.O.R.  It sure sounds tempting but I'm going to try and stick it out for the time being. I may break once we pick a contractor but for right now I'm going to keep making a mess.

Here's a picture of the kitchen before I started anything. We need to have the refrigerator removed and other than that it's all on us to gut it. I always wonder why they left that gross mat in front of the sink. That mat, a ceramic snail on the porch and that grammatically challenged brick on the walkway are the only traces of life. So weird. Like farmhouse Chernobyle.

It's still really cold in the house but nothing warms you up like pulling up floorboards!

Here's what I accomplished yesterday. I only got half the kitchen done but in my defense I wasn't there very long. What you see is about an hour of work.  Getting those boards up is pretty tough. That beat up looking crowbar was shiny yellow and brand new 2 days ago!

You have to hammer the crowbar under the edge of the board and slowly pop it up from the nails along the edges.  Then you have to move down the side of the board and keep popping it up with the crowbar until you can yank it off the floor. It's a shame I can't salvage the wood but being tongue and groove, its all splintering to bits when I pull it up.  I still have no idea what kind of wood it is but it's extremely sturdy and the boards are thick.

I'm pretty sure we had that exact same linoleum pattern in my kitchen when I was little. There's no way to get it off the sub-floor and it doesn't matter since we're taking the sub floors out to make the floors level.

There's a fancier pattern on the entryway by the front door.  It really accomplishes a moroccan vibe don't you think? :/

I bashed a hole in the wasted space area above the cabinets to see what it's made of- drywall is the answer.  Just minty green dead drywalled space. I never want to see that color again once that kitchen is gutted.

The backsplash is tile that was painted over in the same minty green. It couldn't look worse.  I understand that bashing out tile is messy and time consuming but come on!

Furthermore, how lazy and indifferent do you have to be to put rusty outlets UPSIDE DOWN?!

It's bad enough they're not GFI outlets in the kitchen (which means they don't have the safety feature that stops sending electricity if something gets dropped in water) AND they've got too much power running to the kitchen anyway. What I'm saying is that the current kitchen is a death trap.  Maybe the outlets are upside down to make it harder to electrocute yourself. Just a thought.


I'm going back out to do more demo all day on Thursday so hopefully I'll get a lot more done this week!

The closing process.

Our closing process was a battle of wills - the paper equivalent of a stare down. Anyone even slightly concerned with time, logic or reason would have thrown in the towel but not us. We knew the bank would buck but we were set on breaking that horse!

Their tactic was pretty simple.  We put in our offer, they said another couple was also interested...so we bid higher and won (I'll always wonder if there really was another couple!). Then they proceeded to ignore our contract for 2 months. We wanted an answer but stayed calm.  We'd locked in a rate and had a VA inspector check out the property in order to approve the loan.  He pointed out minor repairs that needed to be made before closing and we asked the bank to address them...the silence continued.  We then extended our interest rate lock more times than we, or our saint-like mortgage man Eric, can remember and kept waiting for an answer on the original items we requested be addressed before closing, which was all septic repairs that legally should have been remedied before they ever attempted to sell the property.

After 4 months, interest rates went up and we had our real estate agent (Casey Margenau, an amazing agent and person) contact them to say they needed to make a decision or we were walking.  Our rate lock would expire in one month and after that it would be too late.  That worked- they agreed to our stipulations and got working on fixing the septic issue along with our smaller VA inspector items!

But not so fast...the septic system turned out to be the MOST complicated and convoluted system ever constructed.  Like I said, they should have dealt with this way before trying to sell the house. I'd never known anyone who used a septic system before this experience.  Sure, I'd seen Rid-Ex commercials like everyone else but I had no idea how they worked.  To be honest, I'm still pretty fuzzy on a few details but I do know that you have to have the right kind of dirt and without the exact right kind of dirt, having a septic system is a huge pain.  Apparently, where our septic system is located (out of alllllllll the places to put one on almost 12 acres) it's not an ideal spot.  The system primarily needed an overhaul of its connector box and the box needed to be buried to prevent freezing of the lines. Blahblah, something. Just make it go away when we flush it!

Beyond that, the bank needed to get permission from the county to allow their septic company to start work on the system and the county wanted a plan from an engineer on how the system would be fixed before they'd sign off.  It dragged on and on for weeks.  County not answering calls, septic people unable to start work, bank agent dragging her feet, until finally, we only had one week left.

As the septic issue was dragging, we were also dealing with he fact that the "small items" the VA inspector pointed out were not properly taken care of by the bank's contractor so the inspector failed us...TWICE before we decided to take matters into our own hands.  Each time he failed us, this inspector would add more things to his list in the interest of protecting us.  The irony! By the time we stepped in he'd requested that broken windows be repaired (despite the fact that we intend to replace the windows immediately if we closed), the front porch be sanded and painted (why?!), interior holes in drywall be painted over with primer (why?!) with no mention of fixing wires protruding from hallways, broken doors that barely fit their frames, etc.  It didn't have to make sense, we just needed to fix it.

The bank was DONE putting money into that house and they let us know that it would be up to us to pass the third and final inspection.  I can't confirm it but someone, not necessarily us but someone that the bank gave permission, bundled up and came out to that freezing house to sand and paint the porch, sand and paint over drywall and remove and pay to have window panels repaired.  That same someone-entity also left a nice note for the inspector laying out all items addressed per his request. At least that's what I heard through the grapevine.  Either way, we passed inspection and were free to go back to worrying whether or not the septic work would get done in time.

I kept a positive vibe but was starting to think this was NOT going to happen in that last week.  It seemed impossible.  I definitely underestimated how bad the bank wanted to be rid of this house.  They'd already put too much time and effort into it to back out now. We signed papers on the very last day possible while work was still being done on the septic system. The bank worked out a deal with our agent that they would pay in full for all the septic costs up front as well as reimburse us for our fees to extend our rate lock because of their delays. We'd take possession of the house with the understanding that the septic system still needed a few more day's work to be completely finished.

SO, that's how it all worked out in the end.  It was a complicated, muddled mess and because it snowed three feet just after signing, almost a month later we're still waiting on that septic work to be 100% complete.  The snow is melting now so we hope to have it all done this week - we'll see what happens!  Either way, it's a relief to have made it through closing and it can only go up from here!

Where to begin- bathrooms and HVAC and wiring, oh my! And flooring and windows and kitchens...

The hardest thing about renovating a house that needs a new everything when you have limited funds is deciding where to begin!  When we first went into the house it had holes in the drywall throughout, wires coming out of just about every wall, a huge switchboard type panel in the entryway, broken windows  and doors (most of which seem rigged to fit into their openings) and a LOT of bugs had lived, loved and died throughout.

Thankfully, we closed when it's still snowy and freezing outside so we have the good fortune to focus solely on the tragedies of the interior without getting sidetracked by landscaping or gardening that will need to be done soon.

The previous owners ran a business from the home so they had a lot of people living there (not so great for the septic system) and they wired every room for phones and computers. The picture above is of the main hub where all the wires in the house come from- we're hoping to pull most of them out before we tackle properly insulating the exterior walls and attic.

Right now we have no idea if the boiler or AC run. We've had the water off since we closed in order for the septic system to continue to be repaired.  Hopefully we'll have all that sorted out within the week. I'm getting pretty tired of dressing like a homeless woman to endure the bone chilling cold in there and I'm pretty sure the people at the grocery store up the road are tired of seeing us every time we have to use the bathroom!

Other than the basic necessities of septic, insulation and HVAC, the bathrooms, kitchen and a stairway in the middle of the main living space are our primary focus points for renovation.  We have a long list of wants but those are the needs. As you can see, the master bathroom leaves a lot to be desired.  We can't even get our shoulders through the doorway without walking sideways!                                                        

The small frosted window on the wall connects to the guest full bath to let some natural light in from the  big window in the master....I get it but really? Not ok.  

The guest bath is decked out in all pink tiles.  One challenge we face is where to get extra room to make the master bath bigger.  We're probably going to have to take some square footage from the master bedroom but we'll be depending on whatever general contractor we choose to help us sort out the details.  We're hoping to cut down on contractor fees so our goal is to demo both bathrooms, the kitchen, flooring and other misc areas ourselves.  I gotta say, I think demo is gonna be fun!  I wonder if I can recycle the smashed up tile somewhere. I need to look into that! Otherwise I may have a pink and blue table mosaic somewhere in the garden. 

The connecting guest bath in all its pink glory!

As I mentioned earlier, another main focus is the kitchen and an ill-placed staircase in the center of the open floorplan.  The kitchen, like the bathrooms, appears to be original to the 1965 home and is just as unfortunate.  Low, warped cabinets, formica countertops and wasted space all over.  NO pantry. I really want one and am hoping some creative genius designer the contractor brings in can find a spot for one that costs us close to nothing. If the kitchen depresses you, you can always throw yourself down the staircase put directly in a high traffic area two feet away.  I'd love to meet the person who originally thought up that layout. I need to buy a silk glove just to slap them with

it should we ever meet. 

The answer to the question you're wondering is yes, that is an actual 1980's era glass block wall on the side of the refrigerator eating up space.  This house has just about every horrid decorating item you can think of! The dead fridge is pulled out from the wall in the picture above because it had been leaking which warped the hardwoods underneath.  We don't care though because those hardwoods have to come up anyway. Some kind scavenger was nice enough to sneak into the house one night and steal the ancient stove and oven. Thank you kind stranger, you saved us the work! 

If you can't tell from the picture above - a past owner put wood floors on top of linoleum instead of taking the time to level it out with the rest of the floor.  They let it sit 2 inches higher resulting in little step downs that run the length of the kitchen and living room. Very deserving of a second slap in my book. 

Our plan is to remove the raised wood planks, relocate the staircase making it a switchback with its own door and then sand and stain the floors a rich brown, thereby making it the only rich thing in the house! Ba-dum-bump!

 The hardwoods help the main living area look pretty decent, even as run-down and dull as they are, they really make a difference. I'm so thankful we don't have to deal with carpet upstairs (downstairs is a whole other issue and will have to be a whole other post!).

This is the huge window located on the West side of the main room between the fireplace and the front door.  I'd love to make it a bay window seating area where we can enjoy the view!

Having a fireplace has been great so far, we light fires when we visit to stay warm! As you can see, the "open concept" room would be a hell of a lot better without a huge staircase smack in the middle.  

Another thing that's a "must" (vs. a want) is replacing the aforementioned doors and windows. They, like everything else, also appear to be original to the house and gotta go! None are efficient and I'm pretty sure that even a toddler who got angry enough could kick the doors in.

In the picture above you can see the slit window side entry door that leads to a large screened in porch area.  My hope is to replace that door with french doors and enclose the porch with windows so we can use it year-round....that's the definition of a "want"!

From Foreclosure to Farm

Six months ago my fiancee' and I came across a listing for a foreclosed house on 12 acres. We'd been casually house hunting for over two years in the Northern Virginia area. Most recently we'd been searching for a small plot of land where we could build something new, efficient and affordable. We had a dream of having enough land to grow our own food and raise chickens but we soon discovered what most people already know, it's MUCH cheaper to buy a lot with a house already on it!

Searching for and buying a vacant lot is as difficult as finding a simple black dress, most have been marred by a tacky lace detail, a zipper, or worst of all, a split-level 1960's relic untouched by modern life. What the hell is the deal with split-level houses anyway? They are ALL over this area like an ugly plague of locusts.

So after seeing more than our fair share of split-levels and poorly maintained, drafty, low-ceiling colonials and ramblers, none of which seemed to justify the insane pricetags they carried, we stopped looking. We had given up the search both in and outside the beltway and decided to just keep renting while we saved up and hoped for something better. Then we saw the listing: a 4,000 square foot ranch on almost 12 acres, horse barn included.

When we went out to see it the grass was thigh high, tire tracks covered the front yard, a brick left on the walkway had "Your pathetic" written on it in black marker and it was obvious that the house had been empty for a long time. Despite the seemingly endless list of problems and the errant grammatical errors, we saw possibility. We put in a bid and a harrowing six months later, we finally closed (that harrowing six month struggle is a separate entry).

Now begins the renovation of a house with very little going right for it as well as the preparations to get a small farm running as soon as the snow melts!