The Contractors Do Their Thing

Liam and I were able to accomplish thousands of dollars in necessary renovation due to a special renovation loan program. It was no small feat to acquire all the necessary paperwork to make this happen. That is an entirely different story, called "FHA Madness"

Anyway, within the first couple of weeks, our contractors got to work. Everything they needed to do primarily had to do with the exterior of the house.

1. We received a brand new roof. The old board members were entirely stripped from the roof, and new boards were laid. After that, the roof went down! An enormous truckload of roof came off the house and was thankfully towed off the property. It was quite a sight to see!

2. The garage was refaced and the entire garage was lifted back up. This is a temporary fix until Liam and I replace the garage entirely which will ultimately be necessary.

3. The front porch masonry stoop was repaired and the chimney as well.

Once the contractors were done doing what they needed to do, the outside of the house looked like it had a brand new haircut and it seemed to be happy.

It looked something like this:

Plastic Tile Nightmare

One of the biggest challenges we initially faced, was the side entrance. Not only was the rest of it filthy and utterly a disaster, the walls were covered in a terrible sort of thin red and green plastic tile. This tile was covered in mold and the stench coming in from the side entrance was unbearable. This tile had to go and it had to go fast!

Luckily the plastic tile itself was fairly easy to remove. Sure enough, black mold was found behind the tiles and a sticky brown, musty adhesive remained on the walls after the tiles cracked off.

All we knew was the tile had to go. We went at it with a trowel and a hammer and just kept going.

Eventually we had it all removed and it looked like this:

Later, the adhesive was removed with chemical adhesive stripper. We had to wear thick chemical resistant gloves, goggles, garbage bags over our bodies, and face masks for this process. It took about 2 days to remove the adhesive. Once the adhesive was removed, the plastic wall was patched and sanded until it was somewhat smooth, then painted over with a thick white primer. Pretty soon wainscoting will be placed over the imperfect plaster walls and will then be trimmed with crown molding.

The First Few Weeks...

There was nothing we could do, but get in there and just do it! Our FHA renovation loan closed on August 20th, 2008. The house was finally ours.

We drove out to the property late, the following night. We gathered what needed to be done and what we could do right away. The carpet was a disaster and needed to be torn out first. There was water damage along the plaster walls in the eat-in-kitchen area which was once a back porch. It had been closed off and made into an addition probably around the 1950's. The roof was going to be entirely replaced through our loan, so we knew we could get started repairing the water damaged plaster.

It looked like a disaster, but we knew if we could get the horrid carpet out and repair the plaster damage, we'd have a start.

It took several days to tear out the carpet throughout the entire house. We had intended to refinish the hardwood floors throughout the entire house; however, we came upon the discovery that the floors on the first floor were severely covered in stains, paint, and had board separation throughout. We knew immediately we would not have the skill, the money or time to refinish the first floor, so we considered our options and determined laminate flooring would give us the same look of hardwood floors for a price we could afford.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that the second floor did not have nearly the damage of the first floor. Although the floors were splattered with paint, that could be sanded off with patience.

The carpet was out in a few days, and we began the tedious effort to remove all the old carpet trims, nails and staples throughout the entire house. This process took many days straight. We ultimately removed 5,000+ staples and nails.

The once beautiful hardwood staircase with rich lacquer finish finally became partially uncovered. It too had been victim to a sloppy white paint job, rubber step pads, metal trim, nail upon nail, and thousands of staples. That was the first glimpse into the 1920's history of the home and it filled us with hope and motivation to keep going.

In a matter of a couple weeks we had repaired the plaster damage in the eat in kitchen to the best of our ability. A lot of old plaster had to come out and wall patch had to be applied. We had no idea how it would turn out, but at last, after hours and hours of patient sanding by hand, the wall began to look like a wall again. We finished it with a thick white primer designed for uneven and damaged walls.

With the carpet out, the floors cleared, and the wall repaired, we could move on to the next challenges...

Here are some photos of the repaired wall & floors sans carpet!